“”Until
there is Hearing, Until the Argument
Makes its Point in You,
Practice Cannot Begin
The following is an ‘essay’
composed from a collection of notes and excerpts taken from
the writings and teachings of Adi Da Samraj on the nature of
‘hearing’. ‘Hearing’ is a technical term used by Avatar Adi
Da to indicate most fundamental understanding of the act of
egoity (or self-contraction) and in so doing (by Grace)
transcend the self-contraction. In ‘hearing’ or
Understanding and transcendence simultaneous there is the
permanent intuitive to one’s own true nature, Divine
Condition (Reality or Truth). The collection is not made to
read as if it’s one seemly conversation or essay. It it a
‘choppy’ patchwork of writings and teaching put together to
give the reader of what one would ‘look like’ or what the
‘signs’ would be if one actually were to demonstrate a
‘hearing’ disposition. In some of the writing below I
have taken a paragraph and broken it up into sentences. I’ve
done this because I believe one way to read (study) Adi Da’s
Wisdom Teaching should be read as if you were ‘biting’ into
a meal and needed to chew it. And so I’ve broken up
paragraphs, included sentences and paragraphs from other
essays and talks which do not read as a seemless essay. I
beleive this a good way to read, study and digest the Wisdom
Word of the Great Sage Adi Da Samraj. One more item that may need some
clarification. The term hearing, as Adi Da uses it, is also
used in conjunction with other terms such as
‘self-understanding’ ‘self-observation’ ‘hearing the
teaching argument’, Satsang and a variety of other terms
which all have to do with transcending the act of ego or
self-contraction. All the words below are primarily
those of Adi Da except those italicized. I’ve done my best
to remain true to Adi Da’s teaching word as best I am able
and any errors are only my responsibility and if alerted
will address them immediately. The
Way begins only when you have thoroughly understood the
disease of egoity, not as a symptom external to you, but as
a process with which you are thoroughly involved in this
moment and which you are capable of observing,
understanding, and transcending. You have the capability in
my company, by entering most fully into the prior
presumption of Being. It is only then will you have the
capacity to practice this Way, and not until
then. The first thing you must do is to
hear
me, combine yourself with
the
Argument relative to
Narcissus
to the point of relieving yourself of the arbitrary notion
that things are just happening to you and that you are
succumbing to limitation. You must realize that these
limitations have no force at all. Rather than just respond
or react to them, you must see the mechanism of contraction
or reactivity and know it utterly. The sense of
self-contraction
is just like clenching your hand or getting a knot in your
stomach or tightening your eyebrows. You must see it as
something that you do in reaction to conditions of
existence. You cannot receive me until you
understand your resistance to me. Understanding is the first
gesture of spiritual life. You must know the self-contraction
and you must see it. You must observe it to the point of
realizing that it is not happening to you. You are doing it,
just as you are moving your mouth and blinking your
eyeballs. Like the movements of your intestines, it is a
rhythm to which you have become habituated. It is really
very simple, but you must observe it, and you must
understand it. This is the first office of spiritual
life. When you awaken to this
understanding through ‘hearing‘
and are awakened to the Condition of this moment without
concepts and contractions of energy and feeling you will
quickly achieve humor and responsibility relative to the
conventions of self. You will see through the strategy of
Narcissus and awaken beyond all appearances and delight in
the Awakened Company of the Adept. You will then have the
ability to quickly transcend all false evidence and all
conditional distractions relative to conditional
arising. A sign of those whose “hearing” is
most profound is one who is stably founded in
psycho-physical
equanimity, and their energy
and attention are completely free for the direct or
unmediated Intuition of Transcendental Being. One Awaken to
the ultimate Condition of things and their participation is
one of constant Brightness. Another sign of one who awakens
through hearing is they are full of humor and delight. There
is no aggressively opposition to the world, nor clinging to
it. All the tension in the heart has been re-leased. To
speak of Enlightenment without that sign is nonsense. There
is no Enlightenment without the release of the heart from
all of its seriousness, all of its clinging to phenomena,
high and low. True devotees (one who has ‘heard’)
realizes Humor, Freedom, or Distance from all the
seriousness of his or her interests and occupations from day
to day. They see the ordinariness of it, even the absurdity
of it, without becoming ironic. They are free of the world
in itself and rest naturally in the mood of the heart, the
Intuition of the Radiant Transcendental
Consciousness. If you rest in God, then you have
received Grace. Then Grace has entered into your daily life
and only serves its ultimate transcendence. If you do not
come to rest in God, the heart is like a stone or a clenched
fist. It has not entered into the Infinite Radiance of
Consciousness. It is fixed upon itself. It is Narcissus,
self-meditative, self-protective, threatened by everything
to Infinity, obsessed with possibilities and the repetition
of experience in order to acquire a sense of survival,
consolation, and pleasure. One who has heard must emerge into
the True Condition of existence, which is relationship. To
live in constant, heart-felt relationship to the Spiritual
Master. It obliges the being to a Way of sacrifice, which is
at once Truth and Love. One who understands and becomes free
of the necessity of his own life of Narcissus begins to live
among men in an entirely new way. What he requires is the
communication of love, of presence, because he knows that we
are the food source, the life source, for one another. The
force of his presence begins to become a demand for that
life, that love, that Truth, the lightness, that happiness.
