an essay and talk by
Sri Adi Da Samraj
The All-Pervading Life-Spirit, or the Self-Radiant
Transcendental Spirit-Being, is Love, the Source of beings and worlds,
the Great Power, All-Bliss, Reality Itself. To live and Be in Oneness with
the Eternal Spirit is God-love, Salvation, Enlightenment, and literally
eternal life.
Those who love God totally (as self-transcending spirits,
surrendered as the total body-mind, feeling as and in the Self-Radiant
Energy or Spirit of Being) also inevitably love others, Communicate or
Magnify God in the worlds, and always transcend themselves in all relations,
under all conditions, and in every state. Therefore, be “born again”be
reborn or re-Lived nowby the discovery and affirmation that you and all
beings and things are Spirit, or an eternal process of Energy (rather than
unconscious and mortal matter). What is presumed to be mortal matter (in
the form of body, mind, and world) is only a phenomenal state of Energy,
or Energy in one moment of Its beginningless and endless sequence of transformations.
Awaken and Be in the Spirit and then fulfill the double Law of the Spiritwhich
is to love God, or the Transcendental Spirit-Being, until you become Love,
and so love all others.
Be Happy and altogether healed or en-Livened by this
conversion of “matter” into Energy. This conversion is repentance, or release
of all non-Spiritual views, acts, and “karmas”, 1
or the habit-results of “sin”which is simply the ego-based or self-contracting
denial of Oneness with the Divine Spirit-Being. And this same conversion
is also Salvation, or restoration of resonant Oneness with the Divine Spirit-Being.
As a spirit (or a body-mind-self that is only or entirely
living and conscious energy), Be surrendered into Oneness with the Transcendental
Spirit-Being. Transcend yourself in Love-Bliss. Transcend the present world
(and all materially or mortally conceived conditions and concepts). By
all of this, enter into a totally new Destinyin God, or Spiritual Being.
That Destiny goes beyond self and, ultimately, beyond every plane of conditional
Nature. It is the Destiny of Love-Bliss, or uninterrupted Existence in
the Divine Condition, or the Divine Domain, wherein there is no trace or
memory of conditional existence.
Only this is true and useful religion. Religion is
self-transcending Spirituality. It is to be restored to inherently Free
Spirit-living, and not merely to submit to the myths and rituals of dogmatic
beliefs and the lifeless or Spirit-less disciplines of the concerned social
ego.
Accept the Spirit-Blessing of the Adept Spiritual Master.
Even the body-mind is only Energy. Realize the Spirit-Being is the Reality
in which self and world are arising as spontaneous but unnecessary and
non-binding modifications of Itself. Be the Spirit-Being only. See all
things and beings in and as the Spirit. And always Magnify the Spirit-Force,
which is Love, Blessing, Tolerance, Forgiveness, Help, Healing, Nurture,
Delight, Joy, Bliss, Peace, and total Happiness. November 3, 1982
2.
ADI DA: I call this essay “A Birthday Message from
Jesus and Me” for several reasons. Today is my birthday, first of all.
The essay also speaks of being born again in the Spirit, so it is in some
sense a message about everybody’s “rebirthday” or spiritual birth. And
it is “from Jesus and Me” because the essay also paraphrases the Teaching
of Jesus.
There is a likeness between my Teaching and all of
the high and great and radical Teachings of the Great Tradition. In the
book
Nirvanasara I explore the likeness between
this Teaching and the traditions of Advaita Vedanta and Buddhism. I suggest
in that book that one of the descriptive names of this Teaching is Advaitayana
Buddhism. This does not mean that the only precedents for this Teaching
or its only likenesses are to be found in the traditions of Vedanta and
Buddhism. I have also suggested other descriptive names for this Teaching
and explored the likenesses between my Teaching and many traditions outside
the Transcendentalist Teachings of Advaitism and Buddhism. But, I differentiate
those aspects of the Great Tradition that represent great Teaching and
those that represent conventions of the human mind, human life, false religion,
pseudo-religion, lesser religion. I explore and examine all of the traditions
critically, and therefore I criticize aspects of all traditions, but there
is also a congenial likeness to be found between my own Teaching and the
great or high Teachings of all the traditions.
Christianity is historically the dominant religious
tradition of the Western world for all kinds of reasons, most of which
have nothing whatever to do with the Truth. Therefore, I criticize Christianity
on a number of levels. But over the years I have also considered Christianityactually
not so much Christianity as the Teaching of Jesusin terms of its likenesses
to my own Teaching.
Jesus preached a Way of life that involved stepping
outside the bondage to tradition and institutionalized religiosity. His
was a radical Spirit-Teaching that communicated the religion of conversion
to the Spiritual Reality, to the Divine as Living Spirit, rather than to
the Divine as the remembered and honored “God of our fathers,” the God
of the book, and so on. Jesus preached that people should be altogether
converted from their false views and sinfulness, that they should be transformed
by the Realization of the Spirit, and that they should make their religion
a way of life in immediate and constant Communion with the Divine Spirit.
The New Testament declares that there is only one unpardonable
sin. Among all of the enumerated sins only one is unpardonable: the denial
of the Holy Spirit or the Spirit of God. If that is the one unforgivable
sin, then something about that sin must epitomize sin itself. All the forgivable
sins must somehow be the lesser versions of this primary sin. Therefore,
sin itself has to do with our tendency to deny or dissociate from the Spiritual
Divine.
All that we might do that could be called sin in the
Semitic and Christian traditions is a version of our tendency to dissociate
from the Spiritual Divine. What is unforgivable about the unforgivable
sin is not that it is merely an immediate form of behavior that temporarily
dissociates us from the Spiritual Divine, but that it is sin raised to
its absolute degree. It is perpetual sin. It is not unforgivable because
God does not forgive or because God is not forgiving. It is unforgivable
because the act itself will not accept forgiveness. To accept forgiveness
is to become involved with the Divine. Therefore, to deny the Divine is
to be in a perpetual state of dissociation from the Divine and, therefore,
dissociation from forgiveness. Only once we have ceased to deny the Divine
is forgiveness possible.
Therefore, sin is simply the denial of the Holy Spirit
or denial of the Spiritual Divine, and it becomes most critical when it
becomes an absolute act of absolute denial. Forgiveness is liberation from
the effects of all denials of God. It is restoration to God or repentance,
which is on this side of forgiveness. Repentance in the Christian tradition,
and in the Semitic tradition in general, is the act of giving up sin or
returning to God.
From the point of view of Jesus, the process whereby
we become free of sin and are restored to Oneness with God or Communion
with God is not a matter of ritual or acts in the temple. It is not a matter
of conventions of belief. It is not the ritualistic act of repenting and
accepting to some degree, psychologically and emotionally, that we have
returned to God’s good graces and God will now bless us. From Jesus’ point
of view, the whole process of repentance, forgiveness, and restoration
to God is a matter of spiritual conversion, or the realization that God
is the Living Spiritual Reality, always Present, All-Pervading, the Source
and Substance of Existence. From Jesus’ point of view religion is the conversion
from self-possession or withdrawal from the Spiritual Divine or denial
of the Spirit to Communion with the Spirit and acceptance of the fact that
all existence is Spiritual, made by the Spirit, made of Spirit, arising
in the Spirit, pervaded by the Spirit.
In one of the key passages in the New Testament, Jesus
meets a man named Nicodemus, who was a major figure in the temple. Nicodemus
came to see Jesus at night, because he did not want anybody to know that
he was going to see this renegade who was preaching a free form of religion
outside temple life. He had learned of Jesus from others who had heard
Jesus preach, and he wanted to know precisely, beyond hearsay, what this
man was Teaching.
Jesus told him, “You must be born again. You must be
born in the Spirit even as now you are born in the flesh. You must be Baptized
in the Spirit, you must receive the Spirit, you must enter into Communion
with the Spirit. God is Spirit, Man is Spirit, every individual is a spirit,
and all of the spirits, including the entire world, are arising in God,
in intimate, eternal Communion with the Spirit, God. Religion is to repent
or be converted from an unspiritual point of view, the whole life of self-possession
and the mortal mind, and to enter fully into Communion with the Divine
as the Living Spirit. Only on the basis of such conversion can the law
of Israel be fulfilled.”
Jesus was asked on one occasion, as reported in the
New Testament, “What is your summary of the Law?” And Jesus repeated the
summary that is already found in the Old Testament: “Love God completely,
with every aspect of your being, and love all others. Treat all others
as you would be treated. Treat them as your very self and as you would
have yourself treated.” From Jesus’ point of view that Law could not be
fulfilled except through spiritual rebirth or conversion from the mortal,
self-possessed point of view to Communion with the Divine as the All-Pervading
Spirit. The Law could therefore be summarized completely from Jesus’ point
of view in just this brief statement. There was no need for the complicated
sub-laws and rituals and mechanical aspects of religiosity, all of which
are built upon the ordinary mind. If just this one simple process of conversion
could be realized, then the Law would inevitably be fulfilled. However,
if this conversion were not realized, to fulfill the Law would be impossible,
even if one practiced the ritual fulfillment of the Law down to the last
detail.
In his Teaching, Jesus criticized the tendencies of
religiosity in his time, saying basically that no real religion existed
then. There was a great deal of religiosity, a great deal of temple life
and ritual, many laws and legalisms, many beliefs and myths, but none of
that had anything to do with religion. Such pseudo-religion was about God
in the book, the God who created everything and is now to be viewed as
untouchable, holy, elsewhere. The religious life of most people had been
reduced to the popular form of religiosity, just as it has been in our
timeor as it is in any time.
Jesus preached a radically simplified form of religion.
He
preached what I call basic religion. Only one affair is religion: the conversion
from self, and all the views based on self-possession and mortal self-consciousness,
to Communion with the Living Spirit-Being or Radiant Transcendental Being,
the recognition that all of Nature is made of that One, that every being
is a spirit and one with the Transcendental Spirit. That which is born
of the Spirit, he said, is Spirit, is of the same nature, and, therefore,
can Realize a state of perfect Identification with that Great Spirit or
Transcendental Being, and by that perfect Divinity be drawn into the Domain
of unqualified spiritual existence.
My own Teaching to you is fundamentally the same. During
the last few days I have told you that ultimately the Way transcends the
conventional point of view of religion and spirituality. The Way of the
Heart is the Way of radical self-transcendence and Perfect Realization
of a state of Identification with the Radiant Transcendental or Divine
Being and Condition. Nevertheless, the Way begins with true and basic religion,
and basic true religion is spirituality, life in the Spirit, life as the
Spirit. Such religion is not transcended in the Wayit is the essence of
the Way.
The process of our submission to the Spiritual Condition
is realized in stages that correspond to the seven
stages of life. There are therefore lesser stages of maturity in the
process of Transcendental Communion and ultimate Enlightenment, lesser
stages, higher stages, and the ultimate stage. But they are all aspects
of true religion, or spiritual existence. You cannot enter into the process
of this Way unless you are born again in the same terms that Jesus preached.
You cannot enter into the process of the Way until you Awaken into the
acknowledgment of the Living Spiritual Reality, not merely the God to be
believed, but the Spiritual Reality that is tangibly Present and with Which
we are inherently intimate. We need only acknowledge It and submit ourselves
to Its Living Current and enter into Its Ultimate Condition. This submission
is a natural and free process, always available to human beings if they
will repent or convert from their self-possession and their denial of the
Spiritual Reality.
I have told you that without such conversion, it makes
no difference how many of my books you read or how many of the specific
disciplines you apply. The disciplines will not be fruitful, they are not
even true in your case, unless you first become religious in the spiritual
sense. You must first be converted. We suffer many conditions of existence
because we do not presume the Spiritual Reality of existence. When we cannot
be intimate with God, we start to think and when we cannot be intimate
with other people, we start becoming physically self-indulgent. All the
behaviors that are called sin in the traditions are simply the variations
on these two possibilities, indulgence in the self-mind and its mortal
views, and physically based self-indulgence.
The reason we enter into the conditions of existence
that are self-contracted, ego-based, and self-possessed is that we become
incapable of intimacy with Reality. The first form of that dis-ease, that
imaginary disease, the “dreaded Gom-boo,” 2
is the denial of the Holy Spirit, the denial of the Spiritual Reality,
the denial of the fact that all beings are spirits or spiritual entities,
not merely spirits somewhere inside and behind the body and the mind, but
spirits as the body-mind.
This world that we perceive is the spiritual world
in a certain form. It arises in the Spiritual Divine, the Transcendental
Spirit-Being, the Transcendental Condition of existence. When you lose
sympathy with that Reality, when you cannot be intimate with It, cannot
submit to It, even bodily, emotionally, with the whole mindas Jesus said,
you must love the Spiritual Divine with your mind, heart, soul, all your
strengthwhen you cannot be intimate with the Living Spirit-God, you as
a spirit, with every aspect of your being and personality, then you are
self-contracted and self-possessed. You fall in upon yourself, and are
no longer capable of intimacy with the Spiritual Divine or with any of
the conditions of existence.
You are not capable of intimacy with other beings,
therefore. You cannot love God or others, you cannot be love in the world,
you are not free, you are not Happy, you become un-Happy. Then you try
to become Happy through the exercise of mind and physical possibility,
but when mind and physical possibility are generated on the basis of the
loss of intimacy, the inability to be submitted to love, to surrender,
to enter into Communion with the Living Being directly and in the form
of all beings, then all the forms of mind and body become self-indulgent,
self-possessed, sinful, disoriented from the Divine. They “miss the mark.”
To sin is to “miss the mark,” as in the Greek word “hamartia,” for example,
which means a miss of the mark.
Thus, human beings are suffering from this imagined
disease, this self-created or self-imposed disease. Its root is an emotional
problem, the incapacity for intimacy with the Real or the Transcendental
Reality and all of the modifications of the Transcendental Reality that
appear in the form of living beings and conditions of existence in this
world and in all other worlds. The Way, therefore, begins when we can repent
or be converted from this self-possessed disposition and all of the acts
and habit patterns, thought patterns, points of view, the whole affair
of the disease of egoity. We must be converted from self. We must Awaken
from self-possession to the acknowledgment of the inherent Spiritual Reality
of existence. We must be restored to intimacy or Communion with That One.
When intimacy is restored, the body-mind is restored
to a state of equanimity on the basis of its resonant Communion with the
Living Current of the Spiritual Being. This restoration of intimacy with
the Living Divine is likewise a restoration of intimacy with all other
conditions of existence and all other beings. When love of God returns,
then love of others also returns. Life is simplified. Life becomes capable
of a harmonious disposition and of magnifying the characteristics of Spiritual
Being. We cannot first love others. We must first be restored to God. We
must first be converted spiritually.
The primary principle is God-Love, God-Communion, self-transcending
submission to the Living Current and Transcendental Being. When that conversion
is established, then we become capable of fulfilling the second part of
the great Law. When we love God to the point of becoming love, when we
Commune with the Spirit to the point of becoming spiritual, then we love
or magnify the characteristics of the Spirit in all relations, under all
conditions, in all states, in all possible worlds.
The essence of the Way is the spirituality of self-transcending
Communion with the Living Divine. It is spirituality, you see. It is life
in the Spirit. It is not merely a matter of developing the programs of
the social ego. It is not merely a matter of being fitfully committed to
creating the politics of social peace. Such is the great program toward
which all of Nature and all of humanity are striving, and yet peace is
not about to be instantly created! Even so, we should not be disheartened
or become dispirited because the conditions of life are frustrating and
do not show the signs of the universal invasion of the world by the Divine
Spirit. The world is not likely to become converted to the Spiritual Divine
in all of its billions, to become converted to the true process of religion
in our lifetime. Perhaps it will never be converted.
It is possible that anyone who hears and sees the Spirit-Born
Adept will be converted to the Living Spiritual Reality and enter into
the process of spiritual realization in community with others who have
been likewise converted. Such individuals magnify their disposition in
the world and are of use in the world to help the world in the direction
of Ultimate Transformation, but without distress. Still, the fundamental
process of their existence is spiritual, or a matter of moment to moment
God-Communion. That Communion is their Happiness. By submission to that
Condition, through the spiritual process inherent in God-Communion, they
are transformed in this world and ultimately Translated beyond all conditional
worlds, or all worlds in which dissociation from the Spirit, or self-possession,
is possible. Those who fulfill the Way perfectly are Translated into the
Divine Domain or the Transcendental Condition.
This conversion to spiritual Communion is the essence
and fundamental necessity upon which this Way depends. Thus, it must constantly
be emphasized. Without such conversion, without true “hearing” and “seeing,”
3
without spiritual rebirth, the Way cannot be practiced. It can be imitated,
but it cannot be practiced. None of the disciplines are fruitful apart
from such conversion. Those who are simply listening to the Teaching, who
have not entered into this conversion in the Company of the Spiritual Master,
may as part of the natural discipline of listening assume the various practical
conditions associated with the practice of this Way, but even so they are
not yet practicing the Way. They are listening or giving their attention
to the possibility of practice. When there is full conversion, or “hearing”
and “seeing” to the point of real practice, then real preparation for the
ultimate form of the Way beginsand not until then.
Spiritual conversion is the most fundamental matter
to be considered by beginners and the most fundamental event for listeners.
When it occurs, it changes the entire quality of your existence. You become
Happiness Itself, and you can never become un-Happy or bound again. You
may seem to become bound again, perhaps, if you commit the ultimate sin,
if you deny the Spirit, become self-possessed in your mind, emotion, and
body again. Bondage is always possible short of perfect Enlightenment.
But once you are established in the Principle of God-Communion, nothing
in that Principle can bind you again or cause you to become un-Happy. Once
you discover It, if you will simply abide in It, the process of the Way
is assured.
3
Your growth toward maturity will be limited only by
the force of your application to the Way of the Spiritual Reality once
you become converted to It. This is the great discovery to be made on the
basis of hearing my Argument and giving me your attention
or living in my Company. This is the Baptism that is always being generated
by my Presence here. When I call you to consider the Teaching, I call you
into my Spiritual Company, even if you are simply sitting down to read
my books. 4
Whenever you are in my Company, whenever you give me your attention, then
you are as good as sitting in the room with me where this Baptism is being
given. I do not stand in a river to perform the water ritual. I stand in
the fire to perform the Spirit ritual, which purifies, enlivens, and grants
Enlightenment. 5
It is the perfect Baptism.
Thus, those who give me their attention, in whatever
form it may take at any moment, align themselves to my Baptizing Power,
the profusion of Grace that is manifested through the Adept, which is simply
a magnification of the Spiritual Divine to living beings. When you have
heard and seen me, when you have understood and located my Presence, experienced
this Baptism and Awakened to the Spiritual Reality, then you have entered
into the stream and fire of the Way. Then all of the disciplines become
fruitful, but not otherwise. This is the fundamental import of your involvement
with me in this Way of Life and this Teaching. All of the gatherings of
our community and all of the moments in which devotees attend to this Teaching
and this practice are the moments of this Baptism, the Baptism of the Holy
Spirit, as it is called in the Christian tradition, the reception of the
Living Current that is the substance of existence, that is Self-Radiant
Transcendental Being, Love-Bliss, Happiness.
To enter into that Happiness is to be healed. All Power
is within It. All Transformation is inherent in It. To enter into Communion
with the Living Divine is to be Transfigured, to be Transformed, ultimately
to be Translated. To enter into the Company of the Spirit-Baptizing Adept
is, in fact, to enter into the seventh stage of life. The processes of
the seventh stage of life, which are Transfiguration, Transformation, and
Translation, are inherent in the moment of God-Communion, and therefore
this Way begins in the seventh stage of life. But we acknowledge that there
are habits or tendencies in every individual that must be purified, and
therefore we also acknowledge that there are stages of maturity or stages
of the development of the practice. Yet even preparation for the Way develops
within the ambience of the seventh stage of life, or the living Environment
of the Spiritual Divine.
