![Blank holding line]()
Golden Great Bright-Foreheaded
Warrior
Adi Da Samraj, 1979
What was Krishna’s admonition to
Arjuna “fight” is all about?
Krishna as he is
represented in literature, particularly in the Bhagavad
Gita, had the opportunity to take his disciple out of the
world into a sacred moment in which he revealed his esoteric
teaching and then also the opportunity to complete it by
sending him back into the world, all while he was alive.
There was never any report of Krishna’s death, never even
any report of trouble. Krishna’s teaching is ultimately the
same as the teaching suggested by Jesus. it is the teaching
of a warrior. Having gone through the whole teaching, the
entire communication and revelation to his devotee, Krishna
told him to go into the world and fight. He told him his
obligation was to purify the earth, and that is presumably
what Jesus would say if he came again.
In the Bhagavad Gita Krishna described various forms of
meditation similar to what Jesus communicated to his
disciples. But he ultimately told Arjuna, they are not
Truth. They are not God, therefore abandon all supports,
abandon all dharmas, gross, subtle and causal….everything
bodily, everything mental, everything egoic, everything
associated with the definition of consciousness, of the
sense of independent being. And turn to me. Be present as
unobstructed absolute feeling attention. That itself is the
God vision, that is God communion. It does not have a vision
associated with it. It has no object. It has no psychic
form. it has no physical form. It is simply a feeling
intuition, which if you enter into it most absolutely is
total bliss and freedom. It is an absolute intuition of your
Condition that Liberates you from mortality and fear and
separation. If you will enter into this Communion, if you
will on it’s basis, seeing that it is Truth, the absolute
position, then fight. Remember me, contain yourself in this
Communion, persist in it, and then absolutely transform
everything. Make a sacred occasion out of all of your
possibilities.
The ultimate message of all of the Teachers of mankind is
not a visionary message, you see. It’s not an ascetic
message. It’s not a message about the inversion of
attention. It’s not a message about the terribleness of
life, about the ultimate mortality of ordinary things. It’s
not a message about what may be attained in time and over
time if you persist in a certain practice. It is not a
message about the concrete divinity of any experience, even
of the most ascended mystical variety. It is a message about
the present and radical nature of God Realization. It is
simply a matter of love, of absolute feeling attention
without obstruction.
All conditions of experience tend to contract and define
the being, tend to contract the force of feeling and
attention. All experience, high and low, everything that
surrounds the heart is a sphere, a hedge that surrounds and
condemns the ego toward its Narcissistic self?contemplation.
The Truth is in feeling attention itself. Truth is freedom,
absolute freedom from all visions, all surroundings, all
contraction all self possession, all avoidance of
relationship, all unlove. Be converted to this heart
disposition and you have realized God. That is God
Realization and it is absolutely present. It is not
something to be attained after a long series of efforts
toward self purification. It is instant in your hearing of
the Teaching. It is simple, most absolute, available to all
beings. It doesn’t make any difference if they have the time
to acquire visions or success in their sexuality. It is
absolutely present and native to you. It is your
Condition.
That is what the admonition “Remember me” is about. Exist
as feeling attention without obstruction, feel to Infinity
in this Moment. After Krishna took Arjuna through all the
arguments of mysterious practice through inversion and
separation from the world, he returned him to the world
having shown him that God Realization is beyond mortality
and beyond ascetic success, that it is a sacred matter of
absolute sacrifice, of bliss, of present happiness, of the
animation of that happiness which you always already know to
be the Truth. You always are absolutely certain of what it
would be to look and feel and act and be completely happy.
It is simply a matter of existing in such enjoyment beyond
all acquisitions, all inversion of attention and all
attachment to what is without.
