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Transcend the Self-Knot of
Fear
August 13, 2004
DEVOTEE: Beloved, You Wrote a phrase recently
which struck me very deeply. You Said that we all had
karmas, both superficial and “hell deep”. In the
last few years, I’ve experienced a number of traumatic
incidents, some of which You know about.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: I experience numerous of
them Myself. Have you got a minute?
What about it?
DEVOTEE: Beloved, I feel like always its my
fear–Ive always been a fearful character.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: Hm?
DEVOTEE: I’ve always been a fearful character.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: Well, who isn’t? It’s very
reasonable. Anybody who is in this situation and is not
afraid doesn’t have any awareness of what’s actually going
on. What you do about it is another matter, but there is
every reason to be afraid. And if you weren’t aware enough
of the potential suffering in the states of conditional
existence, then you wouldn’t be motivated to transcend them.
So, as bizarre as it seems, there is a kind of grace in the
sufferings that are imposed on us through experience.
But, so–you’ve been fearful by tendency.
DEVOTEE: Beloved, I feel these recent events have
exaggerated and locked this fear further in my body in some
way.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: You fear that?
DEVOTEE: Yes.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: Fear is inherent in the
body, in its separateness. The fear isn’t yours at all. The
fear is in the self-contraction. It is its characteristic
mood, its inherent emotion.
You could be feeling fear now, and yet there is nothing
dramatic happening at the moment that would seem to justify
being afraid. But if you somehow or other bring to mind the
potential of life-difficulties in this moment, or remind
yourself of traumatic experiences you’ve had by remembering
them, and so on, you can be experiencing fear right
now–without any apparent cause. It would be entirely,
obviously, subjective.
But, nonetheless, it’s still the same thing. It is the
mood of self-contraction, the mood that is inherent in
self-contraction, in the presumption of separateness, in the
presumption of identification with the body as the position
of existence.
And if you presume it is the position of existence, then
you start puzzling over: What do you do about this? Is there
some way to escape this? There doesn’t appear to be any way
to escape it, and so fear becomes a kind of fixed sensation.
It becomes a chronic sensation, in fact, potentially–very
disabling sometimes.
And so everyone has experiences of one kind or
another–just the mere fact of being alive, and what had to
occur in order for you to be alive (birthing and so on),
plus all the experiences of a lifetime, affect, as you
suggest, imbed fear in the body or the psycho-physical
mechanism. And this is fundamental to the condition of
everyone here, or every human being, or every living being.
Although everyone is in a different disposition or sense of
circumstance or state of mind in the present moment,
nonetheless all are sitting in a situation, and everyone is
in the midst of an activity–in fact, right now–that is
generating fear.
Except, generally speaking, people use various
psychological devices to keep it subliminal or to generate
diversions, a kind of intoxication–or even literal
intoxication by using intoxicating means. But diversions of
life, experiential means to divert attention through
generating intentionally, or otherwise by circumstance
experiencing, different states of mind, of emotion, of body
that desensitize you, at least temporarily, to the
fundamental fear that is at the root of this bodily sense of
separate existence.
And this is not, therefore, merely your characteristic.
It is the actual state of everyone, and it is, therefore,
something that is right there. Everyone is always sitting in
it. And how much of your life you want to waste diverting
yourself from it or consoling yourself and so forth,
intoxicating yourself, is up to you.
But you can’t really get rid of it, because it’s inherent
in the presumption of identification with the state of
separateness and brevity, change and inevitable death. You
can’t escape that, so you cannot escape fear. Unless
something fundamental changes about your understanding and
experiencing of existence itself, you cannot get rid of
fear. There is no intoxication, no diversion, nothing that
will desensitize you that is anything but temporary, and in
the long run, very destructive of any kind of balance or
well-being or clarity.
So rightly, if you consider the matter clearly, you have
to address this fundamental matter. There is nothing you can
do about it, except whatever it is that utterly transcends
the root-presumption that is the cause of it. Is there an
understanding and a Realization of existence that is free of
the root-conditions that you are experiencing fearfully?
And, of course, I am telling you there is.
There is also something about fear that has a practical
value. Without it, you wouldn’t do what is necessary to
protect the body under various natural circumstances that
require an immediate reaction, for the sake of safety. You
wouldn’t want to be so benumbed in the midst of daily life
that you couldn’t react to something dangerous and get out
of the way. So there is also something very practically
useful about fear in its moment.
