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is no need to look outward -- look inward. And if you can look inward, with your eyes closed in deep silence, you will start feeling a new quality to your life, to your existence; a quality that can only be called godliness, that can only be called divine... something more than matter. You don't end with matter.
Matter may be the foundation of life, but it is not its highest peak. Matter may be the roots of the tree, but it is not its flowers. And unless you know the flowering consciousness in you, you cannot feel bliss.
Bliss is the ultimate experience of your coming home, of your feeling at ease with existence, relaxed, in a total unity and harmony.
The moment your heartbeat and the heartbeat of existence become one, the moment your small dance is in tune with the vast dance that goes on around you, the moment you become part of this celebration that is existence, there arises a tremendous gratitude. You don't have to do it. You simply find it arising from you, just as fragrance arises from the flowers. It is a spontaneous thing.
This is true prayerfulness.
I have told you a beautiful story by Leo Tolstoy. An archbishop of the Russian Orthodox Church was very angry because thousands of people were going to see three absolutely unknown villagers who lived on a small island in a lake. People thought they were saints.
Now in Christianity, unless the church certifies you as a saint, you cannot be a saint. This is such a stupidity that you cannot conceive... For centuries this has been going on. In fact, the English word `saint' comes from sanctus. It means sanction by the church. Unless the church gives you a sanction... it is almost like getting an honorary D.Litt. from a university.
Sainthood cannot be certified by anyone. There is no one who has the authority to certify anybody's sainthood. Sainthood is, in itself, self evident. The moment you see it, you know it. The moment you feel it, you know it. It needs no other approval.
But the archbishop was very angry; "Without my permission, without my sanction, how have three idiots from a village become saints?" And people were not coming to his congregation;
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