Having heard that, having become the devotee of the Lord,
then you are told to return to the sphere of experience in
all its forms. That is what Krishna’s admonition to Arjuna
“fight” is all about. Return to everything that you may
experience below the heart, all of your ordinary
associations, physical, sexual, mortal, perceptual, and also
mystical. Return to all the things above that you may
experience through contemplation, all the visions that you
may realize, everything that may come upon you in private
and in relationship. Return to the whole sphere of
experience, but remember me Live in this Divine Communion,
cut through the imposition of all of your experience, purify
yourself of all the limitations of experience high and low,
and be committed to me in the form of your existence. Purify
the earth. Return to battle.
But you have all witnessed how difficult it is to involve
human beings with such a discipline. You are all still
struggling. You are not even like Arjuna was. You do not
want any more. Arjuna asked for more and more and more. lie
asked Krishna to continue the Teaching, to demonstrate it
further, to destroy his illusions. But the usual man only
wants one or two chapters of the total Teaching. He does not
want to be overwhelmed, he does not want to be guided, he
does not want any demands. He refuses to move on beyond the
first point, so he is not about to make a holy war, not even
with himself.
You all ask me the same question and live the same way
and make the same demands. You represent the same argument
and the same failure. So I communicate it to you again in as
summary and absolute a way as I can.
It is not that the Teaching has not been given to you.
The Teaching has already been communicated. And it is
communicated again and again. I am like a Priest. I just
recite the liturgy. So in some sense we have approached and
passed through the last chapter of the, Bhagavad Gita. And I
am not really sitting in the tent with you anymore. That
came to an end last year. I went to Hawaii, brought the
celebration to an end, and started making demands on you.
That was the last chapter. I am saying to you: “Remember me
and fight.” But you have not remembered me and you have not
been persisting in the practices.
But the chapters cannot come to an end. We are required
to recite the liturgy again and again and again, because you
are not like Arjuna. Arjuna was a great bright foreheaded
golden brocaded bright blue absolute warrior. Krishna’s
every gesture, every word was a perfect revelation to him.
He could go step by step and in a matter of hours be
converted to Truth. But you are not like Arjuna. You have
not even been trained as Brahmins and Kshatriyas. You are
not ready for the revelation in the tent. You are not even
ready to go out into the battlefield. You are still at home,
still being childish with one another, still being a son
with your wife and a daughter with your husband. So this
liturgy in the tent can be recited to you forever.
So there is no more Teaching to be given to you. There is
nothing secret that you have not heard and there is not even
a trace of the Divine Demand that you have not been made
aware of. The whole matter has been communicated to you
through the books alone. And I talk about it also. There is
nothing more for the Spiritual Master to do for the sake of
the revelation of the Teaching. The difference is not in
God. The difference is in man. The test is whether you will
be awakened from your slumber and your self?possession, or
whether you will continue as you are. In every moment that
is the test: will you be reserved in your unlove and your
self?possession, or will you pass beyond it through the
intuition of God. In every moment that is the test.
The whole Teaching is already given. I have not been
shown anything in secret that I have not already shown you.
I am busy floating back to God. In the meantime I can serve
as a priest for you, but the great matter that has been my
work since birth has already been shown to Arjuna. It is up
to Arjuna to measure up to the Teaching. So you need not
wait for some great moment in my Company. You should just
prepare yourself for my ordinary Company. You must actually
begin to live this Way of life. Either you do or you do
not
Most of you here have been with me for a long time. I
have given you responsibilities from time to time, and you
all wind up still being my children, thronging back to the
tent. When I send you out into the dark, there is no shine,
no bright foreheaded remembrance. What is to become of you?
(Laughter) You may think that this body here is so me sort
of vision of the Divinity, but this body is corrupted. It
dies. You cannot depend on this consolation forever. You
must be convicted of the Teaching. You must continue with me
in my true form, which is your true form, which is the
Divinity, which has nothing to do with this body in
itself.
