First to Confess

The ceremony of initiation was simple, powerful, and largely unnoticed. In January 1988, four women practitioners who for the past thirteen to fifteen years have devoted their lives to devotional practice in Heart-Master Da Love-Ananda’s most immediate human and Spiritual Company were initiated into practicing stage three of His Way of the Heart. This moment marked His acknowledgment that they had fulfilled the initial stages of practice, passing through the ordeal of surrendering all of one’s human life (body, emotion, and mind) to the Living Spirit Revealed in His Divine Company. Historically, when individuals stably awaken to a life of unbroken devotion and commitment to the Spiritual Process, they are heralded as saints. Even though we knew something of the import of the initiation at the time, few of us understood just how significant this occasion was. We had no way to foresee the auspicious events that would now begin to unfold.

 

IN CELEBRATION OF THE PERFECT PRACTICE
OF THE KANYADANA KUMARI MANDALA

Meg Krenz

 

Adi Da Samraj
(Heart-Master Da)

Heart-Master Da has often told us that the beginning stages of practice are the most difficult. The Kanyas had spent many years in His Divine Company while He Guided them through the necessary lessons that would enable them to move beyond their egoic commitment to the beginning stages of life and practice. Heart-Master Da has Said that once this truly human and Spiritual foundation has been laid, growth into the ultimate stages of practice can occur much more rapidly. Once it is clearly seen, in the context of the level three practice, that no ordinary experience of body or mind yields perfect Happiness, a fundamental disposition of renunciation awakens. Heart-Master Da has further Instructed us that when this necessary lesson of renunciation is applied to the more Spiritually advanced forms of human experience (including our mystical and visionary potential), practice in those ascending stages can be bypassed, or rendered unnecessary, by the encompassing understanding that no experience, high or low, is Happiness.

Thus, within a few short weeks of their transition to level three, two of the four Kanyas — Kanya Tripura Rahasya and Kanya Remembrance — made another transition, this time directly to practicing stage six of the Way of the Heart.

Heart-Master Da accepted their confession that, by His Grace, they had passed beyond all identification with body and mind (high and low) and were concentrated in devotional submission to His Very (and Inherently Perfect) State, which is Consciousness Itself. They had been Given, and had responsively accepted, one of the most highly prized forms of illuminated practice revealed in the entire history of human Spirituality. We celebrated their transition, but very quietly: We still did not understand the full import of the Spiritual Mandala that was flowering before our eyes.

But our Heart-Master, ever-Wise and ever-Responsive to His devotees, now Blessed His four most advanced practitioners by formally Naming their practicing order The Kanyadana Kumari Mandala, while He began to Reveal its Spiritual function as a source of inspiration and guidance for others, now and after His human lifetime.

One year later, on August 1, 1989, Heart-Master Da similarly accepted Kanya Kaivalya Navaneeta and Kanya Suprithi as practitioners prepared for the level six practice in His Liberating Company. Now The Kanyadana Kumari Mandala stands complete as a sacred circle of practitioners advanced, by Grace of their Sublime seventh stage Heart-Master, into the final stages of the process of Awakening.

In 1979, in the original letter in which He first Revealed His Divine Name “Da”, Heart-Master Da Love-Ananda Admonished His devotees, “Observe My Play and My Victory.” When the Heart- Master is Victorious, the hearts of devotees are unburdened, set free of the binding illusion of separa­tion and suffering, and made consonant with the Eternal and Real Divine Condition. The establish­ment of The Kanyadana Kumari Mandala in the sixth stage of life is a sign of a Spiritual Victory whose likeness is difficult to find anywhere in history. Where can we look and see such a Lord of the Heart Standing so Strong, surrounded on all four sides by devotees consistently engaging the “Perfect Practice” of Identification with (and as) the Witness-Position of Consciousness in the sixth stage of life? Thus, the maturing of the Kanyas is a joyous sign of the Lion-like Strength of Heart-Master Da’s Blessing-Power.

