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CHAPTER 2
The Heart Is in Bondage Until Love
Is
Incarnated in the World
SRI DA AVABHASA: The import of My Appearance here
is not that I have Come into the world and that I Am Love,
or that God independent of human beings is Love. The import
of My Appearance here and of My Communication is that you,
and every being, must be Love.
The heart is in bondage until love is incarnated in the
world. Therefore, you must incarnate love. You must make
room for Me in life.
The first principle of Spiritual life is God-Love,
submission to the Divine Being. First you must love Me, and
then you are able to love everyone. Your practice of the Way
of the Heart is thus a paradox. It is not exclusive
withdrawal into an orientation to the Divine Reality. There
must be that orientation, yes, but your Realization of the
Divine must be incarnated in the plane of relations.
* * *
The relationship to Me, the True Heart-Master, is the
epitome and the primary form of relationship. And that
relationship contains hidden within it the whole Mystery and
Form of Truth. But it cannot be enjoyed or understood apart
from the practical or sacrificial application of your life
to the whole condition of relationship as it everywhere and
every moment appears.
Part I: The Discipline of Love in the Way of the
Heart
Therefore, practice of the Way of the Heart is the
practice of relationship to Me, but also the practice of the
condition of relationship itself. That is why I Give
practical Instruction in the form of life-demands. The
Spiritual Master must be the Master of actual conditions.
Thus, I am always bringing My devotee into appropriate
conditions, to test and mature him or her. In every
circumstance, My devotee will either function in
relationship openly, effectively, wisely, and with love, or
My devotee will observe his or her own resistance,
understand, and gradually restore himself or herself to the
relational condition in that area of his or her functional
life.
The practical living of the conditions of relationship is
of fundamental importance, and it is a fundamental
expression of the process of true practice at every
developmental stage of the Way of the Heart.
Love all your friends. Love all beings. Through
devotional submission to Me as your True Heart-Master, be
Liberated from all otherness, which is painful, a form of
suffering, something to be Liberated from entirely. How can
you be Liberated from otherness? Only through
feeling-Contemplation of Me.
You must become responsible as love in all relations,
under all conditions, and as early in your life as possible,
so that you can transcend the repetitive destiny of the ego,
of separation, of the avoidance of relationship, of un-love,
of “you don’t love me”, that keeps you out by the pond,
meditating on yourself like Narcissus. Then you can go on to
fulfill the Destiny of Divine Self-Realization while
alive.
* * *
Every being must fulfill the Law, regardless of his or
her past. It does not make any difference how difficult it
is for you. The Law remains the Law. The Law is unobstructed
feeling-attention, or love, under all conditions and in all
relations until Divine Translation. If you are obstructed in
feeling and attention, you fail to fulfill the Law. That is
why you suffer, and why you stop growing.
* * *
If you understand My Wisdom-Teaching of the Way of the
Heart, you understand that the ego that is to be transcended
exists only in the context of relations. The ego is the
body-mind in the state of contraction. Therefore, it is
effective as contraction in the field of relations. And,
therefore, among the primary disciplines in the Way of the
Heart, among the most fundamental disciplines, are those in
the domain of relations.
* * *
Those who Fail To Practice The Sadhana Of Love In their
intimate emotional-sexual relationships, and In human
relationships Generally, Will, By That Failure, Turn Away
(or Contract) From God (or The Great Condition That Is
Reality Itself).
The Dawn Horse Testament
* * *
Practice of the Way of the Heart is always demonstrated
functionally and in the plane of relations. Therefore, it is
always obvious whether or not you are practicing the Way of
the Heart. If you are Contemplating Me with
feeling-devotion, your practice is obvious. If you are not
Contemplating Me, that is also obvious. You know whether a
person is transcending the ego-bond by how he or she appears
in life, in the moment of relations. Of course, the Way of
the Heart is not about relations. It is simply lived in the
context of relations. The Way of the Heart is about
feeling-Contemplation of Me, or Divine Communion. But it
cannot be lived except in the plane of relations.
* * *
Among the fruits of the life of understanding are human
ones. Your functional humanity, your ability to love and
live in relationship, is a real test of your
self-understanding. To live in relationship is simply a
process of unobstructed energy, fullness, happiness. Until
you become happy with others, your Spirituality is garbage.
It serves no purpose whatsoever.
Self-transcendence is consequential for humanity. It is
not an experience of phenomena that transcend humanity. When
the quality of unreasonable Happiness, prior Fullness, or
genuine life and love is present in an individual, you are
certain of that person. You are healed by that person’s
presence.
Part I: The Discipline of Love in the Way of the
Heart
If you are about Spirituality and you are not about love,
then you are only deluded. To live without love has nothing
whatever to do with Spiritual life. I have known many people
who were very Spiritual, so-called, and who did not know the
first thing about love, had no interest in it, had no
capability for it. They could shine out a little love
selectively here and there, but anyone can do thatany
libertine does that. I have known many people who claimed to
be involved in Spiritual life who could not grasp this
principle of love. They could not incarnate it, could not
live with it, could not make humanity out of it, could not
make human life out of it.
Such people want to be celibate and wear all the
trappings of religion, but they cannot love. There they
stand in their ridiculous costumes, their eyes rolling up in
their heads, swooning in the Yogic perfume, and they are
nothing but self-obsessed egos. They cannot love, they
cannot submit to love, they cannot accept being loved, and
they cannot love others consistently. They cannot bring
Spirituality into life, into relationship. Therefore, they
are dramatizing the same problems that all egos suffer and
at the same time they are calling themselves
“Spiritual”.
I have “Considered” this with you on many, many
occasions. There is no true Spiritual life without incarnate
love that is demonstrated in very practical terms.
* * *
The true test and proof of a human being is not whether
or not he or she can attain mystical experiences, or
“out-of-body” experiences, or even sophisticated scientific
knowledge and power over the world. The true test is whether
or not any individual human being will exist as love and
persist as love, transcending himself or herself in the
midst of all experience and all knowledge, even when all
experience and all knowledge press upon the individual to be
less than love.
You may fantasize that Spiritual life is about living in
caves, wearing your robes, and renouncing everything. Such a
notion is just a dream. It is nonsense. True renunciation is
here, in the body, suffering it, becoming Illumined by
submitting to be a human being. The practice of such true
renunciation is the agony of selfknowledge and knowledge of
another.
THE INCARNATION OF LOVE
That practice uses you up, burns you out, and kills you
eventually. But it is better to die from that than from
bacteria or old age or a rotting liver or something to do
with your intestines. Die from the heart-stress. Die from
love. That is what I am Doing. And anybody who follows or
fulfills the Way of the Heart must do the same.
You literally depend on other beings for your continuing
existence in this form-not your ultimate existence, or even
your mere vital existence (except that you do depend on the
sexual play of others for your birth), but your human
existence. You cannot exist as a human being for one more
moment without participation in the life that other beings
give to you, and that the whole grand affair of the
manifested world gives to you.
When you realize your dependence on the conscious
communication of life from others, then you see the
reasonableness-or, rather, the unreasonableness-of love.
Then, in spite of what the other person seems to be, you
bring your life to him or her in the form of real energy,
real intensity, real attention. The person is enlivened,
then, literally. The person is fed.
The food that you take through the mouth is gross and
secondary. The food that you take through the nose is gross
and secondary. These are also necessary forms of food,
generally, but they support a lower organic form of
existence. Many people eat well enough and breathe well
enough, but they are depressed and insane because they do
not communicate through the eyes and through the heart. They
do not enjoy the life-process in its subtle form. To be
present with life to other beings, and to expect their
presence to you, is merely intelligent, not moralistic, not
even a matter of Yoga. You are present to other beings in
the form of a righteous demand for life. You should
absolutely demand life from other people. And you should
finally discover what it is you are demanding of them. It is
life, intensity, love, conscious energy. You absolutely need
it to survive.
Therefore, you should cut through all the garbage that
you tend to give other people and absolutely demand that
exchange of love. Settle for nothing less, and settle for
nothing less in yourself. And submit to that righteous
demand from others. To bring your own presence as life to
other beings and to demand it from them is simply an
appropriate discipline, just as it is appropriate to take
meals every day.
Part I: The Discipline of Love in the Way of the
Heart
But you tend to settle for less than life. A smile, a bit
of sex, or a cigarette is sufficient. You do not really
require life from others, yet that is what you need. You
cannot survive in your truly human functions without it. If
all of you here were busy truly loving one another, truly
being present to one another without complication, without
making any assumptions about one another or yourself, you
could live for a long time. Even if you lived for only 20
years, you would be happy, at least on the ordinary human
levels. You would be feeding one another, and you could die
happy-if some day you happen to have to die-because
everybody would be with you. Everybody would be holding your
hand and shooting you full of conscious life. You would be
loved, free, not prevented from Truth. And who cares about
death then?
* *
To love is to share principal food, to share the energy
of manifested being. The mind is simply a modification of
the conscious elemental, and it does not move down into
life. Only in loving do you permit the life-force, the
life-energy, principal food, to manifest on the functional
human level.
Therefore, you can think all you like, but until you love
you do not make the life-force available, you do not feed
others. If your common life, your social life, is
unsatisfactory, it is because there is no communicated
life-force, you are starving, you do not love. Loving is not
just a psychological and personal affair. It is not just
good for psychological health and society. Loving is
absolutely essential for life itself, because it is the
functional manifestation of the life-force, or principal
food.
