My Bright Word
Chapter 12
Adi Da Samraj
No “One” Survives Beyond That Moment
DEVOTEE: Beloved Heart-Master, are we evolving?
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: What do you think?
DEVOTEE: I think we are evolving toward the astral.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: What is so good about “astral”?
DEVOTEE: Well, nothing. But, as far as evolution goes, there is a constant change. Is it constant change? Where are we going? What is it doing for us? What is it?
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: Is it?
DEVOTEE: Well, it seems to be, but I am in a dilemma. Is evolution part of the dilemma?
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: There is this dilemma.
DEVOTEE: There is dilemma. Yes. Then it is part of the dilemma.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: What is the question?
DEVOTEE: Now I am really confused.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: In this concern for “evolution”, are you really talking about something?
DEVOTEE: I do not really understand what evolution is, or even if there is evolution.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: That is true.
DEVOTEE: That there is no evolution?
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: That you do not know.
DEVOTEE: Yes.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: What you know is this dilemma, this confusion, this ignorance about your own propositions. That is the truth of it. That is your experience. “Evolution” does not really exist as your experience. You are not certain of it-of its existence, of its quality, of its nature, of its direction, of its relationship to you. You know nothing whatsoever about it. Why are you bringing it up?
The truth is that you are confused. There is this dilemma. There is suffering. Questions about evolution are completely beside the point. Such questions, for the time being, are nothing but a means of drawing attention away from your actual state, of temporarily distracting yourself from that confusion.
You could take the abstract category of “evolution” and talk about it from many different points of view. You could generate all kinds of mind-forms relative to “evolution”. But, after you have said it all, no real experience will have been added, and you will remain in the same state as when you first asked the question.
Therefore, your question about evolution is not your real question. Your real question is your own actual state. That is the question you are truly asking, the question you are always asking. You present your very life to the world in the form of a question.
You are this real question. But you conceal the question from your ordinary conscious awareness. Therefore, the question exists only as your chronic state-your suffering, your search, your dilemma.
Ordinarily, you do not verbally ask your real question. You only live it and enact it – as seeking, suffering, and death. Sadhana is the means whereby human beings become conscious of their real question.
Just so, the “answer”, so called, to your real question has nothing whatsoever to do with evolution, or any other arbitrary topic the mind can select for discussion. The true answer is not in the form of a verbal response to an abstract question. The true answer must be a “radical” (or “gone-to-the-root”) transformation of your state. That root-transformation is the true answer to your question. And, if this state that you are always in – this confusion, this dilemma-is utterly overcome, then the nature of life and world becomes obvious. My Answer to My devotee comes in the context of the discipline of real conditions, demands for functional action – the sadhana which is always generated in My Avataric Divine Company.
There is absolutely no point whatsoever in talking about evolution. Your concern over evolution is an arbitrary distraction you have selected from the pattern of your own tendencies. You have chosen this particular concern from among the general confusion of your ordinary state – whereas it is your confusion itself that should be your genuine concern. All your questions are forms of this dilemma, this state of confusion. Every question is in the form of a dilemma, and every verbal or mental dilemma is an expression of the underlying state that shapes every moment of the usual life.
The arbitrary formulation of “questions”, of artifices to occupy the mind, is a means of distracting yourself from your own state of dilemma. To do so is a form of self-indulgence. To answer such questions (in and of themselves) is only to serve bewilderment, unconsciousness, fear, ignorance, and all the qualities of seeking and suffering.
You are bewildered and confused by the total complex of your tendencies – and now you want to talk about evolution. What has that got to do with anything? Your own suffering is presently manifesting itself. Understanding and transcending that suffering-and, thereby allowing the process of true “egodeath” – is the matter of importance.
DEVOTEE: The suffering just goes on and on and on. It never seems to stop.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: Death. That is what you want to get away from. You want to “evolve” into the astral world in order to escape natural death-and to escape the necessary ultimate “death” of the ego, the “death” of the chronic activity of separation and separativeness. There is no elimination of death, no ultimately successful avoidance of death. You are trying to prevent your own ego-death-this very and ultimate crisis-by occupying yourself with abstract questions.
DEVOTEE: But that is the only answer-ego-death. Why do we keep fighting and fighting?
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: Keep fighting what?
DEVOTEE: This thing. We know we are fighting it – and, yet, we cannot seem to avoid it. Why are we avoiding it? How do we get out of this?
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: The desire to “get out of this” is another form of the same avoidance. A real transformation – in the form of the conflict, the crisis, you are now experiencing – has already begun in you. That conflict, that crisis, has become intensified. You are beginning to find your real question. It is your own death. That is the significant event. There is no distraction from it. There is no consolation for it. It is an undeniable reality.
Evolution makes no difference. Migration to the astral planes makes no difference. None of that changes your chronic state. The crisis would still be necessary, no matter where in all the worlds you happened to appear. This crisis is the necessary event of all life. Going to the astral planes does not change that necessity. “Radical” self-understanding is still required.
The question about evolution represents a form of concern, a search. That is what is communicated to Me by your question. Your question has no real content other than your seeking. It is only because this crisis is occurring that you have the least interest in evolution. If you are dying, there is no evolution. In that case, what do you care whether the billions that remain behind you are transformed into ducks or luminous red astral bodies? Your death is the only remaining content of your life. From the point of view of your experience, there is no evolution. There is only sudden death. But ego-death is the Real process. The death of the ego is the very crisis in consciousness that serves both Truth and life.
