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An excerpt from:
THE “BRIGHTENING” WAY TALK
SERIES
The Yajna Discourses of Santosha Adi
Da (1995-1996)
PROLOGUE
A Mastered Life
DEVOTEE:: It feels as though,
Beloved, that when you relax the conceptual mind, the
perceptual mind is felt at heart.
AVATARA ADI DA: Mm? And that’s a
perception.
DEVOTEE: But it also shows you the
deepest place to relax into.
AVATARA ADI DA: Yes, well, what if
you do that?
What if you relax that perception,
too? In other words, where there is no contraction
whatsoever.
If there’s no contraction, then
you’re not merely experiencing but in some inherent sense
Realizing What Is , because you’re not adding anything.
There’s no “you” in the active sense affecting What Is. So
you’re not experiencing What Is through any kind of medium
of thought or sensation.
it’s just It.
If you feel It utterly, then the
perceptual mind that is even aware of your own physical form
relaxes and there are no boundaries. And no separate self.
[pause]
There are levels of emotion in it
that follow, rather formless-positive emotions, negative
emotions. That’s just another modification of
Energy.
Feel through each of
those.
Add absolutely nothing to What Is.
[pause]
There’s a kind of anxiety at the
root of it. That’s the ego knot. Feel through it.
[very long pause, several
minutes]
Now do you see how much further
you’d have to go to allow it completely? [Devotees
answer that they do.]
So you have to do the sadhana, you
see. [long pause]
DEVOTEE: Beloved, that was a very
extraordinary experience, because I felt like it began with
the conceptual mind relaxing to begin with, as we have
talked about.
AVATARA ADI DA: Mm-hm.
DEVOTEE: And now all kinds of
perceptions when we were just silent there. And then even
those perceptions kind of all being just eliminated down to
what felt like was the contraction at the core here. And at
the same time I was seeing You, just Witnessing You. It was
like I could simply see Who You Are. And I felt like there
were moments when I would just evaporate into That in some
sense, that this knot was forgotten for a split second, but
then it was right there.
AVATARA ADI DA: Mm-hm.
DEVOTEE: It was so strongly there.
And I felt, apart from conceptions and perceptions and so
on, that that was simply going to be there until completely
purified by sadhana. There was no way of thinking it through
or perceiving it through. It was simply there. And I felt
what needed to be surrendered in order for that to be
transcended.
AVATARA ADI DA: Yes, if you really
feel that knot, you don’t want to feel it. Hm? But it is the
ground of your ordinary life. You try to distract yourself
from it constantly, through seeking and self-indulgence and
whatnot. But if you really find out about yourself, find
this knot, find what your real experience is, then you won’t
want to put up with that. It will oblige you to do sadhana,
to feel constantly more and more beyond it.
DEVOTEE: Beloved, I feel this. I
feel this need to go beyond that, what this illusion is,
very strongly now. it’s something that You Gave me this
year.
AVATARA ADI DA: Tcha.
DEVOTEE: I feel that it’s such a
profound vision to see life as an illusion. The Beauty of
What is other than that, you know, is just Shining more and
more to me.
AVATARA ADI DA: Mm-hm.
But to Realize It you must utterly
relinquish your self-position. So that doesn’t make life a
negative. That just means that that’s what life is about.
Life is inherently, by Law, sadhana, God-wardness, going
beyond separate self.
Generally, people don’t seem to know
anything about that. So by Grace you may become aware of it,
and no longer be willing to be distracted by your cover-up,
to keep yourself somehow or other unaware of it and becoming
very, then, superficial, peripheral, in your mind, your
body, your feelings. But all the time you’re motivated by
it. You re always seeking something or other. You even
forget what the hell you’re seeking. Or in one moment or
other it’s this, that, or the other particular thing, but
always avoiding the knowledge, the discovery, of your own
action that is producing all of that.
So it is a Grace to find it out. But
it is not in itself Graceful. In other words, it’s not a
mere pleasure to find this knot, you see, if, having found
It out, you must do sadhana. Otherwise, well, maybe you’ll
forget a little bit again by getting very superficial, but
you’ll give up the opportunity to deal with it.
DEVOTEE: Beloved, I feel that
everything in the world is about that. That is all it’s
about, is avoiding that.
AVATARA ADI DA: Avoiding this
knowledge of this knot. The whole worlds avoiding this
knowledge of the knot.
DEVOTEE: Everything that I’ve done,
even in Your Company and the practice that You’ve Given us,
I’ve had to come to see that everything I do, everything I
do, everything I do, …
AVATARA ADI DA: Mm.
DEVOTEE: … is intentionally
keeping me from feeling that and going beyond
that.
AVATARA ADI DA: Well, truly, you’re
only willing to feel that knot that motivates you when you
simultaneously, Gracefully, discover What Transcends it and
are Given a Wisdom that communicates itself to you so that
you know how to go beyond it. In other words, individuals
will automatically dissociate from this depth unless they
can somehow come to terms with it through the Graceful
discovery of What Transcends it and the finding of Wisdom to
deal with it.
So when all those things coincide,
and all of a sudden you find you’re able to feel this thing
that motivates you, this knot, this disturbance, because you
know that there’s something you can do about it, then there
is the What to Realize that’s beyond it.
But still the sadhana is a matter of
actually dealing with this dis-ease. In other words, the
religious life, this Way in particular, is not about
consolation merely and distraction and so forth, in the
conventional sense, or ego-supporting sense. The process,
moment to moment, goes beyond the self-contraction,
particularly as hearing awakens. that’s when there is most
profound understanding, knowing of this self-contraction,
and that it is your own activity. But even the sadhana from
the beginning is about going beyond this knot and not
avoiding it through conventional-mindedness and consolation
and such.
So the actual process is to stay in
place, in this place of separate self, surrendering to Me,
to the point of self-forgetting Communion with Me, true
going beyond it. Its that from the beginning, not merely
after hearing. Even from the beginning it is so. But you
have to understand that that’s what the sadhana is about, or
you will miss the point and think the religious life is
about consolation or mere behavior and so forth.
You are to stand in that position of
that knot, feeling your own dis-ease, motivation.
DEVOTEE:: it’s so painful just to
feel that, though.
AVATARA ADI DA: But it’s there
anyway. [DEVOTEE: Yeah.] So you must embrace this
Way and actually go beyond it.
But that means you have to endure it
over the period of your sadhana. There’s not only the
fundamental knot itself. There are all of it’s reflections
in the body-mind, tendencies of one kind or another, and so
on. You have to endure the purification of these things by
standing in the knot-position, sensitive to all the
limitations of your disposition, and surrender to Me to the
point of forgetting it, relinquishing it, keeping the
faculties all focused in Me, in this Communion Only then do
you make this knot obsolete.
You initially go through a process
of purification where the resultant knots, the different
kinds of behaviors, attitudes, and so forth, that bind you
appear. These must be purified through the initial stages of
sadhana, even up to the “Perfect Practice”. So the initial
sadhana is purifying, and it’s necessarily, then, a matter
of being in touch with this knot in life-difficulties and so
on, all tendencies that would make life difficult. Instead
of dramatizing them, maintain the discipline of this Way and
practice this Communion every moment.
In this manner you will be purified
by this Communion with Me in all those areas that are
relaxed, forgotten, disciplined. So that more and more the
practice becomes extraordinarily concentrated, not in
peripheral matters of experiencing and so on but in the root
itself. And then the “Perfect Practice” can begin. So, once
sufficient purification has occurred, that there is this
extraordinary concentration, then suddenly My Instruction
about the Witness becomes inherently Obvious and is
thereafter not something that can be forgotten.
it’s not a something that can be
forgotten. it’s not merely a thought. it’s a noticing that
you never forget. Its a noticing even beyond the
mind.
Now, you can notice it, of course,
for a moment, if I Call you to.
[Beloved Adi Das Voice becomes
quiet.] I mean, isn’t it true, right now? No matter what
is arising, you are the Witness of it? [Quiet assent
from devotees.]
But to Stand in the Witness-Position
Itself, truly, requires purification of attention, and
therefore of the bondage signs in the body-mind altogether,
and in life, experience.
So sadhana is tapas. You must be in
the place of the knot, sensitive to the limitations in your
own disposition, but in every moment-instead of dramatizing
that-disciplining it, surrendering it to Me, entering into
Communion with Me by forgetting the content that is simply
the garbage result of not living in Truth in the past. So it
has to be made obsolete. All the modifications of the
fundamental Reality must be purified and transcended. What
there is to Realize is the Unconditional Reality, the
Reality that is Always Already the case, even
now.
Now you are preoccupied with the
modifications of that Reality, that Divine Reality,
distracted by them and dissociated from the fundamental
Reality by this very knot. You must enter into depth, no
superficiality, as you did in the first part of this
consideration. Ordinarily you are not doing so in the
fullest or stable sense, you see. And so as soon as you
relax into your just fundamental feeling, you feel a knot
there. You don’t simply feel the inherent Love-Bliss of
Reality-but you do feel It, Flowing through it, but you’re
experiencing this knot in the midst of It. To Realize the
Divine Self-Condition, you have to go beyond that
knot.