Cats are very sensuous. They are always walking around,
rubbing themselves on things, purring away, and so forth.
They look like they haven’t a care in the world. But just
like that, if anything comes up that requires a reaction, or
a mouse that they can enjoy tormenting, anything that
requires a sudden reaction–which inevitably has a fearful
characteristic in it, because it’s so much sudden energy and
chemical change, and so forth–they are always ready. Zap,
they do it. And then, in the next moment, they are perfectly
calm again.
So this kind of capability for fear is certainly not
something you would want to have tranquilized to the point
where it’s no longer available to you, or you wouldn’t be
able to function safely in the midst of ordinary things.
That’s not a kind of fear that one would rightly want to get
rid of, unless one is just an addict of some kind who wants
to be totally dysfunctional.
But apart from that practical usefulness of fear, the
fear you are describing is a kind of philosophically
significant condition. It’s the noticing of the fundamental
condition in which you are living.
The Way I have Given you all is the means for
transcending just exactly that. It’s not a diversion, a way
of being addicted to some manipulation of the body-mind that
just makes you feel good at will by some technique or other.
As long as things aren’t too bad, you can always sit down
and meditate and relax. You have perhaps noticed one
another. You think that’s bliss.
It’s no more bliss than an orgasm is bliss. It’s that
kind of bliss, if you want to use the word for
it. In other words, it’s a temporary state of pleasure in
the body. It has nothing to do with transcending fear. It is
simply an experiential diversion that covers it.
So the kind of self-manipulative games people play that
have the look of meditation or religion about them are
devices, techniques whereby people divert themselves from
experiencing Reality–and reality in the conditional sense,
and its inherent fearfulness, its inherent dangers, its
inherent mortality.
So that kind of meditation isn’t worth squat. It’s
nothing more than relaxation. It’s just another form of
self-pleasuring. It’s a technique. And it’s temporary. And
if this kind of, you know, everything is just so
sweet, you know, and you suddenly were tapped on the
shoulder by something with a mouth on it about this big, you
are going to be immediately returned to your sensitivity to
inherent fear.
So fine, there are states that are meditative that look
like that. So I am not mocking them entirely. But, on the
other hand, they have no ultimate significance whatsoever.
It is moment to moment Realization, moment to moment
practice, moment to moment renunciation, moment to moment
Realization–this is all that works. And nothing else does.
All the rest is a diversion, a hoped-for pleasurable
distraction.
So you have had some experiences fairly recently that
were traumatic, and feel this has even created a kind of
fear-reaction, built it into the body. And now you are
afraid of it, too. You are afraid of being afraid of being
afraid.
But it doesn’t make any difference whether you are
afraid, or you are afraid of being afraid, or you are afraid
of being afraid of being afraid, or you are afraid of being
afraid of being afraid of being afraid, or on and on to the
nth degree–it’s still the same thing. And you have to do
the same thing about it. And why add a lot of imagination to
it?
Fear is all the same. And it’s completely justified. You
have every right to be afraid. You are in a position in
which is it completely justified to be afraid, and there is
absolutely no reason why you shouldn’t be. So you should be
quite happy about the fact that you are feeling quite
normally. There is nothing wrong with you. You are
completely well, My son.
But if you are seriously asking the question about
fundamental fear itself, well, haven’t I addressed this?
DEVOTEE: Yes, Beloved.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: The Way I’ve Given you is My
Address to that question that is the totality of your life.
It’s not a bunch of myths or things for you to believe that
are somehow supposed to make you feel that fear is
unjustified and everything is just OK. No. Everything is
really not OK. But that’s a fact only from the point of view
you are presuming. And that is what must be examined and
transcended–and not by merely thinking about it. You will
think about it inevitably, but that’s not the Way.
The Way is exactly as I have Given It to you to practice,
and that’s exactly what you should do about it–and do so
moment to moment, in other words. Endeavor to be constantly
doing this sadhana, and developing the real process of it,
instead of remaining at the beginning of it forever, simply
bound up not only in unsatisfactory states, but not even
entering into the real process whereby they are understood
and ultimately transcended by Spiritual means.