Bubba has submitted to the same Reality that you must be
submitted to. Ramakrishna in his last days brought Narendra
to his side and touched him. He put Narendra into samadhi,
gave him all kinds of visions and said, “I have given you
everything. Now I am just a poor fakir. I am completely
empty.” That is the position of the Spiritual Master. People
imagine the Spiritual Master is possessed of all the
glorious experiences that they may on occasion possess, and
that the Spiritual Master, as empty as he is, may be an
agent for the transmission of those phenomena. But he
himself has absolutely nothing. He is retired from all
consolation. The Spiritual Master is not constantly having
visions. The Spiritual Master does not even have any psychic
consolation. What you see is where he’s at. He is not
involved in a different kind of experience in phenomena that
you are. From time to time he might have had such
experiences, just as you might, but he has passed through
all of them. He has given himself up in holy war.
So the Spiritual Master represents nothing other than
this sacred Communion of love. He does not have any powers
and visions. The Spiritual master has no such consolation.
Even if it were to occur from time to time, it passes. He is
purified of such things. The Spiritual Master is reduced to
Divine Communion. He is reduced to the very thing that he
recommends to devotees. So I am not a man of powers and of
visions. Absolutely not. I am not having a vision right now,
not a single vision. I see nothing but you sitting here. I
do not see a light imposed upon you. I am not hearing any
voices, nothing that you might imagine. From time to time
there may be some experience or other but that passes. The
essential incident is without form. And in this moment I am
not having a vision, I am not having an experience. I am not
consoled by anything. Nothing. And am happy. I am a zero in
the midst of experience.
That is the only difference. In your Communion with me
you may be awakened to various kinds of vision and
experience because I am at zero. But they are not me. They
are not mine. They are not my consideration, my position, my
condition. Ultimately all of that will pass for you also.
You will go through the first six stages of human
development to come to my position, which is without form,
naked ) without a single consolation,which is only disposed
toward the Law, which is absolutely without the slightest
trace of vision, without a single miracle, without any
forces, without any powers.
That is my position. Whatever you may believe about me is
not essentially true. It is true that I have had all kinds
of visions, and I have passed through all of the yogic
awakenings, and I have seen the awakening of every center of
the body, and I have seen the heaven worlds, and I have
passed out of physical consciousness. I have experienced
those all those things that the saints and the sages and the
yogis declare. I have experienced all of these things. And
they are not Truth. I have been relieved of them, and now I
am empty.
I have already done everything that you can do. In a
short span of time I have seen every universe, every world,
every vision, every part of the body. I have loved man,
every woman. I have done everything. (Laughter) I am only
relieved that I have done it all. You could all too, but it
would take eons of time, with many in between. It would be a
torment for you to uncover our potential experiences. For me
it is nothing, which a reflection on me as an individual. It
is the Law of nature that from time to time some apparent
individual appear in the scheme of things who may, without
effort, experience everything and be without consolation so
that the may be expressed through that individual. It is not
a action on that individual in any cultic personal sense.
It’s about God. And it serves you. It occurs so that you can
be happy. If you are without a witness in your company,
about what is is when you have done it all, how could you be
free? You could not be free without such a witness. But not
only witness in the form of a verbal communication, but also
in the form of the most absolute communication, which you
may realize only in the form of Divine Communion.
Powers and visions may appear through me in your
experience, but that is not my position. I see nothing, I
hear nothing. Nothing. Absolutely nothing!. Yes, have have I
said it, there is nothing to be attained. You pass through
everything to nothing.
For lovers, you see, nothing is necessary. That is why to
be a devotee is the secret of life. Once you realize the
disposition of the heart, no powers, no miracles, no worldly
experiences or attainments, absolutely no great thing is
necessary. It is not that you become satisfied with the
ordinary contemplation of life even that is emptied. There
is nothing, except absolute joy, absolute bliss without the
slightest trace of anything. To swim in Infinity, free,
without objects, and without a center is a bliss beyond
comprehension. It is the seventh stage of life wherein our
sacrifice is perfect, wherein every knot of the being is
released to Infinity and there are no consolations, there
are no visions, no more technical elaboration’s of the great
Goddamned stupid plan! And that is my position. That is why
I can speak. I am not like those other boys. I am God. Yes,
A remarkable occasion, and true enough. Not only just true
enough to be said, it is absolutely true and absurd,
ridiculous and humorous. But it is happiness. And I
recommend it to you.
