“Everything must be “considered”, you see. There isn’t just one way to do it. It depends on the qualities of the individual, the purposes of the individual, the capabilities of the individual, the circumstances and so on, also, and what you, examining everything very seriously, feel you want to do about it all, and just how profound is your impulse altogether.”
Adi Da Samraj – 1995
What is ‘Listening’ in the Teaching of Adi Da Samraj?
Adi Da Samraj (1993)
Table of ContentsNote to Reader – Introduction – The Argument – The Consideration –
What are you always doing? – Narcissus – Seeking – My Work, Your Responsibility –
self-Observation – self-Contraction – Beginning – The Listening Process – Hearing
The Symptom and the Disease – What you do proves ‘hearing’ – First Thing You Should Do
Footnotes – Divine Intervention – Confrontation with Narcissus – Ruchira Avatara Bhakti Yoga
The End of The Teaching – White and Orange Project
The following project by Beezone on the ‘Listening’ process in the teaching of Adi Da Samraj is a compilation of many talks Adi Da gave to his students from 1992 – 1994. This period is described in the book, ‘The Promised God Man is Here‘, chapter 19, entitled, Divine Intervention. ‘Listening’ in the teachings of Adi Da Samraj may be referred to as, a practice at the beginning of sadhana which comprised many elements. All materials are taken from published materials covering this period. The words and phrases in the following essay in italics are those of Beezone, all others are directly from the published materials.
Beezone
Right Practice and Hearing the Fundamental Argument – 1978
Listening – A “reality consideration” of the conditional self and
how it operates as self-contraction
The Argument
SRI DA AVABHASA: My fundamental Argument1 must make some point in you. If there is any self-understanding in you relative to anything, it is because self-understanding is central to your life in your “consideration” of My Teaching.
And what is that arugment? What is central in your consideration when you study My Word? What is at the root and central to my teaching word? It is this, You are seeking ALL of the time.
And that seeking, that looking, that questioning is a sign of your disturbance. You would not have any questions and you would not be so busy doing all the things you do otherwise. The only reason you went to bed with your intimate partner, the only reason you’re looking for the next thing to do is that you are disturbed. That is the only reason that you do anything! Do you think Narcissus feels good at the side of the pond there?
He(She) is ready to kill himself with his desires, his adoration of his beloved. All of which is nothing but an illusion! He is full of stress, the stress of separation from all objects, from The Very One, God (Truth or Reality). He cannot fulfill his impulse toward union with anything! He could leap in on the apparent body there on the water, but he would sink down deep in the water and drown! His objects of desire, his beloved, is insubstantial. He is suffering himself! The whole time!
Your questions are…part of your search, as they propose an answer. They are already a structure of expectation. It is possible for questions to be wrong, all wrong, in some fundamental sense, just as the answers that follow questions can be wrong in some fundamental sense. Every question designs a particular kind of answer, constructs an answer, proposes an answer, for its satisfaction. You puzzle until you acquire the answer and relieve yourself of the question, and then you ask another. And all the while that you are asking, seeking. The questioner basically wants to be consoled. The question wants an answer. But the expected answer is not Realization. You have been asking questions your whole life. You have even received all kinds of answers. But your questioning has not become Realization.
What Are You Doing? What Are You Always Doing?
If you ask Me a question I am not going to address you through your question because you are already proposing an answer and I do not think the answer will necessarily change anything fundamentally for you. My “Consideration” with you is not merely My relating to your questions and coming up with the answer that you are already proposing. My “Consideration” with you is My way of breaking through the limitation that is your question, or your proposal, this limit in you.
You want Me to talk about the search and improving it. I want to Talk about you and about what you are up to. That is what I do. You are doing this contraction, this separativeness. And that is what you must deal with.
I do not want to talk about what you can do about it. I want to Talk about you and what you are doing.
You are just suffering! Just plain old! That is it! That is what I mean when I Say that there is self-understanding from the beginning of the Way of the Heart, that much understanding, knowing just that, that you are seeking, that you want things to work out, you want, things to be fulfilled, you have all your interests, but, you are just suffering all the time, you are full of your own contraction, the stress of it, the disease of it, the separateness, the fear — that is it! The bottom lime–that is it!- That is what every one of you is up to every single moment of your life! Not all this mild, innocent boyscout/girl-scout garbage that you expect Me to be interested in.. All your idealistic crap is just about having this thing at the pond work out.
Real “consideration” is about just such undoing of egoic limitation. What you may otherwise call “consideration” is just a social diversion. Real “consideration”‘ is a kind of play. It is a paradox, the undoing of the game of your own proposition. Therefore, in real “consideration” with you I am not merely straightforward. My “Consideration” with you is ‘Crazy”, artful theater of breaking through the presumption that is your own illusion.
That is My point! You are suffering yourself…! All your life! Right now you are suffering yourself! And that is why you ask questions, that is why you are doing anything at all! That is the entire motive of your life! That is it! And that is what there is to deal with! That is what there is to listen to Me and hear Me about.
You are only doing anything because you do not feel good. And why aren’t you feeling good? That is My question! What are you up to? I keep leading you, to that discovery, but you, already a seeker, want Me to indulge in the banal business of somehow helping you make your suffering work out. Basically all I have to Tell you about it is that it does not work out, it cannot work out, because you are the disease. You are suffering yourself.
Life does not work out! IT CANNOT WORK OUT! Trying to make life work out is not the Way of the Heart! The Way of the Heart is ego-transcendence, transcendence of the very thing that seeks to make it all work out!
To compensate for your lack of dissatisfaction, I Call you all to embrace discipline, abandon your self-indulgence, break through the cycle of your mediocrity by embracing more disciplines, intensifying your devotional practice, serving with greater energy and attention, meditating more, and so on.
Why? Because you are not serious, you haven’t gotten the lesson of life yet. You want to talk about YOU!
This YOU is Narcissus. You are “Narcissus“. You want to keep bending over the pond and looking at that swell beloved down there, the world”, “my latest experience”, “my meditation this morning”, “my girlfriend”, “my boyfriend”, “my ideas”, “my aspirations toward this, that, or the other thing” — you want Me to take all that seriously. I do not take it in the slightest bit seriously. I know what you are up to! Anybody standing by the pond knows that you are a damn fool, looking, at your own reflection. You want to chat about mating with that poor bastard! Knowing where you are at, all I can do is tell you to wake up! “LOOK AT WHAT YOU ARE DOING HERE, NARCISSUS! That is what I do, you see.
How could anyone do anything else, knowing where you are at? But you expect to be taken seriously in your bending over the pond, looking at this illusion, your body, the world, your relations, your difficulties, your past, your memories. You want all of that to be taken seriously. It is all one big picture of yourself. That is all you are staring at. I do not want to talk about that! Fine, bring it up, but I am going to lead you to the point.
You are “Narcissus”! You are looking at an illusion that is nothing but yourself. When do you see the world except as it is manufactured by your own brain?
When do you ever see the world except through your own reactivity, your own thoughts, your own desires, the things going on in the body? When do you ever see the world except from the point of view of the stress of your own self-contraction, the un-Happiness that motivates you to seek?
You are only looking at yourself. That is all you are ever looking at. And you want your life to work out, Narcissus! You are looking at all this, and you are calling it “the world” — yet it is you. That is the problem with Narcissus. He does not know he is looking at himself. He thinks he is looking at somebody else, or that he is looking at reality, or the Great’ Other, or the Adorable One, the Beloved. It is HIMSELF! Everybody else knows it, but he does not! Everybody knows that the poor bastard is looking in a pond, and seeing himself. But he does not.
