Have I Said It?
Note to reader:
As a member of Adi Da’s (then Bubba Free John’s) community from about 1973-1975, during which time I lived for nine months in Persimmon, the sanctuary where he lived. My service was to create an index of his early books. I found these writings to be compelling, along with some of the outrageous talks that have not found their way into print. Around his birthday in 1975 (to the best of my recollection), Adi Da was planning on moving with a small group to Hawaii. For that occasion, I arranged a selection of his compelling words by topic (mostly selected from his books) and hand-wrote them in a blank book for his enjoyment. As far as I know, nothing ever came of that compilation. That became Book One of two parts, the second of which I completed some time thereafter. Now through the Internet, I make both parts available to interested readers. These blank books (I made a copy for myself) have been sitting on my bookshelves all this time, and after Adi Da’s passing, it occurred to me that this compilation would be very useful to many readers.
Enjoy,
Ed Hirsch
presenceofone@yahoo.com
Ashland, Oregon
Chapter 7.
Spiritual life
Spiritual Life is a Spiritual
Relationship.
God performs this work.
This way is fulfilled
By grace.
It is made perfect
And true
By grace.
What’s true about
Spiritual life
Is that there is God, Truth and
Reality.
And there is Grace.
Spiritual life
Is a spiritual relationship.
It is an involvement
With Grace.
It is life in God, Truth and
Reality.
It is a Graceful Process.
Because the spiritual process
Is Divine business,
It can be done very easily.
It is already done.
We are not talking about
Some condition that is
or can be
Accomplished.
We are talking about
The condition
That always and already
pertains.
The foundation of spiritual
life
Is not the absence
Of the intuition of the
Divine.
The foundation of spiritual
life
Is the intuition of your Real
Condition,
The intuition of the Divine
Nature
Of this moment.
I don’t mean life
evolving
Toward the Divine,
But life presently founded
In the Divine.
Life isn’t intended to be a
mystery
That leads to the discovery of
God,
Truth and Reality,
At enlightenment,
Or at any other point in the
future.
Life is founded in God, Truth and
Reality,
And is meant to be lived in
God,
Truth and Reality,
Happily and without mystery.
Life becomes a drama that is
not
Leading to the Divine.
It is leading Nowhere.
Life is not leading anywhere.
Truth or Reality becomes
Not the goal
But the very principle of
life.
Spiritual life
Is the company of truth.
It is a relationship to one
Who lives as Truth.
It is the very nature of life.
It is the form of existence.
Spiritual life
Is not the activity of spiritual
seekers.
Spiritual life begins
When the spiritual search
Is abandoned
And Communion with Truth is
begun.
It is a matter of living
In Divine Communion
From the beginning.
It is the assumption
Of the Divine
As the active principle and
condition
Of your life.
Then you begin in utter
freedom,
In the infinite intensity of
God.
The True Way
Is to Realize God in Truth.
It is God first, not God as the
goal.
God, Truth and Reality first,
as the principle of life.
Then the world is known in
Truth.
Then all the psycho-physical
Manifestations are known in
Truth.
The real or true way
Of Spiritual Life
Is to assume the condition
That is Divine Communion,
To live that condition
constantly,
Now, in this moment,
And now in this moment.
The Truth is this condition,
And that’s the good news.
The real good news is that
None of that seeking is
necessary
It is all nonsense!
The good news is that the
condition
That is happiness is free of this
dilemma
And all motivated existence,
That all of that is completely
unnecessary
And can in this moment be
side-stepped,
Obviated, undermined, and
completely
By-passed in the way of real Spiritual
Life.
The Divine Power of this work
Is perfect.
There is no obstruction in the
cosmos,
No obstruction in a human
being
That can stand up to it.
It is nothing.
It is just a ride.
It is no big deal.
It’s nothing, it amounts to
nothing.
You’re very serious about
it,
But at some point
It won’t mean anything to
you.
This way is simple and easy,
Because it does not take
Billions of lifetimes,
But it requires a hell of a
lot
In one lifetime.
And yet some day you will look at
it
And see that it required
Nothing at all,
That you did nothing.
It all seemed very dramatic
At the time,
And yet it involved
Nothing at all.
The true way
Is the one that is blissful
now.
The true teaching
Turns you to present bliss
And does not require you to create
it.
The condition of relationship
Already exists as your
condition.
What has to be added for that
To take place?
Nothing!
All that is required
Is relationship itself,
The condition
That is always already the
case.
Allow it to develop
And reveal the Divine to you
According to its own pace.
Live by faith,
Not by design.
You cannot overcome this
world,
But the Divine has already
Overcome this world.
