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‌CHAPTER 5

5 December 1978 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Deva means divine, pravasi means a stranger – a divine stranger.

Man is a stranger on the earth; this is not his true home, hence the search. All search is basically the search for the source, the true home. And whatsoever we make here on the earth disappears: all these palaces that we make are made of playing cards. All that we think is very real finally proves dream-stuff, and by the time one is finished on this earth, one’s hands are as empty as they were when one entered. We don’t bring a thing into the world and we don’t take a thing from the world. The whole turmoil between these two emptinesses seems to be just futile, because it creates nothing. That’s why you see people so frustrated. They may be aware of it, they may not be aware of it, but frustration is writ large on every face, in every eye. People may be different, but they are all living in the same ocean of frustration.

One has to find the home; and you have come very close to it now. This has been your search for your whole life. Don’t miss this opportunity. It is difficult to get the opportunity: it is very easy to miss it. One can find a thousand and one excuses to miss; and it is natural that the excuses look very valid, relevant, because they belong to your mind and to your past. And the thing that is going to happen is unknown, you have never tested it, so there is no proof for it. You have to risk that which you know to find that which is unknown.

That is the beginning of being a sannyasin, and that is the initiation into a totally different kind of world that exists side by side on this earth but which is invisible to the worldly eyes, unavailable to the mundane, mediocre mind.

Every authentic person feels this, that he is a stranger, a foreigner, lost in something alien; nothing seems to fit.

There is a beautiful parable about Jesus: when he was crucified, after the third day he rose again. He goes in search of his disciples. He meets two disciples on the road but they can’t recognise him – not only do they not recognise him, they ask him ‘Sir, are you a foreigner here in Jerusalem? You don’t look as if you belong to this place. Are you a stranger here?’

His own disciples asking him that! But I love the story: Jesus is a stranger in Jerusalem, that’s why he is crucified. He is not only a stranger to the enemies, he is even a stranger to his own friends; even they cannot see his true reality. They also recognise only his former identity. Now that former identity is crucified. Now he has come in a new radiance, with a new purity, with new innocence: he is resurrected. This is his essential core! Even the disciples cannot recognise the essential core. They could have recognised the old garments, but they are gone. Now this is true Christ-consciousness, but it looks alien, strange.

Jesus is not only a stranger in Jerusalem, he is a stranger everywhere else. And any person who starts feeling himself a stranger is coming close to Christ-consciousness.

That is the meaning of pravasi: one who has become aware that he is living in a strange world which is not his true home. Once this settles in your heart, the search takes on a passionate intensity. This becomes the seed of awakening.

And this is my whole effort here: to make you alert that whatsoever you think you are, you are not, that you are totally something else; that you have fallen into a dream and you have become identified with the dream, that you are not part of the dream, that you are not a character in your dream, that you are the witness of the dream, that you are only pure awareness call it Christ-consciousness, Buddhaconsciousness, or any word, or no word.

And it has been a long search for you. Now relax – now you can relax.

The sannyasins are not a crowd, they are not even a society, they are not even a family: they are an organism. And I welcome you into this organism, into this energy-field. Dissolve yourself into it, utterly, with a total yes, and miracles are possible.

Deva means divine, nirdosh means sinless.

The idea of sin has been the greatest calamity. It has created guilt in people; it has made their life very serious, sombre, heavy. It has destroyed their self respect, and without self-respect one cannot enter into one’s being. The guilt becomes a China Wall and you cannot penetrate into your own self. You start condemning yourself, and if you condemn yourself, you will never be able to recognise the divine that is within you.

The first contact has to happen within you. Unless and until god is seen within it cannot be seen anywhere else, because that is the closest door to god. If you cannot see it there, how can you see it in a tree? How can you see it in a rock? How can you see it in another human being? Impossible! The first revolution has to happen within you. Once god has been contacted there then he is everywhere. But first he has to be known within; then he is without, then he is all.

The idea of sin has converted the whole world into an irreligious world. And the paradox is that the people who have been preaching the idea of sin were thinking that they were creating a foundation

for religion. They have been the poisoners, the priests have been the poisoners. They have poisoned everything that is beautiful in man; everything that belongs to the beyond has been polluted. And the name of the poison is sin.

My message is that there is no sin at all. At the most there are mistakes, but no mistake is a sin. There are errors, but errors are not sins. And the mistakes and the errors that one commits in one’s life are not bad either, because it is through them that one grows, matures. By going astray one learns and comes back. And when one comes back to the way again, to the right path again, one comes richer. Every sin, every so-called sin, is nothing but a stepping-stone towards divinity.

Nirdosh means without sin, innocent, pure. And nothing ever reaches to the deepest core of one’s being that can corrupt it; it remains virgin, it remains innocent. There is no possibility of its being poisoned; otherwise priests would have poisoned that too. They can only poison the mind but they cannot poison the being.

