CHAPTER 4 SRI DA AVABHASA: Always be purposed in response to Me and
to My Wisdom-Teaching. * * * You must become associated with the Divine Purpose from
the beginning of your practice of the Way of the Heart, so
that when all of the lesser offshoots of that Purpose appear
they will-not suddenly become your “great purpose”. They
will be the simple demonstrations of your practice as you
mature in the Way of the Heart. * * * You must observe, understand, and overcome your
conventional vision – the vision made of conditional
existence – and instead Realize the Vision of the Heart
itself, so that you can become consistently purposed to
transcend conditional existence in Communion with Me. To do
otherwise is to fall into separateness and
self-indulgence. Even at the beginning of your practice of the Way of the
Heart, all of your involvement in “money, food, and sex”
must always be associated with the Great Vision, the
Heart-Vision, and the purpose of self-transcendence.
Therefore, you cannot casually indulge in the modest designs
of “money, food, and sex” and practice the Way of the Heart.
Whatever those designs are for you personally, they must be
animated in the context of the real process of
self-transcendence as it is demonstrated even at the
beginning of the Way of the Heart, when the disciplines are
minimal. Nonetheless, whatever the forms of self-discipline
at your developmental stage of practice of the Way of the
Heart, they should always be demonstrations of the process
of self-transcendence. They should not be expressions of the
illusion that conditional existence is purposed for its own
sake, or that conditional existence can fulfill itself on
its own terms, by consolation, self-pleasure, and
self-fulfillment. As My devotee, you must eventually realize true
self-discipline through true listening, true hearing (or
most-fundamental self understanding), and true seeing (or
the Awakening of Heart-Vision), so that you are purposed to
transcend every fraction of conditional existence in
Communion with Me. Then you will assume self discipline as
it is in the Way of the Heart. I Give you the Divine Vision of existence a piece at a
time, and the piece I am Giving you now is the matter of
human loving. But do not ever imagine that this is all there
is to it. * * * You are not being asked to love and be radiant as an
answer to your dilemma. * * * In every moment of manifested existence, there is the
mechanical tendency of self-contraction, or the creation of
the illusion of difference between egoic self and all
objects. This very mechanism is the cause of the perception
and conception of manifested existence as a “problem”, or
the apparent separation from and non-Identification with the
Divine Being. When this tendency is presently understood and
transcended, it is Realized that there is only the
Self-Existing and Self-Radiant Divine Being, Apparent as all
“subjects” and all “objects”. On this basis, manifested
existence can be lived as Happiness, in Freedom,
spontaneously and creatively. * * * The purpose of the Way of the Heart is to devote energy
and attention to the observation, understanding, and
transcendence of the self-contraction and to Realize That
Which Is at the root, or Source, of that contraction. This
“radical” orientation to transcendence of the egoic self at
its root, or in its fundamental form, through feeling
Contemplation of Me, is the Way of the Heart. * * * The first form of the conditional “I” – activity that is
observed and felt beyond is the bodily, emotional, and lower
mental display of the avoidance of relationship (in the
ordinary context of human exchanges). When the freedom of
no-contraction, unqualified relatedness, or love is
basically restored in the ordinary human sphere through
Spiritual Communion with That Which Is Always and Already,
before the self-contraction is apparently added to What Is),
then the conditional “I” – activity begins to be observed
and transcended most directly, as contraction itself, even
in the subtlest forms of mind. Finally, the self-contraction
is observed and transcended in its essence, root-form, or
first form. * * * Now you are looking for the cause of your suffering. You
are seeking to be relieved by examining the phenomena of
experience. You are seeking to create an arrangement in the
body-mind itself that is satisfying. But the body-mind is a
limitation. Th body-mind is mortal. There is no way to be
Divinely Ecstatic and at the same time to be identified with
something mortal. “Ecstasy” by definition means “standing outside one
self”. To be Divinely Ecstatic is to stand outside what is
mortal, to transcend it, to be greater than it, but also to
include it and to realize it as a superficial aspect of What
you Are Ultimately. If you cannot find a way to Realize this
Ecstasy, there is no way that you can be Happy. You will
simply be obsessed, obsessively pursuing pieasure in this
life and obsessively identifying with this mortal body-mind.
