Daily Devotion - Jan 02, 2026 (English)- Make Me Innocent
When you were born, you were completely innocent and guileless. You did not know how to doubt, nor did you think of questioning anything. You believed everything, just as Valmiki believed the words of his Guru: "Keep chanting 'mara mara' until I return." He simply accepted it. He did not even ask his Guru when he would return. He made no arguments, no counter-arguments, and no excessive reasoning. There was not the slightest trace of doubt or suspicion in him.
In our country, only those who became as innocent as a newborn attained God-realization. If you, too, can become that innocent, then you will not apply your intellect to the teachings of your Guru. Instead, you will place complete and permanent faith in everything the Guru says. It will not be that you believe at one moment and lack faith the next moment.
Valmiki's Guru merely asked him to chant 'mara mara,' yet he did not question it with his intellect. However, Shri Maharaj Ji has explained everything to you using logic, quoting the scriptures and the Vedas, and clarifying in every possible way what you must do, why you must do it, and how you must do it. Even then, you either do not practice or you become tired after engaging in sādhana for only a short time.
When the pandit ji gave Dhanna Jat a stone and told him it was God Himself, Dhanna believed his words completely. Because of that faith, the stone itself became God for him. But when you met God Himself, you considered Him to be stone. In this way, you have accumulated nāmāparādh. Your mind has become deeply polluted by the material world.
Since people in the world deceive one another, your intellect has also become filled with deceit and trickery. Out of habit, you apply that same deceptive intellect to saints and to God. When God appeared in His countless descensions and when innumerable saints came before you, each time you doubted them and argued with them using your intellect.
During Shri Krishna's descension, you said, "He steals food from the mouths of the Gopas- how can He be God? How foolish are the people who consider Him God." Similarly, in every descension of God, you questioned each of His actions and thought, "Why does He do this?" You neither accepted God nor the saints as being beyond your intellect. That is why you remain stuck where you are.
This is Vedavyasa's profound statement -
Yaśca mūḍhatamo loke yaśca buddheḥ paraṅgataḥ.
Only two kinds of people can attain God -
- one who is so innocent that no one is more guileless than they, or
- One who is such a great scholar that they renounce all learning and become foolish again.
Therefore, the devotee prays, "O Lord! I take great pride in myself and believe I know everything. Please make me innocent like a newborn once again. You belong to the innocent! The simple farmer Dhanna Jat attained You through innocence alone. Please remove all the shrewdness I have learned from books and from people for the sake of material and physical pleasures - now, please destroy all my false pride. Make me innocent again."
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