The Bright – Amrita Nadi – The Light of Consciousness
Devotee: “Should I meditate on the right chest in order to meditate on the Heart?”
Bhagavan: “The Heart is not physical. Meditation should not be on the right or the left. It should be on the Self. Everyone knows “I am”. It is neight within nor without, neither on the right nor the left: “I am” – that is all”.
S.S. Cohen – Reflections on Talks with Ramana Maharshi
he first night we came together here I quoted that (that verse from) particular verse from the Bagavad Gita, in which it says the life force should be resolved in the sahasrar and the mind resolved in the Heart. The epitome of the conscious activity, the ultimate event of the conscious activity is the resolution of the consciousness in the Heart, prior to thought, prior to the reflections in the mind, prior to experience, the very Self. This is the source or reality of consciousness. But the force, the manifest force, the Shakti of this Siva is generated above. So the form of reality, the form of realization is this Amrita Nadi that is generated between the true Heart, not just the heart chakra, but the living Heart of the very Self and its perfect place above, its perfect extension, above, which purely for convenience, in order to relate the whole affair to ordinary perception, we say is in the head, or we relate it to our sense of the head. But actually it has nothing to do with one’s physical head, other than the fact that there is certain phenomena associated with this process that go on relative to one’s physical head, but the upper terminal of Amrita Nadi is nowhere in time or space, anymore than its lower terminal, the very Heart, is in time or space. –
The Life of Understanding, Week 1
In Sahaj Samadhi there is a great and transcendental yoga that is not described in the traditional texts. It is the yoga of Amrita Nadi, in which everything arising is recognized to be only modification of , the prior Condition of your apparent condition. Everything arising is without force, unnecessary. If you persist in that meditation or realization in every moment, the limiting or binding force of existence at every level is lost, and you are brought into a transcendental meditation that is the Radiance of the infinite being itself. This meditation is projected infinitely, absolutely, far beyond what is seen and heard subtly, far beyond all that is felt. Thus, there is a kind of ascent native to Sahaj Samadhi, because all phenomena, gross, subtle, and causal, are unnecessary, not because they do not arise – they appear in the conventional way – but because they have no necessity. They do not impinge upon you. They do not have any implication or logic that binds you to being an anything, a soul, a person, a consciousness, a separate phenomenon or being. In that Realization there is only the absolute projection or Radiance of the Heart felt relative to this gross body as the projected line of conscious Light that moves out of the Heart, far beyond the crown, far beyond subtle phenomena.
Drawing by Adi Da Samraj, 1970
By persisting in this Samadhi, or Realization, we are lifted out of this gross dimension. And if our meditation is most profound, we are lifted out of all dimensions. We do not have to be reborn in this condition, nor do we have to be reborn in any subtle condition. We certainly do not have to be born in any condition lower than this. We are not reborn in any condition. We move into Bhava Samadhi or the Divine Domain, which is not describable, which is like that absolute formlessness that we recognize to be our very Condition. It is Bliss. It is, in this certain sense, form, but it is without description, without analogies, without archetypes. There is no vision to describe it. All visions that arise are re-cognized in Sahaj Samadhi. Even visions have no force of implication.
Thus, the line of Amrita Nadi penetrates far beyond even the highest realm. Ultimately it is not even a line, you see. It is read relative to the body as the line passing out of the Heart toward the place infinitely beyond the crown, but truly it is simply the expanse of Radiance of the infinite being, In Bhava Samadhi there is the complete forgetfulness of the limited born-being – gross, subtle, or causal – in any dimension and in all dimensions. All are forgotten, and there is simply translation or perfect ascent or absolute expansion into the Divine Condition itself.
You are identical to the physics of things in your manifestation, and that is why you are immortal – not because you are inside the body, but because you are identical to the body. In the physics of things, repetition and continuation are the law of energy. Thus, you cannot die. You can only be changed, and you are changed, constantly. You are constantly put into another condition, and, whatever it is, you must comprehend it; you must realize that you are the prior Condition of that appearance. When you rest as that Condition, then there is no force whatsoever to existence. It is an illusion, an hallucination. Not that you think it is so–the Realization is not philosophical in the conventional sense – but it is obviously so.
