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And Dostoevsky says in his memoirs that in those four, five moments, he remembered his whole past.
It happens: when death approaches and you become aware that death is coming -- when it takes you unawares -- then it doesn't happen; but when you know that at exactly six o'clock you will be shot dead and only five minutes are left, one starts having a review. The whole film of the past starts moving. And in those five minutes he remembered that he has not lived his life attentively. He had wasted his life, he had lived as a robot, as a machine, unconsciously, almost asleep. He could not remember a single moment of attentiveness, of awareness. He decided, "If another life is given to me, I will devote my whole life to awareness." And by chance it happened that he was forgiven; exactly one minute before, the order from the Czar came that all those twelve had to be forgiven.
Then somebody asked him after a few years: "What happened to your decision?" He said, "I tried, but it didn't work out; I could not live attentively. I still try but... for a moment it is there and then it is gone."
People are living almost in a kind of sleep. But when pain comes, misery comes, they are disturbed in their sleep and they start praying, and they take great decisions that "Now, from now onwards, I will be good, I will be this, I will be that." But that is not true prayer. If it comes out of pain, once the pain is gone the prayer will be gone. The true prayer has to arise out of bliss, it has to arise out of your gratitude to God, it has to arise out of a tremendous sense that you are part of this great, profound mystery, that such an infinitely beautiful universe has been given to you for no reason at all; you have not earned it. It is a sheer gift from God. Then there is prayer.
And if prayer is there, God is there. Wherever prayer is, God is. People ask, "Where is God?" -- their question is meaningless. They should ask, "What is prayer?" -- because wherever prayer is, God is. Prayer is the way to see God. Prayer gives you the eyes, the perspective to see God. So Anand Annelise will mean: a blissful prayer to God. Let that become your existence too.
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