That is what you have your attention on, and you are saying to Me, “That is You, the Guru”. But you are pointing to yourself. You are experiencing yourself, you are distracted by yourself, you are involved with yourself, you are keeping attention on yourself, and you are naming that “the Guru”. Ishta-Guru-Bhakti Yoga is not about naming yourself or your insides “Guru”. No. It is about Me. Not what you are, or what is inside you, but Me2. Me Beyond you. The One to Whom you are, here in bodily (human) form, related. Not the one you are in your bodily human form, but the One to Whom you are related in your bodily (human) form.
When do you ever see anything free of all that?3
Never! Absolutely never! You are “Narcissus”, staring at yourself and wanting your desires to work out. You want somehow to get across to the beloved and into that embrace and feel really good and be free of your stress. That is what you are saying to Me all of the time. That is all you are doing all of the time. You are always only seeking illusion in the midst of something that is an illusion to begin with.
You are only looking because you are uptight. You are only interested because you are afraid. You are only seeking because you are suffering. And the reason you are afraid, seeking, suffering, and all the rest of it is your own act — your very own act! That is what you are, suffering from, not, what happened to you before or what will happen to you in the future. You are suffering from your own act! Right now! Every single one is disturbed right now! You are disturbed, you feel separate, you feel afraid, you are under stress. That is it!
However, you want to persist in your adoration of the pond, your experience, your search, and you are asking Me how to make it work out. I do not have anything to do with the “making-it-work-out” business. I am here to wake you up! Yes, fine, you say that is what you want Me to do, but you also think I am in the “making-it-work-out” business.
DEVOTEE: Sri Gurudev, I have often felt the liability my life would have been had I been in a circumstance of unlimited resources to indulge myself. That hasn’t been the case, but …
SRI DA AVABHASA: It has been the case with many people whose lives are quite well recorded. But they were not happy people. Their search was not over. Yet they had the very things you reach for–ultimate bucks and all the rest of it. Those things were given to them by their circumstance, and still they were seekers, still they were unHappy, still they were egoically “self-possessed”. Even if you achieve what you are seeking to achieve by your various means, your search would not be over.
But in the meantime, since you have not achieved it, you can imagine that the achievement would bring it all to an end and you would just be a happy man. Isn’t that the illusion of seeking in general?
You have little searches that can be attained in the next moment, and you have bigger ones that take a little while longer, and you have immense ones that could take you forever. Especially those that could take you a long time or even forever are the hangers! How often has it been said about people’s romantic and sexual gamings that the ones who stay on your mind are the ones you did not have sex with? The ones with whom it did not quite work out, the unachievable ones, seem to support your illusions most. So you keep those going, too. That is the game of the salesman. That is the game of the ego.
And this is how you prevent yourself from finding out that you are just a seeker and that the search is based on pain and that it is founded on the act of separation and cannot be fulfilled. You keep yourself from finding this out by projecting some of your searches onto such a large scale that you can never prove the point. You are something like the physicists these days who are theorizing about forces that are so immense they cannot conduct an experiment to prove their theories or disprove them.
The search is something like that. The hangers are the unachievable ones, the ones with which you cannot experiment to find out, the ones you cannot just glance at and know that your seeking is all pain and cannot be fulfilled. Of course you can do that, but you project these things so far out in front of you to support your illusion so that you do not have to get down to what I am talking about.
Then there is the sexual search, of course. You know what you can do with someone, you know what you can do with your present partner, but you do not know what you can do with everybody! You know very well that you cannot be fulfilled with your present partner or with anybody you have ever been with.
You Are Seeking All of the Time.
All your seeking has one root: the suffering that is your own contraction. The self-contraction motivates you to try to get rid of it. All of your desiring, your reactivity, your search for objects, your search for others, all of it, is about trying to get rid of your suffering. Yet it is your own action. You are suffering it and you want to be relieved of it by all those means, yet what you really must do is deal with yourself! You are the cause of your own dis-ease and distress! You are!
This is the fundamental, central awareness that must be brought to all the aspects of the discipline that is your practice, because each aspect covers one or another function, relation, practicality. You cannot do the sadhana in My Company without some basic sense of yourself as self-contraction and some basic sense of your search: to relieve yourself of the results of self-contraction. Instead of functioning all the while to become relieved of the results of self-contraction, I expect you to be aware of yourself as the cause of the very thing you are trying to be free of. You are the disease. You are the stress. All the seeking and the nice-boy, would-be this, that, and the other thing is a song and dance around such understanding.
You are exercising yourself as “Narcissus”, and you want Me to address you about this act you are making to have everything be hunky-dory. But the whole damn thing does not even exist! That is what there is to Realize! Absolute Freedom from this illusion that you call “reality” and that you are” trying’ to make work out perfectly is what there is to Realize!’
You are not dealing with reality. You are not even relating to reality. You are entirely and only related to yourself, exclusively related to yourself. All you ever talk about, think about, or perceive is you. It is a private, egoically “self-possessed” illusion, the result of your own knot of separateness, and it registers in this poor little slug of a body-mind that you identify with as all kinds of illusions, hallucinations, thoughts, presumptions, ideas, perceptions — the whole, lot, the whole ball of wax. You think it is the adorable Great Other. There is even some “God” thrown in there in your words, in your infantile manner. And it is nobody but you! It is nothing but you. It is all the result of your own separate position, your own point of ‘;view,; the self-contraction, manufacturing illusions on the base of What actually is Reality.
Yet you have no idea what that reality is. No notion. You are not associated with reality. You are dissociated from reality. That is the whole point! Well–that being the case, that is what you must deal with!
Even what you call “the world” is not the world. It is am image that your own brain4 and nervous system are manufacturing. You might say, “Well, yes, but the world is out there still. That is why the senses work. That is why the mind works the way it does. Yes, but what is that reality that is “out there” so-called? What does it look like? What does reality look like? If you did not have your particular brain, nervous system, self-contraction, deep “interior”, with all your presumptions and your thoughts, which you superimpose on what you call “reality” all of the time–if you did not have all that, what does reality look like?
Real life is not about acquiring the objects you are seeking. Real life is about dealing with yourself, transcending your own disease, the disease that is you, the act that is you.
And look, Narcissus. This whole field of experiencing and perceptions in which you play and seek is nothing but the reflection off your own disturbance.
Before you are My devotee, ego is king, or queen. When you become My devotee, ego is a servant -not meaning this in any demeaning sense, but meaning that there is a, different understanding of what should govern life. The ego-principle should not.
My true devotee does not make much of himself or herself. Practice is self surrender, self-forgetting–not merely in and of itself but in Communion with Me, by Communing with Me, by responding to Me.
Knowing this is what it means to wake up. And that awakening is where renunciation comes from, by the way. Not the seeker’s renunciation, already seeking, already self-bound, deciding to cut things off. Such is a game within the illusion. It is one of “Narcissus”‘ games. All your gestures, all-your adventures, all your proposals – they are all the same game.
Seeking
You do not understand this any better than a child does. You are supposed to be an adult already, yet you are acting like a child, with all your bullshit notions of God and pleasure and social fulfillment. You live as if you are living protected in mommy and daddy’s house. You have not seen how things are yet. You have not seen how the world is, for that matter. You are still pushing on the self-fulfillment button. You are here just to have bodily existence turn out to be utopia, with God somehow out there in your infantile mind, understanding you, protecting you, making everything turn out okay, all you need to do is just utter a prayer and wait for the goods to come down. Such is the infantile ego. It is not how life is.
