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a non-serious phenomenon; only then can one dive deep. Seriousness keeps you on the surface. Seriousness is never deep, it cannot be; it is shallow. It is only in playfulness that one relaxes and goes deep; relaxation is the door to depth. When you are serious, you are so tense that it is impossible to relax.
A serious saint is a contradiction in terms. If he is serious he is not a saint; if he is a saint he can't be serious. But that's how saints have been thought of up to now: they cannot laugh, they cannot be playful, they are not healthy and holy; they cannot sing. But real saints have always been a song in the world. They have been a dance, they have brought more festivity into existence, they have made the whole of their lives a festival. And that's my whole effort here: to create sannyasins who are songs, dances, celebrations.
Unless you can be playful with life you will not know what god is. So drop all kinds of seriousness; on no level should seriousness be allowed to settle in you. Remain like a small child, playful, and then god is not far away. He is very close by, in the flower, in the tree, in the river. All that is needed is the wondering, innocent, playful eyes of a child; not the seriousness of the scholar and the so-called saint, but the playfulness of a lover.
And that is the meaning of your name: become a song. In becoming a song you have become a prayer, and you will be heard. Only songs reach to god.
Deva means divine, dip means lamp, light -- divine lamp. It is there in you, as it is in everybody else, but we never look into our own being. We are keeping our own light at the back, hence we live in darkness. It is our own choice; the darkness is not natural. We are living in our own shadow; the lamp is behind us and we never turn back. Slowly slowly we become so accustomed to looking outwards that it becomes a fixation, it becomes a kind of paralysis; we cannot turn in. It is as if for years one has not used one's neck to turn and look back, and now one's neck has become fixed; it is exactly like that.
Becoming a sannyasin means that you are making yourself available to changing this pattern. Sannyas is a
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