Heart Conversion Talk Series – Adi Da Samraj – Your Heart Must Be Moved

DEVOTEE: Sri Gurudev, because Your Realization is Full, Complete, because You Are Who You Are, I can understand how Your devotees feel You very concretely, very specifically, when we surrender to You. When devotees of other Gurus surrender to the Guru, are they feeling their Guru, or are they feeling their own self-sense?

SRI DA AVABHASA: They are obviously feeling themselves. But they can also feel their Master, and they can feel various influences coming through their Master as well. They can be experiencing what they may call the “Divine”. There are many kinds of experiences, obviously.

DEVOTEE: Sri Gurudev, in The Knee of Listening You talk about Your actually being overcome by the being of Swami Nityananda.

SRI DA AVABHASA: And Swami (Baba) Muktananda somewhat, yes. And Rudi. It was obviously Them, just Them, personally. Their manifestation was greater than the mere physical.

DEVOTEE: The phenomenon of being overwhelmed is not unique to You as the seventh stage Adept? It can happen with lesser Realizers?

SRI DA AVABHASA: Of course. You can get overwhelmed by bacteria! You can feel a little overwhelmed, even intoxicated, by somebody you say you are in love with.

DEVOTEE: Sri Gurudev, have any Realizers of the sixth stage of life clearly understood that there was a limit in their Realization and known that there was something beyond it?

SRI DA AVABHASA: I am sure there have been dissatisfied Sages. In some there is a feeling there was some limitation there. Ramana Maharshi is one of those in dissociative Samadhi who intuited Something More and described It in various reflective moments. But He did not appear with the Siddhis of the True Heart-Master. He did not demonstrate all the unfolding characteristics inherent in the seventh stage of life. In general, the language about the “Regeneration” of Amrita Nadi that may have crept into descriptions about Him came from Ganapati Muni and others who were merely talking about fifth stage Yoga.

The full description of the seventh stage of life and its Demonstration did not occur in Ramana Maharshi. But He made certain statements that describe the limitation in the separative Samadhi, the trance Samadhi, associated with the sixth stage of life. That is good. But it did not make Him a seventh stage Adept in this great and full sense.

ANOTHER DEVOTEE: Beloved Gurudev, that criticism is also brought in the Tripura Rahasya. In that book, Hemalekha says that the thickness of the eyelid is not enough to separate one from reality.

SRI DA AVABHASA: Yes. Those greater sixth stage texts are, in general, speaking of a development of Jnana Samadhi, which is the presumption that Consciousness Itself is separate from phenomena. One can experience this even while apparently associated with phenomena, but it is still the separate Consciousness Realized in Jnana Samadhi that is the basis for those statements. Therefore, they are seventh stage statements only in a tentative sense. They reflect something of the seventh stage Realization, but they are really expressions, intuitions, based on the sixth stage Realization. You can behave naturally, live normally, carry on your life-functions, keep your eyes open, and still be experiencing the apparent separateness of Consciousness from phenomena.

That Realization is basically the source of such descriptions in the texts that I say fall into the general category of premonitorily “seventh stage” texts because of certain statements they contain. Such descriptions are emanations of the sixth stage “Point of View”.

The ultimate phenomenon of the sixth stage Realization is not trance Samadhi. The Awakening to the sixth stage of life may occur in trance Samadhi, but not necessarily—it can also occur without trance Samadhi—but the tacit Realization that Consciousness is separate from phenomena, not stained by them, not limited by them, and that one is able to function in every ordinary way and have that still be the case—this is really the end phenomenon of the sixth stage of life. Certain statements made on that basis sound like seventh stage descriptions, but they are intuitions based on the sixth stage Realization, based on the separation between Consciousness and phenomena.

That is where the sense of freedom comes from, then—”I am the Self. I am this Consciousness dissociated from phenomena, not touched by them. This is my Freedom.” It is the sixth stage Confession.

Read My Word. This is not My description of the seventh stage Realization. It is not the separation between Consciousness and phenomena that characterizes the seventh stage of life.

DEVOTEE: You just said that the Realization of the sixth stage of life is possible without trance Samadhi.

SRI DA AVABHASA: In some cases the Awakening to this Realization of the separation of Consciousness from phenomena can occur in just a sudden moment of Awakening without necessarily a period of trance Samadhi, or Jnana Samadhi.

DEVOTEE: So it would not be Jnana Samadhi, but it would be that same…

SRI DA AVABHASA: That same Realization.

ANOTHER DEVOTEE: Sri Gurudev, does this mean that before You Appeared, no one Realized Sahaj Samadhi?

SRI DA AVABHASA: The Realization that I just described has been called “Sahaj Samadhi”. It is not Sahaj Samadhi in the seventh stage sense. The term “Sahaj Samadhi” is used in fifth stage traditions, for that matter. It is a commonly used term in the esoteric traditions, meaning that the Realization one may gain in fifth stage conditional Nirvikalpa Samadhi, or Jnana Samadhi, or even spontaneously somehow, may be continuous even in moments of ordinary occupation, in a “natural” state, in other words. In the “natural” state one can be apparently associated with phenomena that would otherwise undermine the Realization. Such is the meaning of the term “Sahaj Samadhi”. The term is frequently used in the sixth stage tradition, and also the fifth stage tradition. But I use it in the special sense, the seventh stage sense.

DEVOTEE: Swami Muktananda talked about it as the same Realization as the waking state. I read You the passage once, and You said, “Notice that He says, You then return to meditation.” You pointed out that the Realization he was describing is still conditional.