When I look into the room, the Condition of all this is perfectly obvious, all these bodies, all these “me’s, “this whole room. Everything in the room is just a pattern of energy. It has no ultimate necessity. It can pass – in fact, it will pass! While it continues, it is God. There is a beauty and a fullness to it, in my right relationship to it. On the other hand, it is exactly like a dream. This apparent concretion here has no limiting force whatsoever from my point of view. If I close my eyes and stop talking and remove myself from your attention, I can see the space of the room with my eyes closed. I can pass into subtle places. I can pass into these bodies here. All of that is, happily, an ordinary experience for me.
If there were no one to witness to you, as I do, you would have no way to continue your practice. Because God-Realization is simply true for me, then if you will give me your attention, if you will commune with me, this same disposition will be yours through a process that is much easier than your hearing a philosophical premise and trying to attain it through self-manipulation. You do not have to try to attain it. If you will simply enter into Communion with the Spiritual Master, who is already in the Condition of God-Realization, that Condition will be duplicated in your case.
The Realization communicated in the form of the Spiritual Master is the supreme instrument. But people in their egoity do not want to make use of it, They do not want to submit to the Samadhi, or Intuition, that is instantly available to them in Communion with the Spiritual Master. They are self-possessed, committed to experience. Those who have had enough of experience, however, who are humbled by their own sweat, can make use of Grace in whatever form it appears. Who knows why it has appeared at all! The appearance of Grace in this life is crazy! It is a paradox! But it is true, and you can see for yourself that it is true if you will engage it.
All I can say is, this is the way it is for me. I am already all-pervading, without a form, and therefore I enter into ordinary relations as an impulse. In Truth I am manifesting as all bodies. I am absolutely certain of it. And I am conversant with all bodies. By a simple act of attention I can be you, be identical to you, and have a perfect reading of your disposition so that I can be of service to you, while at the same time also having the sense of being this body. It is crazy. It is a paradox,. It is all silly, paradoxical, ultimately unexplainable. It is a mysterious conjunction and it is contradiction.
In the early months after the incident in the Vedanta Temple,1 I realized in meditation that I was no longer meditating this body. All its limitations were already obvious, not binding any longer. In meditation I experienced many, many, many people. And I could meditate them. I could be completely identical to them. I could meditate them if they were in Communion with me. I could be their meditation. I could awaken the God-Realizing process in them because I did not have to presume the limited point of view that they were. They simply had to be in direct Communion with me so that I could be them, and then I could do the practice, and in that case it could be brief. The trouble is that people do not enter into that Communion. They are reluctant. They remain self-possessed. Therefore, I cannot enter into that process with them as directly as would be ultimately useful. – Chapter 11 – I Will Do Everything – The Way That I Teach, Bubba Free John, 1978.
The following excerpts are from various writings and talks by Adi Da Samraj on the topic of ‘Amrita Nadi’.
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When enquiry has settled in the heart, awareness develops as what Ramana, Ramana Maharshi, calls the ‘Amrita Nadi . I call it the ‘Form of Reality.’ It is the circuit of current from the heart to the head. As a child I knew it as the ‘bright’. In the unqualified state all identification, differentiation and desire have ended. There is only unqualified relationship realized in enquiry to be already the case. This realization is simply consciousness as the Amrita Nadi, the form of Reality, and it is experienced as the ‘bright’, the unconditional bliss of presence, of perfect knowledge, whose source is the heart, reality itself. Therefore, the bright is the form of that reality which is consciousness. It is a true and real, the birthright of all existence.
Amrita Nadi is eternal.
Amrita Nadi the Heart, the absolute Formless existence, is of course the quality of Amrita Nadi. But so is also its Infinite, perfect generation.
So there is an eternal God world that transcends the appearance and disappearance of the Cosmos, of the conditional worlds. The God world does not come and go. The God world does not appear and then collapse for a period of time and then reappear.