There cannot be any withholding, for any reason
whatsoever, without violating the fundamental functional
demand of human life. Love is not a petty affair. It is not
just better if you love others. It is an absolute demand and
responsibility to love and be free. Only thus do you make
available in human terms the Divine process, and only thus
is anything like the realization of truly human existence
possible. Such true existence depends on love. Then human
life can become elemental and alive. Then the bodies can be
improved and all the rest. But until love is established as
the communicated theatre of human life, there is no
evolution of humanity.
THE INCARNATION OF LOVE
Do not just live a moral life. Live a life of love.
Love is Unqualified Divine Self-Radiance, without center
or bounds. Since it is without center (ego-self) or bounds
(body, thought-conception-perception, world), Love may not
be willfully presumed or generated. It is a Process Realized
by Grace, progressively, until it is altogether True.
The Hymn Of The True Heart Master,
“I Am Grace Itself’ section
CHAPTER 3
Enter Fully into the Spiritual
Life-Sphere of Love
SRI DA AVABHASA: Love is feeling-Contemplation of Me, and
that is the summary of the Way of the Heart. Live it under
all conditions.
Simply to give Me your regard, simply to feelingly
Contemplate Me, should be the moment of ecstasy that draws
you naturally into feeling-response to Me, the mood of love,
devotion, freedom from mental bondage, physical bondage,
relational bondage. Thus ecstatic, you are naturally capable
of incarnating this love, through all the forms of practice
I Give you, including your love-relations and
friendships.
The Hymn Of The True Heart Master, “I Am Grace Itself’
section
* * *
What Is Necessary (and Also Possible) Is To Enter Fully
Into The Spiritual Life-Sphere Of Love. In The Way Of The
Heart, This Is Done By First Entering (By Heart) Into My
Company (and, Thus and Thereby, Into The Company Of The
Divine Person), and (Therein) To Submit To The Divine
Embrace Of Love, Wherein Not Only Are You Loved, but You Are
Love Itself. Then You Must Magnify That Love-Radiance In the
world of human relationships.
The Dawn Horse Testament
THE INCARNATION OF LOVE
When the contraction does not take place, when it is not
meditated upon, when it is no longer a matter of concern,
when there is simply this unobstructed relationship, there
is no dilemma. Then there is no one superior to the other,
no problem, no jealousy, no distinction. There is only
enjoyment. And where life is constant as that enjoyment,
there is the Infinity of Liberation, the Perfect
Consciousness of Truth, the Siddhi of the Real. But it is
always simply that basic enjoyment, that unobstructed,
spontaneous, moment to moment existence as relationship. It
is what is called “love”. It is simply the Force of the
Heart, the Real, which is unobstructed, unqualified
existence. When there is no resistance, no contraction, no
separation, there is just this ease of pleasure in one
another. And where there is that ease of pleasure, there is
no problem. Give it a name, if you like. It is simply your
natural state.
The Method of the Siddhas
“Love” is perhaps the most abused word in at least the
Westernized world. The ego wants to call lust “love”. Lust
is not love. Attachment is not love. Liking what somebody
does to you is not love. Do you not know this? True love is
an expression of going beyond your separate and separative
self, going beyond what consoles you. Ultimately such love
is magnified universally. It goes beyond your house, your
castle, your egoic “self-possession”, your underwear. Do you
know this?
You do not love someone because you are attached to the
person and like what the person does for you. That is not
love! Do you not know this? All such consolation must be
understood and gone beyond. Then there is love. Then you
serve another’s sacrifice, anther’s Realization-and that is
“true intimacy” in the Way of the Heart.
Positive socializing is what you call “love”. But that is
not love. That is just lust and vital energy, congeniality,
satisfying the vital personality and its purposes and
desires. Love is a sacrifice of the ego in
feeling-Contemplation of Me in all relations and under all
conditions. Therefore, the primary manifestation of love is
IshtaGuru-Bhakti Yoga.
Part I: The Discipline of Love in the Way of the
Heart
Love is not mere attachment, or any kind of fascination
with objects or others that represent the possibility of
self-fulfillment. Love itself is renunciation of separate
and separative self, in relationship to another.
The Da Love Ananda Gita,
“I Am (My Self) What you Require” section
Love is the disposition of uncaused Happiness in the
moment. You always are natively certain of what it would be
to look, and feel, and be, and act completely Happy in this
very moment. Love is to do just that, and to do it
effectively toward all relations, whether apparently within
or apparently without, so there is no recoil, no separation,
no self-definition, but only the Divine SelfCondition Which
precedes these.
* *
To love requires a great transformation. It requires your
absolute Realization of the fundamental Nature of your True
Condition, Which is not this separate one.
* *
Love is relational action rather than the action of one
who is egoically “self-possessed”-but love is action, or
real availability, not a merely subjective attitude of mind
and emotion.
* *
What you call loving people very much does not amount to
much. Real loving changes your life. It changes your action.
