Darshan 23 September 1978

Deva means divine, sahaja means simplicity, naturalness, spontaneity. Simplicity is living a life without any idea about how to live it, without any ideology. Ideology brings complexity into life.

Animals are simple, no animal is ever complex because no animal is burdened by any ideology.

There is no "should"; the animal simply lives the way it feels. It has no goal to achieve, nowhere to go, but just to live the gift of life that has been given to it.

Simplicity is animal-like - the same purity, the same innocence. One should not live through "shoulds," one should drop all "oughts." The isness of life is enough; nothing else is needed. Life has no goal. It is enough unto itself. Life is not a means to some end. It is the means and it is the end; it is both. And when you are simple, you are naturally natural.

To live in nature is to live in God. To live through a certain culture is to go away from God. The more cultured, civilized, cultivated, a person is, the farther away he is from God. To know God one has to be in a state of primalness... just as trees live. Be simple like the animals, be natural like the trees.

And if you are simple and natural you are bound to be spontaneous. Then you cannot live out of the past. You have no obsession to be consistent with your past; you are free to live the moment. You are not somehow to make your present consistent with the past.

The person who tries to make his present consistent with the past is thought to be the man of character - virtuous, religious. He is not - he is a dead man. If your present has to follow the past, how can you be alive? The present has to have its say, sing its song, dance its dance, unburdened, untethered to the past. There is no necessity to be consistent with the past. The spontaneous man is always inconsistent - bound to be, because each moment has to be decisive on its own. No moment has to be decided by another moment, neither of the past nor of the future.

There are two kinds of dead people: one, who is dominated by the past; another, who is dominated

by the future. But both kill their present, hence both are dead. The spontaneous man knows only one time, and that is this moment; there is no other time for him.

These three things are the foundations of sahaja. It is one of the most significant approaches towards life. Sahaja means Tao. So live like animals, live like trees, live like small children, moment to moment. The child is laughing one moment and crying another moment and has no confusion about it, that he is being inconsistent. One moment he says, "I will never see you again" - he is so angry. Another moment he is sitting in your lap and has completely forgotten what he had said just a moment before.

This moment-to-momentness makes one free, alive, total.

Deva means divine, aggeya means the unknowable. God is not known, has never been known, will never be known. God cannot be reduced to knowledge - God remains love. God is something that happens through the heart and not through the mind; hence the impossibility of knowing. Knowledge is the function of the mind; you cannot love through the mind. And in the same way you cannot know through the heart. The heart loves - the mind knows. God is available only through the heart. You can love God, you can be God, because love leads one to being, but not to knowledge. If you really love you become it.

The real lovers lose their separate identities; they become one. Even if their bodies are separate, even though they function as separate individuals, somewhere on a deeper level they are no more separate, they are bridged, as if there is one soul in two bodies, or it will be even better to say: two bodies in one soul. But love never becomes knowledge. That's why man has loved woman down the ages and has not yet known what a woman is. Woman has loved man for centuries, but has not known exactly what a man is. There is no way of knowing.

God is the ultimate love affair. These small love affairs that happen between man and woman, between man and man, woman and woman, are just preparations for the ultimate love affair, just steps to the door of the divine. But each love leads you towards prayer. Prayer is love with God.

So God cannot be known... it is an absolute truth that God cannot be known. It is not that God is unknown, because anything that is unknown can become known someday. The moon was unknown; now the moon is known. Science has changed many unknowns into knowns. So God is not only unknown - God is unknowable, cannot be reduced to knowledge ever. Its unknowableness is its intrinsic nature. It is impossible... it is as impossible as seeing through the ears and hearing through the eyes.

Knowledge relates to the mind. Knowledge means that you are separate from the object known.

Knowledge implies separation. Knowledge means that the knower is there, the known is there, and between the two there is a certain kind of relationship happening. Knowledge is a relationship between the two. Love is the experience of becoming one; it is not between the two. Love is not a communication, but a communion. Knowledge is a communication, knowledge is a dialogue. Love is silence. There is no "I," no "thou."

This is the mystery of existence. It is good and it is immensely beautiful that it cannot be reduced to knowledge, because once something becomes known it becomes mundane. Once something becomes known we cannot have any wonder about it any more. Wonder is killed by knowledge.

God means the ultimate mystery of existence; it cannot be killed. One can go on wondering and wondering and wondering and there is no end to it; it keeps man wondering. And wonder has immense beauty because in the moment of wonder you become a child again, in the moment of wonder you are innocent again. When you know, you are no more innocent. Knowledge corrupts you, makes you cunning and clever. You become knowledgeable, it gives you ego. Wonder, and the ego disappears, and with the ego all its trips are gone. You know nothing. In the state of wonder you are in the state of not-knowing, and that not-knowing is immense. Knowledge is always limited, non- knowledge is unlimited. Knowledge can be increased, decreased - innocence cannot be increased, cannot be decreased.

By giving you this name I am simply giving you an indication to become more and more ignorant, to become utterly ignorant. When one is ignorant one is full of heart. Then the heart really beats, then one really breathes. And then one is in tune with the source again... one has fallen into nature and its harmony again.