When you awaken from a dream, you are not thereafter concerned for the destiny of those who appeared along with you in the dream. There is no such destiny. There is no one left behind. All that appears in the great cosmic process is a spontaneous display, like the conditions that appear in dreams. All of that goes on in any case.
Now, however, you are beginning to see the more fundamental condition underlying your adventure of distraction in the cosmic event. In the past, you did not see it, or know it for what it was. To the degree you felt it at all, it was an undefined sensation, a discomfort, a sort of formless craziness, a wildness. But now you are beginning to know what it really is. Now you are beginning to know it as your chronic state. You will come to observe and understand it as your own activity. You are beginning to be aware of it more or less continually. That continuous awareness is essential to the self-purifying sadhana of Real religious and Spiritual life.
DEVOTEE: Even a Realized being must follow certain patterns and rules. Otherwise, the chakras will not open. There are laws which cannot be disregarded. So there is, in fact, a pattern, isn’t there?
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: A pattern of what?
DEVOTEE: A pattern by which the universe is ordered. Even someone who has Realized the Heart must go by certain signs along the way. It is different for each person, but still there are rules.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: If it is different in each case, what is the common pattern?
DEVOTEE: There is no pattern that fits everyone, but still there are patterns existing.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: Of course, there are apparent patterns in life. But the True Divine Heart is not somewhere else. The True Divine Heart is not a point separate from every other point. The True Divine Heart is not to be found by going in a certain direction. The True Divine Heart is not the end of any particular road. The True Divine Heart is not the goal.
If you are speaking of the causal center, the heart-center on the right side of the chest, it is (indeed) a point, a place, a psycho-physical sensation. But “the Heart” is another term for the One Unqualified Reality.
DEVOTEE: That becomes true once someone Realizes the Heart. But, between the time the person is only approaching the Heart and the time that one actually Realizes the Heart, there are still patterns.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: They are your own patterns. They are your apparent condition. They are the ego-patterning that give rise to dilemma and seeking. When My devotee lives in perfect Satsang with Me, I Establish a living relationship with the individual, and then it no longer makes any difference to My devotee what his or her apparent patterns are. From that moment, the patterns are merely observed. A unique Condition is lived – and, because My devotee constantly turns to Me, these patterns become obsolete. They fall away, until only the True Divine Heart Stands Out.
From the point of view of My true devotee, there is no significance to the patterns. There is no significance. “Significance” is your dilemma. It is the pattern of your own mind-forms always based on limited point of view. That limited point of view is the only thing that obstructs Most Perfect Realization of Consciousness Itself. Consciousness Itself is neither external nor internal. All that arises is only a modification of Consciousness Itself, Which Is the Divine Self-Condition and Source-Condition of all-and-All.
When (by Means of My Avataric Divine Spiritual Grace) this is most perfectly understood, the True Divine Heart is Most Perfectly Realized. From the “Point of View” of the True Divine Heart, there is no subject, no object, no inside, no outside, no physical universe, no astral world. All such phenomena are simply apparent modifications of the Divine Heart Itself.
Until you truly enter into Satsang with Me, you are very much concerned about your remedial path, about the pattern of your own growth and experience, your own transformation, your own liberation. But, when you enter into the Condition of Satsang with Me, your concerns, your path, your patterns become obsolete. All of that is simply not supported. You simply live the Condition of Satsang with Me and the conditions of relationship generated in My Avataric Divine Company, and the patterns subside. They become obsolete, without function.
Therefore, concern for those patterns is more evidence of the search, of the fundamental dilemma. All developments within the cosmic domain are limited to the cosmic domain. No such development implies or leads to Reality Itself. All such developments lead to limits within the cosmic domain itself-to more states, more change, more phenomena. In and of itself, no such development obviates the dilemma that is the result of self-contraction. There is no action that leads to My “Bright” Divine Self-Domain. Truth requires the observation, understanding, and transcending of motivation and action.
You are always already “There”. This Is It. There is no dilemma. There is only One Reality, presently. It is not somewhere else. It is not hidden within you, nor behind the world. It is only Obvious. Satsang with Me is the Condition of Reality, consciously lived. It is lived to you, within you, as you. It is that Real Condition lived as life, as a pressure upon My devotee. I Live the Real Condition to My devotee, such that It begins to become Obvious and Intelligent in My devotee. The Real Nature of the arising event, the apparent condition, becomes clear.
When you are My devotee, it becomes obvious to you that your dilemma is your own activity. You see that, in fact, there is no dilemma. There is nothing about your present-time experience that is not Truth. Satsang with Me is the Real Condition. It is the Condition of Truth itself. It is the Condition of heart -relationship to Me. When you enter into it consciously, with any degree of clarity, you have begun to live under the conditions of Truth Itself. And that is the entire process. That is Real religious life, Real Spiritual life-Real life altogether. Everything else is an extension (or another reflection) of your search, your dilemma, your dis-ease. When this Real Condition is truly lived, whatever arises tends to be consumed.
II.
