When you are too intent, too direct, you are aggressive, and life reveals its secrets only to people who are non-aggressive. When you are too intent, too aggressive, too violent, and you are trying to conquer some secret of life, you become very narrow. Your consciousness closes; you are no longer wide open. And truth is so big that it cannot enter into a narrow consciousness.
When you are relaxed, the narrowness disappears; you are open from all sides – maybe just playing with soap-bubbles in your bathtub…. That’s exactly what Albert Einstein used to do: all his great discoveries happened while he was playing with soap-bubbles in his bathtub. You will be surprised to know that for hours together he would remain in his bathtub playing with soap-bubbles. His wife was very embarrassed to tell it to other people.
One of my friends went to see him and he had to wait for six hours – because he wouldn’t come out of the bathroom. And finally the wife had to tell him the truth: “He cannot be disturbed – never when he is in the bathroom. He can be disturbed when he is in his lab, but not when he is in his bathroom – because he becomes so utterly relaxed that all the great insights happen to him there. So nothing can be done. He may be playing with soap-bubbles, but playing with soap-bubbles he has come to know about stars, faraway, faraway stars.” Playing with soap-bubbles…even stars which are so far away that their light has not reached yet since the earth came into existence. For millions of years the earth has been in existence; their light has not reached the earth yet. And light travels with terrific speed; greater speed is inconceivable.
Light travels one hundred and eighty-six thousand miles per second. When the earth came into existence, since that day the light has been traveling from those stars; it has not reached yet. Einstein became aware of those stars playing with soap-bubbles, became aware of the greatest discovery of this age – the theory of relativity – in his bath-tub.
This is simply to say that life is ready to reveal itself when you are non-aggressive, when you are like a child playing with reality. All that is great happens in fun, in playfulness.
You are too much intent. You say: “I am only here on a very short visit. I have come to try to understand what you have here that the rest of the world does not.”
What I have here is everywhere, but maybe you cannot see it somewhere else. You need a certain space in which you can relax – that space is nowhere else. Religion is very serious all over the world; religion here with me is a non-serious phenomenon. Elsewhere life is taken as a great problem, a theological problem. Here it is thought to be a beautiful joke. Prayer is thought to be very sacred in other places. Here, just to be celebrating, anything…the whole question is just to be celebrating. If you are eating your food with celebration, it is prayer; if you are taking your bath with celebration, it is prayer. If you have joy in the heart, it is prayer. Prayer is not a ritual here; you need not repeat certain words, you need not move through certain gestures. Prayer is a quality here, not an activity – a flavor, a subtle dance of your inner energy.