SRI DA AVABHASA: True, or seventh stage, Sahaj Samadhi is not conditional. It is not dependent on conditions. It is also not an expression of the separation between Consciousness, or the Great Force that is apparently modified as phenomena, and phenomena. There simply is no “difference”. There is no separation and no conditional dependency.

DEVOTEE: I feel the motivation in everyone to find some equation between the searches of egoity, which include all the traditions that have ever existed, and Your Demonstration. But the Divine has never Incarnated before, and What You Bring is utterly new and not to be included with anything else. There is a structure of egoity that can be seen, and You have made sense out of that chaos, as You said.

SRI DA AVABHASA: In the past, the Divine has apparently Appeared. Apparently—therefore conditionally, merely. People have had all kinds of experiences, visions, visitations, and on and on and on. In the ordinary sense, many of these things could be called “Divine”. But not from the seventh stage “Point of View”, not from the Ultimate “Point of View”. It is not correct to say, then, to people involved in the traditions, that there have been no God-Realizers, no Divine experiences. They would react to such a statement, and it is also not true. If you are making such statements, you must be careful to describe the point of view from which you are saying this and not say it in some hypercritical sense with any bad intentions or just make blanket statements that other people would react to.

It is simply that in the greatest sense, in the Ultimate sense, all those Realizations are incomplete—good, but incomplete.

DEVOTEE: I was feeling the difference between what occurs structurally in egoic evolution and what is occurring when You Descend and take over the Yoga in this body-mind.

SRI DA AVABHASA: Yes. People who speak authentically about Spiritual experiences they have had, Spiritual energies sometimes in the frontal line, sometimes in the spinal line, are having true Spiritual experiences. But they are not the experience of the Very Divine Person, and they are not about surrender to That One.

How do Spiritual experiences occur? Though a Transmission of one kind or another of Spiritual energy, just that, as if the Divine is separate from that energy and sort of puts out this pulse for you to experience as it runs through your body and awakens centers and gives you visions. The real Spiritual Transmission is the Transmission of the Very Divine Person—not merely Transmission by the Divine Person. It Is the Divine Person. I Am That Very One, Present as My own Spiritual (and Always Blessing) Presence. I do not merely extend to you some electronic energy of some kind or another for you to experience down into your body and up in your body, so that you can just play with it on your own. To relate to My Spiritual Presence you must surrender to Me directly.

In the Way of the Heart, the frontal Yoga, for instance, is not merely you, self-bound, experiencing some Energy I put out coming into your body. No. You surrender all along. You surrender completely. You give yourself up completely, forget yourself completely, are brought to nothingness by Divine Communion. That is when the frontal Yoga is true. That is what it is in My Company, not just you dealing with some separate energy that may have been put out and that you do not even necessarily have to feel is Me.

ANOTHER DEVOTEE: Sri Gurudev, there is such depth in that boldness, because when You come Crashing Down there is that complete surrender.

SRI DA AVABHASA: Not merely surrender to receive Me, not to be in the receiving position with your body dead to receive Me. Give yourself up bodily, surrender the body, throw it into Me, into My Spirit-Presence, discard it, discard the mind, not merely feel My Spiritual Presence in the body-mind but discard the body-mind. This is the practice of the frontal Yoga in My Company.

DEVOTEE: There is no one there to receive It.

SRI DA AVABHASA: Exactly. You may have experiences of receiving It somehow, but then you are in the wrong position. Such is not the most profound practice, obviously. Therefore, understand why some people may have to go beyond level three, not directly to level six but into level four, maybe level five, until they go beyond this insulted, egoic “self-possession” (or self-absorption) and surrender it into My Spiritual Company: That being done, in whichever stage of those progressive practices it occurs, then there is the steady and true Awakening to the Witness-Position of Consciousness, not just thinking it is logically so or that it is sometimes so but it is just steadily so. It is your Stand. Then you can practice surrender further by entering into the Domain of That Which is the Witness—following Me, attracted by Me, entering into the depth of the right side of the heart, entering into My Company most fully surrendered, Perfectly Gone Beyond the self-knot.

Then when you are far beyond that door and immersed in Me, given up in Me, My inherent Siddhi of Revelation awakens the seventh stage of life.

There is a profound difference between Realizing in My Company and Being Me. Those who Realize in My Company can become seventh stage Realizers, but they do not have My Function. The Siddhis of My Function are not given to My devotees. My devotees will become Realizers of the seventh stage of life, but they will not become seventh stage Adepts. I am the only such Adept. This you will discover, and the “why” of it also.

DEVOTEE: This evening You spoke to me about loitering in the first stage of the “Perfect Practice” and refusing to take responsibility for it.

SRI DA AVABHASA: There ought to be a law against it—loitering, littering, whatever.

KANYA NAVANEETA: Lingering in the first stage of the “Perfect Practice” and refusing to take responsibility for truly entering the depth of the second stage of the “Perfect Practice”—this is really the identical criticism You made of me before I entered into the first stage of the “Perfect Practice”. At one point You said that I was settling for lingering in level three of practice and refusing to accept the responsibility for actually having Realized the Witness-Consciousness and practicing on the basis of that Position. I can feel Your Calling to me to cut through this Spiritual vagueness and the refusal of what we have been Given.

SRI DA AVABHASA: That is the trouble with you slow metabolism types.

