819

It is very simple. There is no need to be confused about it. If you are searching for enlightenment here, you will never find it. If you search for enjoyment here, you will find enjoyment and enlightenment comes in its wake.

Enlightenment happens only to a person who lives in immense enjoyment of life. Only he is worthy of it, because enlightenment is a greater joy– the greatest, the highest. You have to train for it. You have to train for it by being happy, joyous, by being in tune with life, by being a celebrator.

Forget about enlightenment. You need not worry about it. It is useless to think about it. Just enjoy! Get lost in enjoyment. That is the easiest way to lose your ego, and the shortest way to lose your ego. Once the ego is lost and you are really enjoying life, you are delighted with it, a great gratitude arises of its own accord. You suddenly start feeling you are grateful to God; whosoever God may be, whatsoever it means– that doesn't matter anymore. Your life is such a joy, how can you feel ungrateful? Your life is such a joy, it is not possible for you to be complaining.

The complaining mind is the root cause of the atheist's mind. When you complain, when everything is wrong, you cannot believe in God. And even if you try to believe, that belief will just be pseudo; it won't have any depth in you, it will be superficial. Maybe out of fear or maybe just out of conditioning, but no reality is there in it for you.

When you are joyous, when you are enjoying your life– the ordinary life, because there is no other life, only this life is there; when you start enjoying it– your food, your sleep, your bath, your walk early in the morning, the song, the birds, the trees, the people; when you start enjoying all this, gratefulness arises. You start feeling very calm and quiet. You start feeling a kind of contentment descending on you, slowly slowly. That contentment becomes part of your being. You become suffused with it, immersed in it. Every cell of your body starts falling into a harmony. In that harmony you will have the first glimpses of enlightenment, not otherwise.

So if you ask me, I will say: Forget about enlightenment, otherwise the idea of enlightenment will make you more miserable. You are already miserable. Everything is wrong, nothing is ever right. You are suffering. Now you bring another misery– enlightenment; and this is very difficult. The misery of not having enough money is not very big; make a little effort and you can have it, if not legally then illegally– but you can have it, and there are ways. You are not famous, and you are suffering, you can become notorious– that too is a kind of fame. If people don't know you as a mahatma, they can know you as a devil, but you can make yourself known. And the difference is not much between the mahatma and the devil; between the saint and the sinner the difference is not much. Both are after fame: the basic urge is the same. The saint is one who has made it legally. The sinner is one who could not make it legally– was not so clever, was not so intelligent– had to find some illegal ways, some criminal ways. But the reason is the same.

These things are possible easily, so the suffering will not be much. Now, enlightenment... You cannot make it legally, you cannot make it illegally; you cannot make it! You as you cannot make it, because you are the problem. So there is no illegal way to enlightenment; there is not even a legal way to enlightenment. In fact, those who know say there is no path to it; it is a pathless path. There is no gate to it; it is a gateless gate. There is no method to it. When all methods disappear, it happens.

So once a person becomes interested in enlightenment, he is getting into eternal trouble. Now, whatsoever he is going to do is going to fail– whatsoever! His failure is predetermined, it is built-in. In the very effort is the failure. So you do this, you do that and you go on failing. And the more you fail the more desperate you will become, the more and more anguish will be there, the more and more hopelessness will be there. More and more you will feel lost– more lost than ever before, and then you will feel that this idea of enlightenment has been a curse. It has taken your ordinary life from you. It won't allow any other life, it takes possession of you totally, utterly. And the old life is gone, and the new has not happened, and you start hanging in limbo. You are neither here nor there; you become a question mark. Your whole life becomes split.

So remember, never become desirous of enlightenment, that will give you great hell.

