THE “BRIGHTENING” WAY TALK SERIES – The Yajna Discourses
of Santosha Adi Da (1995-1996) An
excerpt from, A Mastered Life – A Gathering
“Consideration” with Adi Da Samraj Sugar Bowl Ski Resort,
California – December 29, 1995. Beezone note: This excerpt was shortened by many
paragraphs from the original talk (link to original below).
The purpose of this editorial liberty was to focus on the
topic of ‘hearing’ that was so eloquently elaborated in this
talk by Heart Master Adi Da Samraj.
Hearing is No Small Matter
(part two) – (part
one) AVATARA ADI DA: To Realize Me, you must transcend
point of view, self-position, egoity, the separate position.
You cannot, through any exercise of the separate position or
the body-mind, Realize the Truth. The body-mind is simply a
modification of That, like the room itself . It’s a
complexity, or a maya, that cannot be comprehended. So rather than exercise the separate self, as if to
Realize the Truth in the manner of the “great path of
return”, you see, the separate self is directly transcended.
That is the “radical” nature of this Way that I have Given
you. So that’s the work you’re here to do. that’s the sadhana
you’re here to do. And you must have a clear understanding
that it is so, or you will re-invent the Way, as you all
have done, individually, even collectively re-invented it in
your own likeness or according to your own egoic
disposition, instead of adhering to My Word and maintaining
this profound consideration moment to moment, and doing so
in the context of embracing all the disciplines I’ve Given
you. Then you are involved in the direct listening
process. See, the listening process is not just struggling with
the practices, the disciplines, all that. that’s all just
something to do. The listening process is this profound
consideration, engages Ishta-Guru-Bhakti Yoga, making use of
the technical elements of practice, of the “conscious
process” and conductivity”. The disciplines and such are
simply the order, the structure, within which you do this
profound consideration, because you cannot become profound
in it or one pointed in it if you don’t simply establish
those disciplines covering everything. There will always be
vacation-land for you. So it has always been My expectation, even, that you
would embrace all these disciplines, all these forms of
practice, and enter seriously, profoundly, into this
consideration, and move on through these stages, get on with
this process. But individually and collectively You’ve been
rather retarded about it. To really be in touch with the self-contraction in this
Communion with Me is to be on the verge of hearing. It
shouldn’t take long, if you drop your vacations and just
stay on the job. If You’ve heard Me, then you’re in that position of your
own making, that knot you’re making, or that pinch you’re
giving yourself. And you can’t get rid of it, you can’t
shake it. You don’t allow yourself to even make an effort in
that direction. So it is tapas. It is a profound ordeal. At the same
time, it is full of absorptive Communion with Me and all the
things associated with right life. You must constantly be dealing directly with this
self-contraction. And if you are in touch with it, then you
don’t like it. You want only this Communion with Me. You
don’t want this self-contraction, but you’re having to feel
it every moment. And it’s your doing, you see. It’s kind of
in a spasm. You’ve got to do the sadhana to relax it and be
full of Me, so that My “Brightness” Radiates through it and
releases it quickly. So if you have heard Me, you don’t want to spend a lot of
time getting beyond that knot, because it’s not comfortable
at all. You become profoundly sensitized to it if You’ve
heard Me, and likewise profoundly sensitized to Me. that’s
why seeing is next. But the knot is there, and it’s unavoidable, and you
don’t like it. It is pain. It is fear. This is what makes a
renunciate out of people, the discovery of Me and the
self-contraction at the same time. In full hearing and
seeing, that’s what makes people renunciates, because it is
pain. It’s extraordinary pain, at the same time
extraordinary bliss but the pain is where you sit, and you
are moved to feel out of it, and be relieved of that
enclosure, that divorce from the Divine, that sinfulness.
You dislike it so much, you dislike that knot so much, that
you become utterly concentrated in going beyond it. It’s not
that you have to just sit in a room all the time, but you’re
just all the time feeling beyond it, practicing the exercise
of going beyond self-contraction into the state of Radiance,
Love-Bliss, Energy, Light. And you would not be distracted
from It, because you do not want to be simply sitting in
that pain of self-contraction. This is basically what Rudi was referring to, not really
knowing altogether what He was talking about. He just wanted
to deal with this incredible stress, frontal stress. But
it’s the ego-knot. You can’t bust it from outside. You can’t
relax the body that much. You have to deal with the root of
egoity itself-it’s in the conscious domain-and in Communion
with Me move beyond it. You can’t just work on the
body-mind. You have to find out the ego-act, and exercise
the flower constantly, every moment. But it is a pain, and it’s associated with lots of
adaptations that keep producing results somehow. So you’re
always going to have to feel beyond egoity itself, but also
all of it’s results. So that makes it an ordeal of pain, of
tapas, which you endure because you’re also in Communion
with Me and have My Wisdom. But it’s still pain. Hm? But you
become intelligent with it. You know what you’re doing and
can make this exercise of going beyond the contraction, the
self-contraction. DEVOTEE: I’ve never felt the overwhelming strength
of that so fiercely as tonight. AVATARA ADI DA: Tcha. DEVOTEE: I’ve experienced this bindu that she’s
talking about, this place, too, recently. AVATARA ADI DA: that’s to be outside it, as I just
said. It’s not wrong. It’s just a level of finding it, of
locating it. Any of you could perhaps, by some exercise of
attention, feel something about the right side of the heart.