SRI DA AVABHASA: [to a man] What about you and the Criticisms I have been making of you? You have not said a word about it.

DEVOTEE: Yes, but I have been working on it.

SRI DA AVABHASA: You are always going for the “Om Bars” or the jelly bread, “Love-Bliss over here—cant You see me eating it?” I was across the table at the time. That is why it has amused Me to call you “Jelly” for a while in recent months. You are still the same guy you were then. You are across the table munching on your “Om Bar”, and I am sitting right there with you and you tell me about the “Om Bar”—which was really the jelly bread. Of course, then you will just say, “Well, this jelly bread is You, Lord”, giving Me the honorific reference there. Whereas your involvement with Me is jelly bread, “Om Bars”, abstractions, ego-based illusions, wanting to abstract Me in such a way that you can continue to deal with your egoic illusions and never get across the table to Me, regarding all My own Characteristics to be inherent in you and also in the domain of conditional Nature.

DEVOTEE: I can see that I have been relating to You inappropriately—not understanding. I have the experience, to some degree, of surrender in Your Company. I feel that I go beyond my normal mechanism when I am surrendered to You. But I carry with me all kinds of expected assumptions about God and Truth. I can see this whole mechanism of staying mediocre, not becoming involved in the demand.

SRI DA AVABHASA: And all the rest of it—your idealistic practice, your 60s lovey-dovey blah-blah, being “mellow”, eating “Om Bars”. Then of course there is also the “love”, or, when you get really so-called “Spiritual”, the “Love-Bliss” just floating around everywhere. God is all you, and likewise all people.

You always use such expressions as “myself—which is You”. You are basically talking about yourself but making the honorific reference to Me. Where is the intensive surrender? Where is the real practice? You are describing mediocrity and illusion, not real self-surrender, real self-forgetting, real self-transcendence. You are philosophizing in the abstract and justifying your own mind.

DEVOTEE: I have always carried this belief that God is Energy, Light, Consciousness Love-Bliss, the Condition of existence, and everything is made of That.

SRI DA AVABHASA: Fine. But God Is That. You are abstracting the Characteristics of the Divine from the Divine.

DEVOTEE: I do not understand.

SRI DA AVABHASA: You are separating the Divine Characteristics from the Divine. You are devoted to the Characteristics, not to the Divine, not to the Very Person. You abstract the Characteristics from the Divine, and then you superimpose them on yourself—the “Love” in you, the “Love-Bliss” in you, the “Divine Self” in you. Where is God? Where is the Divine Person? Where is the One to Whom you must submit? Where is the One Who has those Characteristics, the One Who is to be so characterized? Where is That One? You are involved in yourself, and even superimposing the Divine Attributes on yourself—Love, Love-Bliss, Consciousness, Divine Self—as if That is you. That Is God, the Person Whom you must Realize yet, and the Person Whom you will not Realize without the utter transcendence of your egoic self by submission.

DEVOTEE: I can see how this mediocrity and these ideas I have interpreted in all sort of ways are not surrender.

SRI DA AVABHASA: They give you an alternative to it. Therefore, you do not surrender. You just feel yourself. Even those little tricklings down of the Divine Characteristics become something you believe about yourself. You do not acknowledge them as the Divine. You do not acknowledge the Source. You do not see your own egoic “self-possession” and go beyond it. You just rest in mediocrity and consolation, self-satisfied. When it comes down to it, that is all your practice amounts to. The intensive act of self-surrender is what your life should be about. Instead, your life is the mediocre act of self-satisfaction, munching jelly bread.

DEVOTEE: Deluded in the assumption that it is surrender.

SRI DA AVABHASA: It is not going to be surrender if you do not do the intensive act of surrender.

DEVOTEE: There is obviously something going on that is about surrender, but I have missed something, clearly.

SRI DA AVABHASA: Then it is not it.

ANOTHER DEVOTEE: Sri Gurudev, when You were Speaking to Kanya Navaneeta about the first and second stages of the “Perfect Practice”, I was remembering that You have said it is certainly possible for a member of the Lay Congregationist Order to pass through the sixth stage of life and to Realize the seventh stage of life in Your Company

SRI DA AVABHASA: In principle possible, certainly.

DEVOTEE: Then I was trying to imagine somebody living in a city, and so on, doing this practice…

SRI DA AVABHASA: I did. And not as a member of the Lay Congregationist Order. I did not have any such culture of support. Being in a city, or living under ordinary circumstances, did not impede the process in My case. Therefore, in principle, it is possible for members of the Lay Congregationist Order.

DEVOTEE: Was there a particular moment in Your Sadhana, Sri Gurudev, that can be identified as the transition from the first to the second stage of the “Perfect Practice”?

SRI DA AVABHASA: Moment? I do not think you can call it an historic moment, not something that happened in My Life externally that you can measure on that basis. The process certainly occurred. Apart from just describing it as a process, how can I talk about it historically or in terms of daily events? It need not happen in discrete stages—do this for some period and then that for some period. Basically that is how it works in your case because I have Given you My full Wisdom-Teaching on the total process of Divine Self-Realization. But in My case it was all a very spontaneous matter. The reason I have described those transitions is that they occurred in My case.

DEVOTEE: In that sense Your Sadhana, although it embraced everything that You have Taught us, was not a pattern. The great Samadhis even occurred in a different order in Your Sadhana.