Through the mind they have poisoned the body too, because if the mind is so afraid that the fear enters in the body too then the body becomes crippled, then the body has no vitality. Then the body lives only at the minimum, it cannot bloom at the maximum.

Love is a sin: that idea sooner or later enters into the body, because the body and the mind are not separate. The mind is the inner part of the body and the body is the outer part of the mind. You are separate from both! So whatsoever happens in the mind goes into the body, whatsoever happens in the body goes into the mind, but nothing ever touches you; you are incorruptible. And that is the greatest gift of god: that he has provided each being with an incorruptible centre. Cyclones may come and go but you remain the centre of the cyclone, miles and miles away, unapproachable.

But one can awaken to that centre of innocence. That awakening is meditation. Then you look with a different vision, then your eyes are no more the same. Then your senses for the first time function at the optimum. Then the world is psychedelic. There is no need for any Lsd or marijuana or psilocybin. There is no need, because your own inner being goes on pouring something that the Vedas call soma. It is not a drug: it is the juice of your inner being. And when your juice is poured into your mind and into your body, you live a transformed life. Then you have the body of light, you have the body which is divine. Then whatsoever you do is prayer and whatsoever you are, it is meditation.

Deva means divine, purnam means perfection, divine perfection.

Man is perfect as he is. That is one of the most fundamental things that I teach. Perfection has not to be achieved, it is not a goal. It is already the case; it has only to be recognised, remembered. The moment you make perfection a goal, you will go neurotic. That’s how the whole world has gone neurotic. It is impossible. How can the perfect become perfect? If it is already perfect it is impossible that it becomes perfect; and that very impossibility creates neurosis.

If a rose flower tries to become a rose flower it is bound to go neurotic. It is already a rose flower! If it was not there may have been a possibility, but now there is no possibility. And because it cannot become, frustration settles in; because it cannot achieve the goal, defeatism settles in. And life becomes meaningless when you cannot achieve your goal.

Perfection has not to be achieved. Everything is perfect as it is! The rose is perfect and the mango tree is perfect and the fish is perfect and you are perfect. Everything is perfect as it is, it has to be because everything is divine, and god is perfect. One has only to recognise it and then life is play; then there is nothing to achieve. One can relax and be.

Prem means love, yatro means pilgrimage a love pilgrimage. It is something that has disappeared from the world. There are millions of tourists in the world but it is very rare to come across a pilgrim. Tourism is not pilgrimage. A tourist is superficial. He is in a hurry, he is rushing from one place to another place. In fact he is not even aware of why he is doing it. Maybe he cannot sit at ease in one place, that’s why he is doing it; he is restless. His being a tourist is nothing but an expression of his inner restlessness.

The pilgrim is a totally different phenomenon. It has something beautiful about it, something sacred. The pilgrim is not just visiting places; he is searching, he is a seeker. He is not only curious; he has an intense, passionate desire to know. He is not really interested in places; he is interested in energy-fields and he is searching for some energy-field where he can dissolve himself.

That is the meaning of a sacred place: a place where you would like to die, to disappear, a place where death is mote valuable than life, a place where the ego can be dissolved, because something higher is available, because you can exist on a different plane, on a higher plane. There used to exist many places on the earth, many energy-fields. They have disappeared because pilgrims are not there so those energy-fields cannot be nourished; those energy-fields have no more function.

I am creating here an energy-field, a sacred place, a place for pilgrimage. It is a love pilgrimage. Be ready to dissolve, to put your ego aside. Only then do doors open, only then does communion become possible; and only through communion can truth be conveyed, not through words. Truth can be conveyed only beyond words: it is a transmission without scriptures. That is the meaning of yatro.

Prem means love, gatha means a sacred story – a sacred story of love. Love is the most sacred thing in existence, and those who are not aware of love cannot be aware of god. Those who are aware of love need not worry about god, because love is another name for god. And to live love is religion – not to philosophise about it, not to speculate about it, but simply to love it, to live it, simply to be it. Then one’s whole life becomes a story of love a song of love; and that’s how life should be.

Then there are millions of mysteries, and miracles happen every moment. Mysteries and mysteries go on opening their doors. Then this existence is not ordinary; even ordinary things start moving in an extraordinary way. Then even an ordinary leaf of a tree is so utterly, incredibly beautiful one could not have imagined it ever. Then the whole existence is a celebration. When love is in the heart the existence is a celebration. When love is missing in the heart the existence is a dull and boring affair. It all depends on only one thing: whether the heart is full of love.

I teach love... Love is my message. And you can grow into immense love, you have the energy. All that you need is to become aware of it.