You would not have a single thing to do with God except that you are afraid and you have every right to be afraid. You’re in a position which is completely justified to be afraid and there is absolutely no reason why you shouldn’t be so! You think God is responsible for your situation. You are. Your situation has nothing to do with God. Anything that you might think about. God at all is for the sake of Your own self-fulfillment. Just as the only reason you think about anything whatsoever, the only reason you do anything whatsoever, the only reason – you relate to anyone, is for the sake of your own self-fulfillment. As soon as anyone that you like in one moment does not make the kinds of gestures that would satisfy your interest in self-fulfillment, all of a sudden you do not like the person so much. As soon as your expectations are frustrated, all of a sudden the person is no good. Then it is time to react.
Your life is a dramatization of seeking5. This is what you must understand. And you must understand how it is dramatized in your case. You must find, yourself out. To do so takes a very serious, strong approach to yourself and an intensive application to this Way of life.
People characteristically deny the search, the self-contraction, the dramatization of egoity. Instead they want to present themselves idealistically. This is how you bypass even the fundamental truth of the practice and make the beginning of the Way of the Heart, into an idealistic observance–in other words, things to do more or less outwardly, without the profound ordeal of the real process of confronting the seeking, separative ego that is the dramatization of your life.
You, personally, want to avoid dissatisfaction. You want to be basically pleased and do not want to have difficulty. Perhaps one of the greatest characteristics of a most serious devotee, is the characteristic of dissatisfaction, the awareness that you are not, and will not be, satisfied by anything, by anyone, by any arrangement, any experience. The closer you are to, having dissatisfaction be profoundly true of you, the closer you are to being a most serious devotee of Mine. You seem to be pursuing just the opposite. You do not like being dissatisfied, you would rather, be consoled, pleasurized, distracted in that sense.
The virtue of relating to Me in the manner of Ishta-Guru-Bhakti (now called Ruchira Avatara Bhakti Yoga (see below) is that it is an attraction beyond your egoic “self-possession”. That attraction is the whole point of it. That attraction is what makes it work, and then you find Me out further. But you want Me to be a participant in your illusory, “Narcissistic” world, some sort of a parent figure, Santa Claus, some male other in the dream with you, somehow consoling you, entertaining you, providing you with a relation of some kind and helping you to work out your search.
That is all horseshit! I have great Compassion for you, nevertheless, because you are suffering from the illusion that things can work out. Therefore, I have been persisting in My Play with you for all of these years. But My Work with you is for the sake of waking you up, and it requires that you get the point. The heart is not contained in this illusion at the pond. Even so, it must be Awakened to its own Position. There can be profundity in this relationship to Me, but all the rest is bullshit. Total. I am only here in relationship to you for the sake of that profundity.
I Call you to submit to Me and observe yourself spontaneously — as you will if you submit to Me — relative to all the aspects of your patterning, your games, your ways of relating to everyone. Therefore, I do not tell you to just observe yourself. I Call you to submit to Me, embrace devotion to Me, practice self-surrendering and self-forgetting devotion to Me. If you will do that, effective self-observation will arise spontaneously.
I do not say, “Just observe yourself.” Mere observation of oneself in life is self watching. It is not productive. You just build up all kinds of details, analysis, descriptions of “Narcissus”. Self-observation in the Way of the Heart is not an exercise that is independently done by anyone. It is something that arises spontaneously in your practice of self-surrendering and self-forgetting devotion to Me. In the circumstance of doing just that hour by hour, moment by moment, every day, observation of the self-contraction, or separate self in its patterning, will occur spontaneously. I do not Call you merely to observe yourself. I Tell you that merely to watch, yourself, to be all kinds of busy noticing yourself, is not right practice, and not useful. It is Narcissus at the pond! It is Narcissus, looking at the reflection and even thinking that maybe it is somebody else, and becoming more and more interested in the one that seems to be looking back.
Whether you think the one you are looking at is somebody else or not, you become more and more interested. The more you watch yourself, the more and more interested in yourself you become. That is not self-observation. That is self-watching. Self-observation is an insight that is self-correcting. It is ultimately self-transcending, and it occurs in every moment of self-surrendering and self-forgetting devotion to Me.
(Further distinction between self-observation and self-watching see here)
Make Me your preoccupation, therefore, and do the exercise I have Given you. Then all the self-observation that is necessary will occur in the circumstance of the Yoga of Ishta-Guru-Bhakti, and it will be useful to you, it will be self-transcending. Merely to be looking at yourself and saying blah-blah this and that about yourself and reporting to everybody and writing in your diary is totally useless business — that is “Narcissus”. That is it!. “Narcissus” is you looking at yourself in the pond. “Narcissus” is just a metaphor for the mind. The mind is always self-watching, always reflecting yourself to yourself, always being preoccupied with yourself. You can build up volumes of self-description by resorting to the mind, and yet they will change absolutely nothing.
The one who is “Narcissus” is relieved from his or her bondage only by the practice of the self-transcending exercise of devotion to Me. In the circumstance of devotion to Me, everything that needs to be observed and taken into account in a truly, effectively self-transcending manner will occur spontaneously.
Some insight into the nature of seeking, as well as some comprehension of the nature of radical self-understanding, is necessary for the awakening of true Hearing of Me.
Aletheon
You cannot deal with the details of the self-contraction without a basic sense of the root-cause.
You are engaged in it because you are disturbed. You engage in it as one who is disturbed. You are looking at yourself the whole time. You never really get in touch with anybody else. As “Narcissus” you tell Me that you cannot get in touch with anything. You are separate from everything. Right! But you want Me to tell you how to make yourself feel good, how to make all that seeking for love and all the rest of it turn out to be utopia. You do not often want to hear anything about yourself or deal with yourself.
You must deal with all of the layers of your life to straighten it out to the point of true hearing. But by listening to My basic Argument, you see, you are already in the right place for such sadhana.
Ishta-Guru-Bhakti Yoga is not merely an ideal Way of life to make the body mind feel good. If you truly practice it, you will notice that the body-mind does not feel completely good. Part of the purpose of the Yoga is to grant you this perception, in order to serve your noticing of this fundamental dissatisfaction, so that you understand yourself and begin to participate in the truly ego-transcending life in My Company.
DEVOTEE: There are moments when I see the self-contraction as unnecessary.
SRI DA AVABHASA: Yes. The peripheral actions, the generalized actions of the body-mind can be noticed in that sense. You notice you are doing something or other, and that it is making you feel bad, or creating the incident of confusion or difficulty. Simply noticing the self-contraction, however, is not standing at the root that is universally showing itself throughout the body-mind. It is the peripheral noticing of a symptom, as I Said to you earlier.
Well, then! Realizing that all of that is fruitless is hearing! That is what hearing is to realize that all of it — when you are at your best, when you are at your worst, whatever angle you have on it, however you may be thinking about it–is simply the self-contraction, the actual present-time dramatization of the avoidance of relationship. It is all that. There is not some sort of thought about it you can have or examination of it you can enter into that is different from doing the self-contraction. It is alll the doing of the self-contraction.
This is what must be understood. And it is understood not in the context trying to figure it out or meditating on the self-contraction. It is understood in the responsive Yoga of Ishta-Guru-Bhakti, or the practice of surrendering and forgetting separate self in Communion with Me. That is the Yoga. In doing that Yoga, things are observed and you take them into account and apply greater discipline to your practice of Ishta-Guru-Bhakti. That process goes on and on, however long it must go on for you, until there is this most fundamental understanding that you are only doing the self-contraction.
DEVOTEE: One thing I should say is that I do not always have the understanding that self-contraction is my own activity.
SRI DA AVABHASA: But so far you are releasing it as a symptom. You feel it as a kind of dis-ease or disturbance, and in at least some moments of your practice of Ishta-Guru-Bhakti Yoga it is released and then you again notice that it is relaxed, or not disturbing you in any. profound way, anyway. Therefore,- in moments- you are enjoying being released from its symptoms. But, as you just said, you do not notice consistently or most profoundly that it is your own activity.
