Love has never failed

Deva means divine, prapata means a waterfall. The waterfall is symbolic of many things. The first: it seeks depth, it is always moving towards the depth. And that should be the search. God is not there high in heaven but deep in you. Your consciousness has to become a waterfall, to seek the deepest valley in your being - and you will find god there.

Secondly: water is liquid, fluid, flowing. Life should never be rigid. Rigidity is death and fluidity is life. So when the waterfall is there, there are rocks also. The water is very soft and rocks are very hard, but sooner or later the rocks will be defeated. The feminine wins over the masculine. The soft wins over the strong. The fluid wins over the rigid. Life goes on winning over death. Death happens but life continues. Death has always been happening but it has not destroyed life; again the spring comes and again the flowers are there. Life asserts itself eternally.

So become a soft element like water and then all victory is yours.

Deva means god, pritama means beloved - god's beloved. And it is one of the most important things to be remembered, that god is continuously showering his love on you. We may understand, we may not understand; we may be worthy, we may not be worthy - his love is constantly being showered on us. And it is not that we deserve it, it is not even that we have asked for it: it is god's nature to shower in love. That's what Jesus means when he says 'God is love.' It is not something that he has to do; it is his very nature.

This existence is a very very loving existence, and if sometimes we don't see love in existence that simply shows we are blind. That simply shows that we are misinterpreting. That simply shows that somehow our own idea of love is becoming a barrier.

The moment one opens one's eyes with no idea, with no thought, with no prejudice, the first thing that one becomes aware of is a constant flow of love from all dimensions. From the stars, from the trees, from the earth, from people, from mountains, from every direction love is searching for and seeking you. Because we are closed and we have shut all the doors and all the windows, we remain unaware of this tremendous energy that is moving towards us.

The most basic fundamental of meditation is to become vulnerable, to become open, so that which is knocking on your door can enter, so that you can become aware of this great occasion, of this great festival that is continuously going on. And when love is understood there is joy; when love is recognized there is gratitude. When you see so much love flowing towards you for no reason, a great thankfulness arises in you. That thankfulness is prayer.

Deva means divine, pragito means a song - a divine song. Life is not prose, life is poetry, because it is not logic, it is love, because it is not matter, it is spirit, because it is not gross, it is subtle. It has immense depth and it has infinite possibilities. It is inexhaustible: one can go on becoming to no end. The adventure is an infinite pilgrimage.

The people who are sad and cannot sing miss it. It is not the sinners who miss, it is the serious who miss. In my vision to be serious is to be a sinner, and to become a song, to burst into song, is to become a saint. That's what a sannyasin has to be.

Deva means divine, pratito means experience. God is not a theory - it is an experience. There is no proof for god, there cannot be. And all proofs are nothing but guesswork. There is no way of knowing god except through knowing. There is no other way, there is no short-cut. One has to know oneself; and by knowing I mean experiencing, not knowing through scripture, not knowing through some authority. My experience of god cannot become your experience of god; there is no way. It is untransferable.

All that can be transferred is the method, not the experience. Buddhas can show you the way, how they have travelled; they can give you a glimpse of the map that they have followed. But they cannot give you any taste of the experience that arises in one's being when one has arrived. That remains private, utterly private. It can't be made public; that's its beauty.

And because it remains private, it always remains virgin; it is yours and nobody else's. Millions of people have known god before you and millions will know after you, but your experience is authentically yours - nobody's repetition, nobody's carbon copy. It is unique.

Deva means divine, sangita means music - divine music. Music comes closest to god's experience.

The most approximate language to express god is that of music because music has no language in it; hence it cannot be misinterpreted. Because there is no language in it, it cannot be misunderstood.

Because there is no language in it, there is no statement, either of truth or of god. It does not state anything - it simply creates a climate. That's the beauty of music: without saying anything, it shows, it indicates; it is a finger pointing to the moon. In itself it is just a finger, but if you follow it, it takes you to your deepest being, and it takes you so easily, so relaxedly, so effortlessly, without any strain.

Music was born in the temples. It was the first approach towards god, and the ancient music has tremendous power in it. Just by the waves it can provoke something which is asleep in you.

Music can create anger - there is music which is used in war, for armies. It can create violence, it can make you a murderer. It can do just the opposite too: it can give you great silence and peace and it can create love in you. And the ultimate is that it can provoke the presence of god in you.

The master musician is one who can provoke god's presence in you through his music. And what I am doing here is more like music than anything else.

