That’s how it is: we are always in the middle of life. Life has been there before you ever entered into the stream, and life will be there when you are gone. You will know only a few glimpses in the middle. You come suddenly into the filmhouse, you see a few scenes on the screen; the film was going on before you entered, you will be gone and the film will continue. You will never know the beginning and you will never know the end because there are none. There is no beginning, no end. Life is an eternal continuum. Hence you cannot ever complete things, but you want to avoid.
You are afraid of enlightenment, just as everybody else is afraid. But nobody wants to accept that “I am a coward.” Nobody wants to accept the fact that “I would like to sleep a little longer because I am seeing beautiful dreams, colorful dreams.” Nobody wants to accept that “I am so stupid that I don’t long for enlightenment.” So everybody goes on saying, “Yes, I would like to become enlightened – but tomorrow, the day after tomorrow, in my old age.”
How to postpone? The best way is to become goal-oriented. That is the most beautiful deception that you can give to yourself. Hence you say, “Some day I hope to find myself enlightened.” Why “some day”? The river is flowing now…you can drink.
You are thirsty and you say, “Some day I will drink.” If you are thirsty, drink right now. Nothing else is more important. And because there is no goal, all goals are private dreams, life will not support you in your goal-orientation. Life will try in every way to destroy all your goals.
You will have to learn ways of relaxing in the present. Enlightenment is not an effort to achieve something. It is a state of effortlessness. It is a state of no-action. It is a state of tremendous passivity, receptivity. You are not doing anything, you are not thinking anything, you are not planning for anything, you are not doing yoga exercises, and you are not doing any technique, any method – you are simply existing, just existing. And in that very moment…the sudden realization that all is as it should be. That’s what enlightenment is. Enlightenment is not an experience in which you will see great light and kundalini rising up and God standing in front of you telling you, “You can ask any three wishes and I will fulfill them.” Don’t be foolish.
Enlightenment is not an experience at all. It is not that you will be able to walk on water, that you will be able to raise the dead back to life, that you will be able to cure the blind and the deaf and the dumb, that you will be able to do miracles. Enlightenment has nothing to do with any such thing.
Enlightenment is a simple realization that everything is as it should be. That is the definition of enlightenment: everything is as it should be, everything is utterly perfect as it is. That feeling…and you are suddenly at home. Nothing is being missed. You are part, an organic part of this tremendous, beautiful whole. You are relaxed in it, surrendered in it. You don’t exist separately – all separation has disappeared.
A great rejoicing happens, because with the ego disappearing there is no worry left, with the ego disappearing there is no anguish left, with the ego disappearing there is no possibility of death anymore. This is what enlightenment is. It is the understanding that all is good, that all is beautiful – and it is beautiful as it is. Everything is in tremendous harmony, in accord.