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 15
The Devotee
My Devotee Knows Me in Truth.
The sadhana of the student
Is to become human.
The sadhana of the disciple
Is to become spiritual.
The sadhana of the devotee
Is to become God.
My disciples embrace
The discipline of the teaching
Most fully.
And they know that I am
The principal discipline.
They find the Siddhi
Of the Divine Person
Alive in my company.
For them, I am always present
And active as the perfect
Communication of the nature,
Condition, form, source,
And process
That is the world.
The discipline
Lives a life of revelation.
The life of a disciple
Is a waking life.
It is to live
Already awake.
In the life of every true
disciple,
There has only been
The sudden communication
Of the Heart.
The disciple’s attention
Is turned to the guru
Without conflict,
Without limitation.
Then the very living force
Of the disciple
Is manifested as bliss,
Happiness, love, intensity,
devotion.
My disciple is turned to mem
But my devotee
Knows me in truth.
The true disciple
Is a devotee
Who simply lives
With his guru.
When you become
Communicative,
When you become
A real instrument,
When you cease to be
Involved in your own sadhana,
And have become happy
To live with each other
And make satsang available
Those are the signs
Of the devotee.
The true devotee’s attention
Is absolutely intense,
Absolutely constant,
Absolutely unwavering and
pure.
That is what makes
A devotee valuable.
His self-sacrifice
Or surrender
Is spontaneous,
Coincident with his life
From moment to moment.
His realization
Is spontaneous, absolute,
Continuous.
There is absolute
Continuousness of Bliss.
The devotee abides
Without dilemma
As that which cannot be
Avoided,
The form of Reality.
His very existence
Is a paradox.
His enjoyment
Is a paradox.
He is not a man of concerns
Or of programs
Or of descriptions.
He is utterly free of all
that.
He has become always
Already ecstatic.
And for such a one
There is therefore
No straightforward description
Of Reality, or of the cosmos,
Or of life.
Only God is apparent
To such a one.
Only the paradox survives.
To be a devotee,
To live in Satsang,
Is to live God, Truth and
Reality
As your present condition.
The devotee is continually,
Effortlessly
Meditating upon
The Divine Person.
The Divine Process
Is activated
As a literal force
In the devotee.
Every devotee
Is wildly and priorly
Free in God.
They live in the Divine,
And are free to put up with
The randomness of this world
In which there is no
Apparent security,
Because they depend utterly
On the Divine.
When you become bound
To the principle of truth,
You will become active
As a devotee.
And the signs
Of the devotee
Will become active in you,
And you will be happy.
The devotee
Is always happy,
And he lives
With great intensity.
The most intense life
Of a devotee
Is a very active life,
Constant sadhana.
From the point of view
Of the devotee,
There is no discipline to it
At all.
He is just happy.
He is just functioning.
He enjoys this functioning.
He is not functioning because
It will make him realize the
truth,
He is functioning because
He is already alive in the
truth,
And these functions are
Natural to him.
They are the forms
Of his blissfulness.
There is simply direct
realization,
Happiness under conditions
Of all possible functional
states,
High or low.
That is the perfection
Of the devotee.
When God becomes your
condition,
Nothing you’re doing
Makes any sense whatsoever.
You become a happy person.
You don’t have any more
Seeking to do.
You don’t have anything
More to accomplish.
You just become already happy.
You know that nothing
Is going to make you happy,
And you know very well then
That nothing is going to make
Anybody else happy either.
Either they are fundamentally
And unreasonably happy,
Or they are simply unhappy.
Perhaps consoled, occupied,
Distracted,
But basically unhappy.
In the devotee it is perfect.
It is obvious in the devotee
That there is happiness.
That is his nature,
His condition, his destiny.
Then everything that appears
Is Samadhi.
Whatever he sees is that.
So he is only happy.
He can’t help but be happy.
He can’t sidestep it.
He can’t have an experience
That is unhappy,
fundamentally.
It is all the same condition.
All of his parts open.
His Heart opens.
All sorrow leaves his being.
His mind stops endlessly
Manufacturing his false
vision,
And it becomes radiance only.
Those who live in God
Consent to be fools,
Ineffective in the effort
To transform man,
Unreasonable and already
happy,
Without arguments or defenses.
Their happiness
Is their only argument.
There are some for whom
Freedom is that which
They already are.
Therefore, they are
Always already here,
Whose presence is love.
Ecstasy is the way of life,
And those who are ecstatic
Are free of concerns.
They only live and love
And are no longer
Profoundly useful.
They create and continue
And disappear
In the ecstatic
Life fire of God.
When that intuition
Has become intense,
When your life as a devotee
Is real,
Then you will become
Responsible for living God
In the world.
Such a one
Lives freely, happily,
With ease,
And also with
Intensity of being.
He is free of all destiny,
Even while apparent
Destiny or life continues
To arise in his own case.
The conscious force of reality
Becomes the present mover
Of his appearance.
