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ABIDE WITH ME IN FAITHFUL LOVE
Part I: Discourses by Adi Da, the Da Avatar
The Unity of Existence
May 7, 1994
AVATARA ADI DA: Western interpreters always want to argue
that existence is just materiality and separateness and not
a great Unity, and that anything that occurs for the human
being is brain-based – as if there is some news about the
fact that the brain has something to do with human
experience, or that the physical body, with all of its
components, has something to do with all human
experience.
These materialists, who do not acknowledge the Unity of
existence, think they are giving out some great news to
mankind when they suggest that the brain and all kinds of
other mechanisms in the body-mind have to do with whatever
kind of experience may arise. That is all interesting and
certainly true. It has always been true. Nobody has ever
denied it. Yet these people think it is news. The problem is
they want to say, “Thats it-the brain and all the features
of the body-mind are the entire and only source of human
experience,” because they view everything as separate. They
do not understand the Unity of existence. They do not
understand that human beings, with all of their features
that control experience, or a part of their experience,
participate in a grand Unity that is extraordinary. They
have neither the experience nor the philosophical capability
to understand it.
Of course all the structures in the brain and the
body-mind participate in the experiences of human beings!
But human beings are not separate in any absolute sense.
Human beings arise in a grand Unity, and either they
participate in that Unity and its Source, or they do not. If
you become philosophically bound up in the notion of
separateness, and lose the notion and understanding and
experience of the grand Unity and its ultimate Source, then
your cogitations fasten attention in the body-mind. Not only
does such bondage affect your opinion but it affects your
process of living. The body-mind can fasten on itself and be
utterly controlled by its mechanical limitations, or it can
feel beyond itself and participate in the grand Unity and
its Source. It is either this, or That.
Of course the brain conditions you, and all the
structures of the body-mind have to do with your
experiencing, but the limitation of that reality can be
transcended, because there is a grand Unity and a great
Source. All the mediocre philosophizing that controls the
West, and that is starting to control the entire world, is
about fastening on the body-mind itself, being possessed by
the notion of dis-Unity, or separateness, and losing the
capability for going beyond “this” and Realizing That, going
beyond the contraction that fastens you into these
mechanics, or yielding and participating more and more
profoundly in the great Unity and the Ultimate Source.
That Liberating process is what I am “considering” with
you all, whether we are talking about this emotional-sexual
matter or about anything else, no matter whether you are
functioning in amateurish fashion-dissociated from the great
Unity of existence and its Source so that you are merely
egoically “self-possessed” and controlled by the mechanics
of the separate body-mind-or you are responding to Me, going
beyond the self-contraction, investing yourself in the great
Unity and the Ultimate Source in Which you are appearing,
making right use of Me and your great response, so that you
have the means to transcend your limitation.
Or-are you not doing that? Even in your suggestions to Me
tonight, yes, there is devotion but the limitations in what
you have been describing to Me tonight are all about a
fundamental lack of sensitivity to the great Unity and
Source of your existence. What you have described is your
being fascinated and limited by the body-mind, the brain
constructs, the nervous system, and all the rest of it, so
that you are only wallowing in this separateness and its
mechanics, self-contracted, egoically “self-possessed”,
rather than given over, self-surrendered, self-forgetting,
more and more participatory in your disposition, so that
even the brain feels beyond the crown, feels beyond the
skull, and the nervous system feels beyond the flesh, more
and more participating in the Great Force, the Great
Consciousness, the Great Divine Event in Which you are
appearing.
This is the fundamental matter I am discussing with you,
then. Yet when you speak to Me, you talk as people in two
worlds. On the one hand, the world of materialism,
separateness, egoic “self-possession”, the body-mind on its
own terms is one side of your communication to Me, and your
adaptations show it. But also you have a foot in the world
of your devotion to Me, and you describe that openness, that
more participatory disposition. You are in both worlds. You
have a foot in both worlds. And you are a combination of
both impulses, both adaptations.
Therefore, you are not communicating to Me as My devotees
who are fully hearing Me, responsive to Me, gone beyond the
lower or most ordinary adaptations through Yogic adaptation
in My Company. You are not talking to Me clearly in those
terms. You are talking to Me in the midst of an egoic
compromise, on the one hand egoically “self-possessed”, and
on the other hand moved toward counter-egoic effort. You are
showing all the different kinds of signs of that duality,
that mixed adaptation. The great impulse, yes, but also all
the signs that are the result of a former impulse.
You are not exactly infidels, but you are not exactly
great Yogis, either. You are a mixture of both. You are
beginners. Because you are beginners, you communicate all
kinds of weaknesses relative to the greater adaptation, the
greater Admonition, the greater practice. You make
compromises. You ignore aspects of My Instruction. You show
the double signs, then, of people who are, in some basic
sense, yes, My devotees, but on the other hand people just
shot out of the world, with the reluctance and the
mediocrity and the amateurism and the old adaptations that
all of that is about.