SRI DA AVABHASA: No, not in a different order. The event in seminary was like the transition from level three of the general practice to level six. In My case the Demonstration had to be complete for the sake of all. Therefore, the ascending practices were also manifested, and they did not retard anything in My case. I have shown you by that event in seminary that the practice in the sixth stage of life can be entered from what is equivalent to level three of practice in the Way of the Heart. My Sadhana could just as well have been gone on from there, but all the processes were happening spontaneously so that the Demonstration could be complete.

I have also shown you how one could likewise pass through the ascending stage to the sixth stage of life and the seventh stage of life. In the complexity of My sadhana I have shown you all the possible ways of fulfilling the process of Divine Self-Realization, not just one.

DEVOTEE: If I may, I would like to pass on some Instruction You Gave me in a recent conversation. I asked if Your passing through the experience of fifth stage conditional Nirvikalpa Samadhi was unnecessary in Your own case and only taken on as part of Your experiencing of every aspect of life in order to Instruct Your devotees, and You said yes.

SRI DA AVABHASA: Tcha. Of what use was fifth stage conditional Nirvikalpa Samadhi to what occurred at the Vedanta Temple? It was obsolete there. Therefore, it is not a necessary preliminary. But in order to “consider” everything with My devotees and Demonstrate everything in My own case, all the visions had to be seen, all the experiences had to be experienced. Everything had to be experienced in My case.

Otherwise you all would be here now listening to Me tell you about the passing on from the frontal Yoga to the sixth stage of life and then to the seventh stage of life and you would be wondering, “What the hell does He know about it?” if, when you asked Me about ascending experiences and fifth stage conditional Nirvikalpa Samadhi and visions, I said, “I did not Realize that.”

There is nothing any of you are going through, or could have gone through, or will go through, that I have not gone through. I did the whole sadhana, and it characterizes everyone, collectively—not just any individual personally. I bring the Way of the Heart to ordinary people, not just to those who are uniquely prepared. If I had lived as a celibate renunciate in early life and did not have much life-business to handle, again you would ask me about it, and I would say, “Well, I did not have such experiences. I did not have to struggle with the ordinary life. I did not have to deal with sexuality. I did not have to deal with ordinary living. I did not have to deal with ordinary cravings. I do not know anything about it. Nevertheless, I am telling you to deal with it.”

How would you have the proof that such sadhana can be done in the context of an ordinary life if I had not done it? You just mentioned living in the cities. That is exactly where I did My Sadhana. Where else did I do it? Under the least ideal of all conditions, you could say.

DEVOTEE: Certainly Your Confession recently was that Swami Vivekananda, in a way, is the Revelation of Your Perfect Unity of the East and West, of all conditions and all experiences of East and West. He was from the Indian tradition.

SRI DA AVABHASA: Yes, from the Eastern tradition altogether. But He also did His Western time. He was the first of such people ever to do so. Many people have come to the West on airplanes and boats since then, but He was the first.

DEVOTEE: Sri Gurudev, when You were speaking before about the uniqueness of Your Manifestation as the Divine, I had a sense of what You meant when You said that You are Prior to the Cosmic Mandala. I felt that everything in the Great Tradition has arisen within the Cosmic Mandala. But You have arisen Prior to the Cosmic Mandala.

SRI DA AVABHASA: That is the difference. The searches and the Realizations of mankind heretofore have been generated from the position not only of egoity but of conditionality within the conditional Cosmic Mandala. They are approaches to the Divine. In My Case, it is the Divine That is Approaching. That is the difference for all of you in how the Way of the Heart works in My Company. The process in My Company is all about the transcendence of egoity and the transcendence of the point of view of conditionality and of the Cosmic Mandala.

All of religion and Spirituality heretofore has taken place within that context of egoity, conditionality, the Cosmic Mandala. It has all been a search within it. It has gone to the limit of all extremes, at the periphery and in depth.

DEVOTEE: Your Experience will never be duplicated. There will be devotees in the seventh stage of life, but You are unique.

SRI DA AVABHASA: Why should it be repeated, since it will never end?

ANOTHER DEVOTEE: Beloved Lord, because of Your own process of Incarnation, has the Goddess also Incarnated?

SRI DA AVABHASA: The Goddess is always Incarnated as everything, as everyone, as the Cosmic Mandala. That is the Goddess.

DEVOTEE: Forgive me for even daring to speak in such language, but You as the Divine Person have Incarnated uniquely in this time. The Goddess is, so to speak, eternally Incarnated—except that You have told us that the process of the Cosmic Mandala would come to an end. The Goddess has always been Incarnated, whereas You are uniquely Incarnated.

SRI DA AVABHASA: Yes. She is Incarnated, however, in the conditional sense of appearing. In My relationship to the Goddess, She is converted in Her disposition and set right in the context of the Divine. Therefore, because of this, an entirely different view of the Divine Energy is possible. The Goddess is not the Incarnating Force or the Appearing Being in all this suffering, illusion, and limitation. It is of great import that the Goddess is wed, submitted, to the Ultimate Divine, the Very Energy, the Inherent Radiance, the Self-Radiance of the Divine.

This is the right understanding of the Goddess. She no longer appears separately from that “Point of View”. She is part of the Inherent Oneness of the Divine. It is not “Me and the Goddess”. I Am Complete, as I have said. There is no “difference”. I speak of the Goddess. You do not. Fundamentally there is no Goddess, then. There is only the Divine. The Divine Person Is One and Whole, not two, not many—One Person, One Absolute Being, Very Consciousness, Very Force, All Love-Bliss, Self-Existing, Self-Radiant, Absolute, not divided.