Deva means divine, sugita means a song - a divine song. Life should not be taken seriously. The moment one starts taking life seriously one becomes calculative, and to be calculative is to miss all.

Life belongs to those people who are non-calculative. Life does not belong to arithmetic - it belongs to art. Life is known only through being sensitive, aesthetic, vulnerable. Life cannot be approached through logic. The door to life is not logic but love. Anything that makes one serious is part of death.

Anything that makes one sing, dance, laugh, love, is part of life.

Millions of people are really dead. They breathe and they go on doing their things day in, day out, but they are not alive - living, but not alive. Their flame is burning very low. They don't know any inspiration. They don't know any song bursting through their souls. They have never seen any arousal in their being, they have never moved to any higher plenitudes of consciousness. They only crawl and creep; they never soar high. Yes, they are living but it is a pseudo kind of life.

Life happens only when you become a song, you become a dance, when you start blooming. Life is life only when there is a great inspiration in you; and remember, inspiration is not excitement.

Because people are bored they seek and search for excitement; because people are dead they seek and search for excitement. Anything that excites them makes them feel a little unburdened, but again they are back in their bored state.

Inspiration is a totally different phenomenon. Excitement comes from the outside; inspiration comes from the inside. That is the very meaning of the word "inspiration": it comes from your inner core, it grows like a tree in you. Excitement is momentary, inspiration is a continuity.

People are bored, hence they search for excitement - any kind of excitement; through sex, through drugs or through traveling, through violence. If they cannot commit violence then at least they can see it on the TV or in the films, or they can read a detective novel. That is a vicarious way of living violence. That's why whenever there is a war people become very excited. This shows that life is being lived at the very lowest stage. People need constant props from the outside to remain a little excited, otherwise life is dull, meaningless.

Inspiration is an inner flow, an inner song... as if one is constantly humming inside, singing inside, dancing inside. A man who knows the way of inspiration never seeks excitement. There is no need - he is not bored at all, he is living at the maximum. His life is ecstatic; hence there is no need for any excitement.

This is the meaning of your name. I would like you to become a divine song, an inner humming, an inner chanting, an inner dance that continues.

Whatsoever you are doing on the outside, it still continues like an undercurrent; like a small stream it goes on flowing. Slowly slowly you can feel it even while you are engaged in work, occupied, doing things - cooking, cleaning, taking care or whatsoever - but you can feel it constantly. And whenever you have time you can close your eyes and you can listen to it, you can be it.

And this is possible, because I see a song that is just waiting, which needs just a little help, a little persuasion. And that's my work here: to persuade people to laugh, to love, to live.

Deva means divine, prashanti means silence, deep silence - a deep divine silence. Man can cultivate silence but then it is neither deep nor divine. Man can practice a kind of silence. It remains human, practiced, it remains just like an outer layer of your being. Deep down you go on boiling.

You can see many people who look silent but deep down they are getting madder and madder every day. They go on repressing: first they repress from others, then slowly slowly they start repressing from themselves. That's how the unconscious is created. If a person never represses anything he will not have any unconscious mind. The unconscious mind is just a part of the mind that you don't want to look at, that you are afraid to look at, that you are afraid to accept. All that you have denied goes on accumulating there. It is a kind of basement where you go on throwing all the rubbishy things that you don't know how to get rid of. You don't want to keep them there - they are ugly and you don't want anybody to see them in your house - and you don't know how to get rid of them, so the only possible way seems to be to hide them somewhere in a dark corner where nobody will see.

Slowly slowly you start avoiding that dark corner; you don't go to that side. You start forgetting about it - you want to forget about it; that's how the unconscious mind is created. The unconscious mind is a man-created phenomenon.

If a man never represses anything - rather than throwing things in the basement he tries to understand them - there will be only consciousness in him and his whole house will be full of light, because through understanding, whatsoever is useless dissolves. Understanding is a fire.

Understanding is one of the greatest energies in the world. Just by understanding something totally, it is burnt; it simply evaporates. You need not repress it. You cannot even find it, so how can you repress it?

And if something is valuable, if something is part of your inner nature, then understanding cleanses it, bums that which is not natural to you and cleanses and purifies that which is natural to you.

Understanding is a double-edged sword: it cuts the unessential, the pseudo, and it sharpens the essential and the natural. Understanding is a great miracle, the secret of all magic, of all transformation, of all alchemy.

So if somebody represses his tensions he can create a kind of silence which will only be on the surface. But he will know that the enemy is still there and fully alive and will assert itself someday, whenever the time arrives, and will not only assert itself but will assert itself with a vengeance.

That's why you see these things happening: a silent man suddenly murders somebody. One never even thought that he would be a murderer. You had lived with him so long, you had known him - he was so beautiful and so sweet and so gentlemanly - and one day suddenly in the morning newspaper you see he has murdered someone or committed suicide. Seems almost unbelievable, but it is unbelievable because we don't know his inner story. The inner story is that on the surface he was maintaining a face, a mask, and deep down he was just the opposite. He carried it as far as was humanly possible; then the limit came. Either one goes mad or commits a murder, commits suicide or something like that. That's not true silence.