DEVOTEE: I feel there is a certain freedom from it that I never really experienced before, except in rare moments, and it feels more unnecessary.
SRI DA AVABHASA: It is as if you have discovered that if you do some leg exercises -while-you, are pinching yourself on the side of your leg, the pinch does not quite feel so bad! That is good “beginner’s practice, fine–but you are still pinching yourself.
DEVOTEE: Sometimes it feels like I am not doing it.
SRI DA AVABHASA: At those times it is just not happening anymore. But if you did not know you were doing it to begin with, then it is not the “you” who is doing it, but the effect of it, the symptom, that is being transcended.
DEVOTEE: Sometimes I am aware that I am doing that activity. I notice that I am contracted.
SRI DA AVABHASA: Yes, but you have not noticed it altogether, noticed that it is your own activity and that you are doing it always and that you are doing it in the form of the entire body-mind and that therefore, you are doing it in the form of every faculty, every thought, every emotion, every action, the entire body-mind. Every form of concentration, every form of attention, in itself, is the self-contraction, or the act of the avoidance of relationship, even in every moment of the practice of Ishta-Guru Bhakti.
The beginnings of the Way of the Heart are most profound.
SRI DA AVABHASA: What is the listening process about, anyway?
It is about examining yourself as a seeker, examining your, search in all of its details, until your examination became summary, all-inclusive, most fundamental, self transcending, thereby awakening in you the unique capability to transcend the self-contraction moment by moment, now and in all the stages of life, to follow.
The usual man or woman is in motion toward objects, unaware of the motivating contraction. Therefore, the usual man or woman is full of desires, motivations, impulses, attractions, attachments, strategies, and so on. This is what there is to observe. Listening is about observing this about yourself in the process of the unique Yoga of Ishta-Guru-Bhakti, until you discover the motivating source, the-self contraction itself, which is common to every motive, every desire, every attachment, every search.
Listening, to the point of true hearing is the first great ordeal in the Way of the Heart. You must not trivialize it by imagining it is something like an academic matter of just grasping some instruction or having some simple insight, without great profundity of change.
Likewise, you must not trivialize the Way of the Heart itself. If you are a beginner, you must not be indulging in seeking relative to the advanced and the ultimate stages of life, bypassing the listening ordeal, looking just for some sort of Spiritual consolation, Spiritual experiences, Yogic experiences, and secretly imagining advancement, Spiritual advancement, sixth stage advancement, whatever. You must seriously embrace the Yoga of the beginning. It is not glamorized by Spirituality, and so forth. It deals with very ordinary matters. The longer you take to complete that ordeal, the longer you will live as a rather ordinary person.
In this process of listening, many moments of clarity, comprehension, insight, capability for discipline, feeling beyond limits, and there is growth in all this. It is not that there is no understanding until there is most fundamental self-understanding. There is growth in understanding until understanding becomes most fundamental. And understanding is most fundamental when there is this unique clarity that stands you in place rather than keeps you moving, that stands you where you are, no longer seeking merely, but you are clearly aware of the motive behind all your search and you, have the means, the capability, in that place to transcend the knot of self-contraction and to just be about self-transcendence.
This activity in all its forms is what there is to be observed, until the root-motivation or motivator of it all is discovered, thoroughly, to such a degree that you enjoy the unique capability to feel beyond the self-contraction in every moment rather than to pursue its objects merely, rather than to seek.
The listening process has not become summary, or most fundamental, self understanding until you have understood your fundamental act, or the characteristic dramatization of the self-contraction that is operative in your case. If you are to understand most fundamentally, your act must change.
The purpose of observing yourself is to refine the details of your sadhana – not to delay your sadhana, or avoid it, but to refine it, in the real process of doing it.
When you realize that you truly are confined and that there is this one quality of knowledge, experience and existence from moment to moment, then are you are beginning to understand.
The actual practice of The Way is founded in a radical insight into self and the avoidance of relationship, The Conviction of Narcissus. This ‘radical insight or intuition’ reveals the factuality of reactive self-confinement and fruitlessness of the search for salvation, release, or perfect fulfillment.
Listening – Outline, Chapter 19, from The Dawn Horse Testament – 2004
SUTRA 25, p. 449-50
Outline
The … Way Of The Heart Begins With The Preparatory Sadhana Of Listening To Me. Therefore, The Beginning Of The Way Of The Heart Is A Process in Which You Simply:
Devote Your Full Feeling-attention to:
1. My Avatarically-Born Bodily Divine Form, and
2. My Avatarically Self-Transmitted Spiritual Divine Presence, and
3. My Avatarically Self-Revealed State, and
4. To My Avatarically Self-Manifested Divine Leelas, and
5. To My Avatarically Full-Given Divine Word.
And This Original Process Develops Progressively, From Its Rudimentary Beginnings, and Through The Unfolding Developmental Stages Of Practice In The Way Of The Heart-Until There Is The Most Perfect Demonstration Of The Divine “Brightness”.
The Process Of Listening To Me Involves:
1. General Study Of My Avatarically Self-Revealed Divine Word and
2. Rudimentary “Consideration” Of The Way Of The Heart In Its Totality.
Thus, The Process Of Listening To Me Involves:
1. The Profound “Consideration” Of My Teaching-Argument Relative To “Narcissus”, and Of
2. My Teaching-Argument Relative To “Radical” Understanding. And
3. The Necessary Practicing Context Of These “Considerations” Is The Basic Beginner’s Practice Of Either:
a. Random self-Enquiry Or
b. Random Ruchira Avatara Naama Japa.
This Beginner’s Process Of Listening To Me Also Involves The Real “Consideration” Of
1. My Teaching-Argument Relative
2. To Divine Ignorance, or The Tacit Sense Of The Transcendental, Inherently Spiritual, Inherently egoless, and Self-Evidently Divine SelfCondition Of Reality, Through
3. The Present Tacit Observation That the conditional psychophysical self Does Not know What any conditional thing, being, process, or event Is.
See a full description of ‘Listening’ and various readings, click HERE
The foundation of the Way of the Heart, at the relative beginning of it, is to come to most fundamental self-understanding in the foundation of life, in the first three stages of life and the beginning of the fourth stage of life. But this observation of seeking must be thorough if true hearing is to, be the case.
The capability that is hearing addresses all aspects of conditional arising that appear within the field of awareness. Therefore, at the beginning there must be the capability that deals with all the results and motivations, and so forth, associated with the first three stages of life and the beginnings of the fourth stage of life.
One who enjoys this capability is not merely in motion, then, but stands firm. This is the difference between the usual ego-bound individual and one who has become responsible through true hearing. The usual ego-bound individual is in motion, seeking. One who understands stands firm, observing and understanding the contraction itself, in every moment, not just sometimes but moment to moment.
True hearing is most fundamental and most summary self-understanding associated with fundamental life-change. Without fundamental life-change, hearing is just not so. It is also not so, if there is no real understanding of your fundamental egoic game.
Therefore, you must understand yourself most fundamentally, meaning thoroughly, in detail, and also relative to the primary action that is your dramatization of self-contraction.
I am not here merely telling you how to evolve, how to develop in this context of ordinary human life, or in some life much more psychically opened and awakened. I am here to Grant you the Way of the Heart, to link, you to the Divine Condition, so that your practice can be fruitful to the degree of that Divine Realization, Most Ultimately, Most Perfectly.
I have noticed… that you do not want to take seriously the listening-hearing process. You want to become involved in what you might think is Spiritual practice and Spiritual phenomena, and you want to bypass the fundamental asana of the Way of the Heart, which is true hearing.
