The Torque of Attention – Part VII

What else?

DEVOTEE: Beloved? [she shows Beloved a piece of art] A little baby Krishna on a leaf.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: Oh, yes. A little like that frog sucking his toe.

DEVOTEE: Yes.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: Trying to gag himself with “the Thumbs”, no doubt.

DEVOTEE: [laughing] Yes.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: I had something else I observed. This matter of “the Thumbs” began very early on. I was just recalling in infancy, or very small child, not exactly infant, in effect inducing and supporting “the Thumbs” by sucking My thumb. [quiet laughter]

This is usually regarded to be an infantile behavior based on wanting the mothers tit. And there’s no doubt something of that associated with it as well, bodily. But I’ve seen views of children in the womb in which they are sucking their thumbs. They haven’t had any tit yet. But there is a mechanism there a pattern, a sucking mechanism, and so forth and it is available to be fed. So perhaps the thumb is stimulating that mechanism. When the breast comes, the pattern knows what to do, but in the meantime it’s not about breast, it’s about the mechanism.

So the mechanism is a feeder, that’s true, for the infant. The mouth is used to eat. But it’s also used for other purposes. A number of things, including speech and so forth, are associated with that same mouth and throat. So deeper than even any of those exercises is the “conductivity” in that part of the body. In other words, it’s an energy process in it’s depth, behind eating, speaking, whatever.

So I used to stimulate this mechanism for this purpose used to stimulate the back of the throat, the top of the palate, deep down behind the tongue, do this rather spontaneously. And I was just recalling how this was so, very young, for maintaining the “conductivity” in the body. And then sometimes in the midst of that very event, or sometimes without it, when sleeping or resting, the grosser signs of “the Thumbs” would occur that I’ve described, this gagging sensation, forcing pressure down and so on.

So it wasn’t just an infantile expression. It was an infantile way of supporting a Yogic process, or an infants way of doing it, a young child’s way of doing it. So for Me it wasn’t about longing for the tit or anything. It was using the mechanism as a “conductivity” practice to keep the energy flowing, doing this spontaneously.

Its like Milarepa is famous for being shown holding his ear. And I’ve explained to you, he’s stroking it his way, then, of supporting the “conductivity” of energy in the body, rather than dissociating from the body into an empty interior only.

So I was doing a physical gesture, sucking the thumb, like he rubbed his ear. It wasn’t just about tickling myself or reminiscing about My mothers tits. It actually functioned as a spontaneous way of serving “the Thumbs” or the “conductivity” altogether because I was already in Samadhi.

Then later on I would notice, as I got a little bit older, that this would happen spontaneously. The flow of Current, the “Bright”, was there, but this periodic re-Invasion, or reassertion, would come about spontaneously, not sucking the thumb anymore. Well, I think I carried that on for a while, but didn’t require it. You know, it would just happen spontaneously. I can recall sometimes it happening at night, supposedly asleep, and then suddenly “the Thumbs” asserting itself. it’s the “Bright” Invasion, the “Brightening”.

So it’s not just a matter of feeling at Me. You must receive Me, feel Me, “Locate” Me, know Me Spiritually. And that’s not merely a philosophical matter. I guess I must have been having some discussion like this years ago back on Melrose “Guru Enters Devotee” you call it.

DEVOTEE: Right.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: it’s tangible. it’s Me. Like when a woman embraces her lover, there’s no doubt about it. it’s not a fancy or a theoretical matter or a hope or a belief. it’s literal Invasion, obviously Me.

So you see what happens. You are among them. When you come and sit with Me, like in the evenings here with the retreatant’s, or any other time. You know your own experience and you must have some sense that others are doing it, too. People come there, they are supposed to be beginners I’m telling you, well, the Spiritual process, Spiritual responsibility is later, and all this in between but people come and sit with Me and are experiencing all kinds of signs of My Spiritual Presence. it’s so commonplace that I think sometimes people aren’t even noticing that it’s the case. [laughter] it’s more or less taken for granted.

So youve already proven, by that, something remarkable about the nature of Reality. If you can feel Me and with that kind of profundity ten feet away from Me, then what am I about? What is Reality about? What are you about? it’s a knowledge, you see. Then you have to let it change you. Why would you play the conventional persona when you have such knowledge? it’s an old adaptation, but now you must oblige the body-mind to adapt to it. There’s knowledge, that which is known. [pause]

One o’clock.

Maybe we should have them perform The Mummery in here? [laughter] [Beloved Adi Da was planning to go to the performance of The Mummery that night.]

DEVOTEE: That would be beautiful. [Beloved chuckles.]