The grace of Reality itself
Absorbs ego-consciousness
And makes it identical
To absolute Consciousness.
And it is all done
In a very natural, easy
transition.
You couldn’t do it
yourself.
You would refuse to do it
As soon as you realized
What was actually required.
The individual cannot do
understanding,
Nor can he do no-seeking and
no-dilemma.
Spiritual life is not about
winning.
There are no winners in God.
None.
Know that you cannot
Be responsible for it.
Know that you cannot figure it
out.
You do not understand it.
You cannot understand it.
That is the truth.
Here is spiritual life, Divine
Communion.
Live it. Be happy to have
discovered
That you cannot figure it out.
Allow the Divine
To create your event.
The Divine is always creating
A perfect event.
If you live by faith,
In other words,
If you live always already
In Divine Communion,
And allow the manifestation of your
event,
Your life in any moment,
To be the Divine occasion,
Perfection will always be
manifested
In the form of conditions
Appropriate to this moment in
God.
Nothing happens to you
That is not appropriate.
All events serve truth.
Everywhere
Everything combines
For the sake of truth.
Nothing happens arbitrarily
To those who live truth.
The radical point of view
Is not one of seeking,
Step by step,
Through experiences,
But by penetrating,
Prior to any movement at all,
The present condition.
If you always move directly
To that condition,
That happiness,
Prior to your games,
Your separateness,
Your fulfillments,
Then you have already passed
through
Everything necessary
For your dissolution in God.
You will never gain anything
Again by experience.
So if it has become
complicated,
Return to the basics,
God, Grace, Truth and Reality.
There’s no meditation
technique
For you to acquire.
I do not recommend
That you meditate.
There is only understanding.
Therefore, understand.
There is no right motive
For adopting it,
There is only the discovery
That you are
Already doing
Self-contraction.
It is not a matter
Of your meditating yourself
To the point of realization.
The actual power of the Divine
Is activated in understanding,
And that power does the
meditation.
That power is the meditation.
The Divine power
Is greater than anybody
Could possibly comprehend.
It is not itself
Experiential or yogic in
nature.
It is not even mystical in
nature.
But it is perfect nonetheless,
And more than sufficient.
It is real, absolute.
It is present in silence.
It is immediate, direct.
The power of the Heart
manifestation
Is a moveless intensity
Without center or periphery,
That grasps consciousness
And draws it into itself.
In the condition
Of Divine Communion
You are meditated.
Meditation is not your
concern.
The Lord is the Great
Master of meditation.
He alone is the meditator,
And he alone is the Supreme
Object of meditation.
In the process of this
meditation,
Only the Lord is known.
The Lord must meditate you.
The Lord must enter.
And when the Lord enters you,
He makes you ecstatic.
Intelligence is the
fundamental
Meditation.
Consciousness is itself
The meditation.
Real meditation
Is an expression of that
Rather than a way
To get to it.
Real meditation is already
A radical activity.
It is not purposive.
It has no dilemma to solve.
Real meditation is an intense
fire.
It is a marvelous
intelligence,
A brilliance, a genius, a living
force.
It is not a pious attempt
To quiet your little thoughts.
It blasts the hell
Out of these thoughts!
The most intense meditation
Is one in which the Form of
Reality
Itself absorbs consciousness.
When consciousness
Moves into relationship,
The mind falls away.
The mind is replaced
By a form of intensity.
It doesn’t make any
difference
What is inside.
It all has to go.
It is really very simple.
You just throw it away.
The key to the matter
Is not how to throw it away.
The key to the matter
Is recognizing that it is
Just stuff
Garbage.
As soon as you see it,
You know immediately
That you should throw it away,
Drop it.
You are just looking
At a lot of garbage
And thinking it is the
precious
Instrument of God.
But I’ll tell you right
now
It is all garbage!
Everything you are given is
garbage,
And you are expected
To throw it away,
But you meditate on it.
None of it is the Divine.
It is garbage.
You are being asked
To sacrifice everything!
The Divine vision
Is just a pimple on the
Goddess,
Except it is not recognized
As such by seekers.
They think, “oh, it is the
Lord.”
They couldn’t care less
About the Lord,
Because to know the Lord
Would require them
To be obliterated.
The Lord in Truth
Requires the sacrifice
Of self-existence.
Nobody wants such a thing.
They want the Goddess,
Who will pamper them,
And delight them.
That is what people want.
The usual meditation
Is only a consolation.
The ordinary yogi or religious
man
He may think he is looking at
The blue of Krishna
Or the white of Jesus,
Until he loses face.
Until the sudden zero,
He looking at Krishna
Or the Christ.
He is only consoled,
Only distracted.