Without, that foundation, all the stages that follow the beginning are simply developmental stages of the ego. You can practice the Advanced disciplines of the fourth stage, the fifth stage, or the sixth stage of life in the Way of the Heart, but without the foundation of true hearing all you are doing is developing; experience and developing the potential of each of those stages of life.
In the listening stage, the listening process is something most fundamental yet to be grasped. So, you practice, yes, at the very beginning, in the context of the fourth stage of life in My Company. You deal with various elements of the first three stages of life as well, and, yes, there is surrender of separate self, forgetting of separate self, in Communion with Me. But you do not have the foundation to go further even in the fourth stage of life until there is the genuine awakening of true hearing.
If the ordeal is to be complete, then, relative to this matter of true hearing, there must be great seriousness, great thoroughness.
The more serious you are, the more willing you will be to discipline yourself appropriately, practice most intensively, and deal with all limits observed. If you are less than so serious, then you will tend to console yourself with the religious culture of the beginning and the ordinary life, with which it is associated. That may be worth doing, but it is not about profound growth in the Way of the Heart itself. It is better, than the usual life, but it is not about Realization in any profound sense. It is purifying to a degree. It certainly can be happy enough in basic human terms, also. It is a kind of exotericism within the Way of the Heart.
True hearing is at the beginning of the Way of the Heart, relatively speaking. It is not Divine Enlightenment. It is a tool, a means, a capability, because there is more of the ego to observe and transcend than one has thoroughly encountered at the point of true hearing.
The uniqueness of true hearing is that it is most simple and most direct, not at all complicated. Yet at the same time it is effective in relation to everything. In fact, you cannot master the details of life without such simplicity, without grasping something most fundamental at its core. Otherwise, you are fussing all over the place as if you are plugging holes in the dike. You deal with this moment, and then the next moment, and you forget the first moment, and hearing is obviously not true. The fundamental aspect of this unique capability that I call “true hearing” is that you rest in a simplicity, you are single and simple, and your practice is not complicated.
Whatever is left over in your demonstration, whatever is not quite right, whatever is not fundamentally changed, whatever does not indicate a summary change altogether in your disposition, your orientation, your life-sign, is an indicator that true hearing is not the case. You may have grown in the listening process certainly, applied yourself to more discipline, intensified your devotion to Me, realized a more fundamental grasp of the practice itself, fine. All such signs are, signs of growth in the beginning. But the life-sign of true hearing is summary, all-inclusive, the sign of a most fundamental change of life as well as a most fundamental understanding of one’s life.
DEVOTEE: If I were hearing in those moments when I am surrendering to You and I notice the contraction again or notice a limit on my surrender to You, there would not be the motive to do something about it.
SRI DA AVABHASA: The self-contraction is not objective to you in that case. It is you. It is not a symptom you are noticing objectively, either inside or outside but as an object over against your attention. It is you. You are feeling this disturbance, this disease, this discomfort, and you would not have it be so, but you are struggling with it as a symptom, trying to get rid of it.
What must be discovered through persistence in this Yoga of devotion and all its associated disciplines is that the dis-ease, the discomfort, this infection, is your own action. You are doing it now, and now, and now. When there is this comprehension, then Ishta-Guru-Bhakti Yoga has the basis of true hearing. There is the noticing in every moment that this dis-ease is the act of contraction, the avoidance of relationship. Just noticing that this is why you are experiencing the dis-ease, the symptom, just noticing that it is so, volunteers this devotion, this self-surrender, this self-forgetting, this Communion with Me–fully, prior to the act of contraction. It takes place from that deeper seat, whereas at the present time, still beginning, not yet hearing, you make the gesture, but the self-contraction is behind the gesture, in the background, and experienced by you as symptoms–the symptom of dis-ease, the feeling that -your surrender is not complete, that there is a limit on surrender. All this is because you are not in the Position that is Prior to the self-contraction. You are in the position of experiencing its symptoms.
True hearing is about transcending the motive of seeking, instead of dramatizing the motive of seeking, based on reactivity, desire, and the search for objects and others. True hearing is about dealing with the source of that dramatization, directly, moment by moment. And true hearing must be accompanied by life-change, because if you are dealing with the source of your search directly, moment by moment, then the search must be undone, and your characteristics as a seeker, then, must be proven to be a matter of your responsibility, or hearing is not so.
You must inspect all of your uninspected content. Be washed of all of it. It is rather dramatic, actually, to be so washed. It is not merely an external bath but an internal one. All your images; all your presumptions, all your attitudes, all your games –all must be washed away, shitted out, gone. That is what it takes. If you want to move on to the advanced and the ultimate stages of the Way of the Heart, you must endure this bath and not evade it with all your petty, conventional religiosity.
What must be discovered through persistence in this Yoga of devotion and all its associated disciplines is that the dis-ease, the discomfort, this infection, is your own action. You are doing it now, and now, and now. When there is this comprehension, then Ishta-Guru-Bhakti Yoga has the basis of true hearing. There is the noticing in every moment that this dis-ease is the act of contraction, the avoidance of relationship. Just noticing that this is why you are experiencing the dis-ease, the symptom, just noticing that it is so, volunteers this devotion, this self-surrender, this self-forgetting, this Communion with Me–fully, prior to the act of contraction. It takes place from that deeper seat, whereas at the present time, still beginning, not yet hearing, you make the gesture, but the self-contraction is behind the gesture, in the background, and experienced by you as symptoms–the symptom of dis-ease, the feeling that -your surrender is not complete, that there is a limit on surrender. All this is because you are not in the Position that is Prior to the self-contraction. You are in the position of experiencing its symptoms.
When you realize that anything other than That is the self-contraction, that is most fundamental self-understanding, or true hearing. And then, instead of addressing, examining, and following the self-contraction, you do surrender. You forget the self contraction. You forget to do it. At any time when the self-contraction tends to be happening, with just a glance it is obvious. Instead of this [Sri Gurudev clenches His hand in a fist], it is this [He opens His hand]. As long as you think there is some angle you can get on self-contraction, some examination and trying to figure yourself out that you can do, as long as you think there is another attempt you can make to, otherwise deal with the self-contraction, you have not heard Me yet.
You must notice this from the seat, from the position, of the activity of the avoidance of relationship. You are surrendering to Me, and yet you feel your surrender is not complete. You are avoiding Me. You are contracting from Me. You are. Your contraction is not some, mysterious something in the background. Notice that it is your own activity. You are voluntarily, doing it. Therefore, you can, simply by the noticing of it, voluntarily relinquish it. You are in that position, if true hearing is the case.
Hearing, or most fundamental self-understanding, is not itself merely a matter of knowing that the self-contraction is so, or remembering this description of it and describing yourself in these terms. Understanding is a process. If you are to realize the capability that is true hearing, there must have been this awakening to the root of all seeking, of all the kinds of seeking.
As some have suggested here who made this confession tonight, hearing is not a matter of constantly dealing with this, that, or the other detail in your life. There is just a fundamental, simple understanding of what the whole life of Ishta-Guru-Bhakti Yoga is about. And, therefore, rather with ease, there is a demonstration of responsibility for all aspects of life. There is still an ordeal of sadhana for the individual, necessarily so — hearing is only the beginning — but there is the evidence that the person is not mentalized, complicated, and all over the place. Instead, there is some simple, direct heart-grasping, not merely intellectual comprehension, that is demonstrating itself in summary fashion in all aspects of the individual’s life.
This does not mean that those who have heard are perfect beings, absolute Saints manifesting ideal character. It is not so. After,all what we are talking about is only hearing,- and it ,is, not very advanced. Nonetheless, there must be a fundamental lifechange. A transformative understanding must be demonstrated.