This is my basic approach: that you should learn how to enjoy life. Enjoy it more and more, as deeply as possible. Go into it. Small moments can be transformed into eternities of joy. Small things can become celebrations– very small things. Just an unknown flower– and if you sit by the side of it, and you look at it, and you are open to it– will give you great ecstasy. You will start swaying and dancing, you will feel drunk. Any small thing is full of God! This ordinary reality is not just ordinary, it is carrying in it the extraordinary, the superb, the suprememost. So love this life, and don't think of that. That always brings misery, because that brings conflict. Let that come through this!

You love the woman, you love the man... Let God come through that love, let God enter you when you are in a state of orgasm. Eat, enjoy the food; let God come to you as a taste. Listen to music, get lost in it, and let God come to you as sound, as harmony. Let God descend on you slowly slowly, without any hankering to catch hold of him, without any efforts to possess him in your hands. Just open yourself as much as possible– to the trees, to the birds, to the rains, to the sun, to the sands. Open yourself wherever you are, absorb, and gratitude will arise, and that gratitude will become your prayer.

And you will not know towards whom this gratitude is arising. When you don't know towards whom this gratitude is arising, it is towards God. When you know that it is towards God, you don't know a thing. Then it is the Christian God, or the Hindu God, or the Mohammedan God– and these are not God. God is basically hidden. Nobody knows his name. The Jews were right never to spell his name. The name of Yahweh was not allowed to be pronounced, because how can we pronounce his name?– we don't know his name. His whereabouts are unknown. Nobody has ever seen him. Whosoever has seen him has gone into him and disappeared forever; nobody has come back. Nobody knows where he is, who he is. But still, when life is flowing, when life has a flow to it and a dance to it, one feels gratitude.

Gratitude comes first and God comes second, not otherwise. People are trying to bring God first. First they create God, and that is their created God, man-made, home-made, manufactured. Then they bow down to their own manufactured statues. This is utterly stupid– a man bowing down to a statue he has made himself, or has purchased from the market. God is not for sale anywhere. And nobody has seen his face: nobody can make his statue. And nobody knows where he is: overhead, behind, in front, right, left– nobody knows. But gratitude arises... just as fragrance arises out of a flower and goes on, not knowing where, unaddressed; so, in the same way– unaddressed– arises gratitude. That is prayer, real prayer, and you start feeling God in your heart. Because of this gratitude, because of this prayerfulness, because of this thankfulness enlightenment is not far away. First, become joyous! And Jesus goes on saying it, but nobody listens. He says again and again: Rejoice! Rejoice! I say again: rejoice!

You ask: Have I come here to enjoy myself or get enlightened?

You have come here to get enlightened, as far as you are concerned. As far as I am concerned, you have come here to enjoy. But through enjoyment comes enlightenment, and through enlightenment just suffering. These are all ego trips. You find beautiful names, that's all, but they are all ego trips. Now, you want to become enlightened. Why? For what? From where did you get this idea of enlightenment? And this will create much suffering, because now you will be searching. What to do? Stand on your head to become enlightened? Fast to become enlightened? Go to the mountains to live in a cave? Become a masochist– to torture yourself? Practise a thousand and one things– which will be of mind, and cannot lead beyond mind?

Just go and look at the people. The East has been on this trip very long. The West is new and unaware of the pitfalls. The East has been too long into it. Just go and see Eastern seekers after enlightenment and you will find all kinds of pathologies. Somebody is fasting for months, his body has become just bones, sunken eyes, no energy left, torturing himself in the hope that this is the way– as if God were a sadist, as if God would like you to torture yourself. 'The more you torture yourself the more valuable you will become'– this is just something that has gone deep in the psychology of the man.

The child learns this from the parents. Whenever the child is happy, the parents are not happy. Whenever the parents are happy the child is not happy. The child learns one basic fundamental of life: 'The parents can be happy only when I am not happy.'

