Feeling, Trust and
Faith
Adi Da Samraj, January 7, 1994
The following is a ‘clip’ of an audio recording of Adi
Da Samraj talking with his devotees in a very informal
sitting gathering at Adidam Samraj Ashram, Fiji.
Adi Da: Yes, what else?
Devotee: I’m drawn to this feeling matter
again.
Adi Da: There are two kinds of feelings that I was
referring to you earlier. And then there is you feeling and
then there is feeling which is a way of going beyond self.
They are two very different kinds of things. Which one is it
in any one moment that for you to say
Devotee: One is the interpretation of the gross
body and the other is the heart.
Adi Da: Well, that’s O.K. But that has nothing to
do with the self-position. One’s feeling is allowed to
become self-surrender and self-forgetting that moves into a
different kind of dimension of participation then when
feeling is generated for whatever reason from the
self-position. I mean, people in their ordinary disposition
and circumstances of daily life feel to one degree or
another or in one fashion or another and people describe
these feelings all the time and most of the time it’s a
matter of a reactive emotions and so forth. Sometimes it’s a
matter of a not so reactive emotion, what you call love. But
the feeling of love towards someone or whatever is not
necessarily free of self possession. If that’s the position
from which itself is generated it still egoically based.
The true exercise of feeling is responsive not merely a
self act. And then it becomes surrender and forgetting of
self. Then it’s another matter. The word ‘feeling’ itself
doesn’t indicate which one of these two it is.
Devotee: The emotion is the fear. Because what, in
terms of my mistaken presumption that cosmic reality is, is
this matter of feeling.
Adi Da: Well in general you all are afraid, you
don’t trust.
Devotee: I do trust you and that’s why I’m here,
absolutely.
Listen while you read:
Adi Da: Yes, that’s fine, that’s the principle.
But as in terms of you all in general, you human persons
here. A basic characteristic you are exhibiting here and
talking about and dramatizing day to day you see is
disposition of mistrust. You don’t trust. The conditional
reality or the Divine Reality. To trust Reality all together
is another way of describing the word faith.
You tend to think according to convention that faith is a
matter of believing something that you’re call to believe or
suggest that you believe. Faith is really a heart
disposition of trust in Reality in the context of Reality.
You all tend to describe yourselves as people who really
don’t trust that much. You are alienated, for feel
psychologically mistrustful. Therefore you invent all kinds
of games for you own sake to feel better or survive or to
conquer or enjoy some sort of victory over what you don’t
trust, which is Reality. You don’t trust Reality.
You are self-possessed, mortal. Know all sorts of
limitation exist within you and relationship all together,
to others and the natural world and business all together.
And this registers within you as a feeling of mistrust.
The open heart is inherently characterized by faith. Not
believing this or that. It’s not a mind matter or see. A
disposition, a feeling of trust. That feeling of trust is
the root of sanity. You are relatively insane by comparison.
Because there is a fundamental disposition of mistrust. The
body is going to die, people can leave you, people can abuse
you. You can suffer, you get disease. All mistrust language.
I, I, I, I, me, me, me it’s all mistrust signals. As if
you’ve observed reality so thoroughly that you knew mistrust
was an appropriate disposition.
You just localized in your self-contraction and you make
a philosophy out of it. You talk about reality as if you
knew Reality. All it is a dramatization of a fundamental
psychological disposition of mistrust. And this is what
governs your life. It’s another way of describing egoity. A
fundamental feeling of alienation and mistrust. Whereas the
core of religious life, truly animated, truly lived, found
it the heart disposition of trust and that’s another way of
describing true feeling then. Self-surrender,
self-forgetting. It’s a fundamental feeling of trust and
that’s faith.
It’s not feeling that you can escape death, the body
doesn’t have to suffer, nothing bad will happen in life,
it’s not that, those things happen anyway, one way or
another. But even in the midists of a circumstance of those
things do happen the truly religious awakened person enjoys
the feeling of trust. And this is at the root, the core.
This is not just a superficial mind gesture based on “I
read this” “I believe that”, it’s not that
you see. It’s a core disposition of trust, of well being,
integrity. And of course the root of that is no-self,
self-surrender, self-forgotten. Embracing reality all
together even though you you can’t comprehend it in your
mind. But embracing it, a disposition of self-giving.
That shows itself in a human being as a sign of true
sanity, true sanity. Well being in the midists of all that
mortal display that bodily manifested beings suffer.
Further readings:
What
does Full Enlightenment look like?