DEVOTEE: Master, is it possible to remain in the Condition of Satsang with You by exercising the will?
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: Apparently not. You can maintain yourself responsibly as My devotee, and fulfill the specific conditions I Require, but to consciously live the Condition of relationship to Me depends on My Avataric Divine Grace.
Everyone constantly tends to live as if separate. Even when you begin to sense My Unique Blessing-Presence, Which is the Transmitted Power of the True Divine Heart, you resist and defend yourself and hide your disability, discomfort, dilemma. You approach Me with argumentation, self-defense, the endless formulations of your own mind, and with suggestions that maybe “It’s all right anyway.” You continue to play your game, presuming that I am a captured audience for your act.
When you enter into Satsang with Me, you no longer have the separate-self-sense as your primary instrument. The activity that is the ego has become obsolete. It may continue to arise and obsess you, but Satsang with Me has become your Condition. The Process of the True Divine Heart Performs your sadhana and Holds On to you. My Divine Grace Manifests within the life-drama of My devotee. My Divine Grace makes it possible for you to maintain your sadhana, the living practice of your connection to Me – until you become responsible enough to assume the devotional relationship to Me Spiritually, as your responsibility, as your Real Condition. Then you are given responsibilities that will test, prove, and awaken in you all the qualities of My true devotee.
DEVOTEE: What are the responsibilities of someone who is seriously doing sadhana? For years, I have fluctuated between everything from total self-indulgence to forty-day fasts-and I still find myself unable to eat moderately. I do not think that this is a responsible way to live. And, yet, it is inappropriate to be always compulsively “responsible”. If I do not eat properly, I become less conscious, I sleep more, and I get lightheaded.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: The point of view that you are expressing is the point of view of dilemma, of suffering-which has nothing to do with Truth. Right alignment to Truth itself is what people are constantly (though largely unconsciously) trying to destroy, by all kinds of means. Excessive fasting, excessive eating, self-indulgence of all kinds, deprivation of all kinds, turning inward, turning outward, ascetic practices, “ordinary” practices all of these are only strategic attempts to overcome the fundamental sense of dilemma and suffering. None of that has anything to do with Illumination (or Truth). All of that is suffering.
The real question is not how to become responsible. The real question is the state you are in. And the real answer is not in the form of a verbal response to verbally expressed dilemmas, or even apparently actual life-dilemmas. The real answer is the transcending of your self-contracted state.
You will continue to seek (by all possible means) to be free of the dilemma as you perceive it, until the forms of your seeking all of which are reactions to the root-condition (or dilemma) that is your suffering-cease to occupy you. When you come to the point where the force of your life is no longer fully captured by your search, when you know that your search is failing, that your search does not produce salvation, when you fall from ordinary fascination into a crisis, a form of despair, of doubt – then, at that point, you have become deeply available for Satsang with Me, for the heart-relationship to Me which is True religious and Spiritual life.
Satsang with Me is the answer. Satsang with Me is the process and Condition wherein the dilemma is undone. No spoken or written word, but (rather) the very relationship to Me, the Living True Divine Heart, is the Real answer. The answer is not in the form of an ego-serving method, a strategic technique, or a conceptual system that addresses your particular notions of human existence. The answer is the Self-Evident Manifestation of Truth, and that answer undermines that very structure in your conscious awareness that supports your entire search.
This becomes a Real possibility only when you have begun to suffer from your search, when you have begun to sense its failure, when you are no longer totally occupied by it. Then you become available to Satsang with Me. And Satsang with Me is non-support of your dilemma, non-support of your search.
In Satsang with Me, all your techniques fall away, all fascination with your search subsides, all your remedial methods become ridiculous. Your entire life ceases to obsess you. Your egoic need for “liberation” no longer interests you. Your life becomes the progressive Realization of Truth, the Enjoyment of My Avataric Divine Company, until the form of self-contracted awareness in which you ordinarily rest is utterly dissolved. In Satsang with Me, an entirely new and living form of intelligence replaces your ordinary strategic mentality.
Some individuals become involved in an incredible adventure of remedial Spiritual techniques. They apply themselves to techniques of living, techniques of subjective and psychological states, seeker’s meditation, seeker’s diet, and all the rest. Such individuals come to Me imbued with the moods of conventional Spirituality and philosophy. Others are more ordinary, coming to Me after a life-equally traditional-of self-indulgence.
Everyone comes to Satsang with Me in the midst of an egoic adventure of some kind. All come with the same fundamental dilemma-but each one communicates it through particular artifices, through a unique adventure. In essence, all adventures are a description of the same state: the self-contraction, the fundamental dis-ease, the avoidance of relationship. That is everyone’s condition.
From the point of view of the real question – the actual dilemma – the most auspicious thing that can possibly happen is to enter into Satsang with Me. True religious and Spiritual life is not a strategic (or ego-based and ego-bound) technique, method, remedy, or path. True religious and Spiritual life is the Real relationship to the Adept Spiritual Master. It has always been so. Therefore – rightly, and most fundamentally – nothing is offered in My Avataric Divine Company apart from the devotional (and, in due course, Spiritual) relationship to Me, the True Divine Guru.
