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The disciples of Jesus thought in the same way. The disciples of Buddha also thought in the same way. It is part of love, not of reality.

It is part of love. You fall in love with a woman and you think, “Never before has there been such a woman; never again shall there be such a woman.” What do you mean? Is this the reality? In a sense it is: it is the reality for you. It is not an objective reality; it is a subjective reality. This is your feeling, and feelings are as real as stones. They exist.

This is not a comparison. You are not saying there really has never been such a beautiful woman before. How can you know? Millions and millions of women have been on the earth: how can you know, how can you compare? You don’t even know all the women that are on the earth right now. Who knows? – there may be somebody who is more beautiful than your beloved.

But that is irrelevant, that is not the point. You are not making a comparative statement. It is not that you have studied all the statistics. You are simply making a statement of love. It has nothing to do with any other woman; it is not comparative. In the moment of love a truth arises, a subjective truth. It is your feeling. For you, this is the woman, and all other women have become irrelevant.

The same happens when you love a master. It happens even more extremely because the love is still deeper. You love a woman physically – at the most, psychologically. You love a master spiritually. You touch the deepest core. He touches the deepest core in you. In that ecstasy, a subjective truth arises.

This is not new. This is nothing new to you. This has always been happening. Ask Jesus’ disciples and they will say, “He is the only begotten son of God.” They cannot conceive that Jesus can be compared in any way with anybody else. He is incomparable, unique –the only begotten son. It is impossible for them to conceive that there is another son of God.

Ask the followers of Buddha and they say, “He has attained. And only he has attained the unattainable. It was never attained before.” Ask the followers of Mahavira. They say, “He is the only one, all-knowing, omniscient. There is nobody else.”

What is happening? It is a simple phenomenon of subjective love. It is impossible for the lover to conceive that there can be anybody else. In a moment of love, you are in such deep ecstasy, so intoxicated. Love is an intoxicant. In that intoxication, whatever you say is poetic, it is not scientific. And there is no contradiction in it.

That’s why when I speak on Jesus, I forget all about Buddha, Mahavira, Krishna. They pale down, they disappear, they fade. Then, Jesus arises out of the whole of history, the only one, because that is the only way to understand him. You have to be deeply in love.

When I talk about Buddha, I forget about Jesus because even to remember Jesus will be a disturbance. When I talk about Lao Tzu, I forget about everybody else. He is enough, more than enough. He himself is such a vast sky that you can go on and on and on, and there is no end to it. They are all vast skies.

But the standpoint of the disciple is the standpoint of a lover. He is making a poetic statement. It is not reality, and yet it is reality. It is not reality in the objective sense of the word. It is reality as a subjective feeling. But I would like you to get out of it. I would like you to attain a greater love that is less like an intoxicant and more like awareness.

There are two stages with a master. First is falling in love with him. It is absolutely necessary; without it, you will never be in contact with him. But that is only the beginning. That should not become the end. In that state of ecstasy, you will be poetic. Be poetic! Don’t be worried. There is nothing to worry about. Declare your love! Go on the housetops and declare your love because the more you declare it, the more it grows.

But that is just the beginning. That is necessary to come close to the master. But come still closer and there comes a moment when the two flames of the disciple and the master become one. There is a jump, a leap, and the two flames become one. Then you become aware. Then you will laugh at your own statements. Now you know that enlightened people are not different at all. Only names differ. Buddha is a name, Jesus is a name, Krishna is a name – but the enlightenment that has happened to them is the same.

The closer you come to Buddha, the closer you will come to Christ also. It is as if you are moving from the periphery of a circle toward the center. On the periphery, one point is Buddha, another point is Jesus, another point is Ramakrishna. The closer you come to the center, those lines are no longer so separate, so different, so distant. Ramakrishna comes toward Christ, Christ comes toward Buddha, Buddha comes toward Krishna. They are coming closer. Move more and more to the center, and they are meeting and merging into each other. When you reach the exact center, suddenly they have all disappeared. Only enlightenment is, only light is. All have disappeared. Those were just the personalities.

Whatever you see in me is a personality. It is not the quality of the light; it is the mode of the lamp. It is the body of the lamp, not the quality of the light. The quality of the light is the same. Lamps differ. One lamp may be just an earthen lamp, another may be a golden lamp. The difference is vast, but that difference makes no difference in the quality of light. There is the same light in an earthen lamp or in a golden lamp.

It is the same. Buddha is reported to have said, “Go to the sea and taste the seawater. Anywhere you go, the seawater tastes the same.” Such is the quality of buddhas. You can taste from me, you can taste from Ramakrishna, you can taste from Krishnamurti, you can taste from Jesus: the difference is only from where you taste it. The ghat, the banks, may be different, but the ocean is the same. And wherever you taste it, it will taste the same: the same saltiness, the same flame.

So there is nothing wrong in it. Don’t feel guilty in any way. When you are in love, you have to be mad. In love and reasonable? – nobody has ever heard about it. If your love is reasonable, it will not be much of a love. When you are in love, you are mad.

When Majnu says something about Laila, it is not a scientific statement. But still it has a truth: the truth of Majnu’s heart. It does not say anything about Laila, it says something about Majnu’s love. But that love is also true.

So don’t be in any way guilty about it because this is the only way you will proceed. But don’t cling to it: move, go on and on. A greater consciousness is waiting for you – where love becomes aware, where love becomes consciousness, where love flares up and becomes light. There you will understand that all are one and the same. And in enlightenment, the personality disappears – the personality of a Buddha or a Jesus – and only the ocean remains, with the same taste.

It is your love. Good. Be happy about it, but don’t be content with it, don’t think it is enough. Good, but more is possible. Always look ahead and always try to transcend the state you are in. There comes a moment when nothing remains to be transcended. That is realization.