The Feeling Place
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Peter Imas Muizulis asks Adi Da a question about ‘Recognition’.
” It is a feeling response, a tacit recognition. So, this is what Ruchira Avatara Bhakti Yoga is built on, and it is moment to moment turning to Me, and you must have this turning to Me be based on that, and not be a technique or something you’re doing simply based on some verbal …instruction that you’re trying to carry out in some rote manner.”
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PETER: Yes, Beloved Lord. The question relates to Your conversation with Swanzie, and to the Instruction, You were talking about and have given in Your Written Work about recognition of You and how the faculties spontaneously follow the recognition of You. There was a passage that You wrote in the Da Love Ananda Gita which has always very deeply struck Me where You say that the fundamental practice is to find the feeling place where we always already feel attracted to You, and then yield to that feeling. You don’t use the word “recognition” in that passage, but it struck Me that that is an extraordinary clarification of this process of recognizing You and of the faculties following. I wanted to ask You if that was a correct understanding of that passage.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: Well, that’s what the passage says, right? So, why would you be wondering if it’s correct if you’re just quoting it?
PETER: You didn’t mention the context of recognition in that passage.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: Is that necessary? I mean that itself is just a descriptive term that I use intending for it to be suggestive of meaning, recognition response, response. I use various kinds of language to find, by any number of means of utterance, the key to anyone in any particular moment of their study that will reveal what is needed for their practice. So, I state things in many forms. It’s not just about repeating technical terms.
So, yes. It is about that, in other words, locating the feeling response to Me, the recognition response to Me, recognition in that sense. It’s a tacit recognition. It’s not a declarative recognition, like a kind of formula of acknowledgement. It is a feeling matter. It is an unspoken matter. Again, to use the metaphor of feeling in love with someone. I mean, you can’t say exactly why, if this were the case with you, why you are in love with that the Ruchira Sannyasin Order or why they are attractive to you. You could say things about it, but it really wouldn’t cover it, and you could say it to somebody else and they’d take a look at the same person and they wouldn’t know what you’re talking about, maybe. They don’t have that feeling. You do. And you associate it with the certain way the person looks or whatever it is, even things you know about them that an observer, otherwise, wouldn’t know about them. So, all this is part of your attraction, your feeling. But the feeling is actually unexplainable, indefinable, tacit, unspoken. It’s not figured out. It’s not thought first and then you throw that thought down into your chest and turn it into a feeling, you see.
The words are more like a song about it. They never exhaust it. Love poetry is never exhausted. It’s been being written for thousands of years, you see. If it was something that could just be said, and that’s it, and it’s all done with, then nobody would have been writing about it anymore for a long time now. People don’t stop writing about it.
So, it is a feeling response, a tacit recognition. So, this is what Ruchira Avatara Bhakti Yoga is built on, and it is moment to moment turning to Me, and you must have this turning to Me be based on that, and not be a technique or something you’re doing simply based on some verbal sc, obstruction, ah, verbal instruction, or obstruction for that matter, but verbal instruction that you’re trying to carry out in some rote manner. You’re supposed to turn to Me, so you’re turning to Me now. No, you just don’t turn to Me for no reason. You turn to Me on the basis of the recognition response, the tacit feeling response. And that makes the turning easy to volunteer and gives you the entire logic for the adaptation for all of your activities to that feeling so that all kinds of activities and relations and all the functions, faculties, everything is always turned to Me based on this tacit responsiveness.
This is the nature of devotion, true devotion to Me, and it becomes searchless Beholding of Me when it acquires your entire life. So, searchless Beholding of Me is not simply some technique you take up by permission at some point, you see. It’s a development of the practice. It’s a demonstration, a sign, that is acknowledged at some point, and having been noticed and acknowledged, then it can also be cultivated and it develops through coming into My Company and further Instruction about the matter, and so on.
And searchless Beholding of Me becomes Spiritual Communion with Me, devotion in the spiritual sense, and that becomes True Hearing, most fundamental self-understanding in devotion to Me. And this develops as more profound Spiritual responsibility which is the Seeing practice of Spiritual devotion to Me. This shows itself ultimately in the Sign of the Thumbs, the Samadhi of the Thumbs, and establishes the Perfect Practice, not as an exercise you do based on philosophical instruction, you see, but as searchless Beholding comes about, as an inevitable demonstration of this tacit response to Me made into a Way of life, you see.
So, the Perfect Practice, in due course, likewise, is demonstrated to have begun. It begins by spiritual means, not philosophical means. It’s not merely therefore an exercise. It is a continuation of the responsive practice of devotion to Me. It is simply it’s perfect or fullest form, and it, of course, has many more developments that follow its time of origination as a practice.
But all of this Way, you see, develops in this manner, not on the basis of argument, self-applied, self-conscious technical exercises. It is a Way of relationship to Me. It is a relation to Me, not a body of techniques, you see. It is not a self guruing or self manipulative Way. It is a devotional and Spiritual Way Given by Grace that develops naturally on the basis of a fundamental responsiveness to Me, manifested Avatarically in this Bodily Human Form. Even beyond My Physical Lifetime, this Bodily Human Form remains the focus of this devotional turning.
It is a unique Means, usable after My Time of Physical Incarnation, because I’m being photographed right now, you see, videotaped and so on. My Image suitable for this devotion is transferable through time, as well as in space. Devotees in other parts of the world use photographic Murti Forms, are using it right now in various places. So, this is the focus of this responsive devotion, this Body here. That’s the function of it in terms of the sadhana in devotional terms. And it develops into its various forms, the way it develops into its various forms, based on the elaboration of this fundamental foundation, this tacit foundation of feeling response, recognition, tacit recognition-response to Me here Bodily, Self Manifested, found and felt in My Fullness without being able to put it into words. You can say things, but they don’t exhaust it.
And so this process becomes ultimately, not only wordless, silent in that sense, but enters into the domain that is prior to mind, prior to the body, prior to the psychophysical complex, prior to gross, subtle, and causal dimensions of conditionality. Gross, subtle, and causal characteristics of the body-mind, but gross, subtle, and causal characteristics of experienced existence. It enters into the prior domain, the Divine Self Domain, and it simply has no reference to this appearance. It outshines it, literally outshines it, ultimately. So, this is how I translate My devotee into My Own Brightness, My Own Bright Form and Nature, My Own Condition and Domain.
But you must live this response to Me and embrace the discipline of it as I give it and not hold yourself back to make it up yourself, keep your distance, self guru yourself, and make an entire culture out of your errors.
So, did I speak to some question of yours?
PETER: Thank You, Beloved. Thank You for being so incredibly Attractive. I love You, Beloved.