You will be obsessively thinking, obsessively complaining,
obsessively reacting, obsessively desiring. You will be
obsessively depressed. Your capability to love, to
communicate Happiness in the world, will be profoundly
limited. Life will always be problematic. * * * As soon as there are two rather than One, the great fear
arises. * * * Wherever there is another, fear arises. Where there is
the slightest sense of another-in other words, wherever
there is separateness, wherever there is self-contraction –
there is fear. * * * In The Way and Manner Of The Heart, Understand Your
Separate and Separative self (As Un-Love) and Transcend Your
Separate and Separative self (By Love). And This Is
Perfected (Progressively, In The Way and Manner Of The
Heart) By Devotional (or selfTranscending and
self-Forgetting) Heart-Surrender Of the conditional
body-mind To My Bodily (Human) Form, and My Spiritual (and
Always Blessing) Presence, and My Very (and Inherently
Perfect) State, and, Thus and Thereby, To The Person and The
Forms or Characteristics Of The Spiritual, and
Transcendental, and Divine, Self. * * * The emotional-sexual ego Constantly Hunts For an other.
The ego-“I” (or self-Contraction) Hunts (or Seeks) an other
(Even all others and The Total Objective Cosmos) In Order To
Be Gratified, Consoled, and Protected. The Compulsive
Hunting (or Search) For an other Is Generated By The
Feelings Of Un-Happiness, Emptiness, and Separateness That
Possess and Characterize the self Contracted being. Once an other Is Found, the ego-“I” Clings To the other,
At First pleasurably, and Then Aggressively. The ego-“I”
Depends On the other For Happiness, and, Over time, the
ego-“I” Makes Greater and Greater Demands On the other For
Fulfillment Of itself (In all of its desires). Often, In
time, the other Becomes Depressed and Exhausted By This
Demand (and Thus Leaves, or Dies). Just As Likely, the ego
“I” Discovers, Over time, That the other Cannot or Will Not
Satisfy The Absolute Demand For attention and Consolation.
In That Case, the ego-“I” Feels Betrayed, and the ego-“I”
Begins The Strategy Of Punishing, Rejecting, and Abandoning
the other. Every conditionally Manifested being Has (In time) Often
Been The Proposed Victim Of This Strategy Of Separate and
Separative selves. Even More, Until The Heart Gives Way To
Divine Love-Bliss, every conditionally living being Is The
Original Genius and Grand Performer Of This Strategy Of
Separate and Separative selves. It Is The Strategy Of
Narcissus, and It Is The Dreadful Work Of all conditionally
living beings who Are Not Awake To The Truth Beyond the
ego-“I. *** The avoidance of relationship … is the primary act of
identification and differentiation. When understanding
begins to arise, the individual is consciously relieved of
many patterns of avoidance, including all kinds of un-love,
incapability, and obsessive habits. Such a one becomes more
relational, communicative, and positive. But when
understanding is attained in its radical and inclusive form,
there is also a primary transformation of experience. At first understanding promotes a healing of
effectiveness and freedom within the “I-that” structure of
awareness, where “that” signifies all forces in opposition
or contact, high or low. But at last that very structure
dissolves in understanding. The whole complex of
identification with a “personality”, an arbitrary center of
memory and experience that the mind rigs up as an entity,
ceases. And thus also the objects seen over against that “I”
cease to be differentiated because there is no concrete “I”
from which to differentiate them. Perception and consciousness, then, are loosed and
unqualified, and this unqualified consciousness remains as
the known and realized form of being, even under the usual
conditions of natural life. All of this is the truth of
understanding, wherein identification and differentiation
are seen to be the avoidance of relationship in its most
prior and primary sense. * * * The Avoidance Of Relationship Is The Method Of
psychophysical egoity, but The Feeling Of Relatedness (or
The Primal Illusion Of “Difference”) Is Itself The (Original
and Originating) Fault. Therefore, Divine Enlightenment Is