This alone is the proper condition of a human society. The
more he experiences of himself, the more he also sees in the
world. The more he becomes responsible for all of his own
activities, the more that responsibility begins to extend to
the activities of others-his intimates, his household,
devotees in the Ashram, and in varying degrees all those
whom he contacts. In the ‘Hearing Condition’
one suddenly Shines forth, free of the limitations of
the left and right sides and the mechanics of experience. It
is pure Feeling or Blissfulness, pure Consciousness or
Happiness, without knowledge, without any
definition. It is free of all of the limitations
of experiential knowledge and conception. It no longer has
any such problems. Its fundamental Condition is obvious, but
not really speakable. All the aspects of one’s life
becomes observable, and you can presume
responsibility for them and act whole bodily in our
relations in every moment, as God-Communion. In such
practice of Real Life, th(e) body-mind becomes purified,
balanced, and clarified. It becomes healthy in the truest
sense. When the ego (or self-contraction)
is understood and transcended, then Nature is seen from the
point of view of Wisdom. And, in that case, the egoic
struggle in Nature or against Nature is also understood and
transcended. Then the Way of life ceases to be founded on
the need to destroy the dynamic of Nature via conventional
knowledge, power, immortality, or mystical escape. The world
is no longer conceived as a drama of warfare between Good
and Evil. The righteousness of the search for the Good as a
means of self-preservation disappears along with the
self-indulgent and self-destructive negativity of possession
by Evil. In place of this dilemma of opposites, a
self-transcending and world-transcending (or
Nature-transcending) equanimity appears. And in that
equanimity there is an inherent Radiance that transcends the
egoic dualities of Good and Evil (or the conventional
polarities of the self in Nature). It is the Radiance of
Love. And in that Free Radiance, energy and attention are
inherently free from the ego-bond, self-contraction, or the
“gravitational effect” of phenomenal self-awareness.
Therefore, dynamic equanimity, or the free disposition of
Love (rather than the egoic disposition in the modes of Good
or Evil), is the “window” through which God may be “seen”
(or intuited)-not in the conventional mode of Creator, Good,
Other, or Heavenly Place, but as the Real, or the tacitly
obvious Condition of all existence. The Argument and the
self-Contraction Once the
argument has been
considered, felt, and lived, the devotee is convicted. He is
convicted of his love for the Teacher and he is convicted of
the necessity of the Teaching and of right action for the
rest of his life. Then he has heard the Teaching, he is
prepared, and he approaches the Divine Master in Divine
Communion. When that contraction
is seen in the moment of self-observation
– not in the moment of self-watching, because then there is
a self and all you do feel is the contraction – but when the
contraction is seen, when it is really observed, then you
not only see the whole life contracting through all of its
mechanisms, but you see what precedes it. You see
contraction relative to the whole pattern of existence. You
do not just feel contracted. You see this contraction, you
see the great space in which it is occurring, you see it as
an event, and thus you realize what is prior to that event.
You become responsible for it when you know it as an event,
and you cannot do it anymore. In consciousness you live as
what precedes that contraction, and thus through the Siddhi
that is Consciousness you may in every moment undo the
limitation of your tendency. The sign of true hearing in the
devotee is an ease in life – the disciplines become natural
and clear, his life becomes unclouded and responsive, he is
capable of functioning, speaking, thinking, acting, and
loving, he is a disciplined and religious person. He is not
merely disciplined in the traditional way of living
according to a conventional law – don’t do this, don’t do
that, like the traditional yamas and niyamas that we talked
about earlier – but he is disciplined as a natural response
to ordinary life. He enjoys a natural asceticism or easeful
economy in the midst of ordinary activities. He neither
exploits life nor limits it. The signs of preparation or
hearing are a natural approach to the Teaching and
clarity. Everyone who hears the Teaching
enters into this Enlightened disposition in some fundamental
sense. Those who hear me are not
self-concerned anymore. They already possess the arms of
wisdom. They already enjoy the Siddhi of the Divine and deal
with whatever may arise in the apparent individual
experience. They do that creatively and responsibly, but
they do not stand as fear. So, where is their attention?
