Why has this Frenchman from France written his book in the United States to present to his friends today? Because loving the country and wanting to show his gratitude, he could find no better way of expressing it than in these two truths, intimately known to him [Jacques is blind] and reaching beyond all boundaries.

The first of these is that joy does not come from outside, for whatever happens to us it is within. The second truth is that light does not come to us from without; Light is in us, even if we have no eyes.

Joy is the perception of beauty, unlike happiness, which is because of something. Joy is singing of the heart, a feeling of praise.

Somewhere downstairs a door slammed, and my father entered the house laughing. Instantly, the whole universe joined in. Great roars of hilarity sounded from sun to sun. Field mice uttered, and so did angels and rainbows. Laughter leavened every atom and every star until I saw a universe inspirited and spiraled by joy, not unlike the one I read of years later when Dante describes his great vision in paradise.

"D'el riso d'el universo." (The joy that spins the universe). This was a knowledge of the way everything worked. It worked through love and joy and the utter interpenetration and union of everything with the All That Is.

The silence of the spheres is the music of a wedding feast. The more we persist in misunderstanding the phenomena of life, the more we analyze them out into strange finalities and complex purposes of our own, the more we involve ourselves in sadness, absurdity and despair. But it does not matter much, because no despair of ours can alter the reality of things, or stain the joy of the cosmic dance which is always there.

Even on the foggiest nights.

For, the soul tastes the supreme joy of being, not only in the cave of the heart, but also in the endless multiplicity of her contacts with the world and nature of which she is part. Every moment is a sacrament of eternity; every event a sign and a sacrament of the perfect Bliss; for nothing in the universe can escape being transformed by Divine Love at every moment of time. In the crucible of faith and love, all our joys, the greatest as well as the least, and our sorrows, too, are taken up into the one eternal Joy in the heart of God and in the hearts of saints.

Joy is a gift from Universe and Divinity.
Sorrow and Pain are there for the healing.
Through touching of the heart,
the Heart is Opened.
Then the Knowledge may enter,
To return the seeker to Balance.
Watch now, for the Joy and Sorrow
dance together,
And in that is their dissolution,
Leaving nothing to perceive by Truth.
Embrace the Truth, for always it is precisely
who you are in your Eternal Being.

When you live life from your center, you operate from the indwelling spirit outwards into the visible world, like the spokes of a wheel, radiating God's love, wisdom and power. This is what is meant by being in the world but not of it. You remain calm in a crisis. You carry this calmness with you through the ordinary activities of the day, even when things go wrong... Centered in peace, you experience JOY... This is the culmination of growth in being. What you ARE, far more than what you say or do, will be the witness of your faith.

When selfishness vanishes, all you want from life is to give. It is a constant source of joy. Not that you are blind to sorrow. Personal suffering is gone, but for that very reason there is no barrier separating you from the suffering of others. And that immense empathy releases intense action. "What one takes in by contemplation," Eckhart says, "one pours out in love." You live to give, to alleviate the sorrow and improve the lives of those around you, and in that giving is more joy than the world knows. It is the perfect fusion of the inward and outward currents of life, of meditation and action.

I cannot believe that the inscrutable universe turns on an axis of suffering; surely the strange beauty of the world must somewhere rest on pure joy!