For our Spring 2019 issue, we were thrilled to interview modern-day mystic and spiritual teacher Devaji, who shared some beautiful words on the nature of love, and how we can cultivate it in our everyday lives. Devaji is visiting Ireland very soon. He will be holding a special Satsang retreat in Tornant House, Co. Wicklow, from Friday August 9th to Sunday August 18th. Public Satsang evenings will be held in Dublin on August 6th and 7th, and in Galway on August 8th.
Falling Into Love
A conversation with Devaji
Interviewers: Paul Congdon and Ajeet Siva
Devaji is a modern-day mystic and author of the book Illuminated by Love. He has guided spiritual seekers for nearly twenty years. Through his tender, loving wisdom and pure devotion, he offers a unique look at non-dual teachings. Devaji leads retreats in California, Hawaii, Mexico, Ireland, and India, as well as online gatherings available to everyone worldwide.
He is holding a special Satsang retreat in Tornant House, Co. Wicklow, from Friday August 9th to Sunday August 18th. Public Satsang evenings will be held in Dublin on August 6th and 7th, and in Galway on August 8th. Ahead of his visit, we were thrilled to interview him about his incredible teachings on love, human relationships and the nature of existence.
What do you feel about the nature of love, and how we can share that in human relationships?
In my experience, what we call ‘normal life’ is very much the same as a dream – when you dream at night, what happens is that what’s found in your psyche is what happens in your dream. In the dream, you perceive one character as ‘you’ and the other characters as other people, all playing out different roles … but then when you wake up, you realise that all of it was an interpretation of what lies within your psyche, everyone in that dream symbolised an aspect of yourself, and the only way you could have received the wisdom of that information was through the dream. So, if you have a sense that you can’t rely on love from others, that pattern is going to repeat itself in your everyday life. The real place to look for love is inside yourself.
How does your life look when you live from love?
Right now – wherever you are, whatever you’re doing – there is a part of you that is totally aware of your body. If you can shift your gaze for a moment, from whatever practical concerns are in your mind, to that sense of awareness, then that becomes your priority, rather than whatever you are doing. Just feel into it. Feel, with your heart, the part of you that is not bound to anything, and just gently fall into that. When you fall into the experience of unity, the ‘dream’ of life that you experience will reflect that. Life goes on, but the characters that you appear – the people you meet – appear within that feeling. There is no longer a feeling of separation from them.
Did you have a powerful experience of realising the nature of love – one that prompted you to follow your current path?
I’ve had quite a number of powerful experiences over the course of my life, but I can’t target a specific one. They were tastes of pure bliss, and each time they happened, there was a deeper and deeper grounding of that knowing. When you have tasted that beauty and bliss and love, total understanding arrives. You understand that the players on the stage of life have, to varying degrees, forgotten that bliss. That opens you up to an incredible sense of compassion.
How can you engage with that deep sense of love when you’re interacting with another person?
We all construct our own play of time, whether consciously or unconsciously. The nature of the play is that if you are truly humble and open, it is constructed freely. It will bring up everything that is hidden: everything that the mind has wanted to tuck away, that the mind has feared. When you are humble, and you are not built upon reacting defensively, then you freely receive what is being offered and you go inside to hold space and to simply watch the response you have to everything. When you meet from the heart, there is a healing and a melting away of old, ingrained patterns and habits. Need begins to dissolve. There is no catalyst quite like primary relationships to help us uproot all of the protective, adaptive habits that we have hidden away!
Can you talk some more about the experience of ‘falling away’? Is that really what our journey is about: letting things fall away, rather than trying to ‘get’ something?
We are conditioned to believe we need things. As long as we are running after that sense of need, that experience is reinforced. Need is just an experience that arises when you are pulled away from the nature of your being, which is eternal. Your existence is eternally now. It feels no need. Anything that can fall away was never worth having – it was only a distractive habit. You are eternal.
Devaji is holding a special Satsang retreat in Tornant House, Co. Wicklow, from Friday August 9th to Sunday August 18th. Public Satsang evenings will be held in Dublin on August 6th and 7th, and in Galway on August 8th.