That doesn’t mean that you’re established in that
position. Profound transitions in practice are about being inside,
or at the Source-Position. The exercise of hearing, then, is to be sensitive to it
as contraction itself, to be in the position of the pain,
not outside it or avoiding it but actually in that position.
It is not comfortable at all, not likable. It has all kinds
of artifacts-physical, emotional, mental, and so forth, even
in the breath. So the self-contraction itself is fundamental
pain altogether, disturbance altogether, and ordinary life
is motivated by it, because it is so profound, and it is
detached from the fundamental Reality, the Divine Reality.
It is lost in maya, in appearances, presumptions, even
imagining that you are seeing the room, whereas in fact
you’re just seeing one little view. So it’s confusing. You’re not seeing Reality. You’re
seeing an appearance associated with your own egoity. You
can’t be in another position. You can’t be in the position
of the totality of the room. What position are you in? Some
self-enclosure of thoughts and perceptions. So it’s very uncomfortable to make this discovery of
egoity. But as I said to you earlier, it’s not truly
profoundly discovered except in the condition of Grace, of
Communion with Me, and reception of My Teaching, and then,
it’s in that total context that the ego is located also.
That’s hearing, the true discovery of the self-knot,
coincident with this whole process of Communion with Me,
full of the Wisdom of Instruction that you apply. What about that? DEVOTEE: I think you’re talking about the matter
of hearing includes, then, this reception of You. AVATARA ADI DA: Mm-hm. I know what we were talking
about! [Laughter.] I wanted to know if you had a
response to it. DEVOTEE: Beloved, I feel, like You’ve always Said,
feeling-Contemplation of You is primary. The first thing you
have to do is “Locate” You before you can even become
sensitive to the self-con traction. AVATARA ADI DA: Yes. DEVOTEE: It seems the whole listening process is
just staying with that feeling-Contemplation of You, but
along with whatever the body-mind goes through. AVATARA ADI DA: But always give Me the leading
faculties. don’t be played upon by these natural arisings.
Even the intensity of converting life to sadhana can
sometimes produce more arisings, reveal more things, that
require to be purified or made “Bright”, which is what
purification is really all about. Once you dare to allow yourself to hear Me, then the
process becomes intensive and profound. Maybe you have some
sense of that, those of you who are taking a long time to
get to that point. And that’s why you’re taking vacations.
It’s even a kind of fear of the self-contraction, a fear of
becoming aware of the limited nature of your experiencing,
and then the mortality that you’re locked into because of
that. you’re afraid of it. you’re not merely afraid of it.
It is fear. DEVOTEE: It is fear. AVATARA ADI DA: You don’t want to be afraid, so
you distract yourself and minimize your awareness of this.
But you must stand in that position. That doesn’t mean to go
insane with fear or anything like that. It’s about being in
that place where you make this knot, this fundamental
discomfort. Yes, it has the characteristic of fear, but you
basically experience that fear as a kind of anxiety in the
pit of your stomach or something. If you are but really in touch with the self-contraction,
you do experience the anxiety that is the constant
underlying everyone’s behavior, everyone’s moment to moment
existence. They just build all kinds of stuff on top of it
and desensitize themselves, but the self-contraction is the
quality of anxiety, stressful anxiety, and so on. So, as I Said, you may want to forestall that
realization, because you can’t get rid of it once you got
it. Once you get bit, that’s it. Unless you find yourself
out, you can’t escape it. And so that’s when the sadhana
really begins, you see. that’s when it starts becoming
effective at a profound level. Before then, there are
life-improvements and so on, fine. But this is how the
sadhana gets intensified, quickened, full of light, full of
heat, therefore. You see even student-beginners and so on having – even
apparent to all – experiences, kriyas and all kinds of
things going on with them. But that’s not seeing Me. Those
are effects, and they can be sought or clung to and whatnot,
and become means to delay the course like anything else. So those who are involved in the seeing Yoga may very
well have kriyas and so on as spontaneous happenings, but
they’ll be focused in this direct Spiritual “Locating” of
Me, Given up in Me utterly, because of the foundation of
hearing, so that you can be entered into the Source Point of
the “Perfect Practice”. To engage in the “Perfect Practice”
you must be at the Source Point of egoity, not on the other
side of it, wandering in the body-mind. To Awaken to the
Witness and then enter into the profound “Perfect Practice”
is to Stand on the other side of the ego, and the focus of
the practice is no longer dealing with the body-mind,
feeling beyond egoity in the mechanism of the body-mind.