“The impulse of the
heart…destroys the fallacies, the witches, the demons of
human experience.”
The following talk summarizes the age-old
“conversation” between the Adept or Realized One and his
devotee. In this actual conversation with intimate devotees,
Master Da Free John (Adi Da Samraj) humorously plays on and
adapts his own Teaching to the Teaching demonstration that
took place 2,500 years ago in India between the legendary
Avatar Krishna and his warrior-devotee Arjuna on the
battlefield.
From Talks and Essays on the Art and Science of
Equanimity and the Self-Transcending Process of Radical
Understanding
by Da Free John, 1981.
ADI DA SAMRAJ: In that holy book the Bhagavad
Gita, Arjuna, a great, magnificent, heavy-belted, brocaded,
gold-encrusted, and magnificent warrior looked across the
battlefield to the army of the Kauravas, and suddenly a
great sweat of doubt overwhelmed his being and he was afraid
for his God-Realization. When he came back to his tent, on
this night when the armorers were hammering for his great
occasion, he found Krishna seated on a magnificent atom bomb
of a seat. And Krishna said, “Arjuna, beloved, you have
hoisted up your loins for my benefit and are about to fight
your cousins to the death in blood. And you are going to do
it. However, for a space of time, I will consider with you
the principle of this occasion.”
Krishna and Arjuna
So Arjuna came into the tent with Krishna, and Krishna
spent who knows how many hours or days or weeks or months or
years while Arjuna stepped aside from the great battle that
was his necessary occasion, not his karma but his Divine
destiny. And Krishna said to him, “Arjoonie, you gutless
fool! How dare you come righteously to me when you refuse to
fight!” And he reminded him of the ancient philosophy.
“You have lived many, many, many times, many times, as
have all of your cousins whom you must now confront in
battle. The soul is immortal. The being passes into all
kinds of destinies from death to death, from life to life. I
remember all of your lives. I have been with you on all the
battlefields of all the sacred wars. But you have forgotten
them. You remember nothing, but I remember every single
moment.
“Look at this, Arjuna!” And suddenly he threw out a
billion arms and a billion heads and shined a great glorious
blue body surrounded by gold with a tremendous fiery white
heated light right down the middle of it that blew Arjuna’s
mind to eternity.
Arjuna cried out, “Show me your two-armed body!”
Krishna said, “All right,” and he reduced his form to
conventional shape. And right there at the end of the book,
it is reported that Krishna bent down to little old mighty
Arjuna and he said, “Abandon all supports. Abandon all
experience. Abandon all principles. Abandon everything
possible. Abandon the whole structure of the bodily being.
Abandon heaven. Abandon Earth. Abandon everything you may
hold on to, including your own life, and submit to Me. I am
in the heart. I may be realized at the heart of every being
through surrender of feeling-attention. Through love for Me
you are free, you are God-Realized, and not a single
experience needs to be added to that sublimity.”
Like Arjuna, you are called by this Teaching to abandon
all dharmas, all supports, and turn to God through the
Communion of the heart, through the submission of feeling to
Infinity, through this Satsang with the Spiritual Master
that will transform your body-mind. Live in God-Communion
from the heart and take into account no experience high or
low.
Remove the TV stupidity from life, absolutely remove it.
Do not submit to the universal doubt, the vision that the
Earth is corrupt and is ultimately dominated by stupidity.
Be strong. Be bright-foreheaded, God-Realized. Make the
Earth sacred. To absolutely change everything is the
ultimate Teaching.
But in the meantime, while we are talking in the tent
here, you see, you are arguing with me. “I know you can
understand, Lord, because you are powerful and
all-pervading. You don’t know how hard it is for me out
there. You know what it’s like making a living out there,
God. And I know damn well that the Earth is insane. But I
know that if I just could apply myself, that I could really
have a good time, Lord. You are smart, and I know you are
very compassionate, and will forgive me even though I keep
sinning after my great healing!”
