Day of the Heart – Da Free John – 1979

This
is the most beautiful occasion that has ever taken place
here. (tears and laughter).

Some of you have never been here
before. I see some of you have not been here for a long time
(crying is heard all throughout the crowd). Some of you have
wasted several years being angry with me (tears and laughter
are heard, again, throughout the crowd). Or angry with
others of your friends here. This is worse because they are
weaker than I am (crying is heard). In a few years not a
single one of us will be alive, and others will be here
remembering us and they will be lively in their time and
then they will die. In their time, like many of you, will
feel contempt with themselves.

Hundreds of people have come here,
not thousands, yet. My struggle with you all has only begun.
Seven years and you are the only people to come and see me
today. Many of you are content with yourselves at this
moment. You think that you can receive something and become
even more content with yourself. You think that you can rest
in yourself and find God, and this is not true.

Some of you think about God and
mysticism, meditation and philosophy. But this mind is as
mortal as the body and passes. Some of you may feel some
life awakening in you and you imagine that what you see
within is your salvation, your hopefulness, your hope. A
vision internal, floating forms of all the senses are
believed to be God. And this is not true.

All the hundreds or thousands of
vitals, peculiar and solids that have passed through here,
imagine that they are pleasuring their sufficient
consolation. Their seeking the sufficient truth, their
mysticism, a sufficient revelation. They come, tune in on me
for a time and then they take it for themselves and leave.
Where as they cannot own a single thing, not even this
breath is owned.

Let me tell you a story about
myself. All the great events of my life were for the sake of
others. Each of those events was a return to equanimity,
surrender. All of my life I have struggled with people like
you, and far worse people than you. All the idolaters, all
the advocates of the cult of experience.

I had two principal human teachers,
who were men of great yogic experience and to whom I had
been sent by prior visions and commands. I went to them for
God, you see, and I received many things and in brief
moments. (All of yoga, all the mysticism that may be
attained, was realized in moments. This is unusual.) Each of
these teachers represented his own disposition, which I had
to transcend in order to continue to grow spiritually. I did
not reject or deny the help of these teachers, but I did
transcend their gifts. It did not occur to others who also
approached these teachers to transcend the gift, but only to
receive it, to be consoled by it, to own it, to be made
content with themselves again. Even those who taught me
imagined that my freedom was their gift to me–yet this was
not true.

Published version

I spent several years with a man
named Rudi and in his company I entered into the experience
of the lower coil, the physical, emotional, and mental
dimensions of the body-mind. In Rudi’s company, the lower
life was awkaened and purified. Then I went to another man
named Baba Muktananda and in a few days at his ashram at
Ganeshpuri, India, I extended my experience into the upper
coil of the body. In his company the higher mind was
awakened.

On the last day I was sitting in the
Ashram garden and Baba Muktananda was being visited by a man
named Rang Avadhoot. Rang Avadhoot was a wandering Siddha, a
God-Realized being whom Bhagavan Nityananda had called one
of his forms, meaning that Rang Avadhoot was his equal in
God-Realization. His way of making contact with saints and
with devotees was to suddenly appear among them, as he did
on this day I am describing. He typically wandered
throughout the countryside, visiting ashrams, but he never
stayed anywehre more than three days. On this occasions, his
visit lasted just a few minutes, and I happened to be
sitting in the garden when he and Baba Muktananda passed
by.

Rang had a great white beard and
white hair. His forehead was smeared with white ash and a
streak of kum-kum (red powder) had been drawn between his
eyes. As he walked past the garden bench where I was
sitting, suddenly he looked at me. His face was wide,
without a trace of doubt. His eyes were wide, full of life,
and he was brilliantly happy! In the moment it took him to
pass in front of me, one of the great events of my life was
accomplished.

I went to my room and left the body
and all the universes. This great experience was the not the
result of my contact with Baba Muktananda, but rather the
result of seeing Rang Avadhoot for that brief moment. Afiter
this meeting with Rang Avadhoot, I spent two and one-half
years out of my mind and out of my body.

