Bright”
“The point of view from which our work is generated as
that of Amrita Nadi, the Form of Reality, the Form of God,
and the entirely awakened intuitive life, which is the
foundation of all manifest existence. The foot of that Form,
the root of that Form is, of course, the Heart. And that
Foot, that root of the mind, is what the Advaita tradition
means by the Self. What I mean by the Heart, by the Self, is
the Form of Reality, the very Self, the very Form, inclusive
of the bright.”
Adi Da Samraj (Franklin
Jones) – 1973
Watch
introductory video from DelphiYes on the early life of Adi
Da
The Knee of Listening is determined
to communicate about “the Bright” again and again, in many
ways, to describe what this term means, what this condition
is. So it is not meant to be completely described in the
first section of the book. And it is always described from
an experiential point of view, from the point of view of the
various phenomena related to it. Therefore, the term “the
Bright” ‘it is used in different ways throughout the book.
Sometimes it is written with a
capital “B,” sometimes it is written with a small “b.”
But it is always meant to be
essentially – the same term. Sometimes it is used as an
equivalent for “Amrita Nadi.” Sometimes it is used as an
equivalent for the Heart, meaning, though, the Heart in the
midst of its reflected Consciousness or Light. It is most
often used to refer to the Bright of Consciousness, the
perfect Light of Consciousness, the intuition of
God-Light.
Essentially, the Bright is the
intuition of the uncreated Consciousness-Light of God.
Perhaps various phenomenal manifestations of this Light may
be associated with this intuition, as I have described. The
God-Light is the reflection of Real-God. The Bright is the
reflection of the Heart. It is all a duplication of the
ultimate structure. In the first three pages of The Knee of
Listening the Bright is described in terms of the whole
mechanism of the intuition (not visualization) of the
God-Light, the reflected Light or Creative
Consciousness-Force, as it appears in the various functions
of the descending and ascending mechanisms of
man.
crawling around inquisitively with an incredible sense of
joy, light and freedom in the middle of my head that was
bathed in energies moving freely down from above, up, around
and down through my body and my heart. It was an expanding
sphere of joy from the heart. And I was a radiant form, a
source of energy, bliss and light. I was the power of
Reality, a direct enjoyment and communication. lI was the
Heart, who lightens the mind and all
things.”
Fundamentally, the condition that is
being described here is that of the Amrita Nadi, the
complete realization of the Divine Form, which includes the
intuition of Real-God, the God-Light, or the selfluminous
Power of God, and the relationship between these.
So Amrita Nadi, or the Form of God,
was the fundamental enjoyment from the beginning. And the
term “the Bright” is used to mean the entire enjoyment of
Amrita Nadi. It is also meant to refer to the peculiar
quality (conscious brilliance, radiance, living joy) of the
intuited Light of consciousness. But, as you see, the Light
is always related to the Heart as its foundation. Its
foundation is in the Heart, or Real-God, of whom the Heart
is the intuition. Its center is in the midst of the Heart.
That awareness, that conscious enjoyment in space, centered
in the midst of the Heart (whose psycho-physical locus is on
,the right) is the Bright. It is the entire source of humor.
It is Reality. It is not separate from anything.
Non-separation, or abiding in God as one’s Condition, is the
nature of that humor.
conceived a purpose in the “bright.” It was to restore
humor. Throughout my life I have been moved to find and
communicate the fundamental source of humor to others. It
appeared in many forms, as enjoyment, laughter, faith,
knowledge. Butt at last it has only one form, which is
reality itself.”
And then there is another
description of the Bright, meaning Amrita Nadi, or the full
realization and intuition of the real condition:
recognition of it, it was my simple state [my common
state, my ordinary state. There was nothing peculiar about
it from my point of view, nothing special about it] . It
was consciousness itself, prior to any experience, but it
was not distinct from my life. It was not mysterious or
awesome. There was no shadow, nothing hidden in it. It was
not motivated. It knew no beyond. It had no sense of time.
Nor had it yet begun to feel any kind of confusion or
identity with existence as personality and experience. It
was an operating center, without dilemma or consciousness.