ADI DA SAMRAJ: Of course I might be moved constantly in the midst of it to enter into “consideration”. [laughter]

DEVOTEE: It could take several days.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: Well, it’s already taken nearly years.

DEVOTEE: Ha, that’s beautiful.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: I’m at your mummery all these years, but introducing My “considerations” constantly throughout. Notice this and what’s going on, what it’s all about, then you’ll stop being a mummery here, mock religious, and mocking real religion, dissociating from it. That’s the mummery, you see.

So the purpose of the community attending that event is to be purged of mummery by getting the secret of Raymond Darling.

Well, have I managed to convert you all yet or what?

DEVOTEES: Yes, You have.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: Hm?

DEVOTEES: Yes!

DEVOTEE: Most definitely.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: Any non-converts in the room?

DEVOTEES: No.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: So what else do we have to cover about this conversion, this converted life? Now that I’ve Revealed to you the greatest Secrets ever revealed to Man all of them.

[pause]

There’s a form of the Shankara tradition of Advaita Vedanta that has reduced the process of Realization to a simple “consideration”, rather than elaborate Yoga. it’s a kind of “talking school” version, you could say, especially if it’s misused. But the simple matter is you’re supposed to take one of the Mahavakyas on which Shankara commented. They’re from the Vedic or Upanishadic tradition. They’re supposed to be taken on authority as the true word of Realizers. So it’s accepted as such on that basis. There’s cultural support for that presumption. And so you examine this pronouncement, one of the Mahavakyas, like “Thou art That”, and you just based on a fundamental sense of the certainty that it’s true you just examine it and consider it, feel it, listen, contemplate just that, not all kinds of places in the body and energies and on and on, or any other specific concentration of any kind. You read that word, you Contemplate it deeply, and then you realize it’s Truth. it’s proposed to be just that.

Perhaps it’s because that is a long-standing variety of the Shankara school of Advaita Vedanta that the modern “talking schools” have appeared, where the process as I say, what we together call sixth stage practice is just a matter of listening to a presumed Realizer talk about it, “consider” it. Well, that’s certainly obviously useful practice itself, but in the “talking schools” that’s all there is.

It’d be like if we gathered together here and starting in when we used to gather constantly, I would talk it would be like that’s all we ever did. We could still be doing it now. None of you practicing anything. I guess you go to work sometimes or whatever. You come over here whenever you can, and we talk, and it just keeps going on and on and on. You don’t change anything. I mean, you don’t take on any disciplines of any kind functional, practical, relational, cultural really nothing much of anything. You just come and hang around the house, with Me hours, days, weeks, months, years on end and I “consider” matters with you, usually based on remarks you make or questions or whatever. And that, by the way, is in fact what we did for a long time. But what if that’s all we ever did? That wouldn’t be a “consideration”.

But some schools recommend just this listening to a “consideration”. That’s supposed to be sufficient for Realization. It suddenly dawns on you, is the idea. But it doesn’t work, you see? That’s all you were doing initially around Me. It didn’t become Realization. It didn’t even become practice, except that I maintained it truly as a “consideration” to the point where you had to discriminate, you had to come to a point of view about this, an agreement with Me, and so on. Each detail of “consideration” eventually, however long each part took, went on to that point. And you could see it’s been a “consideration”, because all along you have progressively been assuming more and more of what is practice of this Way.

So it was real “consideration”. But this listening must become a practice.

What if we just sat here and talked about the “Perfect Practice”, if you’d just come off the street for some reason, or just friends or whatever, weren’t doing any practice of this Way you are now, but what if you were not just strangers of a kind or just ordinary friends? We could “consider” these great matters as we’ve been doing this last week or so, and perhaps it would be interesting to you or whatever. And then after some hours, an evening of such, the polite good-byes and so forth, and you go do something else. Sort of like an evenings entertainment.

This is not a “talking school”. This is a practicing school. it’s a matter of “consideration”. That means you come to conclusions and you change your act.

But you all have been to one or another degree using Me in the revised form of the Way of the Heart, which would be something of a “talking school” merely, except that you have been in “consideration” with Me and you are, but slowly, embracing the conditions of this Way. As I said, in these “talking schools” there are no conditions to embrace. Nothing comes of the listening to the Teachers discourse in the form of practice. Presumably what’s supposed to occur is an Awakening. And so, in that tradition of the Shankara school, it’s this word of the Teacher or ancient Rishi, just examined, just that, nothing else. Of course that’s what’s said. In actual practice, in this particular school of Shankara, even though the focus of their practice was this contemplation of the Mahavakya pondering, you could say that wasn’t all they did. They just didn’t make much of those other things. They had full screening, fixed requirements, for somebody coming into that situation and doing that sadhana. So they had to exhibit all kinds of qualities of discriminative intelligence and will and self-control and aspiration toward release. It had to already be so. And you lived that way when brought into that Advaitic community.