When the self-contraction is that obvious to you, that is true hearing. And there is no true hearing apart from true Ishta-Guru-Bhakti. Hearing is not something you figure out and then you become a practitioner of Ishta-Guru-Bhakti. This most fundamental self-understanding awakens only in the context of Ishta-Guru-Bhakti. Therefore, you must grow in that Yoga, authenticate that Yoga, long before true hearing. If hearing is true, Ishta-Guru-Bhakti is true, and it cannot be otherwise.
You Must Understand That What You Do is the “Proving” of True Hearing
The way to tell the stage of people’s practice is to examine what they do. If the fundamental life-change, the result of many life-changes that have become summary overtime, is not in evidence, then the confession of true hearing cannot be taken seriously. Of course, words must be said, but a life-change through the ordeal of discipline must clearly be demonstrated.
Therefore, diversions are not entered into. There is no puzzling. Any retreat back into separate self is the same business, the dramatization of self-contraction. It is the limit of egoity. It is suffering and dilemma. And all of that also is obvious to such a one. There is no puzzle about it. All the forms of ego are tacitly obvious to be the same thing.
So it is for one who has heard Me. There are no other angles to try out or to figure out. It is inherently obvious: There is this [He makes a’ fist], and there is that opens His hand]. And that is that.
The entire body-mind is like the clenched fist–thoroughly contracted. This is what you are doing. When you discover the root that is the act you are performing in every moment, that is true hearing. And its significance is not merely that you noticed the self-contraction, but you now have the capability of noticing. You can always notice it now, you can always not do it now, you can always enter into fullest, relationship, given over to Me, because in every moment you can notice, in the midst of that fundamental discomfort, that you are doing the self-contraction, and you are able to not do it. It is as simple as taking your hand away from pinching your leg, or relaxing your hand and letting it open.
If you hold your hand tight in a fist [Sri Gurudev clenches His fist], really tight, it does not feel good. It hurts, and not just after a while but right now. If you really clench your fist real tight–you can all try it if you like–it immediately is painful, immediately. The longer you do it, the more painful and uncomfortable it becomes, and then perhaps there is a numbness but the rest of the arm feels the pain. Eventually, the whole body will be infected with the pain or the results of that act. I use the clenched fist as a metaphor, because I am not just Talking about something you are doing with a part of yourself. The entire body-mind is contracted, and, therefore, you do not feel good. You are afraid, you are separate, vulnerable, detached, but also many other things happen in the body-mind. The mind starts racing, reactive emotions start flowing, the bodily energies get out of balance, it is impossible to establish a continuous state of equanimity.
DEVOTEE: (seventeen years old): Sri Gurudev, must someone be of a certain age to have heard You?
SRI DA AVABHASA: No, there is no specific age. But the person must be “older” rather than “younger”.’ If hearing is to be true, it must encompass all aspects of the first three stages of life and the foundation of the fourth stage of life. In general, although there could be extraordinary exceptions, if hearing is to be the case, the person must have reached the age of adult maturity a significantly long time ago.
Hearing must be summary relative to the foundation human experience. A child or a teenager has some experience, and something to communicate and to serve in others through telling My Leelas, and there can be great growth in a young person’s practice, but there is still more to experience.
Hearing must be summary relative to the foundation of life. Therefore, hearing must encompass all that is associated with the first three stages of life and the beginning of the fourth stage of life. As a general rule of thumb, I think that twenty-five years of age is about the age when someone’s confession of hearing might be taken seriously.
One of the First Things My Devotee Must Do
Every apparent individual is patterned uniquely, although there are obviously many common characteristics. The process is therefore very individual. Each one must go through the ordeal of thoroughly encountering and becoming responsible for all aspects of his or her own patterning. Among the first things My devotee must do is grasp this Instruction.
You must go on to address numerous features of potential experience, and developmental life in your future sadhana once hearing is true. Hearing occurs at the relative beginning, in the context of functions, processes, and relations that are generally associated with the first three stages of life but also founded in the “original” context of the fourth stage of life. Having become grounded in true hearing, you go onto develop your practice intentionally, and by Grace, in the context of a larger sphere of experiencing.
There are two primary elements to practice in My Company: Ishta-Guru-Bhakti, with all of the practices associated with it, and the process of self-understanding and self-transcendence. These are the two elements. They both must be very strong if there are to be any significant transitions in the Way of the Heart.
The “Perfect Practice”, is the practice to which I am Calling you. I am not calling you to a developmental strategy, the purpose of which is to establish and magnify evolutionary signs, or conditional signs, of a developmental kind. I am Calling you to self-understanding and self-transcendence in the context of all of the developmental stages of life. Therefore, I am Calling you to Awaken to the capability that is the “Perfect Practice”. Happiness Itself, not conditional existence, is the Realization of Inherent Being.
The End of the Teaching Revelation
“My work as heart-teacher and my struggle to generate the teaching argument in every detail is complete. Hereafter, those who are interested will simply “consider” my always heart-revealing word and leelas, and they will practice true devotion to me. Now my work is only that of the true heart-master, standing free, always blessing all to listen to me and to hear me and to see me where I stand. And only those who have heard me can also see me with, and at, and as the heart.”
The Dawn Horse Testament – Chapter 4
Footnotes:
1. “The foundation of my Teaching Argument is this: You are, as a matter of habit, and in every part, conformed to the activity and the results of self-contraction”.
THE DREADED GOM-BOO, CHAPTER 4, The Cult of Narcissus and the Culture of Participation.
My Avatarically Self-Revealed Divine Word Of Hart-Instruction Is Founded On Two Basic (and Complementary) Teaching-Arguments. The First Is My Teaching-Argument Relative To “Radical Understanding (or Most Direct and, Most Ultimately, Inherently, and Inherently Most Perfect – Transcending Of the self-Contraction).
The Second Is My Teaching-Argument Relative To Divine Ignorance (Most Perfect, Divine Self-Realization).
The Dawn Horse Testament
(The Perfect Ignorance in the Aletheon refers to is Reality, Truth, The Divine (all words depending on your particular ‘orientation’ that mean the same ‘thing’) which is Always, Already, Here and Indivisible and Prior to all that arises in consciousness. This ignorance is the foundation. There are no ‘knowers’ in God, Truth or Reality.)
The Aletheon
2. Aletheon – Divine Disclosure
Abandon The Reactive Reflex Of self-ContractionThe Separative (or egoic) Principle In all Your concerns. Do Not Cling To any experience that May Be Sought (and Even Attained) As A Result Of desire (or The Presumption Of Difference). Abandon Your Search For what May Be Gotten As A Result Of the various kinds of strategic (or egoic) action.
I Am Transcendental Spiritual (and Self-Evidently Divine) Love-Bliss ItselfNow (and Forever Hereafter) Brightly Present here As Perfectly egoless, Perfectly Indivisible, and Perfectly Acausal Conscious Light. Therefore, I Say To You: Abandon All SeekingBy Always Searchlessly Beholding and Perfectly (and Intrinsically egolessly) Knowing Me.
Instead Of Seeking Me (As If My Divine Person Of Transcendental Spiritual Love-Bliss Were Absent From You), Always Commune With Me (Ever-Present, Never Absent, and Always Love-Bliss-Full). Thus, Your Always Directly and Tacitly Me-Locating Relinquishment Of All Seeking Is Not,
Itself, To Be Merely Another Form Of Seeking.
If You Always Locate Me and Know Me (and, Thus, Immediately Behold Me), You Will Not (In any moment) self-Contract Into the mood and strategy of inaction.
3. “Mind is an interior projection of a language-program that, in its imaginative elaboration of itself, conceives of purposes and ideas (in the realm of illusion) for which there are no corresponding physical data. Human beings are all living in a “virtual world” of mind. Human beings are, characteristically, egoically “self”-identified with a “robot”, an artificial intelligence”.