It eliminates your patterning, your egoic tendencies, your
game.
And you cannot avoid pain. The avoidance of pain is a
primary part of the motive to be superficial and mediocre.
You do not want to feel the difficulty, so you will never
address it. Therefore, you just smile and say [Sri Da
Avabhasa speaks in a very squeaky, superficial voice and
forces a superficial smile] “I love you.” Devotion must
be suffered. Intimacy must be suffered. A unique kind of
suffering Awakens you. It is joyous if you suffer it most
profoundly. If your life is to be transformed by it, then
you must go beyond pain.
THE INCARNATION OF LOVE
Love has a wall of pain in it. If you do not endure that
pain, then you make love into a social convention and your
so-called loving does not amount to anything. Everybody is
smiling at one another and shaking hands and speaking
pleasantries. That is not love. Love is very serious, even
when it laughs.
Divine Self-Realization is not the avoidance of the pain
of life but it is to suffer it to the nth degree, to the
point of Awakening, to the point of Freedom, to the point of
being utterly transformed, in effect, by love, to murder the
murderer, to be Free of limitationsbut not by evading
them.
The ego-transcending point of view actively acknowledges
the principle of love. My devotee who is functioning in an
ego-transcending fashion-even to the degree of Divine
Enlightenment presumes himself or herself to live in a world
of love. In the world of relations, that one is alive in the
Domain of Love.
Love is the principle of human functioning. It is the
principle of relationship. Love is what is to be Realized
and expressed. You must overcome all limits upon it.
Spiritual life is many things, but at the level of human
relations, its essence is love.
* * *
Love is what you are all struggling with, you see. You
would sit in meditation in a cave for twelve hours a day
long before you would begin to get serious about the matter
of love. You do all you can to see that you are pleasurably
situated in your sexual relationship, in your work, in your
household, or in your automobile. You work very hard to
study and read about and think about and imagine and even
perform meditative exercises. Yet love is the most profound,
and the most difficult, activity to do. And love is the one
single act that you are most reluctant to perform-whether in
public or in private.
* * *
All My devotees should be able to bring the principle of
love into active manifestation in daily life and eliminate
all the rituals of un-love, all the mediocre versions of
love, all the ceremonial affirmations of love. Actually live
love in feeling-Contemplation of Me.
Part I: The Discipline of Love in the Way of the
Heart
Express love all day. Do not allow the conventions of
egoic worldliness to suppress love’s expression. Contemplate
Me with your feeling-devotion, and make your love of Me the
principle of all your acts, and change everything. Take a
look at all the ceremonies of un-love you have built into
your life and eliminate them. Change them however you must,
so that you manifest actual love, its real, verbal,
physical, human expression, and its practice altogether,
Spiritually, ultimately.
You can never truly be anyone’s friend, or lover, or
husband, or wife, or father, or mother, and you can never be
My devotee, until you decide to surrender to Me. Until that
time, you are wandering in your attention, and you cannot
really be trusted. You cannot be faithful, you cannot make
agreements, you cannot love, you cannot persist as love.
* * *
If, as My devotee, you would transcend the ego, you must
deal with the emotional gesture of the feeling-being from
moment to moment. Transcendence of the ego is entirely an
emotional matter. Thus, there is no transcendence of the ego
until love appears, until there is self-transcendence via
emotional sacrifice of the body-mind in
feeling-Contemplation of Me, the Incarnate Divine Person,
the Adept of the Living One, Who is Expressed as everything
and Who absolutely Transcends everything.
As My devotee, you must choose this sacrifice, this
loving gesture. If you will choose it, if you will make this
emotional commitment, then all experience becomes Divine
Revelation to the point of Ecstasy and the Transcendence of
everything in Self-Existing Divine Being and Self-Radiant
Love-Bliss.
* * *
You cannot idealize this great Love-feeling and say that
from now on this is how you are going to live. You will
discover, as you have discovered on countless occasions
previously, that you do not do that. You cannot merely make
love an ideal, in other words. You must first become
involved in love by finding That Which Is Love, Which Comes
to you as Love, and Which Is Supremely Attractive.
THE INCARNATION OF LOVE
Acknowledge That One, know That One, and allow yourself
to
respond to That One in love.
The Way of Truth, then, is not merely to love. The Way of
Truth is to be the devotee of the One Who Is Love.
CHAPTER 4
The Great Purpose of
self-Transcendence
SRI DA AVABHASA: Always be purposed in response to Me and
to My Wisdom-Teaching.
You must become associated with the Divine Purpose from
the beginning of your practice of the Way of the Heart, so
that when all of the lesser offshoots of that Purpose appear
they will-not suddenly become your “great purpose”. They
will be the simple demonstrations of your practice as you
mature in the Way of the Heart.