So that Shankara school is a kind of a model for the modern “talking schools”, but in the modern “talking schools”, there aren’t any of those requirements. So there’s not understanding there of the sadhana.

Krishnamurti is another type like that just come and listen to Krishnamurti. That’s the whole practice, so to speak nothing else required. So it’s not a “consideration”. it’s not a basis for examining, changing things, doing otherwise, and truly, very directly, entering into the profound liberating process.

So it could have been that in that Shankara school, which still exists, people who truly had to meet the qualifications necessary for entrance and maintaining those qualifications obviously could make use of pondering in that sixth stage sense, sufficient to enter into the basics of what I call the “Perfect Practice” in it’s first two stages. In some cases the discipline is done rather superficially. The Mahavakya is used to reestablish the Witness Disposition, the Position of Consciousness.

But the second stage of the “Perfect Practice” doesn’t occur. it’s just constantly coming to that point of noticing, or that conviction, or that tacit certainty that it is so: “You’re not the body-mind. You’re the Witness.” But the meditation, the Samadhi, doesn’t become more profound than that. They don’t do the second stage of the “Perfect Practice”. They don’t enter into the Well, without limitation, by Grace.

DEVOTEE: Beloved, I believe You once told the story of the moment of Shankaras Enlightenment, and it was about an encounter between him and his Master.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: Yeah, I think I was reading or referring to a story about that by Atmananda. It was in one of his publications. He told several stories and this was one of them touching his Masters foot and so on.

DEVOTEE: That was it. That was it. One of the points You were making was that the way the stories told, the Enlightenment seems to come through the “consideration” of the speech. But you pointed out that in the instant of Enlightenment there was also the Touch, including Transmission, of course. I think that’s another thing that the “talking schools” could forget or fail to integrate into the real process.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: True Transmission Spiritually, real “consideration”, therefore increased responsibilities, and therefore actual Realization, not merely a taste of it, such as you all get to in a moment here: Isn’t it true that no matter what is arising, you’re always the Witness? Well, a lot of practitioners of that kind of orientation don’t go any further than that. Because they can repeat it and feel it in some basic tacit sense, they feel this is Realization or enough Realization for their aspiration.

So many sixth stage practitioners are basically just doing that, that “consideration” of the Witness, not really qualified for the “Perfect Practice” altogether, but they’re able to notice the Position through an exercise not the sleeping exercise that DEVOTEE

was entering into now, but . . . [laughter]

DEVOTEE: I’m sorry.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: Ah, I see. You are experiencing a kind of impulse to relinquish the objects of the body-mind.

DEVOTEE: I’m afraid You’re right.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: And yet at other times you tell Me you’re afraid of death. [DEVOTEE

laughs.] Maybe you need to snooze into the dying, instead of being concerned about it. The body-mind wants to do that. it’s a pattern. it’s not you choosing it. it’s just there. It happens. You identify with the body-mind, so you say it’s you as if you made it up. But you’re, in the psycho-physical, experiencing a profound impulse to release association with the body-mind. You do this every day when you go to sleep and so on.

In other words, it’s not something that just happens. it’s intended. The pattern intends this to happen. And something about it feels sort of pleasant. You sort of volunteer into it. it’s a kind of intoxication of a kind, even. You’re not afraid of it. And yet you’re afraid of death, which is fundamentally the same event.

DEVOTEE: Well, somehow you know you’re going to wake up from dreaming.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: Oh, yes? [laughter]

DEVOTEE: Well, there’s a slight intuition of that possibility might happen.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: Yeah, but it’s only a possibility.

DEVOTEE: That’s true. You’re absolutely right. That’s true.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: You could die in your sleep. Huge numbers of people die in their sleep.

DEVOTEE: They do, they do.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: Any time you go to sleep, that could be it. But you don’t mind it, you see? The body-mind is built to go to sleep sometimes, and it encourages you to do so. There are pleasurable associations with it and so on, and you really feel like you want to do this. You want to let go of the body-mind. You would let go of the body-mind?! [laughter]

DEVOTEE: What am I, crazy?

ADI DA SAMRAJ: But when it is psycho-physical time to do so, the body is all kinds of set up for sleep.

Well, the same with death. The body is going to do it. it’s not just going to happen through some misfortune or disease or something. it’s going to happen with some association of whatever seems to cause the end. It is going to do it. The body is going to do this. it’s not merely going to happen to it. And when it gets to that point where the body is volunteering now I’m not talking about an accident or some intrusion when you get to the point where the body is intending to die, is doing dying, as when going to sleep, it introduces all kinds of phenomenal associations because that’s the event you don’t experience them otherwise, you see that make it possible to pass into it, to be surrendered. But when you’re in your moving around trying to stay alive mode, that sounds threatening. You don’t have the chemistry for it, even. Well, you’re not dying! You’re living.

The body itself accounts for all kinds of making it easier. But it can be made very difficult because of all kinds of intervening things diseases and all the rest, accidents. So very often there can be a death intrusion that the body hasn’t been able to account for, or has to do right then, and it’s a wrenching process.

So you cant count on having an easeful, natural death that you feel as comfortable about as going to sleep. That’s a good death. That sounds nice if it would work out that way. But the body has so many other vulnerabilities that you cant count on it.

DEVOTEE: It seems like Your mother died in that way.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: Yes. My father also.

DEVOTEE: Easefully.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: Yes.

DEVOTEE: A natural time for releasing.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: Mm-hm. It wasn’t preceded by a long period of life-threatening disease. Functional up to the very moment. So the body volunteered. It did it. It didn’t happen to it. But since you cant count on it being necessarily that way and there’s all kinds of difficulty in the meantime in any case you cant depend on it. So you cant just tell yourself: “If I go to sleep now, I’m going to wake up. it’s almost guaranteed. Because you die in your bed when you’re really old, you know.” No.

DEVOTEE: I knew you were going to say that.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: You know that there isn’t that kind of certainty. But still you volunteer to go to sleep.

And you can, by maintaining the body properly, acquire all kinds of abilities that have to do with going beyond psycho-physical limitation. For instance, you can maintain the body such that you can choose to sit and meditate for real. You develop this capability. Early on it’s probably rather superficial. The most it amounts to is a kind of little period of relaxation while you mull over a lot of thoughts. But if you truly practice this Communion with Me, you line the body up with it’s laws to support that.

All the non-humans are in a moment able to go aside and Contemplate. The humans can do this also, by right life, right regulation of the body-mind, in Communion with Me, you see. [pause]

There’s a strange tradition among the Jains where some will do sadhana to the point of Realization as it’s presumed in that tradition and then commit Yogic suicide not by blowing their brains out or anything intrusive, but it’s a food body, so they stop doing the puja of feeding it. It kills itself in that case, or it relinquishes itself. So they just fast until death, all the while maintaining their Contemplative disposition or their Samadhi, whatever it is. And that’s one of the sixth stage traditions I’ve described to you as being in this dissociative disposition, ascetical, cutting off. So you can see how in a tradition like that you might find some logic in the procedure I was just describing. it’s a dissociative act. It shows the sign that the body is presumed to be a problem, rather than simply something to be transcended through the real Divine Process, and allowed to take it’s course, but be associated with it rightly in the Freedom of the Witness.

So why, having gone all the way to getting Enlightened, would you all of a sudden get the idea that you had to bump off the body? What kind of Enlightenment is that? [laughter]

Up until then, the body-mind was your friend, your means for this sadhana and so forth. And all of a sudden you get the Enlightenment and the body’s a problem. Well, it is obviously a limitation, an incomplete Realization.

Right, the body is the servant of sadhana. Life has it’s positive function. it’s not merely a negative to be dissociated from. So in the case of true Awakening, there’s no motive to have to do something to get rid of the body. You’re already Free of the body. And the body is part of a pattern, has it’s own process and timings and so on. You don’t intrude upon it. You Recognize it. Nothing like Yogic suicide would ever come out of the Way of the Heart, but you can see how it could come out of a tradition the Jain tradition because it has a certain kind of dissociative point of view to begin with.

So the body-mind is not a problem in the Way of the Heart. It is simply that which is transcended in the Way of the Heart not by being treated as a problem.

When My mother the mother of This Body physically died, just recently actually, I had long ago ceased to be mothered by her. So it had all kinds of other significance’s for Me that I served in that event. But generally speaking, when people contemplate the death of their parents, it’s all kinds of associated with a continued parent-child form of relatedness. And so much, then, of the drama, the emotional crisis, and all the rest you go through in that event is about being a child whose parent has died, who doesn’t have that support that is depended on. So to experience or get the news of death of either one or both of your parents, this shouldn’t happen rightly until you are no longer parented by them. Then you relate to the matter entirely differently. [pause]

DEVOTEE: Or even better, to be Enlightened, as You are.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: Mm-hm.