Relationship itself is the principle and condition of life. Therefore, rightly, the heart-relationship to Me is the single and great Principle of sadhana in My Avataric Divine Company, the single and great Medium of Truth, the one “Method” of Realization. Truly, the heart-relationship to Me is the Condition and the Medium through Which all the necessary and appropriate developments occur in My devotee’s progressive practice of the Way of Adidam. And those developments occur spontaneously, by Means of My Avataric Divine Grace.
In Satsang with Me, My devotee has become available to Truth Itself, Reality Itself – such that Truth Itself, Reality Itself, has become the Divinely Effective Means for My devotee’s Illumination. Up to that point, the individual has been too much focused in egoic preoccupations to be Illumined. First, My devotee must fall from search and fascination, into the crisis of his or her ordinary state.
It is very difficult for human beings to achieve ordinariness. In order to be able to live in Satsang with Me, however, My devotee must become capable of being ordinary. Human beings are extremely inventive – eminently capable of the extraordinary, the adventure, the search. But the ordinary is extremely difficult, because of the principle of seeking on which human beings base their lives.
When you truly enter into Satsang with Me, when it becomes your real circumstance of life, then you suddenly become capable of ordinariness, of simplicity. Ordinariness simply becomes appropriate. It is not in the least connected with anything compulsive, anything like the discipline a seeker might embrace.
As My devotee, your functional simplicity is obvious and natural, because action has been released from its connection with the search for Truth, the search for Liberation. Any egobound effort that is touted as a means to Truth belongs to the adventure of seeking and its dilemma. All such ego-efforts are part of the adventure of extra-ordinariness. Only Truth Itself, Satsang Itself, Free of seeking, is the Means whereby Truth is Realized.
When you are released from the pursuit of Truth, you simply live It. When you live Satsang with Me as the Condition of life, Communion with Truth replaces the search for Truth. All your ordinary functions become truly ordinary when you are released from the search to Realize Truth. Therefore, in Satsang with Me, your life becomes ordinary, functional.
There is no reason why diet, for example, should be manipulated as if it were, in and of itself, a means to Realize Truth. Nor should diet be considered an obstruction to Truth. In and of itself, the ingestion of food has nothing whatsoever to do with Truth. Neither food-indulgence nor food-righteousness is the Way of Truth.
DEVOTEE: What seems to matter is whether I am willing to put my attention on the Truth. If, for example, I am overeating, I will not be in a condition to put my attention on Truth.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: You cannot “put your attention on” Truth in any case. Truth is not an “object”. Truth only appears to be an object from the point of view of the same search that alternately motivates you to indulge yourself and to restrain your self-indulgent tendencies. Truth cannot be concentrated upon even by a mind that is clear and free. Truth cannot be “noticed”. It is not an object. It does not appear within your view. Truth is the Context within which you and all your points of view are appearing.
DEVOTEE: Instead of “putting attention on Truth”, would it be correct to say “to experience more consciously”?
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: Experiencing has nothing to do with Truth. Truth cannot be experienced, nor is Truth an experience. Neither is Truth experience itself.
All these expressions you have used have the same form. As far as Truth goes, there is nothing to be said. There is no verbal communication that is the exact equivalent of Truth Itself. All of the descriptions you might give of the unique form of your adventure have the same form, the same structure. Indeed, your questions are a strategy whereby you prevent the Realization of Truth. Your concerns are a means to avoid self-understanding.
Truth always appears to the seeker as a kind of alternative. But Truth is not an alternative. Truth is the Very Consciousness, the Very Nature, the Very Condition of all-and-All. Truth cannot be concentrated upon. Truth is not an object. Truth is not something you can become interested in. Truth is not something you can be distracted from. Your interests, your distractions, your noticings, your experiencings-all are expressions (or modifications) of Reality Itself. But you are not living them as such. Therefore, you are constantly obsessed with alternatives, with particular distractions, noticings, and experiencings. Alternatives are all that you have.
When you no longer have any alternatives, when the search has died, then Truth becomes your Real possibility. But Truth is not an alternative. It is not in the form of a specific answer to a specific question. It is not something perceived. It is not something that serves you, as the (actively presumed) limited and separate subject. It is not something that Liberates you, as an apparently separate person. It has nothing to do with you, as a presumed separate “one”. It cannot be Realized by you as a presumed separate “one”. Truth is Known only in the Realization of Non separateness, in Most Perfect Self-Identification with Truth Itself.
There is no conditional state equivalent to Truth. Every conditional state is a limitation. In the descriptions associated with the traditional religious and Spiritual paths, there are conditional experiences and conditional states that are (erroneously) identified with Truth Itself (or Reality Itself). Some traditions say that Truth is equal to (or necessarily coincident with) a vision of Krishna. For others, Truth must be samadhi in the form of an ascended Yogic trance – either with associated visionary phenomena or (otherwise) without the least trace of form (whether objective or subjective). Still others equate Truth with a concentrated return of the natural life-energy to the sahasrar, a vision of Light, or some other esoteric (but, nonetheless, conditional) signal of the Divine.
But all of these are forms of experience, of conditionality. They may be sublime, but they appear only as alternatives to other, more “ordinary” experiences. No experience, in and of itself, is Truth. And no experience, in and of itself, is the sign of Truth, the “symptom” (or the necessary accompaniment) of Truth.