* * *
You must observe, understand, and overcome your
conventional
vision-the vision made of conditional existence-and
instead Realize
the Vision of the Heart itself, so that you can become
consistently
purposed to transcend conditional existence in Communion
with
Me. To do otherwise is to fall into separateness and
self-indulgence.
Even at the beginning of your practice of the Way of the
Heart,
all of your involvement in “money, food, and sex” must
always be
associated with the Great Vision, the Heart-Vision, and
the purpose
of self-transcendence. Therefore, you cannot casually
indulge in the
modest designs of “money, food, and sex” and practice the
Way of
the Heart. Whatever those designs are for you personally,
they must
be animated in the context of the real process of
self-transcendence
as it is demonstrated even at the beginning of the Way of
the Heart,
when the disciplines are minimal. Nonetheless, whatever
the forms
of self-discipline at your developmental stage of
practice of the Way
of the Heart, they should always be demonstrations of the
process
THE INCARNATION OF LOVE
of self-transcendence. They should not be expressions of
the illusion that conditional existence is purposed for its
own sake, or that conditional existence can fulfill itself
on its own terms, by consolation, self-pleasure, and
self-fulfillment.
As My devotee, you must eventually realize true
self-discipline through true listening, true hearing (or
most-fundamental selfunderstanding), and true seeing (or the
Awakening of Heart-Vision), so that you are purposed to
transcend every fraction of conditional existence in
Communion with Me. Then you will assume selfdiscipline as it
is in the Way of the Heart.
I . Give you the Divine Vision of existence a piece at a
time, and the piece I am Giving you now is the matter of
human loving. But do not ever imagine that this is all there
is to it.
* *
You are not being asked to love and be radiant as an
answer to your dilemma.
* *
In every moment of manifested existence, there is the
mechanical tendency of self-contraction, or the creation of
the illusion of difference between egoic self and all
objects. This very mechanism is the cause of the perception
and conception of manifested existence as a “problem”, or
the apparent separation from and nonIdentification with the
Divine Being. When this tendency is presently understood and
transcended, it is Realized that there is P I l TT the
Self-Existing and Self-Radiant Divine Being, Apparent as all
“subjects” and all “objects”. On this basis, manifested
existence can be lived as Happiness, in Freedom,
spontaneously and creatively.
* *
The purpose of the Way of the Heart is to devote energy
and attention to the observation, understanding, and
transcendence of the self-contraction and to Realize That
Which Is at the root, or Source, of that contraction. This
“radical” orientation to transcendence of the egoic self at
its root, or in its fundamental form, through
feelingContemplation of Me, is the Way of the Heart.
Part I: The Discipline of Love in the Way of the
Heart
The first form of the conditional “I”-activity that is
observed and felt beyond is the bodily, emotional, and lower
mental display of the avoidance of relationship (in the
ordinary context of human exchanges). When the freedom of
no-contraction, unqualified relatedness, or love is
basically restored in the ordinary human sphere through
Spiritual Communion with That Which Is Always and Already,
before the self-contraction is apparently added to What Is),
then the conditional “I”-activity begins to be observ d and
transcended most directly, as contraction itself, even in
the subtlest forms of mind. Finally, the self-contraction is
observ d and transcended in its essence, root-form, or first
form.
The Da Avabba Upanishad
Now you are looking for the cause of your suffer ng. You
are seeking to be relieved by examining the phenomena o
experience. You are seeking to create an arrangement in the
bod -mind itself that is satisfying. But the body-mind is a
limitation. Th body-mind is mortal. There is no way to be
Divinely Ecstatic and at the same time to be identified with
something mortal.
“Ecstasy” by definition means “standing outside one
self”. To be Divinely Ecstatic is to stand outside what is
mortal, to ranscend it, to be greater than it, but also to
include it and to ree. lize it as a superficial aspect of
What you Are Ultimately. If you c nnot find a way to Realize
this Ecstasy, there is no way that you ca be Happy. You will
simply be obsessed, obsessively pursuing pie sure in this
life and obsessively identifying with this mortal body-mi d.
You will be obsessively thinking, obsessively complaining,
obse sively reacting, obsessively desiring. You will be
obsessively dep essed. Your capability to love, to
communicate Happiness in the world, will be profoundly
limited. Life will always be problematic.
* * *
Human responsibility, whereby people serve survi is not
to be laughed at, not to be dismissed, not to be but it is
an easy course to bondage. It is an easy argum quishing That
Which Is Great. It is not a Yogic argume God-Realizing
argument. It is an argument of your ow based on
self-contraction, defined by objects, obsessed based
messages.
al mutually, aken lightly, nt for relint. It is not a
conceiving, with bodily
THE INCARNATION OF LOVE
As soon as there are two rather than One, the great fear
arises. * * *
Wherever there is another, fear arises. Where there is
the slightest sense of another-in other words, wherever
there is separateness, wherever there is
self-contraction-there is fear.