DEVOTEE: The ultimate moment of being non-parented.

[pause]

ADI DA SAMRAJ: How can a man be rightly related to a woman if he hasn’t ceased to be mothered? Hell always relate to any woman as significantly the mother. Same, then, with women. If they don’t go beyond this parented relationship with the father and all the “Oedipal” stuff, any relationship with any other man is an extension of it. You play out those games in various ways. You’re complicated by your childishness and your “Oedipal” disposition being rather incestuous about it, rather infantile about it in any case, not utterly straightforward and free.

Anyway, that’s all garbage. The endless complications of human beings I just did a quarter of a century of it every day of My Life. Took that long for Me to get to the point where I feel that fundamentally I’ve “considered” it and communicated everything about it to you. Always seems like there’s something more to say, though. Otherwise, we wouldn’t have gathered here this evening.

DEVOTEES: Mm.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: I even have the feeling that this record of “consideration” from this last week or so is absolutely essential for My Teaching.

DEVOTEE: Yeah.

DEVOTEES: Absolutely. Yes. It is absolutely essential.

DEVOTEE: There’s no question about it.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: It couldn’t have been done without.

DEVOTEES: That’s right.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: Still not quite satisfied altogether or haven’t been up until tonight. [laughter]

I had to do this “consideration” and get it on the books.

In any case, this examination of the conditional form and human beings in it seems virtually endless. On the other hand, it is finite and I was able to do it in about a quarter of a century. After, of course, My own previous over quarter of a century working it out, unobserved by anyone [teasing] especially devotee. [laughter]

I’m not absolutely sure she’s noticed it yet! [Beloved laughs.] But I used to work on devotees “case” all those years back.

DEVOTEE: Yeah. You sure did.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: devotee and I used to enter into “consideration” all the time.

DEVOTEE: That’s true.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: And with her addressed the kind of things that I address you all about short of the profundities. [laughter]

DEVOTEE: You really Lived an amazing Life in Your own seclusion, Beloved, during that time. It was so amazing that You could do that sadhana with somebody who was so oblivious. [laughter] [Beloved laughs]

ADI DA SAMRAJ: I wasn’t trying to do your sadhana. I was trying to do Mine. But I Worked anyway. So I was always “considering” things with devotee.

I could never understand how devotee could get into this work thing she used to do.

DEVOTEE: Lucky for You I did. [laughter]

ADI DA SAMRAJ: Well, that’s certainly true. I wasn’t suggesting otherwise. [laughter] But it never ceased to amaze Me.

DEVOTEE: It amazed You?

ADI DA SAMRAJ: Yes. Absolutely. I couldn’t have done anything of the kind. [laughter]

DEVOTEE: You couldn’t.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: Especially for your reasons.

DEVOTEE: I had a job to do. I had a job.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: Yes. She taught school there originally, which is straightforward enough, and everybody can understand that. But then she used to get these mysterious jobs after we left California.

DEVOTEE: Well, I always credited You with that, Beloved, because I thought You were looking after us. You know they were good jobs.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: Oh, absolutely. Yes.

DEVOTEE: More money every time.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: But that didn’t make it any more comprehensible to Me. [laughter]

DEVOTEE: No, it wasn’t comprehensible.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: I mean, I went to her places of work on occasion, occasionally met some of the people she worked with. She would tell Me about what she did and so forth. I couldn’t figure out what she was actually doing and what she was getting paid for. [laughter] I mean, she actually used to get a very good salary and so on. And whenever she would explain to Me and in fact I had her try and do this almost endlessly what she was actually doing there, I really was never able to figure it out. And I wouldn’t know how to tell you today what she was doing.

DEVOTEE: [to devotee] What were you doing?

ADI DA SAMRAJ: She did it with a lot of enthusiasm as well. [laughter]

DEVOTEE: She did it well, I’m sure.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: I don’t know what it was. I really don’t know what the hell it was.

And truthfully, I hardly remember anything about [the “considerations” with devotee during those years]. [Beloved laughs hysterically] I really hardly remember anything about it. I guess if I concentrated on it, Id get some more detail out of it, yes. But I have some general memory of some kinds of conversations we used to have dealing with her “case” stuff. You know what her “case” is like. Youve been talking with her ever since. [laughter]

Wherever I went with all the “consideration”, shed come along.

DEVOTEE: That was my “consideration”.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: Then, after it was done and I was done with it, Id usually have to wait a few months for her to show up again. [laughter] Bought every one of them, as if forever.