Truth Is That Which Stands Out As Reality when there is “radical” understanding of the entire process of experience, when there is the absolute vanishing of identification with alternatives (or the entire self-contracted scheme of seeking). Therefore, Truth involves the “radical” understanding even of that which is extraordinary. Until such understanding is the case, all events in life whether ordinary or extraordinary – are merely the objects of egoic fascination.
It is the memory of experiences – the persistent bondage to your own patterns that result from experience-that generates the goals of seeking. Experiential impressions (in the form of tendencies) continue to fascinate people and reinforce their obsession with the notion that life is made of alternatives, such that the usual individual is doing nothing but continually playing this drama of alternatives. One day, a person is going toward the “experience” of Truth – another day, toward experience itself (usually of a very “human” variety). One day, a person is pursuing samadhi the next day, the very same person is a devotee of sexual fascination. But it is always the same egoic adventure.
What appeared (in the past) to be the great moments of your life did not become wisdom. All you are left with are the modifications that reflect those moments. Truth does not appear in the form of a drama of experiences and alternatives. Truth can only appear when that entire array of experiences and alternatives the entire adventure, the entire force of ordinary and extraordinary experience, the entire drama of seeking-begins to wind down, when it ceases to occupy you mightily, and you are stuck with your actual condition, your suffering.
The Real Spiritual process in My Avataric Divine Company takes place only when there is this crisis in consciousness. It does not take place in the context of your adventure of seeking. The Real Spiritual process in My Avataric Divine Company takes place only when you understand and transcend the root-activity of self contraction that motivates your entire adventure. Such “radical” self-understanding becomes possible for you only in Satsang with Me, when you truly heart-recognize Me and heart-respond to Me-and only when the force of your ordinary and extraordinary adventure has begun to die.
DEVOTEE: I feel a hesitancy to give up that aspect of the search.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: Good, very good. That is it exactly. Two types of people come to Me. Those who have died to their search, and those who still have a couple of games left to play. Relative to those who still have the search in mind, there is no condemnation – no praise, no blame. That is the reality of their condition. The search is still their occupation. They have not come for Truth. The Truth has nothing whatsoever to do with them. The search, the adventure among alternatives, is what possesses them. The search is what possesses all human beings, until it begins to die. Then the Truth becomes possible.
When you no longer have genuine alternatives, when you no longer have the option of your own preferences, when you no longer have the capability to persist, to survive, in the form of your search, then Satsang with Me becomes something more than academic. Until that time, all human beings are talking about the same thing: their adventure! That is what they are talking about. They are not the least concerned for the Truth. It has not entered into the picture yet. It is only an amusement, an alternative notion entertained in the midst of ordinary and extraordinary suffering. They are still occupied. Fine. That is why Real religious and Spiritual life becomes a possibility only when the alternatives themselves no longer constitute a real option.
DEVOTEE: How do I bring myself to the point of not wanting?
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: Wanting and not wanting are both forms of the same activity. It is all the same occupation, preoccupation, distraction, fascination-moment to moment.
DEVOTEE: How do I get over that?
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: The desire to get over it is simply more of the adventure. It is the adventure of getting over it. It is all the same. The fact of the matter is that you are self-contracted and all your actions, your desires, and even your questions are only descriptions of that state of self-contraction. The Truth is of another variety. But this lesson about your present and usual state can be useful. It is the first lesson of Wisdom.
If life begins only to hurt, if all the alternatives fall into you, if they cease to be a real option, if you find yourself continually stuck in the crisis in consciousness (the root-form of suffering, on the basis of which your search springs into action)-when that becomes the nature of your daily life, then Truth becomes attractive to you. Then Satsang with Me, Real life, becomes a living possibility. It will be your obvious need when you have no options.
DEVOTEE: I am already aware that none of these things work.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: That is evidence of some small wisdom, because you are becoming exhausted with experience. But the seeker in you still possesses some potency. The seeker is still springing into action, still reacting to the root-dilemma. When the “springing” stops – or when it begins to seem impossible, when the alternatives do not quite “have” you, when the potency of the search begins to decline-then you can truly embrace Real religious and Spiritual life.
When you are no longer attempting to immunize yourself against your suffering, then the Force of Truth, the Force of Reality (Which Is Truth) can begin to move in you. Then truly effective Satsang with Me becomes possible-because, at that point, It has a function. But, while the search is still your “task”, still your fascination, Truth (or Reality) is not really your concern. Until the search is understood, you relate to Truth Itself (or Reality Itself) only as an alternative, a symbol, another form of distraction.
Therefore, as has always been understood in the esoteric traditions, Truth (or Real life) requires passing through a crisis of dilemma (or doubt). That crisis is the “fuel” of Liberation. When the search, the reaction to your dilemma, begins to wind down, to the point that only the dilemma remains only your root-suffering, only your fundamental dis-ease then the Force of Reality begins to move into your life. Then your real question can be answered.
Until then, your questions are your entertainment, your amusement. They have no ultimate importance. They are the forms of preoccupation and unconscious self-description. In that case, “religious life” or “Spiritual life” is only an amusement, only an entertainment. In that case, meditation, reading religious and Spiritual books-all of that-is only another form of erotica, of mere “significance”.