One whose enjoyment is such
Knows himself and the entire
World-process as
consciousness,
Prior happiness, or joy,
And his enjoyment
Consumes self, mind, and
world.
The destiny of such a one
Is that light that is
Consciousness.
It is a destiny that
May not be described.
It is the timeless destiny
Of the prior light,
Inqualified heaven,
The God-world of Brightness,
Not of motion,
Not of sight,
Not of hearing,
Not of cognition,
But of fullness,
In which no form
Stands out.
Those who become
The true devotees of the
Divine
In the presence of the
True Guru-Siddhi
Are free of the world,
And they may live in the world
As the presence of the Divine,
As the presence of love,
Of freedom, of prior
happiness,
Of conditionless Bliss.
That happiness
Does not appear
Only as a kind of ecstatic
madness,
But as an ordinary, human,
And enjoyable life
Free of the Divine Vision.
Life from that point
Is fundamentally a
celebration.
And the devotee
Loses his concerns for the
world.
He never loses them,
He throws them,
He kicks the shit out of them,
To enjoy his ecstatic
Life in God.
Everything becomes
Consciousness,
Everything becomes his own
Consciousness.
He has nothing left but humor
While alive.
In the perfect devotee,
All limitations are undone
In the inclusive humor
Of is radical intuition.
He does not seek.
He only enjoys himself
At play.
In one who is
Truly conscious,
Life is no longer
A mystery.
He breathes
The very light of God.
He sees the alchemical
Transformation of the divine
Into life in every moment
And sacrifices himself
In return.
He only lives God
And everything
Is obvious to him.
Death is no longer
His concern, nor life.
All states are
The condition of truth
For him.
He knows no dilemma.
And life
Is no longer a question.
For such a one
There is not the least
Trace of “mystery”
Left in the universe.
He has no question,
And he has no answer.
He is only humorous.
The truly free man
Is alive in the world
With love and energy.
He is not contained.
He cannot be undone
By the world itself.
He has a certain madness,
A certain foolishness,
A certain wildness.
The highest form
Of his foolishness
Is his love.
In the case of a true devotee,
The world of experience
Are realized as the present
Play of God,
And everything works together
To instruct, enlighten, heal,
And positively transform
Such a devotee.
All these things
Are given as Grace.
And nothing that is not
useful,
Nothing that is not
appropriate,
Is ever given to such a one.
Everything else is given
In the right moment.
One who is simply
The devotee of the Lord
In Satsang
Is given everything.
For the sake of devotees,
The human Guru appears.
The essential responsibility
Of the Guru is Satsang,
To live the Heart
To his friends.
Everything that I’ve told you
Before
Is to prepare you
To be a devotee.
The Guru’s function
Is to create devotees.
The entire function
Of the human Guru’s appearance
In the world
Is to create devotees.
Once devotees are created,
It isn’t necessary
For there to be
A human guru.
The Eternal Guru,
Who is also that human guru,
Is always present,
And devotees are
Always in touch
With that one.
The creation of devotees
Is what is necessary,
Not the creation
Of more Gurus.
The function of the Guru
Is to enter his devotee.
There is only one
Divine Process in the world,
And that’s when
The Guru manifests
And enters his devotee.
Literally,
The guru enters his devotee.
The guru is not a human being.
The Lord is the Guru.
And when the Guru appears
In human form
It is the Lord,
And he enters his devotee.
When the Lord
Enters his devotee,
There is no doubt
About it.
For the natural devotee,
The physical form of the Guru
Is sufficient.
He simply lives with his Guru.
To become capable
Of contemplating or meditating
On the Guru’s form
Is the ultimate capacity
Of a devotee.
Only if the devotee
Can be awakened
In the Guru’s Presence,
And made identical to him
In Consciousness,
Can the teaching be realized.
The Realization of the Guru
Becomes that of the devotee.
The Truth is being lived to
him.
It is being lived as him,
By the Grace of the Guru.
One who becomes foolish
In relation to the guru
Is already happy.
One who accepts
The Guru’s invitation
Is already eternally
fulfilled.
Satsang is his condition.
Satsang is his need.
Satsang is his sadhana
Or eternal spiritual practice.
For the true devotee,
Guru is the meditation,
Guru is the realization.
Guru is the continuous
Contemplation and enjoyment
Of the devotee.
The true devotee
Is constantly involved
In perfect psycho-physical
love
Of the Divine Person.
All his thoughts are the
Attention of mind
To the Divine Person.
He need not consider only
Holy or cultic thoughts
To be love of him.
All his speech is eloquent
About the Divine Person.
He need not consider
Only holy or cultic speech
To be love of him.
All his actions
Are devotion to him.
He need not consider only
Holy or cultic actions
To be love of him.
Then all that is received
Is received from him, and by
him,
In love.
All that is yielded
Is yielded to him, and by him,
In love.
Such a devotee is my own.
Have I Said It?
More: