A Virtuous Result
of
True ‘Hearing’
A Talk by Heart-Master Da
September 8, 1987
***
“I would say, as a general criticism of those who were previously considering themselves to be devotees, that they did not do the work of true hearing in the context of the first three stages of life.”
ADI DA SAMRAJ: Anyone who is prepared to practice at the 1.3 level should have made sufficient use of all the given means for self-observation, in other words, the functional, practical, and relational disciplines and the group reality consideration process. Anyone who is founded in true hearing must have examined himself or herself in detail using these various means, because true hearing is not just a matter of mental insight.
Just as the confession of the student who is moving on to level 1.1 is a heart-confession, a confession of the being, so also true hearing is not just a change in the mind or an idealistic impulse, but a real capability based on self-observation to the point of most fundamental understanding of the self as self-contraction. Evidence of this must be in place.
Presumably anyone who is seriously considering the possible transition to practicing stage 1.3 will feel that he or she is basing his or her life on the primary impulse to self-transcending God-Realization, and presumably any such individual will also be established in the life-conditions, or disciplines. You will have to make a judgment in each case, however, about whether or not individuals have sufficiently examined themselves altogether by making use of functional, practical, and relational disciplines and group reality considerations. Look at each case. The confession of true hearing must be real. In The Dawn Horse Testament I described true hearing, so you should measure your confession against that confession. Would it be useful to read that here?
Heart-Master Da reads from His manuscript of the revised Dawn Horse Testament, chapter 19.
“When the self-Contraction, or The Complex Avoidance Of Relationship, Is Thoroughly Observed In The Context Of The First Three Stages Of Life, and When (By That Process) It Is Understood Most Fundamentally, So That it Is No Longer The Motive Of one’s life (but The Inherent Motive Of The Heart Is Felt Instead), Then All The limiting and self-Defining Patterns Of the conditional body-mind Have Become Comprehensible.
In That Case, The Effort Of egoity (or The Complex Avoidance Of Relationship) Is No Longer An Uninspected Automaticity (Hidden From The View Of Consciousness, or Heart-Vision). Therefore, Once the self-Contraction Is Understood Most Fundamentally, the self-Contraction itself Is No Longer Necessary, and The Basic Capacity To Release (or To Directly Feel Beyond, or Function Prior To) The Patterns Of self-Contraction In every kind of relationship or circumstance Has Been Regained. The Purpose Of self-Observation (or The Reality Consideration Of the conditional self) Is To Become Thus Truly Awakened To The Heart-Motive, Which Is Unqualified Relationship, or Love (Feeling Toward, Feeling Through, and Feeling Beyond), Rather Than To Accumulate Elaborate ego-Descriptions (or Merely Symptomatic and conceptual self-Descriptions) That Change Nothing When They Are known. Therefore, When (and Only When) True Hearing (or Most Fundamental self-Understanding) Awakens (Via The Ordeal Of Detailed and Ever-Deepening and Really Effective self-Observation), The Third Period Of The First Practicing Stage Of The Way Of The Heart Can Begin (or, Indeed, It Has Already Begun).”
Therefore, the qualification for the transition to practicing stage 1.3 is true hearing. Practice in the context of the fourth stage of life eventually follows, but what follows most immediately is the practice of demonstrating true hearing in the context of the first three stages of life until basic equanimity is established in relation to all of those conditions, or to all the species of the self-contraction in the context of the first three stages of life.
Therefore, the process that must be accomplished at level 1.3 is a basic human matter, not a Spiritual matter. If that basic human matter is accomplished, then the transition to the fourth stage of life, or practice of the Way of the Heart in the context of the fourth stage of life, will occur naturally, even inevitably.
True hearing itself is not sufficient for transition to the fourth stage of life or practice of the Way of the Heart in that context. Rather true hearing must do its original work. I would say, as a general criticism of those who were previously considering themselves to be devotees, that they did not do the work of true hearing in the context of the first three stages of life. Therefore, the foundation for the transition to practice in the context of the fourth stage of life was not established. Instead of using the foundation of true hearing, through the conscious process, in the context of the fourth stage of life, you abandoned it and tried to generate your practice based almost entirely on the process of receptivity and conductivity of the Spirit.
You thereby falsified the Way of the Heart, because the Way of the Heart is founded on the conscious process. Conductivity in any form, including Spirit-conductivity, is secondary to that process. You will not have the arms of the conscious process, founded on true hearing, if you do not first awaken to true hearing and then do the work of hearing in the context of the first three stages of life.
Therefore, what is uniquely added at practicing stage 1.3, based on true hearing, is the work of true hearing, generally, or most basically, through self-enquiry. This can be engaged in the meditative setting and also in random moments, in all occasions wherein the self-contraction is observed.
As the individual matures in 1.3, he or she would show signs of practice in the context of the fourth stage of life. When such evidence begins to appear, the devotee community may extend an invitation to such an individual to participate in occasions of sacramental worship of the Divine. Those occasions do not involve sacramental devotion to the True Heart-Master, but rather, as with children in our community, individuals practice devotion to the Divine, the Divine Person, or the Divine Mystery.
Thus, the devotee community should create special sacramental occasions to include mature 1.3 practitioners to allow for the feeling address to the Divine Condition, as a preliminary to the true devotee stages, wherein the one who is Teacher is also approached as the True Heart-Master. It is only in the devotee stages that sacramental association with the True Heart-Master begins.
Only in the context of “seeing” and “Ishta-Guru-Bhakti Yoga” are such gestures appropriate, because they have nothing to do with cultism. They have everything to do with the Spiritual Process and a right understanding of the Great Transmission and the significance of the True Heart-Master as Agent and as Realizer.
Study More:
Hearing and the Fouth Stage of Life
Read original talk, ‘A Virtuous Result’