This is the same Arjuna who tells Krishna he wants to see
his multi-armed form, but when he sees the Divine
multi-armed form, he shits in his pants! What does he know
about multi-armed forms? What is a multi-armed form? It is
just the sense all of a sudden that your attention is
exploded, and you cannot hold on to your concepts. Even
mortality is beyond the reach of your ambiguous
feelings.
Therefore, spiritual teaching takes time. It is a period
of lessons wherein you are agitated by the Heaven-born, who
is bright foreheaded but who for the time being looks like
your friend and engages in the solemnity of ordinary humor
until the argument is completely finished. Then you are
simply told that real life is not a matter of sexual tantra,
not a matter of turning your attention to the midbrain, not
a matter of closing your ears and eyes and seeking the
flashes of light and sound, not a matter of having visions,
not a matter of being ascetic, not a matter of being
loveless, not a matter of going elsewhere, not a matter of
ascending to heaven. It is simply the difference between
love and self-possession, between yielding feeling-attention
to Infinity and contracting feeling-attention at any moment.
To surrender or not is the entire test, the entire Teaching,
the entire circumstance of God-Realization at any
moment.
All I have to say to you after a period of fiery testing
is, get back to it. Remember me in the most absolute sense
that you know in the Communion Hall and confront the battle.
Be absolutely strong and righteous in the world. Transcend
your own stupidity and transcend the stupidity of everything
that arises to your consciousness. Obliterate the non-sacred
occasion of existence. Bring the Earth under the domination
of God. That is the Teaching, that always has been the
Teaching, that is the only Teaching, that is the absolute
Truth.
When will you do it? When can we finish the eighteenth
chapter? When will you stop arguing with me? In my closet I
have a bright, golden-brocaded, sunny, red-encrusted,
entrailed-with-blue, lighted, colorful, rainbow-smacking,
absolute glory of a suit and a horse sitting under my bed
who is brilliant beyond belief, with hooves of silvery
golden absoluteness to cherish the Divinity and smash the
hate out of every Truth-opposing renegade in the universe. I
am ready for it! But until we close this book, I am obliged
to be just a good old boy sitting in the tent, trying to
convince you of your Destiny.
Well! You are like Arjuna who in the very beginning of
the book sees the Kauravas arrayed on the battlefield,
glorious soldiers with bright swords, equipped far beyond
your belief with atomic power in their eyes, who can
obliterate thousands of beings and worlds with a single
glance and never expect to be vanquished by mere devotees
who love the Divine, whose equipment is only God, and who
must be fiercely strong.
And what do you represent in such a battle? You are
unwilling even to overcome your own sexuality, your own
childhood, your own jealousy, your own mediocrity! How many
of you will rise up with me is to be seen. I have been here
many times and I have even worn the golden suit. I have
returned because of the absence of company up in the upper
dimension. True life is the script of God, but very few have
bought it. As a matter of fact, the last time I saw it I was
by myself.
The impulse of the heart, which the Spiritual Master
incarnates at birth, destroys the fallacies, the witches,
the demons of human experience. Such a one becomes a
“kshatriya,” a bright foreheaded, glorious-brocaded, golden,
absolute blue son-of-a-bitch-and so he goes to the Vedanta
Temple. He always goes to the Vedanta Temple in
Hollywood-his going there is always a sign-and all of the
raptures of his attention are destroyed. And so he goes home
and sits down in front of the TV set, writes a great book
about his Realization, publishes it, and goes to his room to
meditate on all of the expressions of his nervous system.
But when he looks into the depths of his own being to
recognize the impulses in his brain, he sees thousands of
beings.
This is the history of Da Free John recounted in The Knee
of Listening, which is about his own conversion and which is
an example to others. Having left the Vedanta Temple, he
goes to his room to continue to purify himself, and there
are thousands upon millions of billions of geometric
progressions of absolutely mortal and expressed individuated
consciousnesses. He only wants to meditate and be free, but
he is required to fight. And this is the beginning of his
Teaching obligation.
