Darshan 22 September 1979

[Sitting silently, doing nothing, spring comes]

But there are things which cannot be achieved through effort, which are achieved only through effortlessness. Those are the things of the inner world the other world; they don't belong to this shore. Bliss, love, prayer, God - they can't be achieved through human effort.

Human effort is so small, it cannot contain such vast experiences. The human effort has to cease totally, only then do bliss, love, prayer, meditation, become possible. They come only when you are an absolute nothingness, when you don't exist at all, when you are no more present: you are just an opening, a vulnerability, a receptivity, a trust, a surrender. Bliss comes only as a grace - that is the meaning of grace.

The Zen people say: Sitting silently, doing nothing, the spring comes and the grass grows by itself.

That's how it happens as far as the inner, the spiritual, is concerned. It is not that you have to do anything, just the contrary: the doer has to disappear. You have just to be; not a doer but simply a being, just a being, with no effort, with no desire, nowhere to go, nothing to achieve... here and now. When effort ceases you are bound to be here and now, because effort can cease only when desiring ceases; they are all interconnected.

Just take one thing out and the whole palace, the whole edifice of the human mind collapses. Take effort out of it and desiring disappears, imagination disappears, past and future disappear, or take desire out and effort disappears and time disappears and ego disappears. Just take one thing out of the gestalt and the whole gestalt simply disappears; it cannot exist without certain things. Those are the very essentials of it - effort is one of the essentials. Hence all the great Masters of the world have taught about grace.

Prayer simply means asking for grace. Prayer means "I am helpless, I cannot do anything, it is beyond me. I can only be at the receiving end. Come! I am ready to welcome you!" That's what prayer is all about.

And that's what sannyas is all about. Sannyas is prayer. It s prayer spread all over your life - not done in the morning and then finished with, or in the night and finished with, or done a few times a day and finished with. Sannyas means that your very lifestyle is transformed into prayer: you live it, you breathe it, it becomes your heartbeat. And then bliss comes, bliss comes like a flood! It explodes. You just have to be in a state of non-doing.

So learn how to be silent, how to be still, how to be in a state of non-doing, no effort, and then wait! That waiting is of tremendous importance. Just as in the world effort is of tremendous importance, moving into God, waiting - simply waiting, with no expectation... Expectant, but without any expectation, not hankering, not saying that it should happen now, that I have waited long enough; a simple waiting and trust that whenever the time is ripe it is going to happen, whenever I am in a state to receive, whenever I deserve it, it is going to happen - trusting this, a moment comes: it happens. And the moment comes so silently that you cannot hear its footsteps; you know only when it has happened.

Be blissful because God is with us.

Without God life is a misery; it can't be otherwise, because without God there is no meaning, without God there is no poetry. Without God life is accidental; it has no significance. God simply means a context in which life becomes significant.

Things become significant only in a certain context. For example, the alphabet, ABC: A is meaningless; in itself it has no meaning, but put it into a certain context... For example, it becomes part of "awareness" - then it has meaning. A is meaningless in itself, w is meaningless in itself, again, a is meaningless in itself, and so on, so forth. Each unit is meaningless, but when all those units are together in the word "awareness", they suddenly become luminous, they gain meaning.

And when a Buddha says "Be aware!" it becomes tremendously meaningful. Then the word "awareness" becomes alive, it starts breathing. Then it has a heart because it comes out of the experience. It is no more a mere word, it has substance. In the context of a Buddha, the word becomes tremendously meaningful.

Everything needs a context to be meaningful. God is the ultimate context. Without God, everything falls apart; there is nothing to hold it together. There is no bridge between things. God is the bridge between things, God is the harmony of the whole existence.

There is a subtle harmony between the smallest and the greatest, even between the grass leaf and a far, faraway star, millions of light years away. There is a bridge. That bridge is God.

This universe is really a universe; literally, universe means one. It is not a multi-verse, not many; it is uni, it is one. That oneness is God. And unless we start feeling in tune with that oneness, there is no bliss. There is only misery, because you are out of step with the whole. That's what misery is:

being out of step with the whole. And when you are part of the dance, when you are dancing with the stars and the trees and the rivers and the mountains - which together are called God - when you are dancing with God, how can you avoid bliss? It simply happens, it showers.

[Only through wisdom you can know bliss]

Not by studying scriptures, but by studying yourself, do you arrive at the world of wisdom. That is the meaning of Socrates' famous saying: Know thyself. Read thyself, penetrate into thyself. Go as deeply as possible, dive, to the very core of your being.

Socrates has also said: An unexamined life is not worth living. In the hands of the scholars it has taken on a different color, totally different, just the opposite of what Socrates meant. To them, examining your life means analyzing it logically, categorizing: this is this and that is that - labeling things. For Socrates it was a totally different phenomenon. By saying that an unexamined life is not worth living, he was saying exactly what Buddha said: "Be a light unto yourself" - because only in that light can you examine your life. It is not through logic, but through light, and no outer light can be of any help because no outer light can be taken in.

You have to create a light inside. All potential is there; it has to be ignited. That's the function of a Master: to trigger the process, to ignite the fire which is already there within you.

You rub two pieces of dry wood and fire is created. Fire was already there asleep. The rubbing has not brought it, the rubbing has only awakened it.

The Master goes on hammering you in many many ways, both subtle and gross. One day it happens:

suddenly your fire is awakened. And when the fire inside you is awakened, you can examine your life - not only your life, you can examine life as such, the whole of life. And then life becomes worth living. In that light, each step is bliss. Each moment is of such tremendous value - incalculable, immeasurable.