Spiritual Transmission is the reason for the occasions
of celebration when I sit with everyone, whether they are in the room with
me or sitting at a distance. 6
It is the reason that I gather with people under all kinds of circumstances.
It is the reason that I return to The Mountain of Attention periodically
to see people there. It is the reason that I maintain constant communication
of one kind or another with all devotees through the Agencies of this institution.
The import of my Presence here is that I be a Baptizer, an Agent of Transmission.
Part of the import of my Presence here is that I consider the Argument
of the Way and consider the right culture of devotees and develop the practices
in your company, but the ultimate import of my Presence here is simply
that I be Present, not merely to exist but to Baptize, to Transmit the
Spirit-Awakening.
Those who Awaken in my Company then know how to use
me. They understand why I am here. Others who are still listening, who
have not passed through this remarkable conversion or matter into energy,
or egoity into Spirit-living, appropriately maintain a relatively distant
or formal relationship to me, although they give me their attention. And
their granting of attention to me bears the fruit of conversion when they
thoroughly intuit and feel that all that arises is Spirit or Energy. The
Spirit is not merely behind what arises, pervading it as some sort of invisible
essence. The Spirit is this, just this exactly, as it is all the other
forms of appearance with which we might become associated. The Living or
Spirit-Current pervades all of this, is all of this, and we may contact
It intimately through the submission of our body-minds to It.
We breathe the Living Current, we feel It, our fundamental
emotion is one with It. The Current is felt as an energy bodily. It is
also felt as an emotion, the emotion of love, unqualified emotion, radiant
feeling. Be diverted from your thinking, your self-possessed process of
mind, and grant attention to this Living Current. Then you will realize
that the essence of that Current is not only energy, not only love, but
unconditional Being or Consciousness Itself.
There is a very practical means for living in Communion
with the Spirit-Being or the Divine. I have considered that practical means
with you for many years. I have described three basic Ways of practicing
this Communionthe Way of Insight, the Way of Faith, and the Perfect Practice.
7
But all three of these Ways and all of the disciplines associated with
them can be summarized as two basic practices: the practice that I call
conductivity and the practice that I call the conscious process.
Conductivity is the whole affair of physical and emotional
and psychic feeling-surrender into the Living Spirit or Life-Current. We
animate this form of our practice through all kinds of practical disciplines
related to diet, daily living, sexuality, and service to others. We also
animate it through the features of our meditation that involve the technical
process of conductivity or breathing and feeling the Living Current, the
Spirit-Current with which you are Baptized and to which you Awaken in my
Company.
That Living Current is breathed in a Circle, descending
in the front of the body and ascending in the spinal line of the body,
between the crown and the feet or the crown and the bodily base of the
perineum. It is felt from the heart in all directions. It is love or radiant
emotion. We should be constantly relaxed from base to crown or foot to
crown into this Living Current, breathing It in the Circle and feeling
It from the heart in all directions. Jesus’ instruction to love God with
all your heart and all your soul and all your mind and all your strength
is to practice conductivity as a meditative process and as a process of
daily disciplines and daily living, associated intimately with our feeling,
breathing, living, physical personality. We are not merely to go inward
to find the Spirit. We are the Spirit and we must live in the Spirit even
bodily.
The other most fundamental aspect and the primary form
of our practice, for which our practice of conductivity of the Spirit prepares
us, for which our conductivity of the Spirit gives us a support, a basis
in equanimity, is the conscious process. As the practice of conductivity
liberates energy and attention in the Spirit, it liberates energy and attention
from the contractions of egoity. We must devote that free energy and attention
to the conscious process, radically intuiting or entering into a state
of identification with the Transcendental Being, That which is Self-Radiant
and appearing as all forms and beings, That which simply is.
Thus, through the artful practice of conductivity and
the conscious process, we remain in perpetual Communion with the Spirit-Being,
the Living Divine. If we do so, we mature inevitably and by stages to the
point of Perfect Awakening, Enlightenment, Self-Abiding, Abiding in a state
of Identification with the Transcendental Being and inherently and spontaneously
recognizing all arising conditions in the body-mind and its environs or
relations. There is nothing but the apparent, unnecessary, non-binding,
free modification of the Spiritual Radiance of the Divine or the Transcendental
Self.
The religion of the Spirit is fulfilled in Enlightenment,
in which all conditions are recognizable. By the power of Self-Abiding
recognition, the tendency of attention to be associated with conditions
is dissolved. At first association with the grosser conditions continues.
Then as the tendency of those associations is gradually released, a subtler
disposition appears in this life or after this life, in other spiritual
worlds or again in this world. By our continuing in this disposition of
Self-Abiding recognition, the tendency of attention to associate with conditional
existence in any plane whatsoever is dissolved, so that ultimately the
being is Translated into the Divine Condition without the slightest noticing
of conditional existence.
We may say of Translation that it is simply perfect
Identification
with the Divine Self or Radiant Transcendental Being, without
qualification. Whether it is also associated with a sublime Domain beyond
our imagining, beyond our conception in this world, is to be seen, but
we enter into it through Enlightenment, through recognition, through the
dissolution of conditional associations, not by clinging to ideas of a
place to which we want to go.
I also Teach, as Jesus Taught, the radical religion
of the Spirit. A religion about Jesus was created by some who knew him,
by some who did not know him, by Christian-made priests, by all of the
contingencies of historical Christianity. That religion is just another
version of conventional religion, the kind of religion that Jesus himself
criticized. It is not the free religion of the Spirit, and it contains
no esotericism about the life of the Spirit and the transcendence of conditional
existence. It is a myth-laden religion, a priest-laden religion, a religion
of rules, enforced conduct, and beliefs. It is not to any absolute degree
different in kind from the religion of Israel in the day of Jesus. Thus,
like Jesus in his time, I live in a time full of religions that must be
criticized. I am a renegade outside the temple, preaching the radical religion
of the Spirit and Teaching a practical Way of entering into Communion with
the Spirit.
Jesus likewise taught esoteric means of living in Communion
with the Spiritual Divine, but those means have been lost within the tradition.
We know that Jesus spoke of Spirit-Baptism. We know he spoke of conversion
to the Divine as Living Spirit. We know he spoke of conversion from the
flesh or the views of mortality, including religious views that correspond
to that disposition. In spite of all the mythology laid upon Jesus in the
New Testament, what comes through is still a Spirit-born personality who
was Transfigured, Transformed, magnified, made effective as a Siddha by
virtue of God-Communion, Spiritual Communion. All the rest of it, all the
“washed-by-the-blood-of-Jesus” mythology, all of the salvation-through-the-death-of-Christ
mythology, has nothing whatever to do with the Teaching of Jesus. It is
a popular mythology, a conventional religion, an alternative to true religion,
which is spirituality or an essentially esoteric process of being God-born
and ultimately Translated into the Divine Condition.
