(all quotes are of Adi Da Samraj)
Satsang
(Sanskrit sat = true, sanga = company)
is
a Sanskrit adjective meaning “the ideal; pure and true
essence (nature) of an entity or existence. It can thus be
concluded as “the self-existent or Universal
Spirit”.
There is a common understanding that spending time in the company of a Guru is Satsang, something like going to church. Going to church or spending time in the company of a Guru is not necessarily Satsang. Satsang is the communication of Truth. To paraphrase Adi Da Samraj, Satsang is a paradox in the dream and it is the principal condition of sadhana or spiritual practice wherein Truth appears. And in that appearance of Satsang or Truth, all limitations are magnified, Outshined and ultimately dissolved in Light.
Satsang is Eternal.
Satsang is the subjective nature of The Cosmic Mandala.
Satsang is the nature of the Atman (soul).
Satsang is the nature of the creation of the manifest world.
Satsang is the nature of the Spiritual Master.
Satsang is the nature of the whole body.
Satsang is the nature of the entire play that is our humanity and our resistance to it.
Satsang is the nature of the mechanism through which you “know” Truth and My Total Divine Manifestation.
Satsang is the nature of the Current of the body-mind.
Satsang is the nature of the subject, of “me,” prior to world, prior to the body, prior to the life and the life-force, prior to the mind in its lower or higher forms, prior to the “me.”
paraphrased from:
Adi Da Samraj, August 9, 1987, On Sensitivity, Crazy Wisdom, Vol. 6, No. 6, November/December 1987
The following are excerpts (italicized) from various writing and talks by Adi Da Samraj on the nature of Satsang.
“Guru comes to manifest that Satsang that existed prior to his physical birth. People don’t relate to that. After the Guru’s death they try to relate to that Satsang that he apparently generated during his lifetime. So they go around trying to remember what he looked like and carrying that whole cult of his personality, instead of truly living the Divine Satsang that he was here to communicate while he was alive.”
You must begin to grasp the nature of Satsang. Realizing the principle of Satsang is the same as coming into the human presence of the Guru. The mind falls apart, and the phenomena of the Spiritual Process arise spontaneously. It is not that you must develop a technique for remembering the Guru in some artificial way, but you must truly be present with the Guru, and the Guru must truly be present to you. All of the remembering of the Guru that you can generate will be useless, until the principle of Satsang itself is established, until you find the Guru always.
It is easy enough to find the Guru when he is standing in front of you, or sitting there talking and engaging in obvious actions that the senses can recognize. Sitting in the presence of the human Guru and contemplating his form, you are actually concentrating on the perfect Nature or Reality that is the Guru, truly. Thus, the human form of the Guru is an instrument of meditation, because you can find the Transcendental Form of the Guru through the obvious human presence and form. The human form of the Guru is a Grace, it is given, it is obvious. You need not do very much to find him, and by openly remaining with him when you are present with the Guru, you contact his perfect Form, and the mind dissolves.
But when you are not in the Guru’s physical presence, you must be more adept. You must have understood something, learned something, so that you can find the Guru when he is not physically present. And when you do, you notice again that the mind falls apart, regardless of how much thinking about the Guru you may do. You may identify Satsang by a certain sign, which is that the mind falls apart in the presence of the Guru. So if, when you are not in the Guru’s physical presence, you notice that the mind is falling apart, you are in Satsang. If, when you are not in the physical presence of the Guru, you do not experience this dissolution, this Spiritual Process, all the time, you are not in Satsang.
The purpose of the human Guru is not to make it easy for you to find him. The purpose of the human Guru is to establish the principle of Satsang independent of his physical presence, because his physical presence is mortal and temporary. Therefore, the physical form of the Guru must be used for its appropriate purpose, which is to establish true Satsang in the world, not just to make it available to a relative few who contemplate the Guru’s physical form, because such contemplation is temporary and brief.
The mere activity of sitting with the Guru generates a quality people find desirable, and they become addicted to that contact. They make an idol out of the human Guru, because they notice that very pleasurable things occur when they are in his physical company. But the Guru is not present to become an idol. He is here to instruct you and to transform the tendencies of life, so that Satsang can be lived all the time by everybody who is the least bit inclined to it, independent of the physical presence of the Guru.