But, when your hunger becomes intelligent, when you become consciously aware of your dis-ease, then the Avataric Divine Truth-Revealed through My Spoken and Written Avataric Divine Siddha-Word, and Revealed by Means of My Avataric Divine Siddha-Form-truly becomes what you require. You become intelligent with that Truth-Revealing Word and Form, and you respond. You recognize Me at heart. Only on that basis does the True Spiritual process, the Real-God-Realizing process, begin. Until you heart-recognize Me and heart-respond to Me, the Real God-Realizing process has not yet begun, has not yet entered the picture in any real sense.
To begin with, everyone is a seeker. But, if you have been brought to examine the futility and the causes of your own adventure, then (at some point) the process will very likely become something more than academic for you.
DEVOTEE: If Truth is the natural State, how did we come to deviate so much from It?
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: You did not come to do it. You are doing it! It is not a caused activity. The sense of separateness, the dilemma, is not something that “happened”, for various reasons, at some point in the past. The self-contraction does not occur for “reasons”. It is always a spontaneous present time activity registered as the sense of separateness, of dilemma. But the selfcontraction is not (itself) the result of anything in the past.
Therefore, the attempt to trace experience back in time-in order to recover the events you are suffering from – is fruitless. That attempt cannot produce Truth as a result because, truly, you are not suffering the results of anything that is past. Suffering is the quality (or mood) of your present activity. Your present activity is your suffering.
At some point, you lose your ability to remain immunized to your own suffering. Then you are in the position to truly observe and understand the self-contraction as your present-time activity. When you observe the self-contraction as your present-time activity, and understand its nature, then it simply stops. It spontaneously comes to an end whenever such self-understanding occurs-for self-understanding makes the self-contraction obsolete, without a present-time function. But the precise nature of your suffering is extremely difficult to grasp. It is fully comprehended only by means of “radical” (or “gone-to-the-root”) self-understanding.
The religious and Spiritual traditions have often spoken of suffering as the result of something that happened in the past and the purpose of such statements is to make some sort of sense out of suffering. But suffering makes no “sense”. Suffering is irrational, mindless. It is comprehensible only from the point of view of “radical” self-understanding. When there is “radical” self-understanding, the structure, the nature, of suffering-as a present-time event-is entirely obvious.
The traditional myth of suffering is that it happened to human beings some time ago, or that you are presently in a state that is the result of some beginning of suffering in your individual past. But your suffering is always a present-time activity. That is what is remarkable about it. People tend to think of suffering as being caused by something external to themselves-external in terms of both time and space. By such means, they attempt to explain suffering to themselves, to make sense of it-with the intention of overcoming suffering through egoic efforts of various kinds. But, in Truth, suffering is not your symptom. Suffering is your activity. That is the paradox.
All your seeking is based on the illusion that your suffering is somehow a symptom that can be eliminated. But, when the search starts to wind down, it begins to dawn on you that your symptoms are simply the mental, emotional, and physical expressions of your own self-contracting activity. Your suffering is absolutely present-time, experienced as the sense of dilemma.
Therefore, the Real process of religious and Spiritual life is a wholly positive possibility. Real religious and Spiritual life requires only the Realization of Truth, Which Is Reality Itself. Real religious and Spiritual life requires no other process-such as the manipulation of your memory, or the generating of “good karma” so that your “bad karma” can be eliminated. All of that is, ultimately, a fruitless effort.
Behavioral improvement can never be done to the point of Perfect Freedom. The karmas (or tendencies) that generate the qualities of your life can never be fully “paid off”, never be absolutely dissolved by “good works”. Any form of action, whether “good” or “bad”, and even any form of inaction, only (at last) reinforces limitation and the dilemma itself. It is not the absolute elimination of karmas, not super-purification by egoic effort, not any kind of righteousness, that frees you. If that were the case, the solution could never occur.
Freedom is Always Already the Case. Thus, Freedom is Realized whenever Truth suddenly comes Alive. When Truth is lived, when Satsang with Me is truly lived, then Truth Itself Consumes all karma. When Truth comes Alive, It Obviates the force of all karma.
The search makes no sense at all. It is an illusory and false principle. Only the Living Truth avails. And the Living Truth must be lived. Such is Satsang with Me, the heart-relationship of My devotee to Me. Such is True sadhana, wherein Satsang with Me is constantly lived. And there must be a lifetime of Truth-not merely a two-week smack of blessing, fasting, and meditation, not a vicarious weekend of “enlightenment”.
There must be a lifetime of Satsang with Me. In other words, there must be an absolute commitment. Satsang with Me does not truly exist until It affects your entire life (through and through), until It is lived without qualifications of time, space, or life. There must be continuous and whole bodily living in Satsang with Me. In other words, Satsang with Me must become the Principle, the Very Condition, of life-whereas, in the usual person, the dilemma and its search are the principle and the binding condition of life. When Satsang with Me becomes the Very Condition of life, the entire effort of the search is made obsolete-through non-support.
DEVOTEE: What is the role of others in the pursuit of Truth? You mentioned Your Function as the Divine Siddha-Guru.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: I am not separate from you. I Am the Very Divine Self-Condition and Source-Condition of all-and-All.
DEVOTEE: What about the rest of humanity?