Sadhana proves itself. Do the sadhana consistently for
real, instead of doing something else–which is like sitting
around hallucinating your fear more and more, and wasting
your time turning the faculties on themselves, instead of
turning to Me and profoundly practicing. Instead of wasting
your time doing what is unproductive about it, and trying to
get rid of something you cannot get rid of, spend your time
doing as I’ve Instructed. Embrace Me and enter into the
process of Communion with Me whereby you will utterly
transcend not just the feeling of fear, because it’s
inevitable in this state here, but transcend the very state
you are presuming to be in.
The sadhana of this Way–truly and most profoundly
entered into, you see–enters you fully consciously into the
Domain of Reality Itself, the Divine Domain of Reality that
transcends conditionality and that activity which makes all
illusions, including fear. As long as there is the
self-contraction, presumption of separateness, there is
fear. And there is no two ways about it. It’s inevitable.
It’s inherent. So, transcend this.
The Way is the Way of transcending the self-knot, the
self-contraction, which is not just something somewhere
inside the body. It is the totality of the body-mind that is
participating in this, and that is reflecting this act. This
is what must be gone beyond.
This knot is fear. It is also separateness. It’s the
feeling of difference. It’s the feeling of
relatedness. It’s the presumption of being identical to the
body, or the body-mind, limited by it, limited to it,
limited by and to all of the ordinary appearances of
conditional existence, all of which pass. And all of the
grosser appearances of human existence, all of which are
mortal.
The transcending of this is, in fact, something you enjoy
in some rudimentary sense in sleep. You’re not here
asleep–basically anyway–at the moment. You’re in the
waking state, self-contracted as the body-mind. You’re
asking Me this question from the point of view and position
of feeling identical to the body and its potential, its
memory, and so on. But when you are asleep, you don’t ask
these questions and you don’t make these presumptions.
A few minutes ago, I was asked about the dream state
condition. In that particular dream state condition, the
person wasn’t feeling mortal or depressed or afraid, and
didn’t have any problem about it. But then, in the waking
state, all of a sudden it’s time to ask Me a question
because of this. The waking state is habitually bound to the
activity of egoity.
The dream state is a conditional state. It is filled with
conditional appearances–positive and negative. Sometimes in
the dream state, things feel very blissful and amusing, even
in a very high sense. And at other times, of course, they
can be very frightening, and so on.
The sleep state never feels any of those things. And yet
it’s not awake in the absolute sense, otherwise. It is
simply asleep to the binding conditions of the waking and
dreaming states.
Divine Self-Realization is to be Awake to That Which is
Prior not only to the waking and dreaming states, but to the
sleeping state as well. But it is completely without bondage
to any limiting conditioninherently so. Just as in
sleep, you are inherently not bothered by waking state
conditions or memories, and you’re not bothered by dreams,
nor diverted by them, so, in the Real State–the State That
Is Always Already the Case, the Divine Self-Condition–there
is no fear and nothing to be afraid of. There is no
self-contraction. This is worth Realizing, don’t you think?
And apart from that Realization, fear is part of the
condition you will inevitably experience. You can practice
so that you maintain a fundamental equanimity and ability to
function without transcending fear absolutely, so you should
certainly be doing that as a foundation discipline, you see,
instead of worshipping your fear.
But you must enter profoundly into the process of this
sadhana in order to Realize That Condition, That Perfect
Condition, That Inherently Perfect Condition, in Which there
simply is no fear, no conditionality, no limiting force of
embodiment, no rolling opposites, no opposing states of
mind, only the Conscious Light of Divine, Inherently Divine,
Love-Bliss, Freedom, the Unborn Condition–Which remarkably
enough is also the Condition now.
But why isn’t it obvious–to you, to all here? It’s not
merely because you are here. It’s because of something you
are doing. This is simply a modification of That Which Is
Always Already the Case. It’s only an apparent modification.
It’s non-binding, it’s unnecessary, and does not affect the
Ultimate Condition even now. It seems to, because of a
disposition of mind, which you are addicted to in the waking
state. And the entire body-mind, all of its faculties, are
fixed in the patterning, based on that presumption–that act
which is habitual and has patterned your life, controls your
life, unless sadhana intervenes. Not the sadhana
of busy self-manipulation.