DEVOTEE: That’s true.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: So there were all those kinds of “considerations” as well, not just about her “case”, you see. [to devotee with humor] But you seemed virtually untouched by any of it, any of it!

DEVOTEE: A little embryo there, making money.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: Well, that seemed basically sufficient to just always look for this human fulfillment kind of ordinariness.

DEVOTEE: Yeah, that’s right.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: And I was always involved in this profound matter! This profound “consideration”! She always seemed to be wanting more of the householder thing, I guess. Then I had to always be explaining that.

DEVOTEE: Yeah, right. I had a naive conception that I was protecting You with my ordinariness, I think. Looking back on it I feel that.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: Oh, yes?

DEVOTEE: Yeah.

DEVOTEE: Remarkable job.

DEVOTEE and DEVOTEE: Remarkable job. [laughter]

ADI DA SAMRAJ: Yes, she had some feeling I was too much for people. She would sort of play Ma Kettle or something, with the eccentric boyfriend, you know. [Beloved laughs.] So somehow by her being there with these people while I’m talking all kinds of “consideration”, she played the congenial social personality with them. And then they would hardly even notice that I was doing it. [laughter]

They’re watching Me and listening to Me spinning around and all that. devotee asks, “What do you do for a living?” [laughter] And they’d feel all right again. [Beloved is laughing.] So she was being a protectress.

DEVOTEE OKUN: The first security person.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: So I was just going on and on and on with it, and so our situation kept changing.

DEVOTEE: You were relentless.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: But devotee herself wanted to just settle down somewhere. From the beginning that’s what she kept insisting on, and so, as you might imagine, it didn’t work with My plan. [laughter] So she wound up coming along with Me the whole time. Still here.

[humorously] But totally untouched by it. But she’s friendly. She likes you, you know. it’s a nice neighborhood. [laughter] And she’s just here, friendly, chatty.

DEVOTEE: No, no, no.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: What you see is what you get that’s it!! [laughter]

Well, all of this is true enough to be said. it’s just not absolutely true. I mean, she seems to get . . . something. [laughter]

DEVOTEE: She does, she does.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: She gets something of it.

DEVOTEE [laughing]: Oh, no. [Beloved laughs.] I hate this picture that You paint of me.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: I mean, she’s like devotee and Frans. [laughter]

She’s not the tall, lean type, so you might have missed it. She’s into her overall life real big, though. [laughter]

She’s a major overall-lifer, like devotee. You know what I mean?

But she still seems to get something about it. it’s just that she just doesn’t care about it all that much. [Beloved laughs uproariously.]

ADI DA SAMRAJ: What else? [long pause]

DEVOTEE: Beloved?

ADI DA SAMRAJ: Mm-hm?

DEVOTEE: We’ve talked amongst ourselves as devotees many times about how wonderful it is to watch Your Play, and how magical it is to observe over the years how You draw those to You who can serve You at that particular time in their sadhana. And it was just really wonderful to reflect on that.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: Ah, Tcha.

What else?

Hmmmmm. Hm?

You want the fruit now? [laughter]

Are you finished?

Pretty much covered money, food, sex, death all that stuff tonight, right?

DEVOTEES: Mm-hm, yes.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: Any other part of that we didn’t address enough? Any loophole in all of that that you’re wondering about?

So do you intend to die or Stand Beyond it, DEVOTEE?

DEVOTEE: Stand Beyond it, my Lord with Your Help and Grace.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: Well, if the body wants to die, it’s its business. Why do you have to get involved? it’s the one doing it, so . . .

DEVOTEE: So much the worse for it.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: Know what I mean, DEVOTEE?

DEVOTEE: I do, my Lord.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: What else then?

How would you like to be at the beginning of your life? Some of you aren’t that far from it. [laughter] So it may not be as interesting to them who are younger, but any of you how would you like to be at the beginning of your life, instead of at the point of your life you’re in right now?

DEVOTEE: And being with You at the same time.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: No. [laughter]

DEVOTEE: Oh. Oh.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: Under the conditions of the beginning of your life, as it was.

DEVOTEE: Oh, I see.

DEVOTEE: You mean go back to that exact same condition?

ADI DA SAMRAJ: Yes, and carry on from there again.

DEVOTEE: No.

DEVOTEE: No.

DEVOTEE: With all that knowledge, in other words?

ADI DA SAMRAJ: No, just exactly as it was.