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: Neither are they separate from you or “other” than you. They, along with you, may temporarily be living as if separate and “other” – but I am not. “Others” function as “others”. Being “others”, they bring about circumstances (or apparent conditions) for you to enjoy, or for you to suffer.
I am not, in Truth, an “other” – nor do I, in any sense, live as an “other”. My devotee may wrongly presume Me to be an “other”, like himself or herself – but that presumption is simply the failure to heart-recognize Me.
I Am your Very Consciousness, Consciousness Itself, Prior to all egoity-and Absolutely So, not merely symbolically so. I Am the “Bright” Divine Reality Itself, Appearing in human Form here. I am not an “other”. “Others” have no role whatsoever in the Transmission (and the Process) That Is Truth. Only I-the One Who Is the Divine Self-Condition (and Source-Condition) of all and All – Perfectly Transmit the Perfect Truth.
I Am the Divine Self-Condition (and Source-Condition) of all and-All, Appearing in human Form here. In Satsang with Me, the Divine Reality Itself Functions via My bodily (human) Form-in apparently ordinary human terms, in relationship to My devotee until (by My Avataric Divine Spiritual Grace) Most Perfect Realization of Me (and most perfect understanding of ego-“I”) Awakens in the case of My true devotee. Then no “difference”, no “other”, is to be found-even in the world of apparent differences.
The teacher who is “other” than you – who only fascinates, who offers you various ego-based practices and strategies for seeking-acts only to modify your state. Such a teacher is not functioning truly as Guru but as an “other”- as a source of experience, of modification. I am not “other”. My Activity is a Paradox.
Your heart-relationship to Me-which is Satsang with Me depends on your heart-recognition of Me As Truth Itself, As Reality, Real God, the Divine Self-Condition (and Source Condition) of all-and-All. That heart-recognition does not necessarily appear at the level of the mind, as a mentally achieved certainty, or in the form of some sort of visionary or psychic perception. But there must be profound heart-recognition. In many cases, that genuine heart-recognition has no explanation, no mental content. But that heart-recognition is what allows the heart-relationship between Me and My devotee to be lived as it truly is – as Satsang, rather than as the usual communication between “others”.
DEVOTEE: I experience You as not at all different from me. Nonetheless, I experience that You are You, and I am I. How can You and Your devotee become identical?
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: I have not been talking about the notion that I and My devotee are (or can become) identical in the conditional sense, as if you are (or can be) the same conditional entity as My Avatarically – Born bodily (human) Divine Form. Nor have I been speaking in the conventionally “Spiritual” sense, of presuming that Guru and devotee are identical as some sort of Spiritual “substance”, which “substance” is found when you manage to “get out” of the physical body (or even the subtle body). Such notions are only another form of the same conceptual separation, the same dilemma, the same puzzlement, the same separateness that is suffering.
I have been speaking of the Divine Self-Condition (and Source-Condition) That Is Truth, That Is Reality Itself – Wherein no dilemma, no separateness arises as the implication of any condition (even the ordinary condition of apparently discrete human entities).
The notions of sameness or “difference” have no significance or, should I say, they have nothing but significance. They are very “significant”, but they are utterly beside the point. They do not pertain to the matter of Truth. The discussion of significance’s can go on forever, because it only deals with mental modifications.
The notion that, in some subtle sense, there is no difference between human beings is merely an idea, merely a thought. No such idea (or thought) is the equivalent of “radical” self-understanding and Truth. No such idea (or thought) is a sign of Truth Itself. Any such idea (or thought) is merely a mental (or otherwise conditional) state. Psychotics can be in such a state. Daydreamers, drug-users, and philosophers can be in that state. People whose minds are relatively at rest for a moment can be in that state.
Truth is not a conditional state. Truth is not a perception or a thought. When there is truly no “difference”, no “one” survives. If there truly is the Most Perfect Realization of Non-separateness, no “one” survives beyond that moment. No (apparently separate) individual survives the Unconditional (and Inherently egoless) Realization of Truth Itself (or Reality Itself, or Real God). Such Most Perfect Realization is utter and permanent ego-death. No one remains behind to speak glibly of Divine Enlightenment, because It is the Real death of ego-“I” (or the presumption of separateness)not the merely natural death of the psycho-physical entity. From the point of view of ordinary awareness, Divine Enlightenment is the most dramatic, fearsome event. It cannot be conceived. It can only be symbolically entertained – from the usual point of view. But this death of the ego-“I” is the fundamental process of Real life.
DEVOTEE: What happens after the ego dies?
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: You will see.
DEVOTEE: Well, I think that moment has happened to me.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: Some experience you have had is suggesting itself to you now. You think that experience is the “death” I just described because you are trying to make sense of your experience. Such experiences are not (themselves) Truth. In he Knee Of Listening, I devoted many pages to the description of various Events of ego-death. In My Own Case, I passed through all kinds of Spiritual states, all kinds of great, dramatic Realizations, all kinds of Yogic processes. At the time, they may have seemed to be Most Perfect Realization-and, yet, they disappeared. They came to an end.