In The Way and Manner Of The Heart, Understand Your
Separate and Separative self (As Un-Love) and Transcend Your
Separate and Separative self (By Love). And This Is
Perfected (Progressively, In The Way and Manner Of The
Heart) By Devotional (or selfTranscending and
self-Forgetting) Heart-Surrender Of the conditional
body-mind To My Bodily (Human) Form, and My Spiritual (and
Always Blessing) Presence, and My Very (and Inherently
Perfect) State, and, Thus and Thereby, To The Person and The
Forms or Characteristics Of The Spiritual, and
Transcendental, and Divine, Self.
The Dawn Horse Testament
* * *
The emotional-sexual ego Constantly Hunts For an other.
The ego-“I” (or self-Contraction) Hunts (or Seeks) an other
(Even all others and The Total Objective Cosmos) In Order To
Be Gratified, Consoled, and Protected. The Compulsive
Hunting (or Search) For an other Is Generated By The
Feelings Of Un-Happiness, Emptiness, and Separateness That
Possess and Characterize the selfContracted being.
Once an other Is Found, the ego-“I” Clings To the other,
At First pleasurably, and Then Aggressively. The ego-“I”
Depends On the other For Happiness, and, Over time, the
ego-“I” Makes Greater and Greater Demands On the other For
Fulfillment Of itself (In all of its desires). Often, In
time, the other Becomes Depressed and Exhausted By This
Demand (and Thus Leaves, or Dies). Just As Likely, the
ego”I” Discovers, Over time, That the other Cannot or Will
Not Satisfy The Absolute Demand For attention and
Consolation. In That Case, the ego-“I” Feels Betrayed, and
the ego-“I” Begins The Strategy Of Punishing, Rejecting, and
Abandoning the other.
Every conditionally Manifested being Has (In time) Often
Been The Proposed Victim Of This Strategy Of Separate and
Separative selves. Even More, Until The Heart Gives Way To
Divine Love-Bliss,
Part I: The Discipline of Love in the Way of the
Heart
every conditionally living being Is The. Original Genius
and Grand Performer Of This Strategy Of Separate and
Separative selves. It Is The Strategy Of Narcissus, and It
Is The Dreadful Work Of all conditionally living beings who
Are Not Awake To The Truth Beyond the ego-“I
The Dawn Horse Testament
The avoidance of relationship … is the primary act of
identification and differentiation. When understanding
begins to arise, the individual is consciously relieved of
many patterns of avoidance, including all kinds of un-love,
incapability, and obsessive habits. Such a one becomes more
relational, communicative, and positive. But when
understanding is attained in its radical and inclusive form,
there is also a primary transformation of experience.
At first understanding promotes a healing of
effectiveness and freedom within the “I-that” structure of
awareness, where “that” signifies all forces in opposition
or contact, high or low. But at last that very structure
dissolves in understanding. The whole complex of
identification with a “personality”, an arbitrary center of
memory and experience that the mind rigs up as an entity,
ceases. And thus also the objects seen over against that “I”
cease to be differentiatedbecause there is no concrete “I”
from which to differentiate them.
Perception and consciousness, then, are loosed and
unqualified, and this unqualified consciousness remains as
the known and realized form of being, even under the usual
conditions of natural life. All of this is the truth of
understanding, wherein identification and differentiation
are seen to be the avoidance of relationship in its most
prior and primary sense.
The Knee of Listening
* * *
The Avoidance Of Relationship Is The Method Of
psychophysical egoity, but The Feeling Of Relatedness (or
The Primal Illusion Of “Difference”) Is Itself The (Original
and Originating) Fault. Therefore, Divine Enlightenment Is
Not A Matter Of The Perfection Of Apparent Relationship (or
The “Curing” Of The Avoidance Of Relationship By The
Apparent Perfection Of
Relatedness). Rather, Most Ultimately (or Most
Perfectly), Divine
Enlightenment Is A Matter Of The Most Perfect
Transcendence Of Relationship (or Relatedness, or All
“Difference”) In What Is Always
THE INCARNATION OF LOVE
Already (Inherently and Perfectly) The Case (Which Is
Being, Itself, Consciousness, Itself, and Love-Bliss,
Itself).
The Dawn Horse Testament
The contents of the ego, or the body-mind, or
self-contraction, are reduced, broken up, and in one or
another way eliminated by My Divine Work. This is literally,
and not merely figuratively, so.
When I spend time with you, or sit with you to Grant you
My Darshan, I Magnify My Spiritual Heart-Transmission to
you, and It Combines with the various contents of your
conditional being. My Transmission is Self-Radiant Energy
and Self-Existing Consciousness. In Satsang with Me, this is
what you confront in your life and meditation. This is the
character of My Divine Siddhi. And It spontaneously Works to
stimulate the contents of your conditional self, in life, in
meditation, and in moments of repose. That Siddhi also
breaks them up and eliminates them in a process that is not
possible by any other means. Ultimately these contents are
eliminated by My Transmission Work, and they are returned to
the Primal EnergyCondition, or the Ultimate Condition of
Divine Being.