The Guru is always testing his devotee to see if the devotee can find the Guru when the Guru is not physically present. Thus, the devotee may experience brief meetings with the Guru and then separations. When the devotee is able to find him always, then the Guru is satisfied. His function has been fulfilled. The devotee’s realization of Satsang in a sense frees the Guru of his own mortality, because the function of his mortal presence has been fulfilled and is no longer necessary when the devotee has begun to live independent of the physical presence of the Guru. Not that all of a sudden the devotee is just not interested, or thinks that the physical, human Guru is an illusion. Rather, he feels the principle alive in the human Guru to be omnipresent, and this realization increases the intensity of his respect for the human Guru.
The Guru prepares people to live that Satsang which they could have enjoyed even before his human appearance. Such is the true form of Satsang, not the cultic or ritualistic enjoyment of the impression he left behind him as a human teacher. Invariably we find that when a Guru appears in the world and begins to Teach, he becomes the center of a group of people, so that after his death his human image survives as the cultic object of his Teaching. There is no Satsang then, but only people continuing with the imagery, and the Teaching of the Guru becomes religion, or enthusiasm without understanding and without the true Spiritual Process. The human Guru is an instrument of Satsang, or the true Principle, and after his death of course it is useful to remember and honor him, but not in a cultic way independent of Satsang.
Crazy Wisdom, vol. 1, no. 4 (1982), pp. 34-35
“Great Principle of Spiritual practice is Satsang and Guru-Function is associated with the Great Principle of Satsang. The Essence of the practice of Satsang is to focus attention on the Realized Condition of a true Adept.
Exactly how this mechanism of Satsang works is not clear at the outset. Prior to its perfect realization, it cannot be grasped. It is elusive. So, as you say, you are trying to get down to it. But if you try to discover or perform it yourself, your blood vessels will burst. It won’t happen. If you don’t already live the point of view of the heart, vital, subtle or causal, how are you going to move into it? Your point of view is in your head, or your legs, wherever. Satsang, the company and condition of Truth, is your true resort, and in Satsang you will find yourself falling spontaneously into the “Heart,” the Heart of Truth, which transcends the manifest realizations.”
Method of the Siddhas – Due to copyright restrictions Beezone is unable to provide the link to the remainder of this essay – See copyright letter to Beezone from Adidam.
Imaginary, Wrong and True Relationship
HEART-MASTER DA LOVE-ANANDA: Relationship to Me is a matter of your action . The relationship to the Sat-Guru is resort to the Sat-Guru. To surrender to the Sat-Guru is to transcend oneself in every moment of that relationship. It is not that you walk around having it, and some thoughts you have about it are real and others are imaginary. There is no relationship to Me if this activity of resort, or surrender, is not the activity in the moment. Everything else is imaginary, then, or wrong relationship, you could say.
The relationship for real is characterized by your resort to it. That is what makes it real, not some thoughts you have about it, but your submission of those thoughts, the transcendence of mind, through resorting to Me. Your relationship to Me is an activity, what one could call a counter-egoic activity. It is not that some ideas or thoughts about it are real, or non-imaginary, and others are unreal, or imaginary, you see. This relationship has nothing to do with your thoughts. It is entirely about your resort, your surrender. You enter into My Sphere through such activity. You make right use of Me by such activity.
Is this what you understood about it, or something else?
DEVOTEE: That is exactly what I understood. Through surrender You are just Present.
HEART-MASTER DA LOVE-ANANDA: Not only as a result of this surrendering-this relationship is the very context of surrendering. You do not resort to Me and then Find Me later. You only resort to Me if you are resorting to Me (exactly). Me . Not some thought. Not some feeling. Not something you have inside there. Whatever that is, it is precisely what must be surrendered or gone beyond.