It’s a matter of entering directly into the Self-Radiant
Sphere of Divine Being. Of course it’s done most profoundly in meditation, where
you separate yourself from other matters. And so, even
though the practice is also engaged in a fundamental sense
in every moment, there still is, after the profound
meditation, return of ordinary associations. And the associations will not necessarily themselves
change all that much. It’s in the seventh stage of life, the
third stage of the “Perfect Practice”, that the
Source-Position itself is Realized utterly, and no
conditions are placed on It. It is not held in place by
anything whatsoever. So the gesture of dissociation drops,
and the “Bright” Realizer Expands into the sphere of the
body-mind. And through the process of Recognition, all
aspects of the body-mind are “Brightened” by that already
Realized Condition. So someone engaged in the “Perfect
Practice” in the context of the sixth stage of life shows a
very different sign than a devotee who will have Realized Me
in the seventh stage of life. So once you truly hear Me, once you get the taste of all
of this, you will not want to delay the course. Everybody
has their own manner, and the imperfect qualities of the
body-mind in it’s adaptations, so everybody’s sign in the
course is different. Some may be, in their depth, apparently
more a renunciate than others and so on, or more intensively
involved in all the aspects of practice than some other. If
they’ve truly heard Me, they all practice from the same
disposition and would not delay the course. It’s just like if you’re ill, you don’t want it to last.
Maybe sometimes you don’t mind feeling a little woozy, a
little sniffly, and hanging around in bed all day. But if
you’re really sick, you don’t want it to go on. Well, to
hear Me is to be really sick, you see. [Laughter.]
it’s to get really sick, at the same time really well
altogether and knowing what to do, but otherwise really
sick, really in touch with the ego-act and it’s result and
it’s disposition and so on. And you do real work with it,
because it’s such an urgent matter. You don’t want to be
sick anymore. that’s how sick you have to be, in other
words, to have heard Me, because it is a profound motivator,
a profound capability. Brightening Heart Series
– Index
Beezone White and Orange
Project*
is a study method based on Ludwig Wittgenstein’s
Blue
& Brown Books books. The
Blue & Brown Books of Wittgenstein’s were dictated as a
set of notes to his student in 1934-1935. Beezone uses a number of formats for assembling a
project. One is to present a short piece directly from Adi
Da. Then Beezone will write down the highlighted points from
said paragraph and/or a group of like paragraphs. The second format is ‘thematic’. Beezone will take a
‘theme’ of Adi Da’s teaching and go through various talks
and essays and write down a sentence or two related to that
theme or topic. Lastly is a compilation or remix. This is a blend of the
two other methods. In this style Beezone will take a number
of talks and essays based on a theme. Beezone will then use
the ‘cut-up’ method. The cut-up technique is an aleatory
literary technique in which a text is cut up and rearranged
to create a new text. This method can be traced to at least
the Dadaists of the 1920s, but was popularized in the late
1950s and early 1960s by writer William S. Burroughs, and
has since been used in a wide variety of contexts. Beezone This is project is not to be confused with: Humble One-Liners DEVOTEE: It is like the left and right (or the
world of opposites)…..Life is suffering, and then there is
God. ADI DA SAMRAJ: That is one way of putting it, in your
humble one-liner fashion. Humble one-liners are sufficient for most people to
generate in them a sense of feeling consoled. They are like
teddy bears. So a lot of people reduce the religious life to something
like one-liners that they pull out to snuggle with. But how
can one settle for that couple of sentences worth of
comprehension as the attitude of ones existence? It is a
profound matter. The only way to save yourselves from the destiny of
religious one-linerism is to constantly and directly study
my teaching, read the great traditions, study them. Stay in
the process of this great “consideration”, instead of just
sitting around and ‘smoking the pipe”, rapping out dharma
and consoling yourselves with your teddy bear
knowledge…” download PDF of this page – click here
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