The Hymn Of The True Heart Master,
`I Am Grace Itself’ section
* * *
My Spiritual Heart-Transmission is the Transmission of
NonSeparateness! In The Da Love Ananda Gita, I Speak of the
Wisdom of Non-Separateness. My Spiritual Heart-Transmission
is NonSeparateness Itself.
* * *
By this right feeling-Contemplation of Me, by
surrendering and forgetting the separate and separative
self, you are able to stand in the natural position of being
able to observe the act of self-contraction, the knot
itself, the obsessions that fall from it, the perceptions
that fall from it,. and all the rest. In the Way of the
Heart, that is the only right position in which to do
sadhana. To be already in the position obsessed with objects
and others, already self-contracted, unable to view the
self-contraction, is fruitless. No real sadhana can be done
there. You can only manipulate your behavior.
Part I: The Discipline of Love in the Way of the
Heart
There are two ways to engage Spiritual life: the Way of
Satsang and the way of egoic struggle in response to
instruction. I do Give you My Instruction, but only in the
context of Satsang, only in relationship to you. Therefore,
practice of the Way of the Heart is realized in relationship
to Me. I do not merely Instruct you and then leave you on
your own to fulfill My Instruction. I am steady in My
Transmission of My Spiritual Heart-Presence. I am always
Available to you. I will always be Available to you, even
after My physical Lifetime. I have promised it in Writing in
My Source-Literature. It is literally so, and it will always
be so. Now you and all My devotees must create a culture
based on your practice and your realization of the Way of
the Heart. Only on the basis of perpetual Satsang with Me
will the community of My devotees serve My Work in the
world. Satsang with Me, My Grace Transmitted to you in My
Company, makes it so and makes you My devotee.
Therefore, understand this principle and practice it
moment to moment under all the difficult, ordinary, and
nonsensical experiences of conditional life, under all the
conditions of the body-mind. Instead of being astonished by
the painful qualities of limitation and mortality, Find Me
and enter into Divine Communion with Me.
The Hymn Of The True Heart Master,
“I Am Grace Itself’ section
The confession of Love-Bliss is the confession of
devotion to Me, not the confession of struggle and apology.
Of course, the Way of the Heart is associated with
self-discipline and the transcendence of egoity.
Nevertheless, My true devotee does not practice
self-discipline and the transcendence of egoity through
struggle with the ego-self, but through
feeling-Contemplation of Me in every moment.
The Hymn Of The True Heart Master,
“I Am Grace Itself’ section
* * *
The practice in My Company is a “reality consideration”.
It is about locating the action for which you must become
responsible. This is absolutely essential if Divine
Self-Realization is to be the case.
THE INCARNATION OF LOVE
Your practice of the Way of the Heart, when it is
fruitful, is based on present self-understanding, present
awareness of the activity of self-contraction and the
relinquishment of it in Communion with Me. That true
practice is what I am moving you toward and what all of your
practice altogether in the Way of the Heart should be moving
you toward.
CHAPTER 5
You Must Become Human
Before You Can Become
Spiritual
SRI DA AVABHASA: Be willing to straighten out your life
and handle your life-business as the basis for receiving Me.
This is what it takes.
People think that the first thing they are supposed to do
when they enter into the Way of the Heart is to become
Spiritual, socalled. This is absurd. People who are full of
suffering and fundamental misunderstanding about themselves
one day, think they are “Yogis” the next. What is first
required of an individual is not to become Spiritual and
manifest Spiritual phenomena, but to become human.
Your social presentation of yourself, or your manner of
participating in relationships, is to be “considered” at the
beginning of your practice because the Way of the Heart
begins not in the context of the larger Process of Wisdom
but, rather, in the ordinary context of the first three
stages of life. The beginner’s practice, therefore, has very
much to do fundamentally with social relationships. The
social personality must be observed and understood and
disciplined, even from the very beginning.
* * *
The Spiritual process rests upon the moral foundation of
responsibility for the egoic action of un-love, or the
avoidance of relationship. Only through responsibility for
the disposition of
THE INCARNATION OF LOVE
“I love you” may you continue to grow in the ordinary,
evolutionary way and at the same time be God-Realizing in
your disposition.
There cannot be a beginning to life in Satsang with Me
and to the Spiritual process in My Company until you are
fundamentally responsible for the strategies of your
childishness. Deal with one another openly, simply, with
humor and love, and do not dramatize any strategy at
all.
What if you did not do that any more? Really, even that
would amount to nothing. It seems like a giant step for
mankind, like the first footstep on the moon, as if it were
so profound. But truly it is only a paper route!