At last, the entire adventure of associating Truth with experiences began to wind down. I began to become sensitive to My ordinary state. There were many states that, at the time, seemed complete. But they did not alter the fundamental dilemma. Truth was only in the “radical” understanding of the entire process of conditional experiences and conditional states. Only when most perfect “radical” self-understanding was the case did it become Inherently Obvious that all the previous states of Illumination, which had seemed to represent Truth, were only more manifestations, more distractions from Truth Itself. That inherent Obviousness and not any experience in and of itself is characteristic of Divine Enlightenment.
DEVOTEE: Is Enlightenment (or Realization) a process of growth?
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: From the point of view of My devotee, it may seem that there is some sort of growth, some sort of movement (or transformation). But, from the Realized “Point of View”, you see that there was no growth, no transformation, and no path.
In Reality, you cannot be gradually (or “more and more”) absorbed into the Truth. Truth is the Principle of life-the Reality, not merely the goal. There are modifications of your life and strategy that occur in the process of sadhana. They seem to give you a sense of progress. And this sense of apparent progress may have a certain value, from the point of view of sadhana. The sense of growth, and the memory of Spiritual change, may inspire you to counter the tendency to lapse from sadhana and Satsang with Me into your former condition of self-indulgence, seeking, and egopossessed concerns.
There is no ultimately fruitful resort but to Truth Itself. If someone tells others to resort to themselves, to strive onward until the Truth is glimpsed, then that one has functioned only as an “other” to motivate people in the midst of their suffering. Truth Itself is not served by the command that people do something in order to Realize the Truth. No action of any person produces Truth as a result.
Satsang with Me-the devotional (and, in due course, Spiritual) relationship to Me-is the entire Means, the only Means, the “radical” (or “gone-to-the-root”) Means. Truth is the Very Means of Real religious and Spiritual life-not its goal. One who truly resorts to Me is never again returned to the search.
But people are always trying to return to the search, because of the difficult crisis demanded in Real religious and Spiritual life. They always want to console themselves by some means or other. The apparent emptiness, or paradoxical starkness, of My Offering becomes a kind of aggravation to the seeker, who constantly refuses the Condition of Satsang with Me and its demands.
People want to be filled with all kinds of things, distracted with all kinds of things. “What can I do to be saved? How can I meditate? How can I get free? How can I get straight? How can I get pure? How can I get happy?” They want all kinds of occupations and strategic methods. But, in Satsang with Me, no “thing” is given. No egoic occupation, no ego-based means, no strategic method, no consolation, no philosophy that can replace Real practice. Only the heart-relationship to Me is Offered. Only that.
But that is not what the seeker came for. The seeker came to get “turned on”, to get something going, to be occupied again. The seeker is never able to persist in My Company. Only when the seeker’s search has begun to die (as the principle of his or her life) does the devotional relationship to Me cease to be an “offense”. Then My Offering ceases to seem empty. It becomes an entirely ecstatic possibility. My devotee embraces It with great gratitude, even though It satisfies and requires nothing about the search.
Satsang with Me does not support the search. It does not begin from the point of view of the search. It has nothing whatsoever to do with the search. Therefore, one for whom the search is no longer a genuine distraction finds Great and True Happiness in My Mere Presence. Such a one has truly discovered Me, for My Mere Presence is the Communication of Truth.
My true devotee simply enjoys and lives the Condition of Satsang with Me. Therefore, My true devotee becomes Full with Me, Intelligent with Me, Happy with Me, at Peace in Me, Blissful in Me. Satsang with Me restores My devotee. The ordinariness of life becomes My devotee’s possibility. My devotee begins to function again, to come alive again, because the sense of dilemma has ceased to be the principle of his or her existence. Satsang with Me is the obviation of dilemma. Satsang with Me is the Enjoyment of the Communication of Truth.
In traditional literature, it is said that one who regards the Guru to be a mere and separate individual has committed the greatest sin. The highest form of foolishness is to regard the Guru to be like you.
As long as there is no devotional recognition-response to Me, there is no Satsang with Me. When this devotional recognition response to Me occurs, then Satsang with Me can begin. Indeed, It will have already begun.
Guru is a Function. It is not a form of status. It is not something to be achieved, or something to seek to achieve. I am not a big guy who appears among a lot of little guys. The GuruFunction is not a form of superiority or “Narcissism”. Guru is a Function of Consciousness itself (or Reality Itself), appearing in human terms. The relationship between Me and My devotee is not encumbered with any of the things that are involved in the relationship between superior people and weak people. The True relationship between Me and My devotee has nothing to do with the ordinary drama of conflict.
To the seeker, the usual person, the humanly Born Guru may seem to be like other people-but, when you truly live with Me, heart-recognizing Me (and heart-responding to Me) as the True Divine Guru, then Satsang with Me has begun.
DEVOTEE: Does a person have a choice as to when this relationship begins? It seems there is no choice – that it either happens or does not happen.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: All that occurs for any individual is this process I have been describing: The search winds down. You fall somehow into your ordinariness, your simple suffering. Then you become available to Satsang with Me.
When you begin to live this Satsang with Me (as your Real Condition), associated with It may be feelings that you have chosen Me from among others. But the apparent “choice” is purely secondary. In fact, there is no choice. There is only My Sudden Availability in the midst of your otherwise-seeking life.
In the life of My every true devotee, there has only been the Sudden Communication of the Heart.