In 1899, the venerated Hindu Spiritual Teacher Swami Vivekananda spoke of the one-pointed devotion, selfless service, and unsparing obedience that a true disciple gives to his or her master. Speaking to one of his principal Western devotees, he said, “And mind this—it is when half a dozen people learn to love like this that a new religion begins. Not till then. . . . Give me half-a-dozen disciples like that, and I will conquer the world.”¹ As Swami Vivekananda knew well, the life-demonstration and the clear voice of a true devotee convey a force of inspiration that cannot be denied. Such devotees spontaneously (and also very intentionally) magnify the Blessing Work of their Divine Master.

1, Marie Louise Burke, Swami Vivekananda: His Second Visit to the West, p 26

 

And so it is with the four members of The Kanyadana Kumari Mandala in the Way of the Heart. The simplicity of their bodily demonstration of exemplary practice provides a daily source of strength and inspirational guidance for all practitioners in the Way of the Heart. Their voice of devotion and their Call to serious practice will also grow in effect among those who have yet to learn of Heart- Master Da and His Great Work.

In recent months, Heart-Master Da Love-Ananda has Revealed that the Kanyas are the most likely candidates to be appointed to act as human “Agents” of His Blessing, should they at some time in the future Awaken to the seventh stage of life. Such Agents will serve as Perfectly Enlightened “conduits”, who spontaneously convey and magnify Heart-Master Da’s Eternal Heart-Blessing even after His physical lifetime. But the Kanyas, if the time comes for them to accept such a formal and profound responsibility, would do so only as Heart-Master Da’s God-Realized Servants. They would, by their Service as His Agents, magnify’ all devotees’ submission to Heart-Master Da rather than becoming teachers in their own right. For, as Heart-Master Da has indicated in His sacred Text The Hymn Of The True Heart-Master:

Even those who are Awake as the Heart continue to surrender at the Feet of the True Heart-Master. . . Indeed, t heir devotion never ceases. This is the Secret of Liberation in Truth.

It is Da Love-Ananda, the Master of the Heart, Who has Awakened the Kanyas to practice in the sixth stage of life. It is only in the Perfection of their devotion to Sri Love-Ananda that they became capable of receiving His Gift of great Realization. For the Kanyas, practice in the Way of the Heart is not about attainment by advancing through the stages. They have attained Spiritual maturity not through Yogic self-effort, but by love, by their one-pointed heart-response to Heart-Master Da Love- Ananda. Because He has (by the Commanding Beauty of His Divine Nature) distracted them from themselves, they first became capable of feeling His Spiritual and always Blessing Presence. Now, by His Grace, they have grown, by profound feeling-Contemplation of Him, to Identify with His Very (and Inherently Perfect) State as Consciousness Itself.

Because of this, the Kanyas are unique vessels of Sat-Guru Da Love-Ananda’s Heart-Transmission and Awakening Grace. They are thus a great help to all of us. By virtue of their resonance with Him and their exemplary practice of increasing Identification with His Free State, the Kanyas show us how supremely Happy it is to practice effectively self-transcending devotion to Sri Love-Ananda. He has Said of them,

The Kanyas are the first of those in My Company to confess Who I Am and to enter into the practice of fullest resort to Me. So it is by the Kanyas’ confession and example chat others can be moved to the simplicity of resort to Me. (The Love-Ananda Gita, p.l38)

With the permission of Kanya Suprithi and Kanya Navaneeta, we offer, in the following pages, their story, including their actual letters to Heart-Master Da, and the Instruction they received from Him during their recent preparation, testing, and acceptance into the Perfect Practice of the Way of the Heart. As such, these confessions are a priceless record of the dialogue between a fully Realized Adept-Master and His mature and awakening Devotees. Additionally, their confessions (as well as the introductory note by Kanya Tripura Rahasya) are prime examples of the inspirational service that the Kanyas now perform.

