January 24

You Can Win Nobel Prizes

People talk a lot about God-realization and spirituality, but they don’t realize how much they have to pay for it by their own effort.

You can become an Olympic champion and win all the gold medals. You can win Nobel Prizes. You can even become a statesman, a president, a multi-millionaire. It’s all nothing. Anybody can do that, and people are doing it easily.

The real achievement comes in doing what an ordinary person cannot do. It takes an extraordinary person, an extraordinary mind, a super-human to achieve the highest goal. If you are not willing to make the greatest effort, don’t even think about the greatest goal. Think about some small goal: “All right, I want to get a medal.” Or “I want to become famous.” Or “I want to be rich.”

The spiritual goal is the grandest goal, but people expect it to somehow happen overnight without any effort. There are people who have been working birth after birth toward this goal. It may take ten births, one hundred births, or it may happen tomorrow. If you really make up your mind about what you want, that’s a start. It makes things easier.

It’s not just a simple thing you are asking for. When somebody wanted to follow Jesus, what did he say? “Get rid of everything, give it to the poor. Take up your cross, and follow me.” What does it mean? Give up everything. When you give up everything, you get everything.