His realization and his death
Are kneeling in one another.
What are you looking at
In this turning inward?
The same thing
That you are always looking
at!
The same obsession.
The usual meditator
Is just another obsessed man,
Unaware of relationship
As his actual condition.
Fulfillment isn’t worth
squat.
It is not a matter
Of the quiet mind,
The empty mind,
The blissful mind,
The transcendent mind,
Or even the Divine mind.
Truth is of a radical
And most prior nature.
It would be better
To be cooked alive
Than to gain a little peace
By method and trickery.
And even if
There is a little quiet,
Real spiritual life
Must begin at last.
Spirituality is not the way
To Truth.
The cultic path is not the way
To God.
No spiritual process
Makes you realize God.
There is no such process.
The Divine already enjoyed
Is the foundation
Of any genuine spiritual
process.
All these ways of realizing God are
false.
The traditions have only felt
The comedy that men may
attain.
All those ways are absolutely
false.
There is absolutely no way.
There is no way.
There is no path.
None.
In order to know that
With certainty
You must realize
That all paths are
Fruitless.
All paths are
Suffering and avoidance.
Spiritual life is not the
extraordinary.
Spiritual life is not sitting in the
cave,
Reciting the mantra.
Thirty years of Shakti
experiences
Will occupy a fool,
But they will not awaken him.
In the presence of the Divine
Person,
There is nothing to be
attained,
There is no state to be
attained.
There is no God-union
Until God is there to be unioned
with.
And when God appears you are not going
to
Have to do your spiritual
breathing!
It will all be very obvious.
You won’t have to think
about
What is necessary to be done
To become one with God.
All righteousness,
All ordinary spirituality
Or the search for consolation
Is nonsense.
It is a refusal.
It is unreal.
All separation is an illusion.
And all attainments are an
illusion.
There is no separation,
And there is no attainments
Of union.
No process,
High or low,
In any plane of manifestation,
Is Truth or leads to Truth.
The only way to Truth
Is Truth itself.
Truth is the way.
Spiritual life
Is a relationship,
A living demand.
The Way
Is the condition itself.
The relationship itself.
It already exists.
It is the spiritual
discipline,
The meditation.
There is nothing else
That needs to be added to it.
The condition itself,
The relationship itself
Is the spiritual discipline.
Spiritual life
Is a relationship.
It has always been so.
Nothing apart from
That relationship
Is offered.
Spiritual life
Is simplicity,
It is relationship,
Relational life.
It is your conscious humanity.
You must live it.
You must become a human being.
To be intelligent,
You need not first realize
Absolute truth.
But no one can realize absolute
truth
Who has not first
Become intelligent.
You must become
Masters of the ordinary.
Truth is resurrected
From the ground up.
Spiritual life
Is not a form of consolation.
Its foundation is not
A fascinating promise.
Spiritual life is threatening.
Spiritual life is not leading
Toward your fulfillment
In some great vision.
Spiritual life is leading to
The absolute undermining
Of your separate existence
Absolutely.
Spiritual life
Is not a cure.
There is no remedy.
Spiritual life
Is the life of truth.
Spiritual life
Is a demand,
Not a form of therapy.
It is the practice of life
In a world where the Living
Heart,
Not your dilemma and search,
Is the condition.
Real spiritual life
Requires everything
Of a person.
Spiritual life
Is a crisis!
The crisis in Consciousness
Is spiritual life.
The suffering and the
intensity
Tapas
Is spiritual life.
Spiritual life
Is living intelligence,
Conscious in dilemma,
But with intensity.
We begin
Spiritual life
Only when we have
Already discovered
The “terrible
truth.”
It is because
You are sensitive
To the fact
That you are disturbed
That you become willing
To engage
Spiritual life.
It is better to be disturbed.
It is right to be disturbed.
In your condition,
One should be disturbed!
It is quite correct
For you to be disturbed,
because
In fact, you are disturbed.
To be disturbed
And yet not to feel disturbed
Would not be appropriate.
It is much more intelligent
To realize that you are
disturbed.
That is the beginning
Of spiritual life.
At least that sensitivity
Affords the possibility
Of spiritual life.
No one begins to live
Spiritual life
Until he or she has suffered.
Life is suffering.
Suffering is the first form of
grace.
Suffering has released you
Into your own depth.
Come into the presence
That is God
When you are already happy.
It is not a matter of
Any experience whatsoever.
It is a matter of
Falling out of the
Conditional and conventional
Representation of existence
Into that prior, absolute
enjoyment.
It is all garbage.
Throw it all away.
Only God
Is the condition
Of Consciousness and Life.
Spiritual life
Is life in the condition of
Truth.
