The Law That Grants the Heart Strength – November 1996

November 10, 1996 – Land Bridge Pavilion, The Mountain Of
Attention, California

 

DEVOTEE: Beloved, I have a question related to The
Mummery* and the process of true hearing……(remainder
of the question eliminated as it is irrelevant to the point
Beezone wants to emphasis in Adi Da’s
response)……

 

editors note: The Mummery – A Parable
Of The Divine True Love

The heart-breaking story of Raymond
Darling’s growth to manhood and his search to be
reunited with his beloved (Quandra). The Mummery is Avatar
Adi Da’s telling of His own Life-Story in the language
of parable, including His unflinching portrayal of how the
unconverted ego makes religion (and life altogether) into a
meaningless mummery. A work of astonishing poetry and deeply
evocative archetypes.

 

AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: (Sadhana) is not
about the mortal pattern merely. It’s about the Pattern of
Realization. There are pictures in the mortal pattern –
there’s all kinds of dimensions to the pattern of The
Mummery book. There’s a passage from The Yoga Vasistha which
I placed at the beginning of the Epilogue, which says
something, in the traditional language, of the secret of
this. It’s about Liberation then, not merely about mortal
death. The egg is the ego. It’s also the “I” of the subtle
domain, the inner dimension of the world. Quandra being
apparently dead in gross form, he’s able to Contemplate her
in subtle form. Blah-blah-blah.

The Spiritual Process

It’s about the Spiritual process. It goes from gross to
subtle to causal to Beyond. Samadhi is the Realization of
what is beyond gross, subtle and causal, beyond waking,
dreaming and sleeping. The dropping of the egg is,
therefore, not an event merely in the waking world. It’s a
metaphor for the pattern of Realization. And the She
(Shakti) is the Bliss of Reality, the Radiance of
Consciousness Itself. Wherever that is identified with
conditions, it is threatened. Things are always passing,
changing.

The Mummery book is about the voluntary death of She for
the sake of illuminating Him – meaning it’s about the
Spiritual process and how it works in this Way.I have
Revealed to you.

Divine Radiance Keeps Going to the Core

The Divine Radiance passes through the circuit of
manifestation from gross to subtle to causal to Beyond,
requires the Samadhi to be transformed stage by stage,
because the Divine Force will not stay in the waking world
(the gross plane), will not stay in the dreaming world (the
subtle plane), and will not stay in the causal world (the
plane of sleep). It constantly passes through the core of it
– it keeps going beyond. This is the death of Quandra. Gross
to subtle to causal, in the coffin, in the egg, and Beyond.
Her death is His Salvation or Liberation. Submitting to the
ordeal brings this gift ultimately.

Do you think in the next moment Raymond simply takes his
hand out of the door and walks into the church and goes out
and has a McDonald’s with Evelyn Disk?! [Beloved
makes a disgusted face and flicks His hand several times, as
if Hes trying to shake off a gooey raw egg.]
[laughter]

Well, it’s for good reason that there is no next scene –
because it is not about the mortal drama merely. It is a
metaphor, an archetypal sign, a reflection of the Pattern of
My Revelation. It’s about the Spiritual process. It’s about
the Yoga of this Way. So there is no next scene. it’s not
about the bodies and the church and the setting and so
forth. It’s about Samadhi, the Spiritual and Divine
Realization Which Is Beyond waking, dreaming and sleeping,
Beyond the casket and the egg and the self-consciousness,
Beyond attention. So the next moment cannot be comprehended
by the mind, you see.

The Mummery book is filled with lessons for you and
filled with metaphors and perceptions, concepts, all the
rest of it – which could be commented on forever if you
like, finding things to say about it as it pertains to the
sadhana of devotees and to My lifetime, My Pattern
altogether, the Way and so on. It’s also just what it is. It
doesn’t need any further statements or explanations.
It’s just the experience. So it is to be performed every
year.

We could amuse ourselves talking about it forever. What
could be said about it cant be exhausted. Therefore, it
confounds any explanation. It cant be finally explained-its
a paradox, a koan, if you like. You will not get the point
of The Mummery book ultimately until you’ve Realized
Me.

In some fundamental sense then, death, the receding of
the force of existence from this life, is a Grace – if
understood in terms of the process of Divine Realization. If
you don’t see this life in terms of the process of
Divine Realization, but just see yourself caught up in it
and wanting to survive, and survive with as much pleasure as
you can possibly manage to get hold of – no, then you
don’t understand it and death is nothing but something
to be dreaded. It, of course, is not something to be merely
chosen, or thought of as some sort of amusement, or done for
it’s own sake, and so forth. But like all other aspects of
this pattern of manifest existence, it can be rightly
understood. And in rightly understanding it, you will also
live rightly. And then what is dreadful to you becomes
comprehensible, something that can be passed through
Gracefully.

Your Frustation at Finding Happiness is Moving You –
Rightly So

As it says in the Great Tradition, even a little bit of
the Law casts out great fear. Just a little bit of
understanding already relieves some of the stress on the
heart. So this birth leads to death. That’s a tragedy
and something dreadful from the egoic point of view. It’s
otherwise, however, part of a Graceful process. If you get
My Revelation and get understanding, it is the Grace of
Quandra submitting to appear to be dead, forcing you
therefore, and thereby, to look more profoundly. It’s your
frustration at finding Happiness here that is moving you to
find It truly. That’s Quandra volunteering to die.