DEVOTEE: I still wouldn’t want it, I still wouldn’t want to do it.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: Well, you’re all so afraid of death. It just seemed you might like to do that, because you’re much further along than you were then. So it would give you the opportunity to have at least as many years, hopefully more, than youve had so far.

DEVOTEE: Yeah, but . . .

ADI DA SAMRAJ: You get to be young, and you’d be guaranteed all those years.

DEVOTEE: Mm-hm. So it’s sort of like a new start were saying.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: Yes. Doing the whole thing over again exactly. But instead of being as old as you are now, including very old like DEVOTEE

, you get a good sixty right off the bat guaranteed.

DEVOTEE: And hopefully do a much better job than to date.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: Well, whatever. But it’s just the opportunity to do it all over again not remembering that you did it before.

DEVOTEE: I don’t know if I want to.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: Just be in that position, guaranteed a . You know, you can choose now. You wouldn’t know that when you were back there as infant. You wouldn’t remember you made this agreement, but right now you can see the virtue of it. You get zap right off the bat at least.

DEVOTEE: I’m not too sure there’s a virtue in it, my Lord. I don’t know about doing it all over again.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: You’re that much further away from death.

DEVOTEE: Oh, were just talking death. I was talking about relative to my relationship with You.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: You have or more to look forward to again without the prospect of death.

DEVOTEE: Is this a loaded question?

ADI DA SAMRAJ: No. I’m just asking you to “consider” it. It says something about your preferences or feeling about things.

DEVOTEE: It wouldn’t seem people, in general, would have the impulse to go and do it all over again until the last years or months or days of their life.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: Would you choose it?

DEVOTEE: Well, oddly enough, I’m not particularly drawn to wanting to do it over again.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: Nope?

DEVOTEE: Yes. Right.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: You’d just as soon take what you got left?

DEVOTEE: Yes. And go for it.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: Everybody else have that same point of view?

DEVOTEE: Definitely.

[short pause]

ADI DA SAMRAJ: Well, why not?

DEVOTEE: I don’t know. it’s a bodily thing.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: Why wouldn’t you want to do it again?

DEVOTEE: I just go back and my only experience of that kind of thing would be what I actually did go through.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: That’s what were talking about you doing.

DEVOTEE: It wasn’t a pretty sight to begin with. And it was very rough, blah, blah, blah. So why would I want to do that again?

ADI DA SAMRAJ: Exactly. [laughter]

DEVOTEE: Precisely. My feeling is if you had the opportunity to do it, like Stanley was saying, you end up doing it again. That’s why I said, unless it was in relationship to You. Then it’s . . .

ADI DA SAMRAJ: So you don’t want to do it again.

DEVOTEE: That’s right, basically.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: Why would you be disposed, then, in such a way that you cause the repetition after this lifetime? You didn’t get your lesson? Once a philosopher, twice a pervert? Because effectively you are going to do that. Perhaps not exactly the same one, but repetition of that character and everything it’s about it’s been the continuation of it. But you have to go through the cycle again each time. Each time you become associated with one of these organisms, you have to go through the whole cycle.

So do you really not want to do that either?

DEVOTEE: Right.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: No, really.

DEVOTEE: Like, want to come back? Reincarnate?

ADI DA SAMRAJ: Come back, repeat, whatever, in whatever form.

DEVOTEE: And do the same thing.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: Continue, in this.

DEVOTEE: I don’t think I consciously think of that, I don’t think.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: But you have an aversion to repeating the present lifetime.

DEVOTEE: Yeah.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: And you don’t seem to be feeling quite with the same strength of aversion about the continuation of this very same thing beyond this lifetime.

DEVOTEE: Yes, it’s interesting. I think what it points to with me is that “always hopeful”, you know. And even though I’m sure about coming back as of now that is the feeling I have relative to it. Does that make sense?

ADI DA SAMRAJ: Yes. I thought you made a point in there. Then you kept on talking. So you’re content to be doing the thing that effectively will have you go back and live your life over again which you just said you didn’t want to do.

DEVOTEE: Right.

DEVOTEE KANTOR: But he’s hopeful.

DEVOTEE: But then there’s the hopeful element that’s cropped up now into this picture.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: Well, obviously bullshit, because that’s how it works.

DEVOTEE: Mm. Right. You’re right about that.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: If you really didn’t like it, you wouldn’t be doing it now.

DEVOTEE: Right.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: You say you don’t want to do it again, but you are doing it again. And now you’re going to do it again.

DEVOTEE: Precisely.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: You’re going to persist in this, in other words.

DEVOTEE: Unless, as I said, I have a few things I have to change. [some laughter]

ADI DA SAMRAJ: Yes! But I’ve heard you say that so many times, DEVOTEE.