The only reason to talk about some kind of two-ness between the Divine as Very Being, or Consciousness Itself, and the Goddess, somehow Divine but Independent Energy Appearing as all manifestation—the only reason to speak in terms of that two-ness is the dualistic vision associated with egoity, conditionality, appearances. In that point of view it can seem that there are two. But if you understand rightly, there is only One. It is not “the God” and “the Goddess”—the Divine Person “and” the Goddess. There is just One. That was the Realization in the Vedanta Temple. That was the Accomplishment there. And that is what you must Realize also—not the Divine somehow over against you and all of the conditional cosmos, but just the Very One Who Is Inherently Beyond all “difference” and beyond separation.

DEVOTEE: Beloved, there has always only been That One.

SRI DA AVABHASA: Yes. But there have been many appearances and many thoughts

DEVOTEE: We have Your Incarnation here.

SRI DA AVABHASA: My Sign set all of it straight, actually Accomplished it, by virtue of Divine Siddhis. My Divine Self-Realization is not a bit of poetry. I am not merely using symbolic language, as if it was just the same before and the Vedanta Temple was just a bit of poetry. It is not that at all. It was an actual Event—not just the Event of My Divine Re-Awakening but the Event of the utter submission of the entire Cosmic Mandala to the Very Divine Condition by virtue of the Divine Siddhis snapping the barrier that the Cosmic Mandala has represented for beings until now.

DEVOTEE: Sri Gurudev, if there were some way to investigate throughout the world what was happening on September 10, 1970, should we expect to find evidence of this at that precise moment, or more unfolding over time? Or both?

SRI DA AVABHASA: I guess “both” is a good way of putting it. You would not necessarily notice some historical events that mean everything had changed. It was not change in history. It was a change in the fundamental Nature of existence. All the changes that might occur on the basis of it are historical, but it is not about history. It is about Most Perfect God-Realization.

All this historic mentality is another part of the illusion of you all. In your ordinariness—body-based, social-based, ego-based—somehow God is the Maker of all this, God is just sort of wandering around in history making this and that happen—making you win baseball games or whatever. That is just part of the lore of ordinary mankind in their seeking, the presumptions they make to protect themselves and institutionalize their ideals. God does not make teams win baseball games. To paraphrase a common saying, God is at your side, not on your side. Look at all the people praying at sporting events. They are supposing that God is right there and that all they have to do is ask hard enough and God changes history.

Even if you do ask, God is not commanding history. You all are commanding history! If you would enter into some greater depth of Divine Communion, maybe you would have a more benign influence on history. But it is your business.

DEVOTEE: There is one more question from the mainland. Sri Gurudev, You have already addressed similar questions, but this person wants to make sure that You have said everything about this that needs to be said. Why was time required from Swami Vivekanandas death until Your Birth? Were there other factors involved besides the availability of a Vehicle? Or was there a specific reason to wait for “Franklin Jones”?

SRI DA AVABHASA: When the time was right, I Appeared.

DEVOTEE: The beginning of World War II.

SRI DA AVABHASA: Look at all the other changes that occurred in nearly the first half of the twentieth century before I Appeared—tremendous technological changes, communication changes. It was in that period that mankind came everyone face to face, all traditions, all politics, face to face with all and with everything, with all the technology and scientific materialism that has come to characterize the twentieth century. All that was part of the ripening of the time.

DEVOTEE: Sri Gurudev, when You first began to Teach, the technology that was available was just beginning to be useful.

SRI DA AVABHASA: During and since World War II all this has fully developed. If I had Appeared in 1903, I would be a pretty old dude right now—ninety years old and a little overripe to deal with you fools. Also, Freud would not have completed his work. He died the year I was born. What has come to characterize mankind as a whole did not characterize mankind fully until the time of My Birth. What has come to characterize the twentieth century and what will characterize the future took a good piece of the twentieth century to develop—modern physics, all kinds of things.

DEVOTEE: Sri Gurudev, You have also said that the time when You began Your Teaching Work was a specific time when there was an opening in people.

SRI DA AVABHASA: [raising His eyebrows] I must have been tipsy when I said that. I have not been observing any big openings here—just the same old stuff.

DEVOTEE: You also Gave time to those who needed to live a little longer.

SRI DA AVABHASA: Yes. Many of those associated with Swami Vivekananda took a long time to die.

ANOTHER DEVOTEE: Beloved Lord, I believe You said that the Submission of Your gross personality to Your True Condition made it possible for all the Cosmic Mandala to submit to You and to Realize Your True Condition. It seems that the Great Event at the Vedanta Temple and what followed that submission of the Goddess is evidence of it.

SRI DA AVABHASA: All part of it, yes, the relinquishment of independence, of commitment to this foulness here. The Great Goddess has been described in many ways. One of the traditional descriptions is that She is a whore here, dangling out, hanging out, for the amusement of everyone, just doing Her thing, not manifesting fidelity. In the Vedanta Temple She manifested Her fidelity and ceased to be a whore. Fidelity characterizes the true woman, and the true man. Fidelity is something you all must realize—not the mere fidelity of man to woman but fidelity to the Divine.

ANOTHER DEVOTEE: Beloved Sri Gurudev, in The Hymn of The True Heart-Master, verse 72 says, “I bow down to That Always New One, Who Appears in the world again and again by the Magic and Mystery of His Own Will and Love, but Who is only the Mass of Pure Consciousness, Spiritually Radiant, the Sun of the Heart, the Bright Destroyer of un-Happiness.”