So what truly must intervene is My Very Person here. You
must recognize Me, know that I am here, be moved to Me, and
have something else to do then, than all of the nonsense of
your suffering.
To be occupied with the Master is to not be occupied with
self, self-contraction, its patterning. Even if,
as I was asked the other evening, you have to go and work on
the computer, or go and count the numbers for the month, or
whatever–there’s nothing about that that you are going
allow to disturb your turning to Me. There’s nothing about
it that can disturb or limit your turning to Me–unless you
allow it to.
So you must find out, first of all, that I am here and
recognize Me, and you must be moved to turn to Me. And then
you must, by turning to Me, learn the secret of turning to
Me moment to moment. And thereby–receiving My constant
Blessing Spiritually–you will come to the point wherein you
are immersed in Me constantly and ultimately Realize Me
absolutely. And that is the purpose of existence. And
everything else is suffering.
So do the work necessary that you must do to be My
servant, and be turned to Me with all your faculties, every
moment of existence. And forget your fear–even as everybody
else in this room has already forgotten your fear.
DEVOTEE: Beloved, You’re the only One I’ve ever
met Who is completely Free of fear, and all courage I’ve
felt has come from You.
May I tell You a miraculous incident related to You from
several years ago, Beloved?
In Mindless Company [the meditation hall], I was
on retreat here. And, in meditation, You appeared in front
of Me in Your thousand-armed, thousand-headed Form.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: That one, yes.
DEVOTEE: You Said, “Look at Me.” And I was very
full of fear.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: As usual.
DEVOTEE: And I couldn’t look at You, and then You
kept Saying to Me, “Look at Me.” And this went on for some
long time, I can’t remember, until eventually–I guess the
feeling I had was I knew who was going to win, Beloved. And
so I opened my eyes, and I didn’t see Your thousand-armed
Form, I saw Your Murti and–
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: My two-armed Form.
DEVOTEE: Yes, Beloved. And I looked into Your
Eyes on Your Murti, and You pulled all my mind of fear
through my eyes into Your Eyes, and I physically leapt
forward in ecstasy and began to kiss the ground around Your
Chair, Beloved. And this is the state I want to be in,
worshipping You in very moment, Beloved.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: It is interesting to compare
what you just described in your own experience to the story
in the Bhagavad Gita, where Krishna reveals his many-headed,
many-armed, quite large form. And even though there was much
Revelation in it and mysteries of the universe were Revealed
thereby, Arjuna just was torn apart with fear, and he begged
Krishna to just show him his two-armed form again–because
999 more is just too much.
So Krishna showed him that he was the same person, but
with just two arms, more ordinary, more in the likeness of
Arjuna himself in his naturalness. And he became absorbed in
Krishna as his Master and liberated from the fear that came
with seeing his Master in a condition of such immensity and
force that he couldn’t tolerate the vision.
But it is a similar story that required in the end a
similar solution. And that’s why I just brought two with Me
this evening. How many of My arms you can tolerate depends
on how many you can stand, which side of the Water you’re
on. And whether you are looking at the reflections in the
Water, or are Standing in a State of
Non-different Communion and Identification with
the Water.
Outside the Water, seeing reflections in the mind,
everything seems to be a dilemma and very frightening, if
you’re sensitive to how it all is. And there’s no place to
hide from it. But in the Position of the Water Itself, That
in Which everything is appearing otherwise as a mere
reflection of apparent modification, there is no
identification with separateness. There is no act of
separation. There is no difference. There is no
body, no mind, no conditional universe, no
thing–not nothingness in the sense
of the absence of existence itself, but complete freedom
from the force of limitations.
So there is no object that is perfectly consoling. There
is only the transcending of the presumptions about point of
view. Ultimately, that is the process, but it’s not merely a
philosophical process. It is a devotional process, in
relation to Me in all the forms whereby I may appear
fundamentally in this, My Incarnation-Form, so that all of
the conditions of self-contraction may be relinquished
rather than held on to and intensified.
So the one experience you described is like experiences
you’ve had over the last few years that you described as
being traumatic. All of these experiences are in the past.
They’re in the mind. You like the one in the hall. You don’t
like the physical trauma ones. But, in fact, none of them
exist right now.
