The question is from Prasadam. His name means 'gift, grace'. Grace cannot be produced, cannot be manufactured. It comes, it happens, you have only to be receptive to it. It is a kind of non-doing; it is when you are passive, inactive. In fact when you are not, when you are absent — the prasadam, the grace, the gift. When you exist only like a hollow bamboo then God starts playing you as a flute. But only when you are a hollow bamboo. God comes only as a gift, never otherwise.

And Prasadam has been in big business, so he has the idea that one has to 'concentrate single-mindedly, continuously, on the goal — totally, and work as hard as possible to achieve the goal.'

Now, I can understand his problem. In the world, searching for trivia, the business attitude is perfectly right. Money will not come as a gift. If you simply sit under a Bodhi tree, sitting silently and watching for when money will be coming from all directions and will shower on you, it doesn't happen. It will never come. Sitting under the Bodhi tree, nobody will approach and tell you: 'Please come and become the president of the United States.' That is not going to happen either.

In the worldly things, which are trivia, you have to work hard. That is the law of the world, because in the world you have to compete. And there are millions of people rushing for money and power and prestige — you are not alone, it is a competitive world. You have to be concentratedly, madly rushing. Violently. Legally or illegally, that doesn't matter. If you succeed, all that you did will be thought legal. If you fail, all that you did will be thought illegal. If you succeed then everything is okay. Success brings sanctity. Remember only one thing: Don't fail. And if you don't want to fail, be absolutely mad — the madder you are, the better. Then you can defeat other people who are not so mad. Only the mad people succeed in politics, in money, in the world of power. Violent people succeed.

But what is their success? They succeed, but what exactly is their success? When they succeed they come to know only that their whole life has failed. You have heard the proverb 'Nothing succeeds like success'? That is utterly nonsense. I say: Nothing fails like success. Because when you have succeeded, then you know that there is nothing. You have been running after shadows. You have become the prime minister or the president — now what? And you have wasted your whole life. Ask Morarji Desai — eighty-two years wasted, and now he has become the prime minister. So what? What is attained? Nothing is attained. The success is just the climax of his whole life's failure. Now he has utterly failed. In the world, success only seems to be successful. It is a way to distract yourself from your inner search. It is a way to avoid yourself, to escape from yourself. And in the end you will be a loser.

If you want to move towards God, action is not needed, madness is not needed, concentration is not needed. What is needed? Only one thing: surrender is needed. A passivity is needed, you have to become feminine. You have to become a womb — a receptivity, a pure receptivity. And when you are utterly receptive — so much so that you are not even desiring God, because in the desire also there is action; so much so that you are not even expecting God, because in expectation also there is action — when all desiring and all expectation has disappeared, when you are there just silent, not even waiting for God, He comes.

In fact to say 'He comes' is not right — He arises in you. Even that is not exactly right — you suddenly find in that waiting that you are it. Tattvamasi — that art thou.

Prasadam's mind is goal-oriented, that is his whole life's training. Naturally he is very confused. He has come into a very strange world and has become a sannyasin. Now I am teaching surrender and he knows only fight, how to fight. He is a warrior — he knows the whole strategy and the technology of fighting, of warring. And he is in a difficulty. This small world, this my world, is run on a totally different line. No strategy, no technique, no fight. I am trying to create an alternate world — a small world, but for people who are ready to surrender, efface themselves. Who are ready to become nobodies and can work out of their nobodiness.

Then God will come to you. Goal and God cannot exist together. God cannot become your goal. Remember, that is the fear — that Prasadam will make God the goal. Then there comes a synthesis — then he will be using whatsoever he knows from his past experience. But then you have missed the point. God can never be the goal! And no goal can ever give you God. The goal-oriented mind is a non-religious mind, the worldly mind. The religious mind knows no goal. Look at the lilies in the field: they toil not, they spin not, they reap not, they don't think of the morrow. And even Solomon was not like one of these, in all his glory was not attired like one of these. The lily knows the way to God. Prasadam, become a lily.

Goals arise to avoid that which is. To avoid life, to avoid love, to avoid death. Their sole purpose is to avoid. They are distractions. They are refusals to see, to hear, to be. When you are finished with goals and the ideologies that perpetuate them, then there is no need of God, nirvana or truth. Then all that you need is porridge for the breakfast, a roof against the rain, and the present moment. It is in refusing the fact, in the lie of living, that you need God as a goal, truth as a goal, nirvana as a goal. They are not goals, they are gifts. When you are present, they happen.