For example, the child is ready to go out. It is raining and the rains are calling him. And it is so beautiful outside... and the sound of the rain... and it is so cool. And he wants to go out and stand in the rain. But the mother is not ready to allow him, the father is not ready to allow him. They shout at him! He remains in the house. With greedy eyes he looks outside the window; it is so beautiful there, and the trees are so happy; and the trees are so moved by the rains. And he also would like to go into this world and he would like to stand like a tree, but he is not allowed. The parents are happy if he does not go, if he suffers. If he goes, then the parents suffer. When he comes back, then he has been a nuisance to the parents; he will be punished. And the parents will be angry for days together.

Now, one thing the child goes on learning every day: 'Whatsoever I feel is joyous, is wrong, and whatsoever I feel as painful, boring, is right.' He is so full of energy he wants to play with the dog outside or he wants to go and run around the house– but the parents say 'Do the homework'. Now he does not like that homework. He hates it! But parents are happy only when he is in some sad situation. So he has learned one thing– and God is 'Father' so the logic reaches easily to this conclusion: that if you are enjoying food, God will be very angry at you, he will throw you in hell– God the Father. If you are fasting and suffering, God will be very happy, he will send you to heaven. If you love a woman and are feeling immensely happy, guilt arises. God must be watching!

God seems to be continuously watching! That's what people have been told, that he is a kind of peeping Tom– whatsoever you are doing, wherever you are, he is watching. Just think of him also– he must get tired of all this nonsense. And watching and watching and watching... he must have gone mad by now. Millions and millions of people have been doing... How many things are people doing? and he is watching! And he has nothing else to do, he is just a 'watcher'. But you have been taught: he is watching everywhere, wherever you go he is there, following you– those two eyes, or, if you are Hindu, then three eyes, watching you. And continuous fear. You are happy, and he is watching. You will suffer for it.

Have you not observed that whenever you are happy you feel a certain kind of guilt arising in you? Every day somebody or other comes to me and says 'I am feeling very happy. But why? Guilt arises in me, why?' It arises because of your wrong association. You have been taught a very wrong philosophy of life. You have not been taught the grammar of joy, you have been taught the grammar of suffering.

So you ask: Does one need to suffer to become enlightened? I seem to fluctuate between the two. I'm very confused.

Naturally, you will have to be confused. You will have to drop one, otherwise you will continuously fluctuate. There is no enlightenment without enjoyment! Let this become your rule, the golden rule: that God comes through joy, that God comes only when you are happy, immensely happy, that God flows only towards those hearts which are glad, that God comes only to those who are dancing, that God comes to you when he hears your laughter, not your prayer, but your laughter. Let your laughter be your only prayer. Let your joy be your only offering. Love life! Love small things! Don't miss a single moment. Go on getting more and more joyful, and you will find God is coming to you more and more.

Hindus are right when they say that God is Anand, bliss. It is true: that is his ultimate definition. So he can be attained only through bliss, not through suffering. The suffering will help your ego to become more strong, and the more the ego is strong, the farther away you are from God. Only when you melt in happiness, you become liquid in happiness, you start flowing in happiness, you are no more frozen... And when you are not frozen where can you flow? There is only God all around you! Once you melt, you flow into him; and when you flow, he flows into you. It is reciprocal. God comes to you only in that proportion in which you go into him.

A man who is trying to achieve God, enlightenment, nirvana, becomes more and more egoistic, becomes more and more self-centered. His whole effort is how to attain and possess God. But how can you possess God? You can only be possessed by him, you cannot possess him. He is not smaller than you, he is bigger. How can the river possess the ocean? The river can only disappear into the ocean. The ocean will possess the river, and that is the only way for the river to possess the ocean. The man who is seeking enlightenment is trying to do the impossible. It is not possible in the very nature of things.

Here, being close to me, learn one thing, that is: joy. Rejoice! and forget all about enlightenment, otherwise that will create continuous suffering in you, anxiety. And naturally, enlightenment can happen only in the future, so the future comes in. Then you start planning for it and you go on missing the present. Live the moment as if it is all, and enlightenment will find you. You need not find it.