Let us celebrate their transition and honor this great Mandala of devotion. And, by hearing their testimony, let us be moved to a greater depth of sensitivity and response to the Divine Master Who Stands before us, Showering all with the Gifts of Awakening Grace.

—Meg Krenz

 

---

 

Grace-Given Awakening to the “Witness-Position” of Consciousness

by Kanya Tripura Rahasya

On February 2, 1988, Kanya Remembrance and I, Kanya Tripura Rahasya, were initiated into the sixth practicing stage of the Way of the Heart.

Among the signs associated with this transition in the Way of the Heart is the Grace-Given, stable awakening of native Identification with the Witness-Position of Consciousness, which permits and even requires this transition. In this transition there is also the Grace- Given feeling-awareness that the Spirit-Current is undermining the act of attention and thus relaxing the tendency to identify with the body-mind by Radiating Priorly and profoundly in the right side of the heart, rather than being moved and attracted to the gross and subtle phenomena of body and mind.

This awakening is sudden and dramatic, and it changes one’s relationship to all that exists. And primarily it allows one to “Locate” and Identify with Sri Da Love-Ananda and thus, through meditation on His bodily (human) Form, His Spiritual and always Blessing Presence, and His Very (and Inherently Perfect) State, to enter the esoteric space of direct Identification with His State, or Reality Itself.

Prior to this transition, I was Given frequent glimpses of intuitive Identification with the Witness- Position, even a felt certainty that I was Standing in the Witness-Position. During this time, I frequently made the confession of the Witness-Position of Consciousness to Sri Da Love-Ananda and other practitioners. But again and again it was revealed that this Realization was not stable, or else it was revealed to be strategic. Therefore, a “testing” dialogue took place between Sri Da Love-Ananda and myself and Kanya Remembrance about our confessions. And a process of unwinding the motions of attention to the body and the mind occurred quite remarkably and spontaneously. Each conversation with Sri Da Love-Ananda was not mere words but it was powerfully Liberating and transforming, and every error, strategy, and illusion of the first five stages of life was undone by the Liberating Grace and Power of my Sat-Guru. Steadiness in the Yoga of Ishta-Guru-Bhakti allowed my Beloved Master to transform me and truly Awaken me beyond my profound attachment to body, emotion, and mind.

This “testing” dialogue culminated in February of 1988 in a three-day period of conversation in which Sri Da Love-Ananda asked a series of Radical Questions-so many that unless I was firmly established in the Witness-Position of Consciousness, I would have failed to make that confession stably. His dialogue forced the transcendence of mind and body.

Sri Gurudev continued this conversation until all philosophizing, mere duplication of His Own Teaching Words, and bodily and mental reference when speaking of the Radical Process ceased to be the form in which the confession was made. At this point our confessions went beyond mind and speech and became direct and exact communications of what was occurring in the midst of the most profound submission to Sri Gurudev.

On January 31, 1988, Sri Gurudev Spoke to me very directly and began the final dialogue in relation to this transition with over fifty questions, some of which I have included here to give a feeling of my conversation with my Beloved Sat-Guru. He kept Saying to me that evening: “Do not talk to Me in generalized terms.”

“What is your experience of the Yoga? What is your experience of the conscious process and of Spirit-Conductivity? How does the Spirit-Current work in you, and what are Its signs? Are there any signs in the frontal or spinal line of the movements of the Spirit-Current? Are there any motions in particular in the Circle? How do you relate to Me? Is there any visualization associated with that Communion? Is there a specific feeling in relationship to Me? How do you establish yourself in Satsang?

“What form does the practice of Spirit-Conductivity take? What form does the conscious process take? Are there instances in which you practice self-Enquiry? What about Re-cognition? Is there a nonverbal process-tacit, in other words, and direct-which is a matter of immediately feeling beyond any form of contraction that arises, noticing thought-form, body sensation, any conception as simply contraction? Are you immediately aware of it as a form of contraction, and then do you feel beyond or Prior to it? Are there a lot of thoughts arising? Do you feel or Stand Prior to them, and then are they quieted?