Now, in this moment, it is not necessary to be capable of “Locating” My Spiritual Presence or entering into the Domain of My Very (and Inherently Perfect) State. My bodily (human) Form is available for your feeling-Contemplation always. By making use of My bodily (human) Form through Recollection, you establish the context for this resorting, this surrender, in any moment. It is a very practical matter. Remember Me, in My Appearance here. If you are in My physical Company at the moment, it is obvious how you do it, because I am physically perceptible to you, perceivable by you. That is easy enough to understand. But what about the other times, when you are not in My physical Company? You are not called to cultivate some imaginary relationship to My Spiritual Presence or My Very (and Inherently Perfect) State simply because I am not physically Present with you. That is not appropriate. It is another way to enter into a world of imagination, or egoity.
You must make use of My bodily (human) Form when I am not physically Present with you. You have Murtis and other Images, but you can also Recollect My bodily (human) Form in the mind, not as a means for resorting to your mind, but rather as a means for bringing your attention to Me. To do so is not imaginary. It is simply a way of connecting with Me, of providing a practical, physical context for this relationship.
Likewise, if you are sitting, even in My physical Company here, and you become meditative, and the eyes spontaneously close, My bodily (human) Form is still available. It is not that as soon as the eyes close, you have entered into the Sphere of My Spiritual Presence. My Spiritual Presence is not simply everything that is inside when you close your eyes. You must Find My Spiritual Presence by Grace, and Finding Me Spiritually, by Grace, comes in due course. Until then, My bodily (human) Form is the Sign by which you resort to Me, whether I am physically Present-if I am physically Present-or otherwise through My Murti or your Recollection of My bodily (human) Form in the mind.
Use this Recollection of My bodily (human) Form as the Means for your surrender moment by moment. When the Sign of My Spiritual Presence, and, ultimately, the Sign of My Very (and Inherently Perfect) State, also appears, fine. But the fundamental context of your sadhana is the relationship to My bodily (human) Form. Just as you are active bodily, you must maintain the bodily context of your relationship to Me, so that you can resort to Me through the submission of bodily attention. Whereas if you presume I am not bodily (humanly) Present, then you will tend to resort to your illusions inwardly: “Oh, I feel a little devotional. He made me feel a little good. That’s His Spiritual Presence.” No. That is not My Spiritual Presence at all. That is just a sensation of yours, perhaps a feeling that develops in the context of resorting to My bodily (human) Form.
Devotional energies may arise in that moment of resorting to My bodily (human) Form, but to Find My Spiritual Presence is another matter. It is to Find Me Spiritually. This comes in due course, by Grace. Even if I have not yet been Revealed to you as My Spiritual Presence, My bodily (human) Form remains the context of your practice, your Recollection, your resorting. My Image Recollected in the mind as My physical Form is the circumstance of your resorting, your surrender. If you simply picture Me in mind and then go on to do all kinds of things with your mind, that is an imaginary relationship to Me. But if you use the simple Means of the Recollection of Me in mind and in every moment of such Recollection surrender yourself, surrender your attention, and feel beyond self-contraction, beyond thoughts, beyond reactivity, beyond self-address bodily, then that is Satsang. That is enjoying My Darshan in the moment. That is resorting to Me.
A necessary characteristic of this resorting to Me, then, is the transcendence of mind.
The Love-Ananda Gita, 1989, Part III: I Am What you Require, CHAPTER 7, At First Sight.
“The cult is a reenactment of the ego. The ultimate fate of every cult is the same as that of the ego, the separate and separative self. It is the sacrificial destruction of the center, the death of the one in the middle. But true Satsang is an anti cultic or non cultic process. It is not inward directed. It doesn’t tend to become a cult in the sense I have described. It is inclusive, but the “center” is not its motive. In Satsang the center is always already undermined as a center, as a separate and separative entity. The “center” of Satsang is consciousness itself. It is the light, the very force of unqualified consciousness. It is communicated directly to a man’s life, in relationship, so that he no longer needs to turn inward, to create survival for the center. Instead, he turns toward function, freely, the light already assumed. So Satsang, the company of Truth, tends to serve life, to move into life, to contact life in relationship, not to acquire life.”
Method of the Siddhas – Due to copyright restrictions Beezone is unable to provide the link to the remainder of this essay – See copyright letter to Beezone from Adidam.
“He must be purified of all experience, high and low, in the face of them all, beatific and demonic. And the realization of such sadhana is a responsibility of the individual in the midst of his conventional life. It is not magic. He must live it. That demand always pertains. So the conventional dilemma of the body is not permanently taken away by the dramas of experience in Satsang. Eventually, the individual must realize the Divine through the intuitive process of real intelligence, even while alive in “the body.”
Beezone edit and
adaptation
White
and Orange Project
“Fundamentally as I say, sadhana is a matter of self-purification. It’s about then the outshining of all the forms of limitations by the force of consciousness itself by magnifying the force of consciousness itself, the force of love bliss itself. This purifies. This releases. That virtue is what you are coming into contact with in Satsang with me and as you mature you become more and more a responsible participant in that process of self-purification or ultimately outshining, recognition without shining.”
Purification of Karma – Due to copyright restrictions Beezone is unable to provide the link to the remainder of this essay – See copyright letter to Beezone from Adidam.
“The Siddhi active in Satsang is the fundamental instrument of this work, and not any secondary method or technical affair given to you to perform. In this Satsang, by virtue of this Siddhi, the process of understanding begins. The force of Satsang, which yields self-observation, insight, and real meditation, arises on the basis of hearing the Guru, living as the devotee of the Guru, responsibly maintaining the conditions communicated by the Guru.”
Three Dharnas – Due to copyright restrictions Beezone is unable to provide the link to the remainder of this essay – See copyright letter to Beezone from Adidam.
“Satsang is the real condition. Satsang is the activity and communication of truth.”
“Satsang with Me begins as an essentially homely affair, in which, having already heart-recognized Me, you begin to respond to Me by heart-responding to My Avataric Divine Wisdom-Instruction. You begin to deal with your life in the practical ways I require, until you can truly turn to Me.”
He She Is Me – Due to copyright restrictions Beezone is unable to provide the link to the remainder of this essay – See copyright letter to Beezone from Adidam.
“Satsang with Me is not simply a common relationship between a Teacher and a disciple. Satsang with Me includes all of the practicalities and ordinariness and homeliness of a human relationship and a Teaching relationship – but, fundamentally, even from the beginning, Satsang with Me (based on right, true, and full devotional recognition-response to Me) is (by Means of My Avataric ally Self-Transmitted Divine Grace) the Enjoyment of My “Bright” Divine Spiritual Body in the specific manner I am Describing.”
He She Is Me – Due to copyright restrictions Beezone is unable to provide the link to the remainder of this essay – See copyright letter to Beezone from Adidam.
“But Reality tends to include all things in its own form.” This is the law of Satsang. Those who live Satsang with the Guru tend to become the Guru, in other words, tend to become those qualities that are also the Guru. They tend to become like that, they tend to become absorbed into the true form, the true nature. Because this is the quality of Reality, over against all of the karmic natures that may exist, all of the karmic trends that may exist. It’s the quality of Reality to make everything like itself. Everything that attaches itself to the Truth, to the Guru, is absorbed in the Truth, and in the Guru. This is a law that works everywhere as well. For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Whenever we get resistance’s of various kinds, karmic tendencies, when you attach yourself to some karmic quality or nature, you tend also to become like it or become opposite to it. But the law works toward perfection, works in Truth, in Satsang. And, truly, there’s nothing worth becoming like except the Guru, God, Truth, the Self, Reality. Everything else that you’re becoming like is taking you to zero. Everything else is a form of the separative movement, the drama of Narcissus.”
Life of Understanding – Due to copyright restrictions Beezone is unable to provide the link to the remainder of this essay – See copyright letter to Beezone from Adidam.
“But the communication of the Heart is essentially a process in silence, whereby what arises gets no response, no reinforcement.” Again, the activity of the man of understanding is mere presence, that is what he does. His mere existence, his mere presence in relation to his disciple, mere Satsang – this is the method of the Siddhas. And it is prior to all forms of action so it is prior to speech as well, it’s prior to all outward activities. Satsang with the Guru is essentially an affair of silence without peculiar activities. So that form of our meeting together that we generally call Satsang is a time when you all sit in a room and do essentially nothing, and I seem to do essentially nothing. There’s no action, no words spoken, because the Siddhi, the true activity to which the disciple becomes sensitive has nothing whatever to do with either his ordinary games or anything that could be communicated indirectly, from without.”