So the Way is always in the present, the relationship to
Me is always now. Not even in the now that is the presumed
now in time. As I’ve Told you, the
now in time that you presume is actually the
past. The perception you’re having–wherever you are in this
room now, and however you’re oriented, whatever is in your
field of sensation, your visual perception, and so
forth–all takes, yes, only a fraction of time, but it takes
time for the perception to arise. It has to go through the
mechanism of the body-mind. It has to go through a process
in order to be perceived to be happening. So, by the time
you actually perceive it to be happening, it’s already the
past.
Like looking at the stars, what you’re actually seeing is
something long past. You’re not seeing them now, or the
present time experiencing you’re having of them is in the
context of a very strangely organized conditional universe
in which you’re actually looking at the past, or conditions
as they were.
You can figure out different scientific ways of looking
at the stars so that you see them in a different context of
time, apparently. But all perceptions occur in the midst of
conditional existence and in association with a conditional
perceiver, the body-mind. And, therefore, there is no
now in the world of perception. There is only
the past and the future. There never is a now.
Never. You never experience now, ever, in your entire life.
By the time you get to experience something, it’s already
happened.
So where is now? It’s not a when.
It doesn’t exist as a when, just as infinity
doesn’t exist as a number. You cannot experience
now, because the mechanism you have available
for use to perceive it will take time to perceive it.
You’re always bound up in this mechanism, this time-bound
mechanism that’s generating illusions and depends on your
making presumptions that are illusions. And, so, you’re
always seeking. And your seeking is never satisfied. You can
be diverted momentarily, but you can never be satisfied. And
you won’t stop seeking until you realize the fruitlessness
of it–that it is not leading toward any ultimacy at all.
What is Ultimate cannot be Realized in time. It cannot be
Realized in the context of the body-mind in time. And It
isn’t, therefore, a condition of the body-mind.
Realization is not a brain condition. Divine Realization
is not a brain state–although some want to reduce all kinds
of things to just brain states. And a lot of things that are
extraordinary are brain states. But Reality cannot be
reduced to a brain state. And Ultimacy is not a brain state.
And there is a process whereby the body-mind is transcended,
wherein the brain is transcended, and there is entrance into
the Divine Sphere, what I call the Midnight Sun.
I Am That. This Body is the leftover of a Process in Which
That Sphere was Entered, in the midst of a lifetime that’s
apparent to others.
So the Paradox is that I am here to Tell you about It.
Whereas, no one who might otherwise enter into It has ever
returned, ever been able to stand, both heels imbedded in
the earth, and be established in the Divine Sphere, in order
to speak of it.
It is not in the brain. It is not dependent on the
body-mind. It’s not in this world. It’s not in the universe.
It’s not in any dimension of conditional existence
whatsoever. It’s not even merely the light at the end of the
tunnel. There’s a lot of conditionality about that. And
there is a mechanism for it. I Described it after Lopez.
Except most people pass through it and see all their
relatives, and so on. But there was no mind in This Case.
And the mechanism of it (the niches in the walls, the
structure, the lights), the mechanism itself upon which all
human experiences depend was revealed–not the illusions
built upon them, not the karmic illusions, not the
ego-illusions. There is a mechanism for bondage. It is the
same mechanism that is associated with a process wherein all
bondage is transcended.
I never returned at Lopez. I remain Established in the
Divine Sphere. I Am the “Bright”, the Midnight
Sun. I never left It. I am here under unique
conditions, for the purpose of Revelation to others.
That Sphere is Untainted and Unconditional. It is the
Divine Sphere, the Divine Condition. It is Self-“Bright”. It
is Conscious Light. It’s not merely a blank awareness, just
sort of feeling aware in an infinite darkness. It is beyond
description.
And while Being That, Abiding As That, I am appearing
just as you see, and in many other forms that you may see,
and am able to verify to you the supernormal Realities of
existence.
You must do the sadhana. You must accept My Grace. You
must practice the Way of this relationship, and prove My
Word to you. But My Utterance of it should–and is intended
to–restore your hope and give you heart to do this work,
this sadhana.
I am not a liar, would not lie to you. I am Speaking the
Truth to you. I Assure you, you will find it out. You must
prove it through your sadhana, but I Affirm and Confirm to
you all the Divine Realities I just Described to you.
DEVOTEES: Thank You, Beloved.
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