The Process of Depth – Adi Da Samraj

The process of the Way of the Heart is fundamentally the process in depth. And, all throughout the Great Tradition, that is the principle that is “taken advantage of”, so to speak. It is the Law, the unique principle in the midst of conditional experiencing – the fact that there is a depth, and it is there in every present moment, to be entered into as you like. You can live in such a fashion that you cultivate that capability that is sadhana or the religious and Spiritual life because there is this depth – this whole vast domain, deeper than ordinary waking awareness, which is there to be explored, or (otherwise) examined and gone beyond, as in the Way of the Heart. And this depth is always there, no matter what realm, experience, condition, or whatever, of pain or pleasure or any mode at all of experiencing, waking, or dreaming, or (ultimately) even sleeping. There is a greater depth, and that is the Way of the Heart. That is the Heart.

To enter into the depth is always the option. Mankind, as well as the non-humans, has been exploring this for uncountable generations. There have always been people and schools and ashrams, groups, whatever, wherever, in whatever culture, who have persisted in this process. There are many traditions for it. They seem to contradict one another in various ways because they’re all local to some then-known universe of associations. When any local tradition gets in conjunction with some other tradition it grew up without, that wasn’t associated with it before, each of them has an integrity as a body of wisdom-communications, but they don’t seem to fit, so they get into conflict and struggle with one another, each claiming to be the one. Neither one of them is the one-only the One is the one.

Whatever you brought out of your jungle, somebody else brought something else out of their bit of the jungle. The traditions are reflections of the “considerations” of people in the past. However reliably or unreliably transmitted through time, that’s what they reflect.

In every generation there are many who examine this capability and mystery that is depth. Now, the human gathering of traditions going on for all so long has shown itself as a pattern of six stages of life and Realization, and I have proven this to you in The Basket of Tolerance by gathering books reflecting all of those traditions and showing you how it is so and what that is based on, what the structure of the human being and of psycho-physical experience is, and so on. And that’s how come there are those six stages. They’re all based on the psycho-physical pattern of progressively deepening experience, waking to dreaming to sleeping, and then beyond.

These experiences, experiments, reflected in the history of human cultures, even separate from one another, are still demonstrating the same fundamental categories of “consideration” and development, because the structure, the psycho-physical structure, of the human being is the same in people, even though they do not associate with one another historically (for a long period of time, at any rate), and then come to meet somewhere down the line.

Why are there the similarities? Because the same structure is there. And why must the differences be overcome? Because there’s only one structure there.

See more of original talk, The Four Yanas of Buddhism