Their attention is free. It deals freely with personal
circumstance and is not troubled. It is to be thrown out of
the sphere of the body into the environment of all relations
and all possibilities, the environment of total existence,
not merely of self-existence. Until there is hearing, until the
Argument “makes its point in you,” practice cannot begin. In
hearing you transcend the self-contraction and are restored
to Satsang. Hearing liberates energy and
attention from the egoic body-mind and to the Process that
is the Way. Thus, those who hear also begin to hear more and
more. Understanding arises when there is true hearing and
self-observation in relationship. Hearing is continuous insight into
the self-contraction,
allowing us to abide in the disposition which is radically
free of the self-knot. Understanding is insight into the
very mechanism of your existence that is duplicated in all
your actions and experiences. Through such insight you
inherently transcend the lie or the binding power of that
mechanism (The lie is that its psychic aspect represents an
independent being-that is, an elusive…specific soul that
is separate and independent). This insight into the
mechanism of Narcissus, or awakening into the attitude of
Ignorance, is the fundamental Teaching, and the fundamental
practice is the “conscious
process,” whereby insight is
expressed moment to moment. You must enjoy insight into the
mechanism, the action, the presumption that makes existence
into a torment. You must remember That which you are always
denying. To hear the Teaching means that you
hear Me, because the Teaching did not fall out of the sky.
Then you can live with Me in Spiritual terms. To hear the
Teaching means to be established in a relationship with
Me. Having heard, you must see Me, you
must live with Me, you must practice in my Company. That is
the secret of this Way of Life – not to be self-involved,
not just to have a mental understanding, but to live with Me
directly. True “hearing” occurs when the soul
flashes forward, when it is Awakened. When devotee is not at
odds with Teaching, his intimates, and Teacher. When the
devotee is no longer at odds with the Teaching, when he is
no longer at odds with his intimates, when he is no longer
at odds with the Teacher, then hearing is
beginning. Understanding prepares us for
Spirit-Baptism (Seeing).
Without Spirit-Baptism there is no spiritual life.
Therefore, you who deny me and are so self-possessed must
understand that the essence of my Teaching is the
Transmission
of Spirit. This Transmission
Intoxicates you, but if you have not understood yourself,
you cannot use my Spirit-Blessing. You will shut It down.
Therefore, you are only prepared to practice in Truth when
you have used my Teaching to the point of
understanding. The only thing that prevents the
sublimity of Spirit-Communion in every moment of existence
is the simple mechanism of self-contraction. You must hear
me, therefore. You must observe the self-contraction and
understand it so thoroughly that it is not happening to you
anymore, so that you recognize it as your own action, so
that you can enquire of it or meditate beyond it or feel
into the Life-Current, the Divine that is beyond it, in your
daily life. That is the capability you must regenerate in
yourself. It does not exist in you now because you have
habituated yourself to shutting out the Force of
God. You discover that you are already
free, and Happy. Life is enjoyed from the point of view of
understanding. There are difficulties – as always – and
practice remains your test as well as your obligation. But
in your hearing, the “problem” orientation is undone and
instead, understanding is brought to the events of
life. When you are living the disciplines
of practice that the Spiritual Master has given you, when
you are living them in the spirit of Satsang, in the spirit
of the Teaching, simply practicing in ordinary terms. Thus,
when you are seated in the dimension of consciousness
itself, not in the seat of the brain as a strategic
position, you suddenly grasp the entire play that is your
humanity. When you are free of all manipulative exercise,
you are like a mirror to your own event, and the process of
your life shows itself to you in instant
comprehension. From the point of view of the
true disciple, there is no significance to the patterns.
There is no significance. “Significance” is your dilemma. It
is the pattern of your own mind-forms. Hearing is knowing, we are always
already “there.” This is it. There is no dilemma. There is
only one Reality, presently. It is not somewhere else. It is
not hidden within us, nor behind the world. It is obvious.
Satsang is the condition of Reality, consciously lived. It
is lived to you, within you, as you, along with you. It is
that real condition lived as life, as a pressure upon the
disciple. The Guru lives it to him, until it begins to
become obvious, until it begins to become intelligent in
him. But all he will have realized, after all, is the
obvious. The nature of the rising event, the apparent
condition, becomes clear. It becomes obvious to him that his
dilemma is his own activity. He sees that in fact there is
no dilemma. There is nothing about the present that is not
Truth. Observation, or insight, which is
fundamentally the same thing, lasts only when it is perfect,
because only when is is perfect does it include all other
possibilities that maybe observed, and therefore it goes on
and on and on. Any moment of self-observation
cannot last, because something else arises, and you must be
present in the next moment. It is only when the whole affair
of self-observation and insight becomes summary, conclusive,
total comprehension of fundamentally what you are as an
activity, only then can it appear as a real responsibility
in consciousness. The whole affair of self-observation
ultimately becomes summary and conclusive. It becomes
comprehension. Find the Company of Truth. Hear
the Teaching of Truth. Become intimate altogether with the
One that is Truth. When the mechanics of egoity are
transcended in our understanding, then it becomes obvious
that life (or manifest phenomenal existence) is simply a
play of opposites. Neither “Good” (or creation and
preservation) nor “Evil” (or destruction) finally wins.
