A man came to Bahaudin Shah and said, “First I followed this teacher and then that one. Next I studied these books and then those. I feel that although I know nothing of you and your teachings, this experience has been slowly preparing me to learn from you.”
The Shah answered, “Nothing you have learned in the past will help you here. If you are to stay with us, you will have to abandon all pride in the past. That is a form of self-congratulation.”
The man exclaimed, “This is, to me, the proof that you are the great, the real and true Teacher! For none whom I had met in the past has dared to deny the value of what I had studied before!”
Bahaudin said, “This feeling is in itself unworthy. In accepting me so enthusiastically and without understanding, you are flattering yourself that you have perceptions which are in fact lacking in you.”
Osho (Acharya Rajneesh) in the book Sufis: People of the Path
Baháudín Shah Naqshband (1318-1389) was the founder of what would become one of the largest Sufi Sunni orders, the Naqshbandi.
Image: The mausoleum of Baha al-Din Naqshband in Bukhara, now present-day Uzbekistan. Courtesy Wikipedia.
Acharya Rajneesh (1931-1990), known later as Osho, was an Indian godman, philosopher, mystic and founder of the Rajneesh movement. He was viewed as a controversial religious leader during his life. He rejected institutional religions, insisting that spiritual experience could not be organised into any one system of religious dogma. He advocated meditation and taught a unique form called dynamic meditation. Rejecting traditional ascetic practices, he asked his followers to live fully in the world but without attachment to it. Pic courtesy: https://www.sannyas.wiki/