Aletheon – What is Consciousness
4. See, #3 above.
5. “The third stage of life becomes a fruitless drama of conflict between two alternating and contrary impulses, the one toward infantile and childish dependence, and the other toward willful and rebellious independence. The life-process is disturbed by this un-happy and irresponsible drama, and the mental faculties and the integrating function of the will are thus impaired or retarded in their ability to develop the true adult character, which character is characterized by basic human equanimity, discriminative intelligence, responsive heart-feeling, and the active impulse to always continue to grow.”
6.
“HEAR ME HEART-DEEP” A Guide to the Listening-Hearing Process in the Way of the Heart as Revealed by the Divine World-Teacher and True Heart-Master, Da Avabhasa (The “Bright”). Only edition: 1994.
Chapter 19
The Divine Intervention
In February 1993, the next phase of Avatar Adi Da’s Self-Revelation unfolded. At this time, He was meeting frequently with devotees. In gathering after gathering, He found new ways to communicate to them the import of His Avataric Incarnation. On February 12, He spoke plainly of Himself as the Intervention of Very God into the human dimension, here to do His own unique, unprecedented Work.
The Great Process comes about when the Divine Intervenes, Appears, Incarnates, Blesses, Teaches the understanding and the transcending of ego, such that the direct Divine Blessing may be received and the Great Divine Yoga may be entered into. This is What I Do.
I am not merely advanced. I am not merely evolved. I Am the Very One. I Am the One you must Realize.
The seventh stage Awakening will be Accomplished by My Avatarically Self-Transmitted Divine Grace. It cannot be Accomplished otherwise. There is no “method” for Accomplishing It. It is entirely Given by Me. It cannot be Realized without My Avatarically Self-Transmitted Divine Blessing.
I am Telling you the Great Secret. It is not Revealed in any traditional books. It is unknown, apart from My Avatarically Given Divine Revelation of It. [Ruchira Avatara Hridaya-Siddha Yoga]
While Avatar Adi Da Samraj was speaking these Words, the Spiritual Transmission in the room was profound. As on countless previous occasions, He was doing what He was describing. In contrast to the night of “Guru Enters Devotee” in 1974, He was now speaking of the “Crashing Down” of His Divine Grace not only into the individual body-minds of His devotees but upon all beings and things.
When a person feels the Transmission of Avatar Adi Da Samraj, he or she knows it is unique and knows it is Divine. There is nothing “personal” or “local” about it. He or she realizes that it is a universal Spiritual and All-Pervading “Fact”. It is Him, in His Spiritual Form. This experience of His Spiritual Presence is how a person comes to know with intuitive certainty that Avatar Adi Da Samraj cannot be compared to anyone. He is not an ordinary man or even an extraordinary man. He is the Very Divine Intensity, Love-Blissful Pressure, Pervading and Surrounding and Touching all, Who happens to have taken a human Form as an Agent of necessary Communication with all beings. But His human Form is just a “satellite” of the One He Is.
Avatar Adi Da’s Great Self-Revelations continued into March. On March 6, 1993, He spoke of His unique Siddhis, or Powers, as the Divine Person. Now that He has brought these Siddhis into the human plane, He explained, it is possible, for the first time, for human beings to Realize the seventh and ultimate stage of life.
The following is from The Adidam Youth Fellowship Study Series – The Wisdom and Practices of Adidam – A course of Study for Maturing Third Stage Early-Life Devotees of Adi Da Samraj
1996 – Chapter 20
AN INTRODUCTION TO THE SACRED HISTORY OF ADI DA SAMRAJ’S DIVINE WORK
This section, based on the introduction that appears in each of Adi Da Samraj’s Source -Texts, serves to introduce the basic features of the Sacred History of Beloved Adi Da’s Work.
Confrontation with “Narcissus”
In 1991, Adi Da Samraj was offered a new Name, “Avabhasa” (Sanskrit for “the ‘Bright”‘), in a song sung by a young devotee. He accepted “Da Avabhasa” as one of His principal Names, a Name that epitomizes His Divine Nature-“the Giver of the ‘Bright”‘. He had made known for the first time what Enlightenment truly is and how it may be Realized in living relationship to Him. He had confronted the madness of “Narcissus” for years on end with all His “Crazy” brilliance and Force. He had created a new Scripture and a new religion. And yet, He was still waiting for the signs that His devotees had understood their constant act of self-contraction and were truly resorting to Him as Guru. It seemed that there was nothing more He could do.
But Adi Da Samraj never ceases to Work. He cannot abandon His devotees, leaving them to suffer their egoic destiny. In May 1992, He started to gather again with devotees in His Hermitage, and He continued to gather almost constantly, usually several nights a week, for nearly a year. These gatherings were a Call to great seriousness. “Handle business!” was His constant admonition. He was insisting that every devotee find out his or her own bottom-line realities and deal with everything immediate and long-term, emotional and practical, that stood in the way of his or her ability to grow in the great process of Divine Self-Realization.
Starting late in March of 1993 and continuing through the first week of April, Adi Da bore down on “Narcissus” with overwhelming force: .
ADI DA SAMRAJ: You want Me to talk about your trying to work your life out. Life does not work out! IT CANNOT WORK OUT! That is not the Way of the Heart! The Way of the Heart is about ego-transcendence, transcendence of the very thing that seeks to make it all work out! You are wanting Me to address you in this act that you are making to have everything be hunky-dory. AND THE WHOLE DAMN THING DOESN’T EVEN EXIST! AND THAT’S WHAT THERE IS TO REALIZE!! ABSOLUTE FREEDOM FROM THIS ILLUSION – that you call “reality” and are trying to make work out perfectly. You are only looking at yourself! That’s all you are ever looking at! And you want it to work out, “Narcissus”. You are looking at all this and you are calling it the world-but it is you!
All you ever talk about, think about, or perceive is you. It is a private, “self-possessed” illusion. It is a result of your own knot of separateness, and it registers in this poor little slug of a body-mind you identify with as all kinds of illusions, hallucinations, thoughts, presumptions, ideas, perceptions. The whole lot, the whole ball of wax is all the result of your own separate position, your own point of view, self-contraction, manufacturing illusions on the base of That Which is Reality. But you have no idea what that Reality is. No notion. You are not associated with Reality, you are dissociated from Reality. That is the whole point! Well, that being the case, that is what you have to deal with! But you want to persist in your adoration of the “pond “, your experience, your search, and so forth, and you are asking Me how to make it work out. I do not have anything to do with the “making-it-work-out” business. I am here to wake you up!
[April 2, 1993]
By this time Adi Da Samraj was cutting a swath through every attempt on the part of His devotees to defend themselves from His Criticism. He was tremendously intensifying His devotees’ sensitivity to the knot of self-contraction, to the point where that cramp would become so present, so obvious, so unbearable, so unnecessary, so absurd that they would spontaneously let it go. Late in the night during what turned out to be the last gathering of this period, Adi Da brought devotees to that intolerable point. There was a pause while His Radiant Force magnified in the room, melting the clench of “Narcissus”. Then He began to speak differently, quietly:
ADI DA SAMRAJ]: Feel into that knot of stress. Feel into it and account for it. See it as your own action. Regard Me in that moment, in every moment. And then you begin to feel Me. Then the surrender comes, the self forgetting comes, the native sense of Non-Separateness is felt. This is actually what I am Calling you to do! Actually to do that. Just to be doing it grants equanimity to you, even bodily, grants equanimity to your speech, your actions, your feelings, because you are registering this depth-point and going beyond it and feeling Me. This is the context of practice of the Way of the Heart, not merely outer observances. This is what it means to listen to Me: to be examining this point of contraction in depth, to feel it, and by its unfolding to feel Me. This is not the end of the Way of the Heart. It is the foundation of it. Self-understanding and devotion at depth-this is what you must do in every moment. This is what it is to practice the Way of the Heart. [April 8, 1993]
By this final gathering, a dent had been made in the armor of “Narcissus” that for many devotees was a lasting one. They could not snap back as easily as before into a state of immunity to their own act of self-contraction. The heartless machine of the ego was too starkly revealed. There was no lasting relief to be found through any kind of seeking for satisfaction. In His masterful Revelation, throughout that previous year, of their desperate state of bondage to the self-contraction, Adi Da had begun to magnify in devotees the need for devotion to Him, the conviction that He was, truly, their only Help. Everything He had said about the necessity for Ishta-Guru-Bhakti Yoga was starting to prove itself. And the Gift was before their eyes if only they would look up from the “pond” and behold Him in the Radiant Truth of His Being.
