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The question is complex, and you will have to be very alert to understand it because with complex questions misunderstanding is more possible than understanding.

The first thing: disciplehood is a great decision. You can become a disciple only if you drop your decidophobia because it is a great decision, it is a commitment. You cannot become a disciple if you are afraid of making decisions. This is the greatest decision in one’s life – to trust somebody else as the master, to trust somebody else and stake your whole life with the master. It is a gamble. Much courage is needed.

Too many people come to me who say they would like to become sannyasins, but they are afraid. The decision is too much, and a thousand and one things have to be considered before they make the decision.

Decidophobia means you are afraid of deciding anything. Disciplehood is a decision. If you are born a Hindu, that is not disciplehood. If you are a born Hindu and a shankaracharya comes to your town and you go and pay your respects, that is not disciplehood. You never decided to be a Hindu in the first place. This is coincidence; your Hinduism is just an accident. Somebody else is a Christian, and the pope comes and he goes to pay his respects – that is not disciplehood. He never decided to be a Catholic or a Christian.

In fact, you remain a Hindu or a Christian because you cannot decide to get out of them. It is not a decision; it is a lack of decision. Because you are afraid of deciding, you continue whatsoever you have got from tradition, heritage, from your father and mother. Just think about it: people decide their religion by their blood. Is any greater stupidity possible? Your religion being decided by your blood? Then take the Mohammedan’s blood and the Hindu’s and the Christian’s blood, and go to an expert and ask him which is the Hindu’s blood and which is the Mohammedan’s blood. No expert can show you; blood is simply blood. There are differences in blood, but those differences are not religious.

Deciding your religion just by birth is as if you are deciding your future by the I Ching, or going to an astrologer, deciding your future by the stars, or Tarot cards. These are not decisions; these are tricks for how not to decide. Somebody else decides for you. The book of I Ching was written five thousand years ago – somebody, nobody knows his name now, is deciding for you. You ask long-dead people to decide your future. You ask the past to decide your future. It is helpful in a way, because you are no longer needed to decide. If you are a Hindu, you have not decided it just by your birth. Your disciplehood is not disciplehood, it is decidophobia.

Just observe: in small things you think too much, and in great things you don’t think at all. If you go to the market to purchase clothes, you decide – ordinary things, trivia, you decide. It is as if there is a rule that if you drive your car slowly then drive carefully, but if you are going beyond fifty miles per hour then close your eyes. In small things – purchasing clothes or toothpaste or soap – you decide. Religion, God, meditation, prayer, you leave to somebody else to decide.

In great things you want to be blindfolded, and tradition works as a blindfold. People who are not born blind become almost blind because of a constant blindfold. Blinkers are on your eyes. Somebody’s blinkers are known as Hindu, somebody else’s as Christian, somebody else’s as Jaina, but they are all blinkers, blindfolds, given to you by the society because you are afraid of opening your eyes. So better to let somebody else decide; then you are freed of the responsibility, and you can say: We are obedient. Tradition is great, we simply follow the tradition. The past is great, and we follow the past.

You can rationalize these things, but this is not disciplehood. Disciplehood is always a personal choice. For example, you are here. I am neither a Christian, nor a Hindu, nor a Mohammedan, nor a Jaina, nor a Buddhist, and if you decide to go with me, it is going to be a decision. If you suffer from decidophobia, you cannot go with me; then you will remain within the fold in which you were accidentally born.

Once you decide – and “decide” means you have to decide, the responsibility is yours and it is personal - it is a commitment. I know it is very difficult to decide; hence much courage is needed. You can be Hindu easily; you can be Christian easily. But to walk with me you will have to drop your decidophobia. Only then do you become a disciple.

So it depends what type of disciplehood you are keeping in your mind. In the world there are very few disciples. Yes, the people who decided to go with Jesus were disciples. Jesus passed by a lake, and two fishermen had just thrown their net in the lake. He came to them, and put his hand on one of the fishermen’s shoulders. The fisherman looked at Jesus – those tremendously penetrating eyes, those tremendously silent eyes, more silent than the lake – and Jesus said to that man, “What are you doing? Why are you wasting your whole life in catching fish? Come with me, I will teach you how to catch men. Why go on wasting your life catching fish? Come follow me!”

A great moment. The man must have wavered between decidophobia and disciplehood. But then he gathered courage, he threw the net into the lake, and he followed Jesus. When they were leaving the town, a man came running and said to the fisherman, “Where are you going? Your father who was ill is dead. Come back home!” The fisherman asked Jesus’ permission: “Let me go for three, four days so I can finish with the last rites for my dead father, and then I will come.” And Jesus said, “Forget all about it. There are enough dead people in the town, they will bury the dead. You come follow me!” And he followed, he forgot all about his dead father.

This is disciplehood. Those who followed Jesus were disciples, but Christians are not disciples; now they are following a dead tradition. Those who followed Buddha were disciples, but Buddhists are not disciples. You are my disciples. Some day or other your children’s children will also remember me – they will not be my disciples. If your children start remembering me, loving me, because of you, then they are not related to me – then they have a fear of decision. Don’t create that fear in your children’s minds. Let them decide for themselves.

Life can become very rich if people are left to decide. But society tries to force decisions on you. Society is afraid that if it does not decide for you, you may not be able to decide. But, in fact, because of this, by and by you lose the capacity to decide things. And once you lose your decisiveness, you lose your soul. The word soul means an integrated unity within you. It comes out of great, fatal decisions. The more you decide and the riskier the decision is, the more integrated you become, crystallized.

If you have decided – and remember the emphasis – if you have decided to be with me, this is a great revolution in your life, a momentous phenomenon. But if you are not the deciding one – you came here because your wife was here or your husband was here, your friends were here and you came here and you saw so many people running around in orange, and you started feeling like an outsider, and you started feeling a little uneasy, so that you felt alien, and because of that you also took sannyas – then this is decidophobia, this is not disciplehood; then you have followed the crowd. Your sannyas is not worth anything, because it is not your sannyas at all. You have imitated. Never imitate. Be decisive on your own, and every decision will give you more and more integration.

This is a great decision – to commit, to get involved totally, to go with me toward the unknown. The mind will create a thousand and one doubts, hesitations; the mind would like to cling to the past. But if you decide, in spite of all this, you rise above your past, you transcend your past.

But don’t try to be clever. Try to be authentic and true. Don’t try to rationalize, because you may have taken sannyas without any decision on your part. You may have drifted with the crowd. Then you will rationalize it. You will say: Yes, this is my decision. But whom are you trying to kid? You are deceiving only yourself.

I have heard an anecdote. The mother was scolding her oldest son: “I have told you before that you should let your little brother play with the toys half the time.” “I do!” protested the kid. “I use the sled going downhill and let him use it going uphill – half the time!”

Don’t try to be clever. You can call your decidophobia a disciplehood – but you are not deceiving me, you are deceiving only yourself. Be clear about it. Great clarity is needed in the search of truth.