Spiritual life has to do with
Continuous happiness, continuous
bliss,
Continuous freedom, continuous
relationship.
To live that Divine Communion
Under all conditions
Is the discipline of our work.
Happiness is the
responsibility.
Freedom is the discipline.
To be free
Is the ultimate discipline.
Happiness is
What it’s all about.
Unhappiness is
The highest crime.
Spiritual transformation
depends
On this realized, ecstatic
condition
In every moment.
A spiritual life is one in which
you
Lose face in each moment, in which
you
Are the servant of God, in which
you
Are dependent on the services of
God.
Unless such a literal and
conscious
And ecstatic and face-losing
affair
Appears in every moment as your
life,
You are not living spiritual
life.
If that glorious, ecstatic kind
of
Happiness and distraction is not
present,
Spiritual life is not
possible.
There is no call
For seriousness at all.
There is never any call
For seriousness.
There is no reason
To be serious about anything
Whatsoever.
You must already be happy,
Already full of humor.
There is no reason
Why you have to be
extraordinary.
Be ordinary, be happy.
Before you started imagining
A program for your
Ultimate victory or defeat,
By desiring and creating
circumstances
For yourself,
Just before all of that
happens
In this moment,
Just before you believe all of
that,
You are happy.
And it is better to be happy.
That happiness is your
condition.
All of the rest of it is an
hallucination
By which you program your
life.
Be easy, be full of enjoyment.
It is not to annihilation
That you are invited.
It is to the fullness of God
That is happy and free.
There is only this humor, this
freedom,
As the radical foundation
Of conscious life.
And it makes no difference,
Except that every other state,
Object or form of knowledge
Makes a difference.
Universal modification, as a
functional
Rather than a conventional
condition,
Known in truth, is wonderful!
All human possibilities, if they
are
Managed in God, are enjoyable.
Life is, fundamentally,
delight,
When released from the strategic
destiny
Of narcissus and the conventional
cult
Of this world.
Life or the cosmos is a
modification
Of the great Divine.
What heresy to assume
That the Lord’s power of
modification
Is false or to be gotten rid
of!
It is all God’s work, God’s
happiness.
It is to be known and lived in
truth.
Therefore enjoy it,
For you alone
Must live your ends
And all the stages
Of time.
Enjoy and create
According to the wisdom
Of your own form.
All that arises
Is to be realized
As the conscious theatre
Of God.
Not any yogic bliss
But to be already and presently
happy,
Regardless of the apparent
condition,
Is spiritual life.
All the manipulation of the life
force
Is God’s concern.
Life in truth
Is to be already happy
Without any reasons
whatsoever,
Not to be hoping to be happy
By moving into Samadhi.
This enjoyment
Is the principle of life,
Not its goal.
True Bliss
Is the enjoyment
Of your condition
In Truth.
It requires
The most perfect sacrifice.
Truth is Life
Is to live the primary
Condition of relationship
Under all conditions,
At all times.
Live this
Conscious relationship
Always.
You should just
Live that relationship.
Live that forever.
A lifetime of truth.
True spiritual practice
Is to live the condition
Of that Divine relationship,
Divine Communion,
For a lifetime,
Even eternally.
Spend no time whatsoever
Analyzing yourself.
No time.
I mean no time!
Don’t spend any more time
In your little
Self concerned life.
Turn yourself completely
Over to that process,
Withhold nothing,
And every moment throw away
Everything that you’ve
withheld.
You must make every moment
An involvement in that
process.
Every moment must be realized
In this form of service,
Every moment must be realized
As the sacrament
In which the self is yielded,
In which all content is
yielded,
And in which grace is
received.
You are under
An obligation.
You must go through it.
You must maintain the form
Of spiritual life eternally.
Having begun, never abandon
it.
Never.
Once having found it,
To abandon it
Is the height of foolishness,
Worthy of what it realizes.
Now you must do it,
And if you don’t do it,
Then you will suffer.
If you do it,
You will enjoy God.
Enjoy the condition
Of spiritual life
With open intensity,
And you simply won’t be
Obsessed anymore!
The fact that any of that
remains
Is not really any concern of
yours,
Because it belongs to God.
So fine, now it belongs to
God.
It is a matter of living the
truth,
And truth obviates
What is not truth.
Do this always,
Freely,
And with humor.
Just do what you have to do
And get it started.
Then it goes on forever.
Everything else is quick.
It seems
That talking about
Spiritual life
Tends to make it appear
A very complicated process.
It is here!
This relationship
Is a real condition.
You must be
Very simple
And very direct.
True spiritual life
Is much more practical than
that,
Much more direct than that.
It must be.
It is here.
Have I Said It?
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