You cannot attain sukham through sukham (that is, happiness through comforts). The joy of release can be won only through travails and trials. Through intense pain a woman achieves the bliss of motherhood. Through toil, the coveted grain is earned by the farmer from the field. Through long days and nights of steady study, a student passes in the examination and earns a coveted degree. Deprive yourselves of luxury and even comfort; detach yourselves from that which you hold dear and near out of sheer ignorance of what is most dear and near to yourself; pine, struggle, strive ceaselessly - and then you are blessed with the inexpressible Bliss of merger with the Universal, of Sakshathkara. It is grief that makes joy worthwhile and a precious possession; it is the pitch-dark night that prompts the seeker of light; it is death, that lends zest to life.

- Divine Discourse, March 16, 1966.