Life of Understanding – Due to copyright restrictions Beezone is unable to provide the link to the remainder of this essay – See copyright letter to Beezone from Adidam.
“But in the ‘Satsang’ or conscious company of the Heart, what arises is confronted by silence without and the Heart within.”
Life of Understanding – Due to copyright restrictions Beezone is unable to provide the link to the remainder of this essay – See copyright letter to Beezone from Adidam.
“So this Satsang causes the individual to be simply aware of what arises, without the possibility of indulging or avoiding it. The very condition of Satsang eliminates, undermines the seeking activity, the ordinary methodical activity of the disciple, because it puts that utterly in doubt. So it eliminates from his quality in Satsang, in his meditation, the possibility of indulging the qualities that are arising in himself, or the possibility of avoiding them. In other words, the mere condition of Satsang tends to put him in the turiya state of witnessing the qualities that arise. Sitting or living in the mere presence of the Guru tends to awaken the turiya state, the fourth state beyond waking, sleeping, and dreaming, and awakens this function of witness in the face of the qualities that arise. And whenever this mere witnessing, this turiya state, this quality is awakened in consciousness, the possibility of real understanding has awakened.
So he is allowed to see what arises, rather than to become further identified with the stream through the unconsciousness of ordinary conversation and action. The process of Satsang, the meditation of Satsang precedes all strategies, all methods, all philosophies, all verbalizations, all conceptualizations of Truth, all egoic preferences, all Narcissistic approaches.”
Life of Understanding – Due to copyright restrictions Beezone is unable to provide the link to the remainder of this essay – See copyright letter to Beezone from Adidam.
“Understanding is the fruit of Satsang. The first form of Satsang is simply coming to the Man of Understanding, coming to the Guru and listening to him, being attentive to him. And that’s the first form of Satsang. understanding then was simply a matter of observing oneself in a relationship, action, and life. And this, of course, is the beginning of Satsang. he’s forced in the situation of relationship, he has to see his own turning, because he’s always trying not to be in relationship but he is always being reminded of it, and this is the secret of the sadhana, the practical sadhana of Satsang, because Satsang is the condition of relationship by grace and seemingly arbitrarily put upon you and required of you, and it has many forms, it has the form of the teaching, the form of the relationship to the Guru himself, the sitting with him, the sitting at home in Satsang with him with a picture or whatever. In all of these situations you tend to see yourself turning away, because the thing that you’re always being reminded of is the turning toward, the being in relationship. So the secret of sadhana, the secret of understanding, is the condition of Satsang. Without it there is no understanding because the whole process of self-observation is lost, never comes about because the turning is constant. So men can easily be turned to self-observation (and the true) and the way of doing that is not to tell them to observe themselves, but simply to enter into relationship with them. Whenever you enter into relationship with someone and require relational activity in them, the acknowledgment of relationship, and the living of that as a condition in them, the more upset they tend to become, the more resistive they begin to become. And this always occurs in Satsang, this always will occur in our work, we will always have difficulties with people because of what Satsang is, because of what the principle of Truth is. But the more a person is able to pass through the process of Satsang, or self-observation, of understanding, the quicker he becomes within, the more he is able to take on the conditions of appropriate activity in life, and also the more the internal process of conductivity will begin to show itself in him and as these phenomena begin to demonstrate themselves in a person, then we intensify the form of Satsang, which is to increase the conditions that are given to him, to increase the responsibilities that are given to him, increase his contact.”
The Life of Understanding – Due to copyright restrictions Beezone is unable to provide the link to the remainder of this essay – See copyright letter to Beezone from Adidam.
The Reality-Condition could
be Realized simply by Sighting Me here…but the
‘reason’ it’s not is because of the self-contraction….
The reason that My “Bright” Divine Self-Nature,
Self-Condition, and Self-State is not Obvious to you is that
you are bound up in your own errors, your own habits, your
own “self’-reflection, your own egoic “self’-identification
with the body-mind-complex.
\Beezone adaptation from Aletheon