Not A Matter Of The Perfection Of Apparent Relationship (or
The “Curing” Of The Avoidance Of Relationship By The
Apparent Perfection Of Relatedness). Rather, Most Ultimately
(or Most Perfectly), Divine Enlightenment Is A Matter Of The Most Perfect
Transcendence Of Relationship (or Relatedness, or All
“Difference”) In What Is Always Already (Inherently and
Perfectly) The Case (Which Is Being, Itself, Consciousness,
Itself, and Love-Bliss, Itself). * * * The contents of the ego, or the body-mind, or
self-contraction, are reduced, broken up, and in one or
another way eliminated by My Divine Work. This is literally,
and not merely figuratively, so. When I spend time with you, or sit with you to Grant you
My Darshan, I Magnify My Spiritual Heart-Transmission to
you, and It Combines with the various contents of your
conditional being. My Transmission is Self-Radiant Energy
and Self-Existing Consciousness. In Satsang with Me, this is
what you confront in your life and meditation. This is the
character of My Divine Siddhi. And It spontaneously Works to
stimulate the contents of your conditional self, in life, in
meditation, and in moments of repose. That Siddhi also
breaks them up and eliminates them in a process that is not
possible by any other means. Ultimately these contents are
eliminated by My Transmission Work, and they are returned to
the Primal EnergyCondition, or the Ultimate Condition of
Divine Being. * * * My Spiritual Heart-Transmission is the Transmission of
NonSeparateness! In The Da Love Ananda Gita, I Speak of the
Wisdom of Non-Separateness. My Spiritual Heart-Transmission
is NonSeparateness Itself. * * * By this right feeling-Contemplation of Me, by
surrendering and forgetting the separate and separative
self, you are able to stand in the natural position of being
able to observe the act of self-contraction, the knot
itself, the obsessions that fall from it, the perceptions
that fall from it, and all the rest. In the Way of the
Heart, that is the only right position in which to do
sadhana. To be already in the position obsessed with objects
and others, already self-contracted, unable to view the
self-contraction, is fruitless. No real sadhana can be done
there. You can only manipulate your behavior. There are two ways to engage Spiritual life: the Way of
Satsang and the way of egoic struggle in response to
instruction. I do Give you My Instruction, but only in the
context of Satsang, only in relationship to you. Therefore,
practice of the Way of the Heart is realized in relationship
to Me. I do not merely Instruct you and then leave you on
your own to fulfill My Instruction. I am steady in My
Transmission of My Spiritual Heart-Presence. I am always
Available to you. I will always be Available to you, even
after My physical Lifetime. I have promised it in Writing in
My Source-Literature. It is literally so, and it will always
be so. Now you and all My devotees must create a culture
based on your practice and your realization of the Way of
the Heart. Only on the basis of perpetual Satsang with Me
will the community of My devotees serve My Work in the
world. Satsang with Me, My Grace Transmitted to you in My
Company, makes it so and makes you My devotee. Therefore, understand this principle and practice it
moment to moment under all the difficult, ordinary, and
nonsensical experiences of conditional life, under all the
conditions of the body-mind. Instead of being astonished by
the painful qualities of limitation and mortality, Find Me
and enter into Divine Communion with Me. * * * The confession of Love-Bliss is the confession of
devotion to Me, not the confession of struggle and apology.
Of course, the Way of the Heart is associated with
self-discipline and the transcendence of egoity.
Nevertheless, My true devotee does not practice
self-discipline and the transcendence of egoity through
struggle with the ego-self, but through
feeling-Contemplation of Me in every moment. * * * The practice in My Company is a “reality consideration”.
It is about locating the action for which you must become
responsible. This is absolutely essential if Divine
Self-Realization is to be the case.