The story of Jesus reports a person Transfigured and
Transformed by intimacy with the Spiritual Divine. It suggests also that
he was Translated. Most of the New Testament is discardable, the product
of a tradition, a church, a very worldly institution I have criticized
frequently, but the Teaching of Jesus need not be criticized. It stands
in the great tradition of the Siddhas.
No Transmission comes directly from Jesus now. The
link with Jesus through Baptized devotees has been broken. But many other
Adepts appeared before Jesus and after Jesus, and they too have come and
gone. Some precincts may exist within the Great Tradition here and there
where this true spirituality is still aliveit is alive in my Company.
I am an individual of the same type as Jesus and other Adepts who have
Taught and Demonstrated the radical religion of the Spirit and who have
Baptized individuals in the Spirit.
You are called first to the Spiritual Divine, and you
must enter into this conversion physically, emotionally, psychically. You
must become practically involved with every dimension of the being in spiritual
community. Until you do, you are still a listener, and until you have fulfilled
the process in perfect Enlightenment, you are still preparing for the Way
in its fullest sense, even though you have entered into the stream and
fire of the Way, in some sense into the Way itself, through this Communion,
this Spirit-Baptism, this Transfigured life in my Company that begins when
you have located my Influence and become established in the Living Current
of
the Spiritual Divine.
When you are established in the Current, then you no
longer view life with the mortal mind through contracted emotion and a
disharmonious physical vehicle. Rather, you see everything as energy, you
treat everything as energy, you live as energy, you are a Life-Bearer,
you magnify the Living Spiritual Being in all of your relations, you are
transformed by It, you accommodate It in every feature of your life. You
initiate practical changes to make your life coincide with your spiritual
disposition. You change all the factors of your practical living that do
not coincide with the spiritual orientation of your living. You must do
so. To accommodate the Spiritual Divine in every feature of your existence,
to be devoted to It wholly and entirely, not merely in the mind with a
kind of subjective acknowledgment, but very practically, physically, emotionally,
mentally, psychically, is the practice.
Therefore, I do not call you merely to believe in God,
but I Baptize you in this Spiritual Force and call you to act differently,
to submit to it physically, to feel it, breathe it, relax into it, animate
it, manifest it through service and love in all relations. I call you to
worship God in Spirit, as Spirit, worship God spiritually, through spiritual
means, through living, through meditation, not through conventional prayer.
I call you to realize that you are one with this Spirit, not merely experiencing
It but identical to It, so that you may, by overcoming every fraction of
the self-contraction, Realize a state of perfect and uncaused Identification
with It, Realize a perfect equation with the Divine Being and Condition.
This is the secret Teaching. Baptism is the secret
method. Recently we published a book called The Secret
Gospel, by Morton Smith, about a fragment of a letter by Clement of
Alexandria, who lived in the second century. It contains a brief description
of a secret process of Initiation or Baptism engaged by Jesus with his
intimate circle, those who had passed through the initial process of listening,
who had been converted and who had shown the evidence of a true response,
who were eventually brought to either Jesus or one of his empowered disciples
and Baptized spiritually. The Current of the Spiritual Reality was magnified
to them so that it was tangibly felt physically, emotionally, mentally,
and psychically.
It is said that this process was conducted at night
and that it was associated with a certain ritual of purification. The initiate
came dressed in a white garment and was brought into a closed room for
the initiation, which was Spirit-Baptism, or true “Shaktipat”
8
(without certain of the peculiar philosophic and psychic limitations of
the Hindu tradition). Shaktipat is popularly associated with the orientation
of the fifth stage realization, which has been superimposed on the process
that is true Shaktipat. Shaktipat is Spirit-Baptism. It is the same process
that occurs in my Company, but to which you are freely oriented, without
fifth stage limitations. In this Way you are called to enter into a process
of perfect unification with the Living Spirit to the point of Enlightenment,
transcending all conditional realizations at the level of experience or
presumed knowledge. Shaktipat is experientially associated with the Awakening
of the Life-Current in the spinal line. Aspirants in the Hindu traditions
of the fifth stage are thus devoted to a process of strategically raising
the Current to dissociate from existence in this world. Such an orientation,
common to the conventions of Hinduism, is not really part of a tradition
that acknowledges the Divine Spirit fully. It views the individual self
as a spiritual being behind the body-mind and separable from it. It conceives
of God as the Being that Pervades the world and is separate from it, ultimately
to be Located elsewhere. Thus, the conventional orientation to Spirit-Baptism
or the Shaktipat of the traditions is generally ego-based and dissociative.
I call you to understand that the Spirit is the Substance
of ths world. The body-mind is one with that Current. Therefore you are
not rightly devoted to attaching yourself to one aspect of this Current
in order strategically to dissociate from this world. You must enter into
Spirit-Communion utterly, breathe the Spirit in its full Circle, be sublimed
in It, Transfigured and Transformed by It, transcend yourself in It. And
then, quite naturally, association with the limiting conditions represented
by this world and other planes beyond this world will disappear. Otherwise,
the strategy of egoic dissociation and attachment to the ascending quality
of the Living Current will only produce temporary, ego-based results.
Spirit-Baptism, therefore, is a greater affair than
is commonly understood in the yogic terms of Shaktipat, but it is a communication
of the same spiritual force. It is also a communication of more than force
or energy that we may feel over against ourselves. It is a communication
of the Reality, the Transcendental Being, which is Radiant, manifesting
as all beings and worlds, manifesting as the present body-mind, which is
not merely in the body-mind but is the substance of the body-mind.
Therefore, I call you to acknowledge that you are in
the Spirit presently, that you are in the Domain of the Spiritual Divine
presently. If you can Awaken to this realization, then you will be Happy
presently and you will not need to ascend to become Happy. Ascent is natural
at some stage and true to Enlightenment in the seventh stage, but you need
not go through the process of ascent to be Happy or to be God-Realized.
4.
As I said in The Knee of Listening,
this is the other world. This is the Spiritual Domain. This is the Spirit
World.This is the world of God. God is not merely invisible and inside
us. This is the manifestation of God. There are many other manifestations
of God as well, but we must not deny this manifestation. We must submit
to God in the context of this world and transcend it. To do so is our obligation.
Our ascent will not be final or true or free if we do not Realize God in
this moment and in this condition.
