Enlightenment will find you... You need not find it...

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 center 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.

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?

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.

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.