Published version

It was only in the Vedanta Temple in
that event we celebrate today that I returned to my ease.
Since that time you have heard me and seen me and I have
always told you that yoga is empty. That the phenomena of
mysticism are fundamentally only the content of your own
body/mind. To dwell upon them is to live like Narcissus,
reflecting on yourself, meditating on yourself. God vision
is not within, it is not in the brain, it is not gotten
through the stimulation of the nervous system or the
stimulation of the internal psychic or brain phenomena. I
have passed through all of that. I still see it and it is
nothing but this body/mind. It is only reason to be content
with yourself, self-possessed.

Where as in the night I lay down in
my bed in Ganeshpuri I have returned to my equanimity. The
mind, the nervous system, brain all were vanished, utterly
vanished. There was no vision whatsoever. There was a
piercing of the armor of the cosmos and I was established in
the unspeakable God. This realization became manageable only
over time. It’s significance became understandable only
through consideration.

So, in 1970, nine years ago
today…I don’t have the slightest idea what day it was! I
didn’t come home and say, “Hey, I was enlightened this
afternoon!”. (laugher) Well, I don’t know. The members of my
household never noticed anything, and never knew much about
this sort of thing. I only began to speak of it a few weeks
later. I don’t think I’ve ever taken note of the day. It was
sometime around the middle of the month or so. It was not a
mere moment, it was a process. It was an event that
continues that is eternal, fundamentally it is for your
sake.

Because of this event all the
scriptures are now fulfilled in your sight and your prayers
are answered with a clear voice. It is sufficient sadhana to
remember me, to simply, surrender to me, and love me and
trust me, and do what I ask you to do. It is not only
sufficient, there is no way that you will be saved, that you
will be awakened, that you will be happy, except through
this simple conversion. You must also give up your
struggling. You must transcend yourself, your experience,
all of your teachers, teachings, moments, accumulations,
thoughts, as I have done. We are mortal and entirely subject
to the Mercy of God and we own nothing and we know nothing
and there is no technique of meditation that leads to God.
There is nothing to believe that is the truth. We must be
touched in our feeling by the unspeakable suffering of this
world and return everything to God.

Whatever is given to you should be
taken as God’s excess. It belongs to God utterly. But, he
has so much that we wind up with a lot of things in our
house. But they are all God. Everything should be given to
God and whatever is given to us, for how long it is given to
us, should be accepted as something that belongs to God. We
should treat it as such, literally. If you bring me an apple
and I give it back to you then you will have something to
eat. But if I eat it myself then you will not. Will you be
angry with me if I don’t return to you what you have given
to me? You will be overwhelmed with anger your entire life
if you do not understand this, if you do not appreciate it,
if you do not feel your situation profoundly enough to
accept changes in this spirit. Everything we own, think,
presume, everything everyone with whom you are associated
will be taken away from you. Your body itself and also your
mind, will sometime be kept by God, your relations, your
children, your spouses.

If you surrender them to God
everyday then someday they will be kept and you must be free
of anger on that day. You must be free of sorrow, while you
live, free of doubt and also fear. Or else, your will be
crippled through your own recoil on yourself and you will
become an idolater, a cultist, an owner of experience, an
owner of mind and body, of relations. All of that can be
taken from you and you will always unhappy.

We sit here on this beautiful
occasion in this place which is becoming more and more
beautiful and yet I see what is to come in your case and it
will make you sorrowful, angry and fearful. It will always
return you to doubt and to yourself, alone. I see what your
require. It is the help of God.

Recently, I was telling someone who
was with me, “You are all going to the chair, you are all
going to die. I have looked in to it, I have examined your
case and I have made all the appeals that are to be made and
I am afraid you are going to the chair and that is all there
is to it”. Then I said, “a person in your position really
has not appeals left, no strategy, no game with which to be
integrated where you might be saved. There is no meditation,
no mere belief, no consolation, no experience sufficient for
your salvation, your happiness, your eternal life, your
going to the chair, your going to die”. All one could do is
ask for mercy, pray for help. Those who heard me say this
went home for a couple of days and began to scream their
brains out. They were weeping in the communion hall begging
God for mercy. Then I called them back and I pointed out to
them. Just as they were criminals, neurotics and
self-possessed individuals before I told them they had not
appears left, now they also pray like neurotics. Their
prayer itself was neurotic, their prayer itself was
criminal, self-possessed (Adi Da mimics someone crying and
screaming for mercy. Gathering laughs).