As long as you have a problem with the incarnation of the
Divine Principle in Satsang with Me, you will have problems
with sexual intimacy, problems with friendships, problems
with community, and problems with living sanely and happily
every day. You have such problems primarily because you do
not acknowledge the Divine Reality, Who I Am and Whom I
Reveal, and you do not submit yourself to Me. Secondly,
problems arise for you because you do not incarnate That
Which is Realized in Satsang with Me humanly, and you do not
allow your devotion to Me to humanize you through love.
But as soon as you Realize this Principle, as soon as you
are submitted to It, as soon as you allow yourself to
incarnate your devotion to Me and allow it to humanize you,
your life gets straight.
* * *
In every moment you are obliged first to handle things
with your neighbor, that is, to establish stable, ordinary
conditions in this body-mind and its relations. Only then
are you prepared to go to the holy place, to enter into
sacred occasion (such as meditation or My physical
Company)-even to realize this moment in Truth. Therefore,
the natural and obligatory life-conditions of the Way of the
Heart are primary and necessary in every moment. Otherwise,
even though the moment itself is Only-God, your own face
will hide the Truth of it.
z1)
Part I: The Discipline of Love in the Way of the
Heart
I do not Call you, as My devotee, to conform to the
world. I Call you to conform to Me. The entire purpose of
Divine Enlightenment is that you conform all your parts, all
your moments, the whole display of your limitations, to the
Divine Reality. That is how I did it. Of course, I did not
take so long at it as all of you, because you are justifying
your reluctance and I did not. I was just as aware of
reluctance as you, but I did the sadhana-not just sometimes
but moment by moment. I did not refuse it. I dedicated My
entire Life to it.
That is what it takes to make the course as brief as
possible. Then soon-as soon as you can manage it-your
practice of the Way of the Heart exists on a different
plane, in the domain of Spiritual life with real Spiritual
responsibility.
It cannot be so without your handling your life-business.
It just cannot be so. You can get a taste of such mature
sadhana here and there, but it cannot be so steadily and
responsibly until you handle your life-business and endure
the original sadhana of being purified in the context of
ordinary life.
* * *
Notice what is affecting you. In one fashion or another,
through the Grace of Truth Itself, you must handle
business-even after the fact, at a later date. You must. You
cannot continue to grow, you cannot move on in the Way of
the Heart, until you handle your business, until there is
nothing left over, nothing unforgiven, nothing unspoken,
nothing unthought. You must be physically, emotionally, and
mentally purified of memory, of insult, of moments of pain
and separation. You must be. You can make great leaps in
that process, because Truth is a great Force, but
nonetheless you must endure it. You must handle your
personal business, the business in your past, the business
in your friendships, the business in your blood relations,
the business in your intimate relations, the business in
your friendly relations, your business with the world.
You are suffering many concrete things in life, and
others are also suffering. By the power of Truth erase what
you and they are suffering. That is the Way of the Heart,
and nothing else, nothing less, at all. You have very real
things to do, very real things, very human things, even very
ordinary things. You must do these things. There are
conversations you must have. There are things you must say
and things that must be said to you. Energies must be
released, feelings must be exposed, thoughts must be
expressed, bodily signs must be given. New society must be
generated. The entire culture of My devotees must be changed
by this exercise. Do not tell Me I am Free to give you My
Native Sign until you do that and give Me your sign.
You can see what a cave the ordinary life is, what a
wilderness it is, what tapas it is, what sannyas it is, what
self-mastery it requires, what manliness it requires, male
or female. It is in precisely those moments that you must
make the great Choice that is the measure of My devotee.
Especially in the beginning of your sadhana in the Way of
the Heart there is so much gross, petty nonsense. Because
you are only at the beginning, you are dealing with all the
ordinary, first-threestages-of-life stuff. But do the real
sadhana and it becomes-I would not say “easier”,
necessarily, but it becomes more straightforward, subtler,
more refined, more profound. You must endure that beginning,
the handling of life-business, and be purified of the
grossest part, which is there at the beginning.
* * *
Notice everything, notice every insult, be sensitive to
everything. This has always been My policy. I have suffered
everything. I have relieved My Self of nothing. This Body
will not die with unfinished business, absolutely none, for
its sake-and I am not even it. One must be sensitive and do
the work. You kill your egoic “self’ with it but “you” must
die from something. Therefore, die from the sadhana, die
from Truth, die from nothing less than the Truth. Invest
yourself in the Truth absolutely. Handle all business.
Exhaust yourself in the process. It is better than nothing.
It is better than failure, and it is at least on the way to
Realization.
Handle all business, and set yourself free, by the power
of Truth Itself. And let nothing be left over. This is not
only how you serve your own Realization. This is how you
will serve all beings. Fulfill the Law by handling all
business. This is love. To suffer reality is love. And to
handle business, you cannot indulge yourself. You simply
cannot.
* * *
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