An American was driving along a small country lane in Ireland when he was horrified to see a cartload of hay coming out of the field into the narrow road. He jumped on the brakes but couldn’t stop in time, and ended up driving through the fence into the field where the car burst into flames.

“Bejabers!” exclaimed Paddy to his friend Seamus, who was driving the hay cart, “Some of these tourists are terrible drivers. We only just got out of that field in time.”

The old farmer, plowing his fields with a pair of bulls, was asked by a neighbor why he did not use oxen.

“I don’t want to use oxen,” replied the farmer, “I want to use bulls.”

“Well,” continued the neighbor, “If you don’t want to use oxen, why don’t you use horses?”

“I don’t want to use horses!” retorted the farmer, “I want to use bulls!”

“Well, perhaps,” tried the neighbor, “you could try using that new tractor your son has just bought.”

“I don’t want to use tractors, either, I want to use bulls.” reaffirmed the farmer.

“Why do you only want to use bulls?” asked the neighbor at a loss.

“Because,” said the old boy, “I don’t want them to think that life is all romance.”

This is simply the situation in which you are born, in which you have been conditioned. Nobody wants you to know that life is simply romance. And that is my crime – because that is my whole teaching, that life is nothing but romance.

The newlywed couple flew to Miami and checked into the honeymoon hotel. For days nothing was seen of them, until the morning of the sixth day, when they came to the dining room for breakfast. As the waiter approached their table, the bride turned to her husband and said, “Honey, do you know what I would like?”

“Yes, I know,” he replied wearily, “but we have to eat sometime.”

So once in a while it is good to have breakfast; otherwise life is a continuous romance. And I teach you not only the romance of the body, which is very ordinary. I teach you the romance of the spirit, which is eternal, which begins but never ends. But this is possible only if you start going inwards.

Going inwards is going godwards. Going inwards is the whole secret of all alchemical transformation of being.