There is something amusing about
that but they felt is very profoundly. They were all yogis,
you see, understanding. But it was still clear to them in
their feeling, their life itself and everything it
contained, cold come to an end. All their relations could be
taken from them. We exist here in this place, utterly at the
mercy of that which has accomplished the
Universe.

Siddhi, the power to be accomplish.
We are at the mercy of that one that has accomplished our
existence. We have not accomplished our life, we have not
brought ourselves into existence, we do not now maintain
ourselves alive. To suddenly feel our vulnerability and beg
to be kept alive is not more enlightened than that causal
moment before in which we did not realize our dependencies.
The frightened wailing for Gods help is no more surrendered
than our self indulgent self-possessed life. It is another
moment of the failure to surrender.

There is another form of prayer than
that represents our dependencies on God but which is not
itself a self-possessed gesture. A search for mere survival
consolation, self-contentment. That is surrender itself,
equanimity, giving up to God, simply, without exaggeration,
returning to our ease, not of self-contentment but of
heart-release in which body ad mid are relaxed into the
universal current of life, upon which our very existence
depends. Why then continue that path that leads to death.
Why go to the chair? Why go to death, the empty place? Come
to this Chair.

I do not speak as an ordinary an to
you. Nor do I ever suggest that you do what I ask you to do
merely because of some whim or other. It has been given to
me to accept devotees through surrender. It is not a thing
that a man may presume. I have tested it all my life and I
have tested it in your company and I would sooner go to my
death than cal you to me casually. It is not what a man may
ask others to do causally if he expects to live, not only in
this life.

I swear to you and you will always
continue to see me with signs that God has given this Grace
to you through Me. If you will surrender to Me, if you will
Love Me and Trust Me, because you have seen Me, if you will
simply accept the discipline of my demand, simply do what I
ask you to do. I will always make it very plain. If you will
remember Me with love, if you will call upon Me by name,
with your feeling breath, if you will call upon the name of
Da, then this will be sufficient. If you will do this then
you can enter my church and this community will grow and you
will be given every strength and all with Spirit Blessing of
God. Anyone who does this the stages of the Way will
accomplish themselves. You need not have concerns for
it.

Your single obligation is at the
Heart. It is in your feeling that you become self-possessed.
It is in your feeling that you betray the Living God and all
your relations. It is in your feeling that you are unhappy.
It is there, fear, sorrow and doubt, shame, lust and all
obsessions are arising. Therefore, it is in your feeling
alone that you will be healed.

This Way of Life is happy, it is
boundless joyful and it is difficult in this place. This
world is difficult, in terms of what we must endure, what we
must creatively struggle with as a matter of ordinary
discipline.

People are difficult, people are
crazy, driven mad by mortality and pleasure. You all will
continue to suffer limitations in one another, the more this
community grows, the more demanding it becomes, the more
relational commitments your presume, the more things you
must deal with creatively, the more you must overcome
emotionally. There is no point in becoming angry about
that.

You must rather become compassionate
and more loving and more of a servant. But if you do this,
if you will transcend petty reactions of your mortal psyche
through God Surrender, simply accept the discipline,
obedience and remembrance you will be made happy by
Grace.

On another occasion I’ll be moved to
laugh more with you today and to be more casually pleasant
with you. But today I want you to feel this profundity.

Now that you have seen me what will
you do? I will be waiting for your answer.

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The following account of The Day of
the Heart is from Brad Reynolds.

 

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The Most Extraordinary Statement in
Human History

A Proclamation of Infi nite and
Undying Love for All—

The Divine Avataric
Revelation-History of The Day of the Divine
Disclosure

The establishment of sacramental
worship in 1979

was a sign of a great turning point
that was about

to occur in the Work and Revelation
of the Su-

preme Divine Master. In gatherings
with a small group

of devotees, Avatar Adi Da began to
suggest that His

Name must change again, as it had in
1973, six years

previously. At that time Avatar Adi
Da indicated that

He was functioning as the friend or
brother of devo-

tees, and He changed from His Birth
name of Franklin

Jones to “Bubba Free
John”. Now, His Divine Presence

explained that “Bubba” was
too casual an address to the

One we recognized Him to Be. He
suggested that devo-

tees discover what His Name is,
rather than Revealing

It Himself. Later, He Revealed that
He already knew it.