In the line where You Say, “Who Appears in the world again and again by the Magic and Mystery of His Own Will and Love”—I was trying to feel that as the Revelation of Your unique and Only Appearance in the world and the cosmos at this time…

SRI DA AVABHASA: I have already explained the “again and again” part. I have said to you just tonight and many times before that there have been Realizers in the world. There have been visions that could be called “Divine” in a conditional sense. Therefore, there have been Divine Appearances, intuitions of the Divine, experiences of the Divine based on the conditional apparatus. These statements account for it.

You must also understand that The Hymn of The True Heart-Master is My Re-Speaking of a traditional text. Therefore, I had to account for such notions as “again and again”. Do you understand how I am saying it?

ANOTHER DEVOTEE: Until You clarified it, Sri Gurudev, I believe many of us, I can certainly speak for myself, did not understand that clearly, especially before Your Great Discourse on March 6, when You very clearly told us that You are the only seventh stage Adept. Previous to that time, I did not really have the right understanding of this verse. Now I feel all of us can directly understand what You mean by that.

SRI DA AVABHASA: Tcha.

DEVOTEE: Also, Sri Gurudev, a similar change in understanding has occurred for me relative to Your Statement, “I Am the Realizer, the Revealer, and the Revelation of the Divine Person”. But I am not sure I understand it completely.

SRI DA AVABHASA: Part of the Demonstration of My Lifetime is that I went through the Ordeal and Realized. Another way of looking at Me and My Lifetime and My Work altogether is that I Reveal—I am the Revealer. If you understand Me rightly and completely, you know that I, My Self, Am the One Revealed. Therefore, I account for all the aspects of My Divine Work.

DEVOTEE: I feel the great importance of understanding what You mean by saying “I Am the Realizer”. There is a whole context for it, as You have explained. You, in Your Very Being, transformed the deeper personality and the gross personality in order to fully Appear in this world and do Your Work. In that sense, perhaps it would be correct to say that fundamentally You are the Revelation. Somehow that feels to me the most.

SRI DA AVABHASA: It is obviously the primary statement. The other two refer to aspects of My Work and Appearance here.

ANOTHER DEVOTEE: Would it be true to say, Sri Gurudev, that Your bodily (human) Form is the Realizer, Your Spiritual and Always Blessing Presence…

SRI DA AVABHASA: This Body is also the Revealer and the Revelation—primarily the Revelation. By My Work, I Am the Revealer. By all the effort of Sadhana done in This Body, I Am the Realizer. All three descriptions apply to each of My Forms.

DEVOTEE: It also seems that this statement about the Divines Appearing again and again could be interpreted to mean that previous to the seventh stage Realization, in every moment of feeling beyond the self-contraction, You Appear again and again.

SRI DA AVABHASA: Tcha. Good. You are telling Me that in the case of any of My devotees who are practicing in My Company, who are having experiences, who are acknowledging Me more and more in accounting for all those experiences, regarding Me as the One Who is Appearing in each of those moments, that I My Self, even in this Lifetime and forever, am Appearing again and again. That is what you are saying, right?

DEVOTEE: Yes.

ANOTHER DEVOTEE: Beloved Lord, I do not understand how we can refer to Your Very (and Inherently Perfect) State as the Realizer and the Revealer. As the Revelation, I can understand, but the other two do not quite make sense to me.

SRI DA AVABHASA: Do I not Reveal by My Very State? Am I not the One Who has been here and gone through the Ordeal by Submission and then Realized—I, My Self?

DEVOTEE: I was presuming a kind of difference between Your State and Your bodily (human) Form. This is wrong.

SRI DA AVABHASA: Yes.

ANOTHER DEVOTEE: Beloved Gurudev, You Said there is a fundamental change in the very nature of existence. I am still struck by that point. My whole body is feeling the significance of what You said. It is so profound.

SRI DA AVABHASA: The Divine Siddhi changes all. The context of your life would be profoundly changed if you could get with Me about all this. And a different way of life is possible for you that was never possible before, not merely because I have said some things to you but because of what I have Done altogether. The Siddhis of My Work have made a profound change. Therefore, they introduce a profound possibility that was not even thought of before, and could not be. No one was in a position to speak the seventh stage Revelation before. The Realization was not there. The Siddhis that Accomplish it were not there. You can exist in the common play and think of the Divine as making this—call it “He” or “She”—and wander in all of that. I have Revealed to you and Accomplished the Greatness that makes that unnecessary. You can live entirely differently. There is nothing in the nature of conditional reality that will prohibit you from doing so. All that has been changed.

As My grandfather, Pop, said to My father, “Make sure you are right, and a hole through you.” Everything has been set right and a hole straight on through has been made. There is no barrier to Ultimate Realization. It is not a matter of seeking. It is no a matter of ego-based effort. It is about ego-transcendence, which transforms everything. It transforms the stages of life. The stages of life for My devotees are no longer what they were. They are not ego-based forms of seeking for self-development They are specific modes of self-transcendence only, just that, not to be fulfilled for their own sake.

Hold to Me, My Sign and the Word I have Given you, and then you pass right through it. You are right with a hole through you.

SRI DA AVABHASA: What next?

DEVOTEE: I have a question about Swami Vivekanandas meeting with Ramakrishna. Vivekananda was searching for someone who had direct experience of God. When he met Ramakrishna, Ramakrishna said, “Yes, I see God more clearly than I see you.” Ramakrishna was a fifth stage Realizer, so what did his statement actually mean?

