It is not an impossibility. You don’t have to be special, unique – a savior, a prophet. In your very ordinariness, in your very simplicity, in your very humanity you have the potential.

Govind Siddharth becomes a proof for your potential.

You should rejoice as if you have become enlightened. His becoming enlightened is your becoming enlightened; it is only a question of time. But he is enough proof and a guarantee.

Enlightenment is not something that comes from above, it is something that grows in you – the seed everyone is carrying for lives together.

Jesus used to say, “You can throw the seeds: some may fall on the rocks and will never grow. Some may fall on the footpath: they will grow but will be crushed by people continually passing on the footpath. Some will fall into the right soil and will grow and realize their ultimate flowering, will dance in the wind, in the sun, in the rain – expressing their gratitude to existence.”

This is a garden. Whatever I am saying to you is just providing you with the right soil.

Slowly slowly a few seeds will start sprouting. Each seed sprouting should fill you with great celebration because it reflects you. It reflects your future, it indicates all the possibilities that are hidden in you.

The day I had given sannyas to Govind Siddharth…I remember it. Why had I given him the name Siddharth? Siddharth is Gautam Buddha’s original name – when he became enlightened, people slowly slowly forgot “Siddharth.” “Buddha” means the enlightened one; Gautama is his family name. He was Gautam Siddharth, now he had become Gautam Buddha. Siddharth was the seed, his buddhahood was the flowering.

Siddharth is a beautiful name. It was given to him by a very strange man – nobody knows his name. He had come the day Gautam Buddha was born. He was an old, very old, almost ancient saint living in the Himalayas. He rushed, because his death was very close. His disciples asked, “Where are you going? At this age don’t go for any traveling, it can prove dangerous.”

But the old man said, “It doesn’t matter. I will have to go, because if I don’t reach in time I will never be able to see a child who is going to become an awakened being. I have been doing everything to become awakened – I have failed. Perhaps whatever I was doing was wrong, perhaps whatever I was doing was not intense enough, was not total enough, although it may have been right. But a child is born, and I want to see him.

And he reached, down the hills… Gautam Buddha was born just near the Himalayas on the boundary line of Nepal and India. As he reached… The king Shuddhodana, Gautam Buddha’s father, had never seen such an old man. He touched his feet, asked him why he had come – he could have called on him, since he was too old to travel.