Soon Adi Da brought this recapitulation of His Teaching to completion, with a grand five-month summary of His Instruction on Ishta-Guru-Bhakti Yoga:
ADI DA SAMRAJ]: Fundamentally, Ishta-Guru-Bhakti Yoga is the directing of the body-mind to Me and not struggling with its contents and only trying to direct them to Me, or trying to get rid of them in an effort of surrender toward Me. Rather, yield the functions of the body-mind to Me at their root. Yield their leading characteristic.
Give Me your attention, give Me your feeling, give yourself over to Me, and disregard the contents. Do not keep checking back on them to see if they are changing! In your real practice of this Yoga, you forget them. You do not use them. You do not build upon them. You make them obsolete by not using them. In this manner, the Yoga purifies you by making the contents of the body-mind obsolete through non-use. The process is not an effort on your part to do something to the contents of the body-mind or to try not to use them. It is simply your turning to Me, turning your feeling-attention to Me, turning yourself altogether to Me, Contemplatively. That is the Yoga. [December 20, 1993]
Having described so clearly what the practice is-as He did again and again-Adi Da would praise the greatness of the life of Ishta-Guru-Bhakti Yoga:
ADI DA SAMRAJ]: There is nothing but this Self-Existing and Self-Radiant Consciousness Itself, Divine Being Itself, nothing. That is all there is. Truly, there is Only One-Absolute, All Love-Bliss. That is the Condition to be Realized. That is “Who I Am. “When you respond to Me, your life takes that God-Realizing course.
Allow the process to become great. Devote your life to Me utterly. Fulfill your obligations in the body, all the while submitted to Me. This is the Way of My devotee, always vocalizing praise of Me, devotion to Me, every moment of your life transformed by this great impulse toward Me. This is what you must do around Me.
Give Me everything, and forget it all. Your daily life carries obligation-fine. Your puja is to devote yourself to Me and forget about yourself. Having had your glimpse of Me, now you must make a life out of it.
I Am just the Divine One, just the Living One, Showing Itself here. I Am just this Shakti, this Form, this Divine Sign. Be governed by this Vision. That, and nothing else, is devotion to Me. [February 4, 1994]
There was a finality to the Instruction of these months that was felt by devotees everywhere. Truly, Adi Da had nothing further to say to beginning devotees. There were no questions left in their hearts. He knew it, and they knew it. A new seriousness was in the air Ishta-Guru-Bhakti Yoga was becoming a living reality for His devotees. They were proving to themselves that persistence in this devotion does grant Happiness, Freedom, and the ecstasy of direct heart – Communion with Adi Da. The preoccupations of the ego no longer carried the same addictive force. After His then twenty-two years of inexpressibly Compassionate service to them, devotees had understood a great deal, and the lives of many were changed beyond recognition.
Heart Conversion – Talk Series
These Talks in this series are all from the series of gatherings that took place at Sri Love-Anandashram from November 26, 1992 to May 1993.
Beezone White and Orange Project* is a study method based on Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Blue & Brown Books books. The Blue & Brown Books of Wittgenstein’s were dictated as a set of notes to his student in 1934-1935.
Beezone uses a number of formats for assembling a project. One is to present a short piece directly from Adi Da. Then Beezone will write down the highlighted points from said paragraph and/or a group of like paragraphs.
The second format is ‘thematic’. Beezone will take a ‘theme’ of Adi Da’s teaching and go through various talks and essays and write down a sentence or two related to that theme or topic.
Lastly is a compilation or remix. This is a blend of the two other methods. In this style Beezone will take a number of talks and essays based on a theme. Beezone will then use the ‘cut-up’ method. The cut-up technique is an aleatory literary technique in which a text is cut up and rearranged to create a new text. This method can be traced to at least the Dadaists of the 1920s, but was popularized in the late 1950s and early 1960s by writer William S. Burroughs, and has since been used in a wide variety of contexts.
Beezone
This is project is not to be confused with:
Humble One-Liners
DEVOTEE: It is like the left and right (or the world of opposites)…..Life is suffering, and then there is God.
ADI DA SAMRAJ: That is one way of putting it, in your humble one-liner fashion.
Humble one-liners are sufficient for most people to generate in them a sense of feeling consoled. They are like teddy bears.
So a lot of people reduce the religious life to something like one-liners that they pull out to snuggle with. But how can one settle for that couple of sentences worth of comprehension as the attitude of ones existence? It is a profound matter.
The only way to save yourselves from the destiny of religious one-linerism is to constantly and directly study my teaching, read the great traditions, study them. Stay in the process of this great “consideration”, instead of just sitting around and ‘smoking the pipe”, rapping out dharma and consoling yourselves with your teddy bear knowledge…”
“There are all kinds of revelations, all kind of lives, everything going on, everybody on their adventure. You can read about it all, animate it yourself. Do what you like with it. Its based on an error. Theres no truth in it. There can be some sublime feelings or what may be called sublime feelings by some. There can be good feelings achieved by almost anything that you may seek. People get pleasure out of abusing people. Look how much fun people are having killing one another out there these days for what are considered idealistic reasons. Theyre getting off on it pleasurizing themselves in their knot of righteousness you see.
They call it life. Everybody is roaming the world when theyre not abusing everyone, suffering stress and thinking that thats just life. It isnt. Its egoity. Its what life becomes when its fashioned by the ego. Its not what life is. If you get what life is youve got to deal with the ego, the knot thats producing your adventure and transcend it.
You’ve got to realize the natural and native position of non-separateness, unqualified relatedness. That changes even life in its ordinary transactions. Go on with it. It becomes ultimate perfect Divine Self-Realization.”
Adi Da Samraj – December 1992
Adi Da is not generally understood and accepted by the ‘curious’ as a True Realizer. He is generally seen by the ‘TV minded’ as a ‘glorified egotist’ and someone to stay away from. This is in some ways correct, but for the wrong reasons! For the ‘TV minded’ and independently minded skeptics who need to keep their guard up, they should stay away. For Adi Da is a Light and a Fire. Adi Da is not a ‘darling’, he does not speak or teach to those who are looking for comfort in ‘hopeful’ philosophy or needing to buy a consumer message. Adi Da talks and teaches ‘The Real’. He does not save face or save ego, he goes to the root of the separate sense of self. He’s a no-nonsense, straight-shooting, Liberating Blissful Fire. He will attract and repel you in an instant! He will confound your mind so quickly you will think you are spinning in a cyclone of mirrors. And you know something, you will be. For you will only see yourself and what you have not fully inspected. So, best beware. Do not enter casually. If you do so, enter with the full understanding that you will be Tested and Confronted by a Great Light, a most sublime Attraction of which ‘the ego’ will be addressed for what it truly is, an illusion and a cramp of which you are doing, presently. So, be it.
Beezone