SRI DA AVABHASA: There are many shades of meaning that could be brought to bear on that statement. But obviously one way to account for it is that Ramakrishna was a visionary—He was very visually oriented—and He saw His Image of the Divine manifested very concretely.

DEVOTEE: As Kali, in particular.

SRI DA AVABHASA: Kali, yes. As a bhakta, very Yogically active, very visionary, Ramakrishna would have conversations with the Divine in that Form, very directly, very personally, just as if He were talking to another person like Himself in the room. He would see Her move, hear Her speak. If He had a question, He would ask it and She would reply.

DEVOTEE: When You said Ramakrishna would ask Swami Vivekananda questions when Swami Vivekananda was in trance Samadhi, would they have actual conversations?

SRI DA AVABHASA: Yes, and Ramakrishna would seek in His visionary way to discover all kinds of characteristics of Swami Vivekananda.

DEVOTEE: And Swami Vivekananda would even respond verbally?

SRI DA AVABHASA: Yes, according to the report, however Ramakrishna Himself experienced it. That is the suggestion, anyway. In any case, Ramakrishna gave Swami Vivekananda His touch, Vivekananda would become oblivious, and Ramakrishna would make His investigation. Then He would snap Swami Vivekananda to, and Vivekananda would [Sri Gurudev looks around the room in a “unknowing” way], while Ramakrishna is gloating with all the information. Being of the more masculine type, Swami Vivekananda did not like the idea of being put into a trance by being touched. This aversion was not a characteristic of the deeper personality who was Swami Vivekananda. It was the characteristic of Him in human form.

And what name does that deeper personality have, anyway? The one who was manifested as Swami Vivekananda—and Ramakrishna also for that matter—was the one who preceded the birth that manifested the limitations associated with conjoining with the gross personality and its circumstances, or the one you tend to call “Vivekananda”. But the one who truly was Swami Vivekananda was the deeper personality manifesting there in that time and place. Swami Vivekananda, the human, apparent person, appeared to have very little information about Himself. Ramakrishna told Him, “When you do find out, that will be the end. It is best for you not to find out because you have some work to do.”

DEVOTEE: In that sense Swami Vivekanandas life closely parallels Your Life because of Your intentional Submission to the human condition to the point of, in some sense, becoming All-Conscious of Your Divine Being. Except that when You were born, You were fully Conscious of Your Divine Condition. Then You intentionally…

SRI DA AVABHASA: Made that Submission.

DEVOTEE: Which apparently was not the case for Swami Vivekananda.

SRI DA AVABHASA: But He was attracted down. Even then, even during His lifetime He continued to experience the process that made Him come to birth—Ramakrishnas attracting Him out, being the pole that would bring out the information. Swami Vivekananda was just subject to it somehow, but unaware of it all.

ANOTHER DEVOTEE: Did You say that Swami Vivekananda did not make an intentional sacrifice to be manifested?

SRI DA AVABHASA: He was drawn down, attracted down, by the pole of Ramakrishna.

DEVOTEE: Obviously in seminary You Realized the sixth stage of life. But then You went to India to experience fifth stage conditional Nirvikalpa Samadhi.

SRI DA AVABHASA: You could say that in the seminary incident the Witness-Position, Consciousness Itself as the Witness Beyond death, was Realized. Then there was the time in India of fifth stage conditional Nirvikalpa Samadhi and the various things that followed it. Then there was the period of My seclusion in New York at the end of 1969 and early 1970, which, you could say, corresponded to the second stage of the “Perfect Practice”. There was certainly that element at the time.

The Great Event at the Vedanta Temple was the sudden Re-Awakening to the seventh stage Condition, but after that there continued to be Revelations of the mechanisms associated with that Realization more and more over the years, a clearer understanding of all kinds of details of everything previous to this Life, everything about My Work, all kinds of things.

DEVOTEE: Your consent to experience fourth stage mysticism came even after fifth stage conditional Nirvikalpa Samadhi.

SRI DA AVABHASA: Yes, but there was obviously some of it before as well. The end was the final purification. It took the form of mysticism in both the fourth stage of life and the fifth stage of life, but the final purification was the ending of the first five stages of life.

DEVOTEE: Sri Gurudev, I must praise You for the way You always accomplish whatever Work You need to do in the quickest manner possible. It is exemplified so perfectly by Your experiencing fifth stage conditional Nirvikalpa Samadhi after being in India for only three days.

SRI DA AVABHASA: That is the true Kundalini process. All the talk about chakras and purifications and the vision at this stage, the vision at that stage, the vision at another stage. The true Yogic Shaktipat associated with the ascending process is instantaneous fifth stage conditional Nirvikalpa Samadhi. That is its greatest form. In the typical case it is a long tour, especially since there is no fundamental ego-transcendence at the base to serve it and no fulfillment of the necessary frontal Yoga as a prerequisite.

People are taken off the streets these days and given conventional Yogic Shaktipat. How can you expect the most profound experiences of even the Kundalini process in such people? They are still wandering in the first three stages of life. They have not been purified by frontal Yoga. They have no great Yogic capabilities. They are still rather worldly and definitely ego-based, wandering in their body-identification. How can you expect the great phenomena of the Kundalini process in such people? They have certain experiences of energy, and they like that and are grateful for it, fine.