Samved has two meanings. One is sensitivity and another is right knowledge, and both are interrelated. Only the sensitive person is capable of attaining to right knowledge.

The insensitive can gather information, can become knowledgeable, but will never become wise. He will just be a donkey loaded with great scriptures. He will he simply carrying a burden; it will not be of any use to him. It will fulfil his ego but it will not enlighten him. And when the ego is fulfilled, one goes on falling deeper and deeper into darkness, because the ego is a rocklike thing that hangs around your neck and helps you to be drowned. You cannot fly.

Real knowledge is weightless. It gives you wings, it makes the whole sky available to you. Even the sky is not the limit then: you can go on and on, farther and farther. There is no end to the infinite journey of a seeker.

Become sensitive, and you are; that’s why I am giving you this name. Become more. Don’t be shy, don’t feel embarrassed. Crying is good, tears are beautiful, as beautiful as laughter. And the real man is capable of all these things: he can cry like a child, he can laugh like a child.

These beautiful capacities are crippled by the society. Remain available to all moods, remain available to all the plays of the moods, to all climates, and live each mood in its totality. When you are sad, be really sad, don’t pretend otherwise; then become sadness. When you are laughing, then become laughter. Don’t be half-hearted, don’t be lukewarm; then go into it totally, madly. This is how one grows, slowly slowly, to become more and more sensitive.

And to become more sensitive is to become available to right knowledge. The world starts: revealing its secrets to the sensitive person. The world becomes a teacher to the sensitive person. The sensitive person becomes a disciple – a disciple of trees and rivers and mountains and stars. The whole universe is his teacher. He learns infinitely. He never becomes knowledgeable although he goes on becoming more and more wise.

These are the two meanings, but both are two aspects of the same coin.

Santoshi. It means tremendous contentment: not just so-so – with great depth, with infinite depth. And not the contentment that people impose upon themselves but the contentment that grows within one’s being.

One can cultivate contentment but then it is false, phony, and deep down there is discontentment boiling, ready to erupt and explode any moment. The cultivated contentment can become only a shield, a shelter, just to save one’s face. One has failed in life: what to do now? It is better to cultivate a certain contentment so that one can say philosophically ‘I don’t care.’ That is nothing but the same old Aesop fable that the grapes are sour because the fox cannot reach them. Now, it is very hurtful to accept that ‘I could not reach the grapes.’ It is easier to say ‘They were sour, they were not worth reaching. I was capable of reaching, I am capable of reaching, but the grapes are not worth trying for.’ This is false contentment. One should not cultivate any phony contentment because that becomes the barrier for the real contentment to arise.

Real contentment is not out of frustration, failure, limitation. Real contentment is out of gratitude. God has given so much! He has given you eyes to see beauty, he has given you ears to hear beautiful music, he has given you a heart to feel love. What else does one want? He has given you all kinds of sensitivities – to poetry, to att. What else does one want to be fulfilled?

If one looks to that which has already been given one, real contentment arises. It is gratitude. And if one looks to that which one wanted and could not get, then one imposes a false contentment.

Santoshi means real contentment, profound contentment, contentment out of gratitude. Then it has beauty, it has grace, and it transforms one’s life. It makes one’s life elegant, exquisite. It gives you for the first time the feeling of a centre; it creates the soul.

Paribuddha. It means pure awareness, perfect awareness.

The mind is not your awareness: the mind is the object of which you are aware, the mind is the content which is reflected in your awareness. Awareness is your subjectivity.

A thought passes in the mind; you can see it. And when you can see something, you are not it; otherwise how will you be able to see it? It is separate; it is there, it is outside you. Anger passes, love passes, sadness, happiness, and a thousand and one things go on passing; they come in front of you and they pass. You are the awareness, the mirror, but things that pass are reflected in the mirror and for a moment it seems as if the mirror has become it. When the sun is rising and the mirror reflects it, it seems as if there is no mirror any more, just the sun rising in the mirror; the mirror disappears.

And that’s what happens to us: when there is sadness, we forget, we tend to forget, that we are just a witness to it; that we are not sad, that we cannot be sad, that there is no way for the subjectivity to become its own object.

If one starts working on this simple principle, slowly slowly one becomes detached from all the contents of the mind. And then a few moments start happening when there is no content. Those moments are of pure awareness and will bring bliss, benediction. They give you the first glimpses of paradise. When this state becomes your permanent state, when it is not just a momentary happening, when it doesn’t come and go but it is always there, even when you are asleep it is there – you know the dreams are passing but you are not them – then you have become a paribuddha.

This is the highest state of awareness; nothing is higher than that. That is the topmost in the hierarchy of existence. If the rock is at the lowest, at the bottom, then Buddhahood is at the highest peak.

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