It knew no divisions in itself. Many energies were
communicated within it.. There was joy in the body, its
light cell life, its respiration and circulation of force
and pleasure. There was a current of energy in the heart
that rose into the head through the throat. And there was an
energy below the heart that rose up into it from below.
There was a surrounding energy that was spaceless but which
had a locus above the head. And all of these energies were a
single current of light and life in the heart that was
reflected as enjoyment in the-head. That form of
consciousness was bright, silent, spaceless, full, knowing
only and entirely this thing itself and seeing no problem,
no separation in the fact of life.”
The thrust of this first
chapter is to describe, in
experiential terms, without philosophical justification,
this condition, which is the very same condition that is
described throughout the book. The chapter ends, “But my
first twenty years were the gradual undermining of this
certain existence by all of the ordinary and traditional
means of life.” This was the complication, part of the usual
complication of birth. This was the karmic complication that
produced the adventure that followed from that point.
Because this condition, that was simply enjoyed from the
beginning, turned out by observation not to be the condition
allowable in this world. It was not the condition that
people allowed one to live. It was not the condition that
people lived. It was not the state that was acknowledged in
the world. It was not the premise of ordinary activity. So
all of the ordinary and traditional means of life gradually
undermined the simple living of this condition, and forced
it to become realized. In other words, instead of simply
being lived as a prior state, it had to be brought into
life. It had to move into life, transform the vehicles of
life, and present itself as life. So this is the thrust of
the rest of the autobiography, the work or adventure of
realizing or bringing into life this prior
enjoyment.
The world, then, provided all of the
various obstacles or alternatives to this enjoyment. There
are two major things communicated in this chapter. The first
is Amrita Nadi, called the Bright, rooted in the Heart. And
the second is this notion of humor, this purpose that was
discovered in the Bright, this purpose in the very nature of
Reality, which includes the world. The purpose of the Bright
is to restore humor, or to restore the world to this
enjoyment.
So there are two movements in my
life as it is described in these first pages. The first is
this adventure of realization, of bringing into life of this
prior enjoyment. And that is an activity I performed in
relation to the vehicles I was living. The other is the
larger purpose relative to the whole of life, to all other
beings, and that is to restore humor, or to bring this
realization into the condition of life for all other
beings.
Back to Chapter
1 – The Knee of Listening
Continue to The Study
of The Knee of Listening – Table
of Contents
MORE:
When enquiry has settled in the
heart, awareness develops as what Ramana, Ramana Maharshi,
calls the ‘Amrita Nadi . I call it the ‘Form of Reality.’ It
is the circuit of current from the heart to the head. As a
child I knew it as the ‘bright’. In the unqualified state
all identification, differentiation and desire have ended.
There is only unqualified relationship realized in enquiry
to be already the case. This realization is simply
consciousness as the Amrita Nadi, the form of Reality, and
it is experienced as the ‘bright’, the unconditional bliss
of presence, of perfect knowledge, whose source is the
heart, reality itself. Therefore, the bright is the form of
that reality which is consciousness. It is a true and real,
the birthright of all existence.
Knee of Listening – Chapter 9
“The Life of Da Kalki (Adi Da) is
what in India is called a “Rahasya”, or sacred Mystery. It
transcends anything we can ever say about it. His Life has
been, as He Says, “an adventure and unfolding in the
‘Bright” – the Radiance and Bliss and Love of the God State
that He also describes as the Divine Shakti”
Shakti
I called the most subtle region the
“Bright,” because it is only Light. All of life descends
from it, and returns to it in a continuous cycle, conducting
it as force, becoming movement and form. But even this Light
is a reflection of the Heart, unqualified existence, just as
the moon reflects the sun. This Heart, which is the source
of all light and life, and of which every thing is the
reflection, is itself without quality. But the Heart, the
Light and the Life are all included and transcended in that
which is very Truth, the Great Form.
The
Method of the Siddhas – Chapter 10
The
Knee of Listening and Study Chapters – Table of
Contents