To seek God elsewhere is to deny the Spirit presently,
to deny that the Spirit is Present, that the Spirit is the Substance and
Condition of existence presently. To go within and seek for God elsewhere
is therefore a form of sin. It is a form of un-Happiness. We become Happy
when we realize that we are in the Spirit presently. Therefore, those who
Awaken through free spiritual Baptism become Happy presently. They are
enlivened by the Spirit. They are liberated emotionally by It. They are
liberated in their minds by It. They become blissful, Self-Radiant, manifest
as Love, Happiness, Joyous Feeling, Freedom. These qualities, rather than
the dismal qualities of the inverted ascetic, are the qualities of the
God-born, the Spirit-Baptized, those who live in Communion with the Living
Divine presently.
This is not to say that life in the Spirit in the world
is not in some real sense a school or a trial, and a hard school at that,
but it is a trial that occurs within the Domain of God. It is a necessary
trial. We ascend from it, but only by transcending ourselves and allowing
the Spirit-Current to ascend naturally when the free conditions for its
ascent have been established. Thus, we do not merely enter into this Current
to ascend. We allow It to ascend, we allow It to descend, we live in It
utterly, submit ourselves to It utterly, and are purified by the Happiness
of the inherent Spirit of God.
This Way is not therefore associated with a problem
but with the inherent Happiness to which we Awaken when we are Baptized
by the Spirit, when we Locate the Current of Bliss, the Current of Happiness.
When we thus Awaken, all our darkness disappears and all our negativity
and our negative views are weakened. If we continue to submit ourselves
to the Spiritual Reality, all these contractions, states of mind, states
of emotion, states of the psyche, states of the body, states of relatedness
are purified and transformed.
You must cease to be troubled by the mortal and self-possessed
vision of life and enter into the Spirit, be possessed of Its Vision, Its
Radiance, which shines through us physically and emotionally and mentally
and psychically when we Awaken to It whole bodily, fully, and in Truth.
Such religion is free. It is native religion, God-made religion.
Those who enter into such a religious process may live
with one another, create a structure or an institution for association
with one another and the communication of the Teaching, but their religion
itself is free and immediate. It is a process that is always intimate,
that one can practice in every moment of existence, that one must practice
in every moment of existence. It is not a practice to be engaged only sometimes
in meditation or in weekly church gatherings. It is a perpetual obligation,
but it is also a perpetual Happiness. It is to allow your body and your
emotion and your mind and your psyche to be converted by this Baptism,
this Transmission, to be changed in your minds, in your feeling, in your
bodies. Breathe It and feel It. Circulate this Living Force and grant your
attention to the Being that is Self-Radiant, the Consciousness that is
inherent in every fraction of existence.
All this is arising in that Consciousness. All the
things that seem, all the differences, are a play upon one Force, one Energy,
one Light or Life, one Love, Bliss, Happiness. If we contract upon ourselves,
then life seems otherwise. Therefore, we must be converted from our self-contraction
and Locate the Spiritual Reality in every moment.
This is my Teaching. In essence it is also the Teaching
of Jesus. It is a kind of renegade Teaching. It is not smiled upon by religionists
and worldly people. It is resisted by the ego. It is resisted by sin or
the effort of self-contraction, the denial of the Spiritual Reality. It
is resisted by you, therefore, and I call your attention from yourself
to “hear” and “see” this Living Being and to find this Current.
Awaken to the Spirit, and you can see the Radiance
pervading the space of the room. You can feel It Shining out of your eyes.
Awaken to the feeling of It, and all negative and therefore self-contracted
emotions disappear, and the emotion becomes Radiant. Submit to It physically,
and all the disharmony in the body disappears. The body becomes Radiant
and enters into a state of equanimity or balance, in which the Circle of
the Life-Current is continuous, always being magnified, always purifying
every aspect of the personality.
When you enter into such enlivened Union with the Living
Spiritual Reality, then you naturally magnify It or express It in all of
your relations. Service is therefore not a conventional discipline, a means
of eventually realizing the spiritual state, but the natural expression
of the spiritual state. It is not possible to enter into the disposition
of service or community with others and the ability to live with others
spiritually until you Awaken to the Spiritual Divine. Those who are Awakened
to the Spiritual Divine naturally do love others, tolerate others, magnify
help and blessing to others, and become a benign presence.
Such service makes it possible for us to fulfill the
various obligations of life we assume, but because our disposition is fundamentally
involved with the Divine, our lives are fundamentally involved with the
Divine in the process of God-Communion. Our devotion to Communion with
the Spirit economizes our involvement with the world and our involvement
with others. It does not in any sense make our involvement with the world
and with others negative. It simply economizes the amount of time, energy,
and attention we grant to the conditional states of life, so that we may
be more and more profoundly magnified in the state of God-Communion.
At some stage, therefore, we appear to renounce the
world. Our lives become simplified and, ultimately, we leave this world
at death. We should have so fulfilled this process that, at the very least,
at death we will not return to this dimension. We will have completed this
schooling and have no fraction of habit-energy left over to make this particular
experience of the spirit worlds necessary. We must make this experience
unnecessary through fulfillment of the Way. At the very least, your fulfillment
of this discipline should be thus effective, but even if it is not and
you are reborn in human form, you will continue this Way. You will reconnect
with this disposition somehow.
There is no higher world to which we should aspire.
Our aspiration should be toward the Present God, toward a state of perfect
Identification with the Living God. This disposition does not aspire toward
transitions to other worlds or a temporary transition out of this world
and a return to it. The perfect fulfillment of this Way is demonstrated
through Translation, or the complete dissolution of the habit-energies
of attention that lead toward conditional embodiment and experiencing.
It is not by aspiring to go elsewhere that we enter into the Divine Domain
but by entering directly into the Living Divine, always, presently.
All aspirations move attention toward conditional states.
In other words, all the motives of attention lead toward conditional states,
except for the primary motive, wherein attention is dissolved in its Source.
That process leads toward the bypassing of conditional existence in all
planes and makes possible direct Translation into the Divine Domain. Lesser
fulfillment of the Way may lead toward embodiment in a higher or subtler
plane after death, simply because attention has not been released perfectly
in the Divine Condition. But perfect fulfillment of the Way is demonstrated
in Translation, wherein there are no further transitions, no returns, no
ascents, no descents. We enter into a state of sublime resonance with the
Divine Condition and do not move from It, but Awaken more and more profoundly
into Its Domain. This is the fulfillment of the spiritual disposition.
All transitions to other worlds are the products of
a psychic intention, a tendency of attention toward conditional fulfillment.