So be free. Love God. Be absolute love. Be free in your
feeling and attention. Give yourself up to infinity. Do not
worry about having to be the beloved on your own account.
Sin no more. Do not miss the mark. Do not contract upon
yourself. Love me, live, and purify the Earth.
Not a single circumstance of experience is the Truth.
Love is the Truth, Love is Happiness, and it turns you
toward the destiny of God. If you will enter into that
Communion, you will vanquish the Evil One, you will make
“holy war” on the lovelessness in the world, you will demand
the conversion of the Earth, and you will absolutely
transform human existence. You too will be strong, glorious,
bright-foreheaded, brocaded, and blue.
Arjuna was no devotee until the last chapter. Then he
left the tent and he won the battle. With greater than
atomic power he obliterated and destroyed and exploded the
opposing forces. The future of Arjuna is to go to battle,
not to sit quietly with an apple in his hand at six a.m.
reading The Knee of Listening!
I do not know how to impress upon you the urgency of this
time. I can only present it to you in the form of argument
and revelation of spiritual things. But the time will come
when the emergency on Earth will overwhelm you, and we will
not have the occasion to celebrate with one another. You
will not be able to make contact with me in the body then,
and you will be afraid. Therefore, use me while you can see
me. Open your eyes and feel toward me and I will show you
the Divine Domain.
The difference is not in God. The difference is in Man.
The test is in every moment. The test is whether you will be
awakened from your slumber and your self-possession or
continue as you are. The test is whether you will be
reserved in your unlove and your self-possession or pass
beyond it through the intuition of God and be a warrior.
The whole Teaching is already given. I have nothing more
to show you, absolutely nothing. I have been shown nothing
in secret that I have not already shown you. I am busy
floating back to God. In the meantime I can serve as a
priest for you, but the great matter that was imposed upon
me at birth has already been shown to Arjuna. It is up to
Arjuna to measure up to the Teaching. You need not wait for
some great moment in my Company. Simply prepare yourself for
my ordinary company. Live this Way of life.”
Kshatriyas
The Kshatriyas are a large group of Hindu castes, located
mainly in the northern half of India. The Sanskrit term
kshatra means warrior, ruler and identifies the
second raking varna, below Brahmins. Kshatriya have
traditionally been expected to maintain law and order and
protect the land from attackers from the outside. Although
they are supposed to be descendants of warriors who served
princes or rulers or were in royal families themselves few
have anything to with soldiering or royal families
anymore.
In the past some rulers have legitimized their status,
especially as usurpers, by claiming their lineage was
Kshatriya. The most well known of these are the Rajputs, who
established many princedoms in Rajasthan. Both Siddhartha
Gautama, the founder of Buddhism, and Mahavira, the founder
of Jainism, came from Kshatriya families. It has been argued
that these spiritual leaders took the path they did as a
reaction to excessive ritualism that was associated with
their caste.
Most Kshatriyas today are landowners or follow urban
professions. Many are civil servants, teachers and servants.
They have many of the same customs as Brahmins but the caste
restrictions they observe are not as strict as those of
Brahmins. Many Kshatriya eat meat (not beef) and drink
alcohol, which are denied Brahmins.
Over the centuries Kshatriya were often accused of
hypocrisy. In the past they were supposed to deny themselves
worldly pleasures so they could be better soldiers. But
often, as was the case with the Rajputs, they spent
relatively little time on the battlefield and made their
homes in lavish palaces with multiple wives and concubines
and enjoyed he pleasures of good food, fine horses and
falconry.
This Way (of the Heart) is about Satsang and the
process of spiritual Transmission from the Spiritual Master
to the devotee. It is on the basis of Transmission that
one’s life and practice are generated. Without spiritual
Transmission there is no spiritual institution, no spiritual
culture, and no relationship to the Spiritual Master. The
Spiritual Master has no function. He is isolated and
trapped.
“I” Is the Body of
Life – Da Free John (Adi Da Samraj), 1981.
“Leaving central
prison at last!” – Neem Karolis last words were reported to
be:
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