Deva means god, svadesh means our country - god is our country, our real home. Without god we are orphans, without god we are homeless. Without god we are outsiders, strangers; hence all over the world the modern man feels alienated. This alienation is becoming almost chronic. It has never been so before. In no other age has man felt so uprooted. Why? - because every age has lived in the context of god. Man has always remained rooted in god. Through god his life has been meaningful. It is for the first time that man is not rooted in god and thinks he is sufficient unto himself; and that's what is creating the whole trouble.

No tree is sufficient unto itself. It needs the soil, it needs the sun, it needs water, it needs air; it needs a thousand and one things. If it is cut off from everything else, soon it will wither away; it cannot live.

And that's how man is withering away. Man is a dying tree. He can be rejuvenated if he can again be planted back in his natural element.

God is that element. God is not a person but just this experience of being rooted in existence - not alien, not separate, but one with it, part of it, involved in it, committed to the destiny of the whole.

That's what the meaning of the word 'god' is: it is an experience of not being alone, an experience of being in a togetherness with existence.

... the brotherhood of stars and planets, the brotherhood of trees and animals and birds and people.

God is the name of that feeling of brotherhood - that this whole universe is a family.

If you start feeling that this whole universe is your family, you will know what god is. It is an experiment of love... Love for all. And the moment you start growing roots in the universe, you start feeling at home. You have come back to your home, to your source. That is the meaning of Svadesh.

Deva means divine, nirava means profound silence - divine and profound silence. That is the essential part of all meditations - to be utterly silent, to be in a state where no thought stirs in you, no feeling arises, no emotion moves. When there is no emotion, no feeling, no thought, you are still, you are at rest. You are at your very centre, because there is no distraction.

In those moments man becomes aware of the reality of god not as something outside himself but as something within himself. Not that god is not outside you - he is outside too - but first you become aware of his presence inside. Only then, later on, is his presence on the outside felt, never otherwise. First god has to be experienced as your very ground, then slowly slowly you start seeing god everywhere. A moment comes when only god is, when all forms are his forms, all expressions are his expressions and all songs are his songs. The day it is felt, one is liberated from all misery, from all bondage, from all ego. And to be silent is the secret.

In the beginning it is very difficult because the mind has become so accustomed to noise. But if one persists, if you go on sitting silently in spite of all the noise of the mind, all the fuss of the mind and all the efforts of the mind to drag you, distract you, to take you away - if you persist.... And the mind will win many times and will take you on faraway journeys into your imagination into memory, into the past, into the future, but the moment you remember that you have been distracted, come back.

Don't fight with the mind, simply come back. The mind will try again; slowly slowly you will become aware the moment the mind tries to take you away. Even before that moment you will start feeling that the mind is getting ready to take you away; then, in the very seed, the distraction can be destroyed.

First you will find yourself distracted again and again, but whenever you do, come back, again settle.

Even if for a few seconds you can be in the centre, it is a profound experience of great joy and of great peace.

So this is going to be your key: become as silent as possible and whenever you have time just sit silently, anywhere. Don't do anything; just collect yourself, forget the world. The world continues there - you become aloof, you become distant, you are no more interested, you ignore it. Slowly slowly the art is learned, and once you have learned the art, any moment, anywhere you can go into silence. In the marketplace, standing just on the crossroads, you can go into silence. And then suddenly the marketplace is no more there for you; you have moved into another kind of space.

This is what is called the 'altered state of consciousness'. You have moved into a separate reality...

as if you have changed the station on the radio or the channel on the TV. The world simply disappears, recedes and disappears. Another world arises - very colourful, very psychedelic, very divine, where matter does not exist, where only consciousness throbs, dances. And that is the true world. This world is only a reflection of it. As if you have seen the moon reflected in the lake; that's how this world is. When you see the moon then you will know that what you used to know before was not reality; it was just an image of reality, a mirror image.

[A sannyasin has just returned from France, he says and now it feels difficult being back.] Just a few days and it will be okay. Mm? it always happens - that is because you are not a master of your mind. So it always happens: your mind gets involved in things in one place; you leave the place but the mind doesn't leave. You arrive at a new place but the mind continues to think of the old. And you are not master enough to be able to just order the mind 'Be finished with the old - full stop. That chapter is closed and now this new chapter opens.' You are not the master, that's why this happens. Otherwise there is no problem. So it will take a few days, that's all. For a few days the mind will linger with the old and will think this and that and will feel 'Why have you come? What is the point?' and after three or four weeks it will settle. That is simply because the master is not yet awake and the slave is pretending to be the master.

So just do a few groups, meditate and within three weeks it will settle. It takes almost three weeks - from three days to three weeks and it settles!

I hit only when somebody is ready for it. It is a reward! And the more one becomes ready, the more I will be demanding. So that has to always be remembered: the more you grow, the more my demands will be growing.