The form of God is eternal. Amrita Nadi is perfect. Amrita Nadi is the form of consciousness. Amrita Nadi is the perfect realization.
The Form of Reality is not a a special creation or condition but the native form Itself. In other words, Amrita Nadi is not just something temporary while the world exists and then it disappears.
The Heart is then the true foundation, the exclusive Heart is the true foundation of both manifestation and no manifestation.
The Amrita Nadi is never collapsed. Amrita Nadi is always perfect.
One’s own inner functions are subtle functions relative to the intuition of Amrita Nadi, the intuition of the Form of God through Amrita Nadi. These functions may manifest differently in time, their qualities may change. And any function that arises in consciousness as a quality of mind or as a quality of experience, any such things may in themselves come and go. So in no sense is this life as Amrita Nadi some form of holding on to phenomena.
The Heart is the Guru. The Amrita Nadi is his Form. The bliss of unqualified enjoyment is his teaching. The Knowledge of all this is liberation and freedom. The enjoyment of all this is Reality. The existence of all this is Truth. The activity of all this Is understanding. And understanding is real life.
The highest Form of this life. The highest form of Sadhana, the life of a devotee, In whom Amrita Nadi is the constant intuition, the constant enjoyment. But for such a one the human Guru is also Amrita Nadi, alive and literally. So he lives in relationship to the Guru as a perfect devotee, while the perfection of his own conscious enjoyment in more internal ways is also perfected.
The Inner Guru, which is the very Heart and the Form of Reality, Amrita Nadi, is the same as the human Guru. The human Guru is that alive and functioning relative to you. That’s why the life of sadhana relative to the Siddha Guru is the highest form of spiritual activity, because all of the virtues of the Truth are already present. They are already present in the activity that is understanding because it is the understanding of the heart, and of real consciousness, but they are also present in the condition of sadhana itself, in the condition of Satsang, in the very condition with which you begin your sadhana, you exist in relationship to this fullness in the Form of the Guru. So the perfect devotee of the Guru experiences the perfect communication of the quality of the Guru.
But as in every other case where something arises and enquiry is generated in the midst of it, such a one in this case, may find himself falling into the Heart, the root of the mind. And then he will know only Amrita Nadi, which here is described as the spire of Sound and Light that stands forever in the Heart. But Sound and Light capitalized, meant in perfect terms, not sound and light as simply the lesser phenomena that you can turn on by yogic concentration but the perfect Sound and perfect root of Sound, and the perfect Light and perfect root of all Lights.
S-curve of the Amrita Nadi, the open channel of light between the Heart and the point at the top of the head at which the Divine Light is intuited.
The conventional Way of Sages is the Way of exclusive descent into the Heart, or ego death through descent in Amrita Nadi (the secret pathway between the sahasrar and the heart region). The Way of Divine Ignorance, or Radical Understanding, is the Way of non-strategic dissolution of the ego-soul in the Heart and simultaneous regeneration, or expansion and ascent, in, as, and through Amrita Nadi, whose upper terminal is not truly the sahasrar (subtle crown of the gross body) but the Unspeakable Condition and Radiance of the Highest, wherein all worlds arise and fall. (The Expansion of the Heart is without qualification, Radiant in all directions to Infinity, losing its center by including all objects, and losing its boundaries by penetration of all contraction. The Fullness of this Process is also experientially communicated in the upper, or subtle, and lower, or gross, dimensions of the whole body – first to the subtlest, and descending simultaneously to the lowest.)
What I’ve called Amrita Nadi is realized only in the form of understanding, in the most radically intense, intuitive life. Then the true nature of what I’m describing begins to become obvious, and how it is really deathless, beginningless, endless and perfect begins to become obvious Amrita Nadi, in the sense that it is somehow related to one’s own subtlest function between the Heart and the sahasrar, in that sense is limited. In that sense Amrita Nadi is a form, the subtlest form of our own existence, our individual existence and through it we intuit the Very Form or God Form. This Amrita Nadi then, is the duplicate or likeness of God described in the Old Testament. And it looks like this. The Amrita Nadi is the perfect reflection of the Perfect Form.