What the ordinary seeker expects is something positive: ananda - joy, bliss. And this is what has been held out to him, all these years, as the carrot before the donkey. Which doctrine, which system offers more, is the usual choice before the seeker.
From my experience, I would very clearly tell the seeker that I do not know of any positive joy or bliss which does not very soon give way to misery and pain. All I would hold out before you is negative gain: if you are able to accept totally, without the slightest doubt, that all action, without exception, happens as an event which has to happen at that time and place, through a particular body-mind organism, according to God's Will - Cosmic Law, and is not an action done by any individual human entity, then that is enlightenment. What is the benefit of this enlightenment to the individual entity for whom this has happened? Very simply, since he is not doing anything at all, nor does anyone else either, he goes through the rest of his life without the slightest load of shame and guilt for his own actions and without any hatred and malice towards any other entity. A state of negation - that is all. And yet this state of negation is the very basis for peace and harmony: to be anchored in tranquility while necessarily facing life from moment to moment.
- Ramesh Balsekar