True silence is when you don't cultivate it but on the contrary you start looking into your anguish, anxiety, tensions, thoughts, all of your mad mind... when you look into it deeply, perceptively, sympathetically, lovingly, because you want to understand. It is your mind and you want to understand it, because without understanding it you will never be wise, without understanding it you will never become known to yourself; there is no possibility of self-knowledge. And without self-knowledge all other kinds of knowledge are just futile.

So try to understand your mind. Don't condemn it, don't repress it. Give it full play... allow it. Bring all that is thrown into the basement back into the consciousness. Allow everything to come to the surface so you can see, watch, observe, analyze, look into, with no prejudice, with no antagonism.

Because if you have even a slight antagonism it will not come up, it will hide.

To be friendly with one's mind is one of the greatest steps in self-transformation. And all the religions of the world have been teaching just the opposite. Not Jesus, not Buddha, but the priests and the pundits and the people who have created Christianity and Buddhism and Hinduism - the people who are really politicians in the name of religion - these people have been teaching you to condemn your mind, to repress your mind. They have driven the whole of humanity insane, they have made the whole earth a madhouse.

My work here is totally different, diametrically opposite; hence they are all angry with me. If I succeed then there will be no possibility of any priesthood in the future, no possibility of exploiting humanity and driving people mad.

And this is the fundamental law of dissolving all kinds of madnesses: try to understand everything that arises in you with great love, with great caring. And you will be surprised - if you understand it, two things are possible: if it is useless to your growth it will be burnt and nothing will be found, not even a trace; if it is helpful to your growth, beneficial to you, it will be strengthened, nourished, it will start growing.

Then comes prashanti - then comes real, deep silence and that silence is very alive. It is not the silence of a cemetery, it is the silence of music, it is the silence of a garden. It is the silence which throbs with life. It is a silence that can sing, that can dance. It is a silence that can be creative; in fact it becomes creativity. It is silence that wants to share itself with others, a silence that wants to give itself to others. It is a silence that becomes love.

Deva means divine, nutano means new. Life is always new, it is never old; only the mind becomes old. The mind is always old, it is never new. Hence life and mind never meet. One is always old, the other is always new. How can they meet? Where can they meet? The mind cannot be new, life cannot be old; there is no possibility of any bridge between the two. So those who live in the mind cannot be alive, and those who want be alive have to be courageous enough to come out of the mind and live.

The mind gives a kind of security, safety, because it moves only in the familiar. It is a very cowardly mechanism, very orthodox. Because it moves in the familiar it feels good - you know everything, you know the whole territory, you are efficient. Life always demands learning: you have to learn moment to moment. You are always in the process of learning with life. Life never gives you a chance to become knowledgeable. It goes on changing so fast that by the time you know something it is already out of date, it is no more relevant. Life has moved ahead. Life creates new questions and the mind goes on repeating old answers.

To be a sannyasin means: start inquiring into this phenomenon. Scrutinize your mind and see yourself that it is always old. It is not in its nature to be new. The mind means memory. How can the memory be the new? The mind means the experienced, the mind means that which was yesterday.

Yesterday has left a few traces in your memory; that is your mind. And if one lives in the mind, yesterday demands your today also to be like it and your tomorrow also to follow in the same track.

Then you go on missing life and slowly slowly you start living in the mind. That's what madness is:

to live in the mind irrespective of life, to live completely in fantasy which is absolutely irrelevant to the reality outside. That's what madness isl To be sane means to live with the reality as it is. To be sane means not to live through the mind.

Use the mind - it has certain utilities, but those utilities are only technological. Use the mind for technological ends but don't use it for living purposes. It is a good mechanism, like a computer, so when you need some information about the past, consult it, but don't let it hinder your life. Keep it aside. Live fresh, not through the memory, not through conclusions, not through knowledge. Live utterly nude, innocent, like a child... with open eyes, with no knowledge, with wonder and awe, and you will be surprised because you will confront God immediately.

To live without the mind is to know God. To live in the mind is to live without knowing that which surrounds you. The man who lives through the mind is the irreligious man. The religious man is one who lives without the mind, never allows the mind to interfere in his life, keeps his mind aside for other purposes. The mind is a good library, a good Encyclopedia Britannica. Yes, sometimes it is needed - one can consult it. Consult it, thank it, but don't let it become your master; let it remain your servant. It is a good servant and a very dangerous master.

[A sannyasin couple have just arrived. The woman says: I feel like I'm too active all the time. I always go to things and never let them come into me. It's like I don't live moment to moment. It's the trouble between my partner and me.]

Nothing to be worried about - I need a few active people too! Just get involved in the ashram activities; nothing is wrong. You have the energy, that's why, and if you try to become passive, that will be repressing it. You have to use it in the right, creative way. And it is good - to have more energy is a blessing! It can become a curse if you don't know where to put it, how to use it; then it can drive you neurotic. If energy is used rightly it becomes creation; if it is not used rightly then it becomes restlessness.

So don't be worried, I need so much energy - so much work has to be done in the world. So don't make a problem of it - just put it into the work.