If we do not transcend the habits of attention relative to this world and
the possibilities associated with gross human embodiment, then we will
return to these conditions and be reborn in human form again merely by
repeating this exercise, which has no independent necessity, but to which
we grant necessity by submitting to the self-contracting disposition of
the ego. We must transcend all of the appearances of necessity that we
seem to find in this world or in any other worlds. We must be free of the
aspiration toward conditional existence and be full of the aspiration that
is God-Communion.
Therefore, you are called to enter into the perfection
of Enlightenment, the fulfillment of God-Communion to the point of Translation,
not to the development of the psychic ability to ascend, to be embodied
in after-death realms, the world of high yogis and great beings in the
higher scale of Nature. Thus, we do not use this Baptism for the sake of
psychic ascent but for the sake of self-transcendence, the dissolution
of all the conditional tendencies of attention in the Spirit Being, in
Enlightenment. We are not devoted to the conventional possibilities of
yoga or mysticism, just as we are not devoted to the possibilities of being
spiritual and blessed in this world. We are devoted to God, the Transcendental
Condition Itself, and this devotion, rather than any intention to be here
or to go elsewhere, dissolves all the tendencies of attention.
The Way is demonstrated as Translation in Enlightenment.
This is one of the principal distinctions between this Way and the various
conventional and traditional paths. The traditional and conventional paths
associated with the first five stages of life generally lead toward the
improvement of conditions for spirits in the spirit worlds, to an improved
life in this world or an improved birth in other worlds. The sixth stage
of life is truly a transitional stage that should lead to the seventh,
but in and of itself it is based on an heretical disposition toward exclusive
inversion, a problematic view of life that wants to dissociate from the
conditions of existence because it is not Spirit-born, because it has not
recognized and Awakened to the Spirit in the moment of conditional existence.
The sixth stage of life should lead to the seventh or the recognition of
all conditions in the Spiritual Divine, which ultimately dissolves all
the habits of attention.
If we enter into the seventh stage of life most fully,
we will not accumulate karmas in other worlds. We may see other worlds
or become associated with the possibility of the transition to other worlds,
but we will recognize those possibilities as they arise. We will not become
involved in the psyche, but we will recognize the psyche. Therefore, we
will fulfill the Way perfectly in the seventh stage of life and not migrate
after death but be dissolved in the Living One, allowing the Living One
to generate our destiny in Its own Domain.
You could say, therefore, that my call to you is a
call back to the Transcendental Domain. But that Domain is not a someplace
else. You cannot get There from here. No road leads to It. It is not up,
It is not down, It is not within. It is present. We see It when we Outshine
what seems to be in the present. We are already There. We need only Awaken
to It. It is not like another place. It is simply not visible to us because
our vision is qualified by the modifications of the Spirit that are presently
arising. The more we enter into the Spirit, then, the more this arising
world is Transfigured to the point of being Outshined, and we will discover
that we have been all the while sitting in the heavenly Domain, as people
awaken from dreams and find they have been lying in their beds all night!
Because the possibility for Translation exists in death,
death is for the Enlightened a blessed process, a process of Translation,
ultimate Samadhi, 9
Outshining, the moment of the arising of the perfect Vision, the moment
of infinite Brilliance, not of darkness and unconsciousness and all the
weirdness we seem to feel may be associated with death and the afterlife.
But we will enter into that Brilliance, that clear white Radiance, only
if we have lived a spiritual life to the point of becoming perfectly resonant
with the Spiritual Reality, enabling it, therefore, to Outshine conditional
existence when this body-mind comes to its natural end.
The ultimate form of death is Translation, or the Outshining
of conditional existence. It is to enter into the Brilliance, the Radiance,
the Bright of God, not to make a transit to another world, but to be Sublimed
and overcome by the blissful Radiance of the infinite God at the moment
of death. If we are still subject to the self-contraction, then we will
withdraw and fall into the outer lights of the Cosmic
Mandala, into the spirit worlds, gravitating back to those conditions
toward which our habits of attention gravitate.
Those who fulfill the spiritual Way perfectly Outshine
all worlds at the point of death and enter into the Divine Domain represented
in the Cosmic Mandala by the central white Brightness, what is called the
“clear white light” in the Tantric Buddhist tradition, represented in the
visualized sphere of lights as a white star. The cosmos manifested in the
Spirit may be seen as a sphere of lights, a system of concentric circles,
at the outer reaches of which is reddishness and golden yellow, then a
moonlike whiteness, then a brilliant blue, and at the center a white star.
When we enter into the white star, we enter an infinite place of Outshining
Radiance, the Divine Domain.
Yogis make much of the other lights, but all the other
lights are associated with conditional existence. High realms appear in
the blue field, but they are not the Divine Domain. They represent conditional
possibilities of the manifest ego, and most human beings will gravitate
toward the lesser lights, the outer field, toward grossness, the etheric
and lower astral planes, re-embodiment in human form. But by living a spiritual
life, by becoming spiritualized through God-Communion, we enter into that
disposition that ultimately Outshines all conditional realms. Therefore,
death in its perfect form is Translation into the Divine Domain beyond
all the lights.
Translation is the perfect furfillment of this Way.
It is the last stage of the Way. The Way begins with hearing and seeing,
understanding the self-contraction, repenting of it, moving beyond it,
and seeing or locating the Spirit of God, Which is Transmitted in the Company
of the Spiritual Master and thereafter found in all times and places by
maintaining that Communion constantly and submitting to the discipline
of the Adept.
When this Baptizing Power is contacted, It is felt
as a pleasurable force enveloping and pervading the body. It may be felt
to be Shining through the eyes. It creates a melting sensation in the heart
of the emotional being. It creates feelings of the movement of energy in
the body. As we enter into the life of Communion with That which we Locate
through Baptism, then we enter into a process in life and meditation wherein
we are purified. All of the chronic tendencies, physical, emotional, mental,
and psychic, are brought to the surface, to some degree lived through,
struggled with in spiritual terms, eventually transcended. The Way is the
entire process, not merely meditative enjoyments. You must appreciate that
the Way involves these purifications and that we must be actively involved
in submission to the Spiritual Divine in the context of our limitations.
[ * in the original text, a lila
of this day is inserted here ]
We grant more force to this purification through our
meditation. We not only experience pleasurable meditative conditions, but
by opening in the process of meditation we liberate more energy into our
daily lives and consequently experience more of the purifying difficulties,
perhaps, as well as signs of Blessing and enjoyments in life. Then in the
meditative process, in the cycles of conductivity and the conscious process,
all kinds of physical and emotional and mental and psychic changes develop.
As they arise, we must not become attached to them, cling to them, and
become self-contracted on the basis of them, but we must continue to submit
ourselves into the process of conductivity and direct attention into the
disciplines of the conscious process.
Thus do we always go beyond or become purified of our
meditative enjoyments. Whatever arises is the “Garbage of the Goddess.”