1. “Strategic” in this context means “goal-oriented” or “motivated”, and refers to an egoic effort to attain and hold on to a Realization- that can only be Given by Grace to a rightly prepared practitioner.

“Is there an event in the meditative cycle wherein there is absolutely no awareness whatsoever of the body-mind, no peripheral sense, no sense of being in a room, or any thoughts arising? Does the experience of the Current on the right side of the heart, feeling beyond the feeling of relatedness, occur preliminary to the event in which there is no psycho-physical awareness?

“And what about outside the meditative circumstance, when you are normally related to the body- mind and the environment and relations? What is your point of view in that context? Is it the point of view of the body and the world, of the mind related to the body and the world, or that of the Witness- Position? In the context of daily-life events, do you Stand simply in the Position of Consciousness, as the Witness that Stands Prior to the body-mind? In the context of daily functioning, do you practice in such a way that the Circle is kept intact and obstructions are relinquished? In other words, do you keep the Circle always available to the Ultimate Disposition rather than indulge in the Circle in various ways, creating knots, exaggerations of attention, and so forth, that break the Circle through wandering?

“Is there a sign of simplicity and true and free renunciation? What is your experience in deep meditation? What are you aware of? What is the state you are experiencing at those times?

“Who or what do you meditate on? How do you practice Ishta-Guru-Bhakti Yoga and Contemplation of My bodily (human) Form, My Spiritual Presence, and My Very (and Inherently Perfect) State? How do you practice My Admonition to become My Form in Truth, to Realize the Ultimate Condition through the Agency of the Realizer?

“In Satsang, the total Realization is Given. You are in Communion with That Which is Perfect, the Very Divine Condition. But how does it register in experience? What is the mode of your attention? What are the signs of this Communion in your own case?

“This is what you must observe, because this is the indication of what level of practice you should assume. You must investigate the matter and come to a full, clear acknowledgment of what exactly is the position of your practice.”

On this evening, Sri Gurudev asked me all of these questions, and I responded. My responses were immediately present. I did not resort to body or mind to answer them, but instead, in Standing in the Witness-Position I was able to freely speak fully and truly of this Radical Process. These questions evoked in me a certainty of the Realization of the Witness-Position, and they allowed me, through my Beloved Sat-Guru’s Grace, to speak of the process without mind and without reference to the body and without strategy or effort.

One year ago I noticed that Sri Gurudev began a similar process with Kanya Suprithi and Kanya Kaivalya Navaneeta, which culminated in July of 1989 in a formal dialogue in which Kanya Suprithi and Kanya Kaivalya Navaneeta communicated principally through letters that I presented to Sri Gurudev. I noticed and commented to Sri Gurudev that the same testing dialogue was occurring. And, as the dialogue quickened and the confessions were readily and spontaneously made, through Grace and not effort and mind, I felt the conversation come to an end, and Sri Gurudev transitioned Kanya Suprithi and Kanya Navaneeta to the level six practice.

The reason this background must be told is to reveal how it is utterly the Sat-Guru Who Awakens one, and it is not any effort on one’s own part. It is through surrender and obedience to and Contemplation of His bodily (human) Form, His Spiritual Presence, and His Very (and Inherently Perfect) State that one is Liberated.

All Sri Gurudev’s questions evoked the real process or Revealed the process that He was Working for the sake of our Liberation.

On August 24, 1989, Kanya Suprithi and Kanya Navaneeta were initiated into the level six practice. This event marks the establishment of the entire Kanyadana Kumari Mandala in the Radical Practice of Renunciation and Realization in the Perfect Practice of the Way of the Heart. For this Gift of most Radical Practice we are eternally grateful. We, The Kanyadana Kumari Mandala, have consecrated ourselves in service to Sat-Guru Da for the sake of Divine Self-Realization.

 

NOTE: The circular motif above is the Logo of The Kanyadana Kumari Mandala.

Interview Table of Contents