Devotees threw themselves into the
search for His

Divine Name. For months they looked
through vol-

umes of esoteric Spiritual
literature. Avatar Adi Da en-

couraged them with cryptic and
humorous hints, such

as: “When you get da name of da
god, you get da power

of da god!”

On the afternoon of September 13,
1979, Avatar Adi

Da Samraj was sitting with a small
group of devotees in

His residence at the Mountain Of
Attention Sanctuary

in northern California when He asked
them to leave

the room so that He could write. The
fi rst words He

wrote were the Supreme Proclamation
and Blessing of

Divine Love, “Beloved, I Am
Da.” He Wrote this Proc-

lamation for the sake of the
liberation of all beings, on

the basis of having brought His
devotees to a point of

suffi cient maturity that He could
fully and freely Re-

veal Himself as the Very Divine
Person Incarnate.

Beloved, I Am Da, the Living Person,
Who is Mani-

fest as all worlds and forms and
beings, and Who is

Present as the Transcendental
Current of Life in the

body of Man. . . .

To Realize Me is to Transcend the
body-mind in Ec-

stasy. To Worship Me is simply to
Remember My Name

and Surrender Into My Eternal
Current of Life. And

those who Recognize and Worship Me
as Truth, the Liv-

ing and All-Pervading One, will be
Granted the Vision

or Love-Intuition of My Eternal
Condition. . . .

Only Love Me, Remember Me, have
Faith in Me, and

Trust Me. . . . Do not be afraid. Do
not be confused. Ob-

serve My Play and My Victory. Even
after My own body

is dead, God will be Present and
Everywhere alive. I am

Joy, and the Reason for It. . .
.

Through this historic Proclamation,
Avatar Adi Da

openly Declared His Divine Nature
with no compro-

mise. In making this Proclamation,
Avatar Adi Da was

not referring to Himself in the
terms that people com-

monly associate with the Divine,
such as the “Creator-

God”, the “Heavenly
Father”, or the “Atman” within.

He was confessing His Identity with
Real God, the

Divine Source and Substance of
existence, Conscious-

ness Itself, Self-Radiant and
Love-Blissful. He Fully

Proclaimed That One as Fully Awake
and Alive As His

Form, Presence, and
State.

“Aham Da Asmi (I Am Da)”
is the most extraordi-

nary statement ever made in human
history. Through

this Proclamation, Avatar Adi Da
Samraj Reveals Him-

self as the Living Divine Person. He
Invites everyone to

a devotional relationship with Him,
in His Infi nite and

Undying Love for every one, thus Off
ering the Way by

which Absolute Oneness with Him may
be Realized.

Avatar Adi Da speaks His Great
Confession in the

ancient language of Sanskrit. His
devotees have dis-

covered that the Name
“Da”, meaning “to give”, is a

primordial Name for the Divine
Person, and that it car-

ries profound invocatory power. The
Name is revealed

in the Upanishads, the ancient
esoteric scriptures of

India, in which “Da” is
the syllable uttered by the Di-

vine Voice of thunder. It is also
the central syllable of

“hri-da-yam”, which means
“the Heart”, or “the Divine

Condition of all”. The Name
“Da” also appears in the

Tibetan Buddhist tradition, meaning
“the one who be-

stows great charity”, “the
personifi cation of the great

Way of Liberation”.

In making this Confession, Adi Da
Samraj is Reveal-

ing that He is the Unspeakable
Divine Itself—Which

can be described as Reality, or
Truth, or Real God. He is

the Divine not in some abstract or
“distant” sense, but

Appearing here on Earth as
Avatar—in a human Form,

by Which He can directly Communicate
with, and di-

rectly Bless, living beings,
eternally.

Avatar Adi Da’s Primal Divine
Self-Confession “I

Am Da” directly conveys His
Purpose in Incarnating on

Earth, which is to Give His Gift of
Liberating Realization

to all who are moved to respond to
Him in the ancient

devotional manner. As can be felt in
His Addressing ev-

eryone as His “Beloved”,
He Off ers His supremely pre-

cious Divine Gifts out of His
overwhelming Love for all

beings.