Your dissatisfaction that makes you crave and seek, even
wanting to become an addict of one kind or another, has a
seed of rightness in it’s origin. You are noticing that you
are unhappy, unsatisfied. You become wise in this Way when
you realize that you cannot be satisfied. But for great
wisdom to be manifested in you, you have to allow yourself
to become serious. You have to refuse the fools course,
which is simply to seek and to be addicted and so forth. You
have to feel this circumstance here, not just glance at it
and be superficial and amused and so forth, but truly feel
it. And feel Me here. Feel the nature of conditions as they
are and feel That Which Is to be Realized. This sensitivity
is sobering and straightening and also expansive.

The entire world is groaning presently in the midst of a
terrible darkness. Every thing and every one is oppressed.
And yet it’s always been so. There are all the reasons that
seem to be the reasons why it is so now. But it’s always so.
It has always been so. There’s no point in being nostalgic
for the suffering that you could have had in a previous
lifetime. [laughter] A kind of “designer suffering”,
not as bad as the present suffering.

It just occurred to Me, something interesting: There seem
to be endless movies and programs and such about World War
II in the theaters, and on television, and so forth, now-but
fifty years later. I was a child during World War II and
growing up during it and just after it was over and so
forth. The fact that people could feel nostalgic about that
time is amazing! It has something to do with it forming into
memory for those who were alive at that time, but also it
has to do with generations born since who didn’t have
the experience. It’s like an adventure story to them or
something, I guess.

 But the world was groaning then just as it is now.
People were just as much fools then as now. Then, and so in
the generation before that, and all the generations before
that. It’s the nature of mortality, conditional existence
itself, the waking state itself. It’s not that there is some
unique, historically caused stress at the present time and
when you get your utopian act together everything is going
to be fine. There are certainly things to be done, for
compassionate reasons, but that doesn’t mean utopia is
about to happen.

I was reviewing a documentary for The Basket of Tolerance
with a nun called Sister Wendy Beckett. Has anybody seen her
programs about art? She was saying something about art,
ancient art and so forth-she made one interesting comment
which was true enough. She was saying (to paraphrase it)
that art is about reflecting conditions of human experience,
and that the style, the mode, of that changes over time, but
it doesn’t get any better. It’s always about the same
thing.

So it is with human life, human history, human
experiencing, conditional existence altogether in it’s
waking form. It’s constantly changing and there are all
kinds of changes in style and mode and politics and all the
rest of it. But it doesn’t get any better. It
doesn’t get any worse either in fundamental terms. it’s
not evolving in this sense.

And, therefore, all the generations of mankind have been
caught in the same situation and entered into the same
“considerations”. So this dark and groaning time has it’s
own characteristics. And those characteristics have made a
conjunction that, in fact, has made My Appearance here
possible. On the other hand, I’m addressing conditions
and an experience that have always been so. Now there are
many signs that even the entire world, the earth itself,
could be destroyed or made uninhabitable. But how different
is that from some hundreds or thousands of years ago when
people thought the limit of the world was the tree at the
outer edge of the village and that village was threatened?
For them , it was the confrontation with the end of the
existing world. This confrontation, this dilemma has always
been the case.

 And so now, as in all generations past, you are
called, not only by Me, but by all the signs in your
experiencing, to become profoundly serious, profoundly deep,
moved profoundly, moved to Realize What is Great. Committed
only to Happiness Itself and to be fitted with such great
intelligence that you can discriminate between real
Happiness and experiential consolation.

As My devotee, you’ll be doing the same doings that
human beings do. That doesn’t change. Your mode of
doing it is made hopefully lawful and right, but it’s the
same sphere of doings. As we were discussing last week even,
renunciates still have to make a living, and so forth. The
human process is still engaged. And as My devotee,
you’re not called to be a drab, “naive realist”
Buddhist. [laughter] This sadhana should release
energy and attention. Free it up.

But this Way is not about living for conditions in this
world-either those that are present or any in the future. It
is about understanding and going beyond and functioning
freely in the midst of conditional arising-free in the
wisdom sense. Not merely doing as you are by tendency
inclined to do, but doing all those doings that are about
Freedom Itself and the Realization of What is Great.

That’s the nature of Raymond Darling then, and his
adventure in that “Mummery” world. Raymond there at Saint
and Ear does not, at this moment, look to Me a lot different
than My own situation here in the Body and this gathering
here. And so I call you to change it, and not be a mummery
anymore, but be made authentic, serious-start feeling Me
here as those in The Mummery book could have become if they
had taken Raymond seriously, instead of persisting in their
fools drama, indifferent to him.

 Why do you think I call you to attend this
“Mummery” puja every year? Many reasons, of course, but, not
only to attend it, to perform it for one another,
participate in it as a performed puja. Among the many
reasons for that is obviously-I hope obvious to you-so that
you’ll see yourselves reflected in it, see how your
religion business is not very unlike Saint and Ear. It’s not
it, therefore. So this is part of what it has to do with
listening to Me then, you see. Listen to Me about this and
don’t be irresponsible. Make a true Sangha. Don’t
be a mummery. And be serious with Me and get on with it.
[brief silence]

 If you allow yourself to become serious about the
nature of this world and it’s limitations, but with that
allow yourself to become profoundly responsive to Me,
profoundly serious about this great practice-just to enter
into it is a little bit of the Law that will keep you from
being disheartened by this life.

DEVOTEES: Da. Thank You, Beloved.

AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: And that is the first
victory-the heart-strength, you see. And when you cannot be
defeated, when you have that heart-strength and you cannot
be disheartened, then you have the strength to enter into
the great profundities of the Way.

[Beloved Bhagavan stands to leave, and devotees
exclaim their thanks and praise for His Blessing and
Instruction as He exits the Pavilion.]