Nature, in all its planes, is inherently a dynamic. The play
of Nature, in all its forms and beings and processes, is not
merely (or exclusively and finally) seeking the apparent
“Good” of self-preservation (or the preservation and
fulfillment of any particular form, world, or being), nor is
it merely (or exclusively and finally) seeking the apparent
“Evil” of self-destruction (or the dissolution of any
particular form, world, or being). Rather, the play in
Nature is always in the direction of perpetuating the
dynamics of the play itself-and, therefore, polarity,
opposition, struggle, alternation, death, and cyclic
repetition tend to be perpetuated in the characteristics of
phenomenal existence. Therefore, the play of Nature is
always alternating between the appearance of dominance by
one or the other of its two basic extremes. And the sign of
this is the inherent struggle that involves every form,
being, and process. The struggle is this dynamic play of
opposites, but the import of it is not the absolute triumph
of either half. Things and beings and processes arise, they
move, they are transformed, and they disappear. No thing or
being or process is ultimately preserved. But neither is
there any absolute destruction. Nature is a transformer, not
merely a creator or a destroyer. Ignorance. Understanding cannot be
understood. There either is understanding or there is not.
Mere observation is not a condition
in itself. It does not turn toward or in on itself. It is
tacitly disposed to whatever arises, if anything arises,
subjective or objective. It is not a method that can be
taken up in order to control or watch arising events. It is
not a strategy. It is not itself identified with any
problem. It is simply our natural, present disposition when
we are “hearing,” that is, when we are simply at rest in the
intuitive presumption of Ignorance,
rather than any subjective form, any experience, any
condition, any kind of knowledge. True observation is present in
random (not strategic) self-observation. Observation is true
only in the effortless, native moment, in which Divine
Ignorance is the obvious Condition of self and all
conditions. True observation does not merely confront or
perceive a condition-rather, it is priorly free of that
condition, and, therefore, intuitively recognizes it, feels
it without obstruction, and dissolves (through
non-reinforcement) its limiting and binding force. True
observation is identical to Divine Ignorance, and,
therefore, it acquires no knowledge by association with
conditions, but abides as no mind, no experience, formless,
pristine, and void. Thus, from observation, or free
attention, which is identical to Divine Ignorance, springs
the force of love, or unobstructed feeling, which is
identical to Divine Radiance. True or intuitive observation cannot
itself be intended. It is itself native to us at every
moment. It is mere or free attention, or natural awareness
of all events, within and without. It is always already true
of us and as us, but we are free to be present as such mere
awareness or mere presence only when we are intuitively free
of identification with all forms of subjective motion,
distraction or knowledge. In every moment of active
understanding, the independent “I” dissolves – by becoming
identical to the body. When the self-contraction is
transcended on the bases of understanding, the knowing “I”
is replaced by Ignorance, or the consciousness.
Consciousness is Ignorance, or That which is intuited prior
to all knowing. The fundamental life of
understanding does not begin until there is insight from the
point of view of the fundamental activity and proposition of
your life, which has you seeking always, but never
fundamentally being transformed, because that sensation,
that quality, is the principle of your seeking. No magic
from without works that transformation. The Guru serves that
transformation, but if you don’t become intelligent in
Satsang, the genius of the Guru makes no difference
whatsoever. Understanding must take place in your case. No
shaktis, no philosophy, no marvelous influence is greater
than that, nothing transcends that. All those experiences
and occupations are just consolations, distractions from
falling in upon that fundamental activity. 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. Until the devotee begins to
grasp some basic understanding of his ultimate Condition, he
is exploitable by individuals who arbitrarily assume a
creative power and authority beyond his own. So most men and
women, who work in an organization or ashram who don’t
understand are constantly exploited by all kinds of shrewd,
honest and also deluded people who are really in charge of
his or her political, social, and intimate
life. Adi Da
– edited and adapted by Beezone We are at the dead end of the
ancient ways, and we are suffering from the inability to
move fully into our right human, and immortal destiny. Only
an enlightened and liberated understanding of our old
cultural and subhuman presumptions will permit us to yield
to Life bodily, in love, and so move on in the Way of
God. If you had half a wit, reading The
Knee of Listening would have changed your life! But you do
not like the implications of The Knee of Listening because
it indicates that you must change. I attest to this with every cell of
my body. I affirm it with all my heart. I plead with you to
consider it fully and resort to a new Way of
Life. This essay was complied and produced
by Beezone White and Orange Project. The Beezone White and
Orange Project is a study method based on Ludwig
Wittgenstein’s Blue
& Brown Books books. For
more information on the Beezone White and Orange Project
click
here.