10
There are simply modifications of the Spirit. We must continue our practice
and not become distracted by them. We must relate to them naturally and
persist in the essential disciplines. All the spiritual and meditative
experiences and the experiences of ordinary life described in the esoteric
traditions are potential in this Way and may be experienced at one time
or another by devotees, but the thrust of our practice is in the conscious
process toward which we are liberated through our discipline. In every
moment of our practice we free energy and attention from the habits of
the self-contraction. Therefore, we can practice the conscious process,
perhaps in the form of true prayer or perhaps in the form of enquiry and
re-cognition or the forms of the Perfect Practice. Ultimately the Perfect
Practice is fulfilled in the Awakening to Sahaj Samadhi 11
and Self-Abiding recognition in the seventh stage of life, which becomes
Transfiguration, Transformation, indifference or motiveless renunciation,
and Translation or Unconditional Nirvikalpa Samadhi, 12
which is ultimate rebirth into the Divine Domain.
5.
The purpose of all the gatherings of devotees is to
consider the Teaching to the point of hearing or self-understanding and
to grant attention to the Spiritual Master in the Forms of his Person,
his Agencies, and his Spirit-Blessing magnified to devotees to the point
of the tangible Awakening to and acknowledgment of the Spiritual Divine.
This entire institution and this whole community of devotees should be
devoted to these purposes.
Practice daily. Gather constantly for the sake of hearing
and seeing and communicating to one another about actual hearing and seeing.
Tell the stories of your practice. Support one another’s Awakening. Give
one another opportunity for the demonstration of the Way in good company.
And call everyone to the real discipline and technical practice of this
esoteric Way, this radical Way, in daily life.
Do this as individuals and do this as a gathering,
a community, and an institution, and you will see the fruits of my birth
and of your own birth. Then this institution and this community will be
unique and will have great value. They will be real, they will grow, they
will stop stumbling and falling back. It all depends on true hearing, self-understanding,
and the acceptance of this Baptism.
November 3, 1982
1. Karma is action that entails consequences or re-actions.
Thus, karma is destiny, tendency, the quality of existence that is determined
by previous actions or conditions. And, by extension, karma is also latent
tendencies, or patterns of action and reaction condition and experience,
that originate prior to and apart from the presently conscious mind.
2. The imaginary disease of egoity is discussed in The
Dreaded Gomboo, or the Imaginary Disease That Religion Seeks to Cure:
A Collection of Essays and Talks on the “direct” process of Enlightenment
Taught by Adi Da Samraj.
3. Seeing” is a technical term for emotional and total bodily awakening
into faith, or direct feeling-intuition of the Divine Reality under all
circumstances. Conversion from self-possession to God-Communion in, as,
and through all relations and all phenomenal experience.
4. Please see the bibliographies on the DAbase
Main Page
5. Adi Da here alludes to the ancient distinction suggested in the
New Testament between the exoteric, cleansing, or water baptism of repentance
and forgiveness for the sin of turning away from the Divine Spirit-Power,
and the esoteric baptism by “Fire,” or Spirit-Baptism, wherein those who
have been converted to Divine Communion are initiated into esoteric practice
and transformation
6. Adi Da’s meeting with devotees is always a spontaneous affair.
While the Adept’s Spiritual Transmission is perpetual, Bhagavan Adi Da
reserves the opportunity to sit in meditation on the six major devotional
Celebrations of Adidam. Devotees around the world gather for meditation
at a prearranged time to receive the Master’s Spirit-Blessing. These special
occasions serve to magnify the Radiance of the Living Spirit among the
gathering of devorees, thus initiating and demonstrating the process of
Spirit-Baptism as described throughout this book.
7. The Way that Adi Da Teaches is comprised of three
Ways of practice or forms of approach to the ultimate practice of God-Realization.
They are the Way of Faith, the Way of Insight, and the Perfect Practice.
Each of the three Ways is founded in present understanding or the Transcendental
Principle of Enlightenment.
8. “Shaktipat” is spiritual initiation or awakening through the Agency
of the Spiritual Master, often in the form of his Glance, Touch, or Regard.
9. Samadhi is spiritual Consciousness cr Equanimity, Balance. Samadhi
is also used, conventionally, to refer to trance states, spontaneous ecstasies,
yogic blisses in meditation, or extremely subtle or sophisticated realizations
of the nature of ordinary conscious states. Most traditional samadhis are
phenomena of the vital and subtle life-force, and as such are temporary
symptomatic experiences that occur when there is a peculiar intensification
of one’s energy field and circuitry. The highest and only true samadhis
are those of Consciousness itself
10. Adi Da here refers to the period of his Sacred
History called “Garbage and the Goddess,” one of the great Teaching Demonstrations
of Adi Da, which occurred in 1974, and one of the greatest incidents of
transcendental Teaching in the history of spirituality. Bhagavan generated,
via secondary yogic powers, a most extraordinary and sustained display
of yogic, mystical, magical, psychic, and intuitive phenomena in the lives
and environments of his ordinary Western devotees, who otherwise had no
capacity to attain such marvels. At the same time he intensified his Transmission
of the Siddhi or force of Consciousness itself or radical understanding,
and he constantly drew their attention to and criticized the illusions
and suffering inherent in mere experience of any kind, ordinary or sublime.
Through these means he humorously and compassionately Taught them the lesson
that all experience high or low is but a temporary manifestation of “the
Goddess,” the Shakti or great Manifesting Power of the worlds, and should
therefore be treated as “garbage” and thrown away or sacrificed through
insight, recognition, and radical understanding in consciousness.
11. Sahaj Samadhi is the “open eyed” or natural state,
in which whatever arises is seen to be only the modification of the prior
Divine Condition, or the natural disposition of clear Identification with
the Transcendental Self or Being rather than the Self-contraction in any
sense.
12. In his Teaching Adi Da distinguishes between the fifth stage
phenomenon of conditional nirvikalpa samadhi (the yogic Self-Realization
and the traditional epitome or highest possible reach of the process of
yogic absorption of attention in the rising force of the bodily Current
of Life) and Translation, or Unconditional Nirvikalpa Samadhi, the ultimate
stage of the seventh or God-Realized stage of life.
————————————————————————————————-—————————
The Da Love-Ananda Samrajya Pty Ltd.,
as trustee for The Da Love-Ananda Samrajya,
claims perpetual copyright to all photographs
and the entire Written (and otherwise recorded)
Wisdom-Teaching of Avatar Adi Da Samraj and the Way of the Heart.
©2002 The Da Love-Ananda Samrajya Pty Ltd.,
as trustee for The Da Love-Ananda Samrajya.
All rights reserved.
Used in DAbase by permission.
—————————————————————————————————————————-