So it’s not really a matter of
thinking, accumulating experience, and so on. it’s a matter
of being established in that place, surrendering to Me to
the point of self-forgetting. And this allows a course of
purification and development that becomes the “Perfect
Practice” and ultimately the seventh stage Demonstration. It
is truly an inevitable process, able to go by it’s
appropriate stages and so forth, unless you step outside the
process itself and become superficial again. But if you stay
with the process itself, as I have Given it to you
altogether, then the development is inevitable.
So if your development in this Way
is slow, its because you’re stepping outside the process.
it’s not that the process itself is retarded.
This is why the hearing matter is so
profound and fundamental to this Way. it’s the foundation of
the process that must develop, because it’s about finding
the self-knot, the self-contraction, finding it as your own
activity, feeling it’s disturbed, ill-at-ease characteristic
but also even in every moment of such sensitivity enjoying
the capability to feel beyond it in this Communion with
Me.
So hearing is the first great step
beyond the initiation of Ishta-Guru-Bhakti Yoga. In other
words, the first dimension of the process is concentrated in
the awakening of hearing, because you must enjoy and suffer
this capability to stand in the egoic position and feel
beyond it. If you don’t do that, then if you faked your way
on to level 2 and then beyond and so forth, you’d simply be
involved in a kind of evolutionary or developmental
ego-game. Whereas the Way of the Heart is about the
transcendence of egoity.
DEVOTEE: I saw that, Beloved, when I
was Contemplating You. I was feeling this knot of
self-contraction and the Bliss of Your Beautiful Form at the
same time. I felt Your Current of Energy, and It threw me
back into the sense of the descending Current and something
like “the Thumbs”. But when that happened, I lost sight of
the self-contraction and I also lost sight of the Bliss of
Your Form. So there was something about the …
AVATARA ADI DA: You lost sight of
that, too?
DEVOTEE: [Laughs.] When that
happened, I just noticed that I got absorbed in myself
rather than in You.
AVATARA ADI DA: Tcha.
DEVOTEE: That was an example of the
fact that I’m not hearing. Just even that moment of
distraction, I could feel it as such.
AVATARA ADI DA: Mm-hm. Because
you’re experiencing it as an event happening to You. Whereas
hearing is about that unique understanding in which the
self-contraction is not something happening to you. it’s
something that you do. Only when that is discovered have you
discovered the capability itself, so that you can continue
doing it. it’s a unique discovery, most profound discovery.
And it’s the basis for the rest of the Way of the Heart.
it’s what allows it to be a truly ego-transcending process
and not merely a developmental or ego-evolving
process.
DEVOTEE: There’s never been anything
like it, Beloved.
AVATARA ADI DA: Tcha.
it’s also for this reason that in
the general case the transition from maturity at level 3,
the transition can be made at that point to the “Perfect
Practice”, in the general case. Because the Way is not an
evolutionary process, but it’s about ego-transcendence, and
that’s the fundamental understanding associated with true
hearing. So in general what follows from there is simply the
fundamental process of seeing Me, not merely having
Spiritual experiences in My Company but “Locating” Me, and
then the next step is the “Perfect Practice”.
So hearing is what allows that
unique process. It has some features to it for which you can
find analogies in the Great Tradition, but fundamentally it
is utterly unique.
DEVOTEE: So Beloved, when someone is
seeing, that person never loses sight of Your
Form.
AVATARA ADI DA: Yes. you’re entered
into My Form, not merely having experiences in your own
apparent form, or body-mind, you see, but felt beyond that
into My Spiritual Person. Then the Force of My Spiritual
Attraction will draw you into the heart place on the right,
and the “Perfect Practice” can begin.
DEVOTEE: Beloved, I remember one
time when I was driving up to the Mountain Of Attention here
when I was living in Marin. I was a single person at the
time. And I believe it was during the time of the Love of
the God-Man Celebration. I had never seen You before. I was
relatively new. Anyway, for a moment as I was driving my
car, I happened to look across at these two people driving
alongside me. They were an older couple. But it was like You
Said, for a moment I was in the Witness-Position, just for-I
don’t know how long it was. But it just became very clear
that it was the state that I’m never in, or very, very,
rarely.
AVATARA ADI DA: it’s not uncommon
for people to report something like this, though, having
either occasional or frequent experiences of that
kind.
DEVOTEE: I did recognize that it was
through Your Grace that I was allowed to Witness
this.
from:
THE “BRIGHTENING” WAY TALK
SERIES
The Yajna Discourses of Santosha Adi
Da (1995-1996)
PROLOGUE
A Mastered Life
A Gathering “Consideration” with Adi
Da Samraj
Sugar Bowl Ski Resort,
California
December 29, 1995
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