You like communicating yourself rather idealistically, as
if you are truly My devotee and everything about you is
straight. Yet just examine anything in your life, your
intimacy this week, whatever. Examine any of it in detail.
You will see that you belong to both worlds. You are in the
midst of a process of sadhana, of re-adaptation, of
purification. You must appreciate this, and be humbled by
the fact of it. Do not idealize yourself. Be only
straightforward, communicative, confessed, and seriously
practicing, and embrace the details of My Instruction to you
in every occasion of life. You cannot afford to do
otherwise, and you are not going to become greater in My
Company or advance in this practice until you accept My
Admonition in every circumstance, and seriously and strictly
practice it.
I am looking for people who have done that, who can
advance in the Way of the Heart beyond listening. You, by
your duality, your feet in both worlds, are prolonging the
beginning. You are of at least two minds. Every aspect of
your mind is an expression of both feet. You like to be full
of great self-imagery that suggests your purity as a devotee
of Mine, but that is not it. You must be serious and
confessed, and embrace My Instructions strictly, and use
your association with one another to grow. Practice of the
Way of the Heart is not an idealistic matter. It is a very
serious matter.
When I asked you earlier this afternoon and earlier this
evening if there was any “consideration” that would suggest
a gathering, basically you had nothing to say. Six months of
“consideration”, twenty-two years, intimate occasions this
week, all kinds of flaws in your service this week, even
desecration dramatized – and there is no “consideration”?
Such a non-response is you all sitting back on your heels
and being complacent, consoled, idealistic, just full of
yourselves, full of self-consoling one-sided thoughts.
The Way of the Heart is a “consideration”. It is
“consideration” itself. It goes on in every moment. If you
are serious, it never ends. It is a profound ordeal. And if
you are less than completely serious, you make compromises
and communicate idealistically about yourself. To do so is a
real flaw in your devotion to Me, and in your application to
the sadhana I have Given you. When I spoke to you this
afternoon and earlier this evening, you should have been
full of “consideration”, full of questions, because you take
seriously what you have been doing. But you had nothing to
say. You had nothing in mind, nothing going on. I have
become rather humorous about that kind of obliviousness
after so long a time. It is so stupid. It is amazing. All
this practice, all of My Work, everything I have Done and
Said, and you have nothing to “consider”?
Do not withdraw your heart from Me, do not withdraw your
heart from God. Do not separate yourself, do not be a fool,
do not instruct yourself, do not “guru” yourself. Do not
tell Me what you are going to do. Ask Me what I want you to
do. That is Guru-devotion.
DEVOTEE: And we cannot do it on our own, even with good
intentions.
AVATARA ADI DA: Yes, be humbled by that understanding. It
is the Truth. Mankind is not possessed by this Truth, or
conformed to It. You are conformed to It by virtue of your
having become My devotee, but you must live It for real.
The root of your superficiality is egoity. But aside from
the bare fact that it is egoity, there is also the matter of
your lack of comprehension of Reality, your persistence in
this separate, body-based, egoically “self-possessed”,
self-contracted point of view. You desecrate everything. You
are desecrating the universe, desecrating Reality,
desecrating Me, desecrating everything holy, everything
sacred, everything that is True, by your casual performance
of life, according to the principle of your own egoic
“self-possession”. Understand this, and respond to Me. Then
your life becomes serious, and you are humbled by the
Truth.
I Am the Holy Site in your midst, and you must relate to
Me rightly. I do not do ceremonies! I am not here to be an
“organization man”! I am here to receive My devotees who
truly resort to Me and prove that resort in their daily
lives. When you do that, I welcome you with open arms. We
will have to create occasions for your contact with Me, but
just to be available to you because you happen to be on this
Island is not what I do. I am utterly offended by such an
imposition. I am not here to play games with you. I expect
you to be serious, to prove your seriousness in your daily
life, and to prove your devotion to Me day by day. I will
invent occasions for you to come into My Company.
I expect you to do this sadhana, endure the ordeal of it,
the difficulties of it. That is just how it is! I did not
deny My Self that obligation. Why should I deny it to you?
If you want to come around Me, then be My devotee. Prove it.
Move Me. If you do not move Me, I will not do ceremonies
with you just because Darshan of Me should fit into your
schedule. I have no impulse to do so.
I Function according to the Law. This Heart Does what I
Do. I make all kinds of Gestures toward you, as on this very
night. But This Body is becoming weary, in fact, from all
these Gestures I have been making.
It is time for My devotees to live the life I have Given
them.
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