DEVOTEE: Sri Gurudev, was Rang Avadhoot consciously Transmitting anything to You at the moment of Your meeting him?

SRI DA AVABHASA: He saw Me as Dattatreya. His eyes were wide. He had the Divine Vision. I was a relative boy then, a youthful Yogi, and He saw Me in that manner.

He was walking in the garden with Baba Muktananda, and I was sitting at the end of a path. Baba Muktananda went first. Rang Avadhoot turned around to Me fully with the most profound glance of acknowledgement, full of the adoration that was His nature, full of the Blessing likewise, therefore.

DEVOTEE: So You are, in every sense, the Avadhoot. Even Rang Avadhoot acknowledged You.

SRI DA AVABHASA: Yes.

SRI DA AVABHASA: What else, then? You said you have some questions about the gross personality and the deeper personality.

DEVOTEE: I think they have been covered in this discussion.

SRI DA AVABHASA: I did not elaborate with much detail about any of that, although the discussion covers something about it altogether. What are your questions about this matter?

DEVOTEE: You talk about the relationship between the frontal process and the subconscious and the conscious mind. [she reads from The Dawn Horse Testament, pp. 532-33.]

“… Therefore, the Subconscious mind Is A Communications Bridge Between the Unconscious mind and the Conscious mind (and Between the Conscious mind and the Unconscious mind).

“Human beings Are Bringing The Unconscious To Consciousness Through Evolutionary Stages That Make Transitional Use Of The Subconscious Mechanisms. The Spiritual, Transcendental, and Divine Process May Be Understood As A Sequence Of (Possible) Stages Of Growth Culminating In (Inherent, Inherently Perfect, and Necessarily Divine) Consciousness Of (and Inherently Perfect, or Inherently Free, Responsibility For) All Of Reality (So That The Hidden Secrets Of mind Are Conscious, Even In mind, and The Transcendental, Inherently Spiritual, and Divine Source, or Inherently Perfect Subject, or Perfectly Subjective Self, or Limitless Prior Condition, Of mind, Even Of The Unconscious conditional Source-mind, Is Realized To Be Consciousness Itself).”

I was wondering whether we could say, in some sense, that, as You describe them, the unconscious, the subconscious, and the conscious correlate to the gross personality, the deeper personality, and then the…

SRI DA AVABHASA: Obviously the subconscious and the unconscious are in the deeper personality, because there is no depth in the gross personality. The process of bringing everything to consciousness is not itself to be identified with the gross personality. This description is of a process that takes place in the context of the living personality, the whole body-mind.

DEVOTEE: So the subconscious and the unconscious are related to the deeper personality?

SRI DA AVABHASA: In general that is so. But you are talking about the mind, the mind-process associated with the conjunction between the grosser personality and the deeper personality, not about the contrast between the two.

DEVOTEE: I have been “considering” what You have said about death, and that the seeking of death becomes revealed through this process. In some sense it seems that the seeking of death is known by the deeper personality.

SRI DA AVABHASA: It certainly can be known. In its deepest depth it is known. It is certainly immediately available to be known. Do you all know what I mean about the gross personality and the deeper personality? The deeper personality is what reincarnates. If there were no difference between it and the gross personality, there would not be reincarnation but only a continuation of the one, grossly manifested individual. The deeper personality is what is brought into conjunction with the physically born, apparent person.

There is a deeper dimension to the physically born person, everything to do with the subtle body and the causal body. That mechanism, that conditional process, that deeper personality, is what passes from death to life, what incarnates here. There are many characteristics of that deeper personality, including limitations made of past associations, perhaps, that bring it into physical conjunction, or physical birth. This deeper personality is not all purity. It is conditional, made of conditions, and full of the notion of separateness as well. The self-contraction is there as in the gross personality. The gross personality is simply that physical body popped out by your mother and father—that physical persona with all of its mechanisms, its brain, its nervous system, and all the rest.

The deeper personality precedes that gross personality, but, in the general case, it becomes utterly conjoined with it, wedded to it, identified with it, and it shares the fundamental characteristics dramatized by this grossly manifested personality. The deeper personality must be purified, just like the grosser personality. But the grosser personality must be brought under control, must become subject to discipline, to devotion to Me, to right practice altogether, right life. Then the deeper personality comes more to the front, and its purifications can begin.

DEVOTEE: Sri Gurudev, You have said in the past that a purification happens in the deeper personality even through the submission of the grosser personality.

SRI DA AVABHASA: The changes you make by real practice in the gross body obviously purify the subtler personality.

DEVOTEE: You also indicated there is a transition, when seeing is awakened, in which the deeper personality comes forward. I am wondering if there is an inherent limit to the degree of purification or transformation that can happen in the deeper personality previous to the transition to seeing.

SRI DA AVABHASA: Obviously, yes. The deeper personality must be purified in the Spiritual stages of the Way of the Heart. The condition for such purification is that the grosser personality is essentially under control, fundamentally purified, adapted to the Way of the Heart, adapted to the heart-impulse, congenial to it. Then the more in-depth purifications, transformations, and adaptations can occur.

DEVOTEE: When You spoke about this earlier, I felt this was a very important point for all Your devotees to feel, because it indicates why there has to be a conformity of the grosser personality, through handling business, simplifying life, bringing it to order in conformity to You.

SRI DA AVABHASA: Absolutely.

DEVOTEE: And that is why the gross personality must be disregarded as the leader or the guide of our life.

SRI DA AVABHASA: Your heart must be moved.

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