DEVOTEE: I know. Well, I didn’t want to say it again.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: He says I’m his Guru, I Give him My Instruction, he leaves the room and puts “little-ji” hat on.

Well, DEVOTEE, do you expect us to take you seriously about this “aversion”? You love it!

DEVOTEE: Yeah. You’re right. You’re right! I have to cop to it. I have finally seen that, at any rate.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: Just totally psychotic.

DEVOTEE: And I know You cant understand it, I know, Lord. Don’t try. it’s sick, obviously.

AVATARA ADI DA [in a resigned tone]: Mmmmmmm.

[moving on] What else? Hm? Well? We didn’t hear diddly from devotee tonight, did we?

DEVOTEE: I do have something, Beloved. I’m not exactly sure how to phrase this altogether. I’m not even sure exactly what the question is. it’s more just kind of a well, let me just throw it out there. [laughter]

ADI DA SAMRAJ: What a bizarre suggestion. [laughter]

DEVOTEE: Youve been talking about both the whole hearing process and also the moving into the Witness-Position and Demonstrating that for all of us and drawing us into it.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: I know very well what I’ve been doing, devotee. [laughter] Now what is it? You’re taking so long to say this sentence, devotee. I just think you’re a representative of the “Slow Talkers of America”. [laughter]

DEVOTEE: Oh, boy. I don’t know. it’s not coming out. [laughter]

ADI DA SAMRAJ: So what are we considering?

Have you all become utterly incapable of “consideration”?

DEVOTEE and others: I think so.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: Are you just totally finished?

DEVOTEE: No.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: devotee seems to think you’re finished.

DEVOTEE: devotees finished. [Beloved laughs.]

DEVOTEE: There isn’t a wit left in this entire room!

ADI DA SAMRAJ: A wit?

DEVOTEES: A wit.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: Not a wit left. If it weren’t for the halves, there wouldn’t be any wit at all. [laughter]

Well, even now, no matter what is arising, isn’t it true that you are simply the Witness?

DEVOTEE: Mm-hm.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: Is it?

DEVOTEE: Yes, yes.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: Who said “yes”?

DEVOTEE: I did.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: Did the Witness say “yes”?

DEVOTEE: Well, yes.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: Or did the body-mind say “yes”?

DEVOTEE: Mm-hm.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: But the body-mind is not in the Witness-Position.

DEVOTEE: No.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: So how come the body-mind told Me “yes”?

DEVOTEE: it’s in collusion.

DEVOTEE: [laughing] Don’t listen to us, my Lord.

DEVOTEE: Collision.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: One would have expected silence at that moment.

DEVOTEE: Mm-hm. That’s great.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: But you were all too “intellectual”. [There is a quiet pause, then a few people burst out laughing.] What was that?

DEVOTEE: I don’t know.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: Well. The Witness. So did you cease to be the Witness to say it?

DEVOTEE: In that moment.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: Hm. Yes?

DEVOTEE: No.

DEVOTEE: The body-mind did. But the body-mind is not in the Witness-Position.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: Yes. So how does it know?

DEVOTEE: Excuse me?

ADI DA SAMRAJ: So how does it know?

DEVOTEE: Oh. Yeah, it’s sort of an automatic response almost. Almost? [correcting himself] it was.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: It could have said no.

DEVOTEE: It could have said no. Yeah, that’s right. It chose however . . .

ADI DA SAMRAJ: Well, did you abandon that Position in order to say yes?

DEVOTEE: No.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: Have you abandoned it in order to think about this?

DEVOTEE: Yes.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: Yes?

SEVERAL DEVOTEES: No.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: Some say “yes”, some “no”.

Yes, it’s still there.

DEVOTEE: Mm-hm, Beloved.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: So what would you like to “consider”?

[pause] Did you get it back yet, devotee?

DEVOTEE: Um it was starting to come back, but it’s still I don’t have a question with it.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: Now, who’s talking to Me at the moment? Are you, the Witness, Prior to the body-mind, somehow telling Me this? Or is the body-mind telling Me this?

DEVOTEE: No, no, the body-mind.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: It is?

DEVOTEE: The body-minds telling You this.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: And you have nothing to do with that? Or did you intend it somehow?

DEVOTEE: I intended it.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: But that’s the act of will that is after attention.

DEVOTEE: Right. Right.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: So did it have anything to do with you when you said yes, you were Standing in the Witness-Position?

DEVOTEE: No.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: It had nothing to do with you, the Witness?

DEVOTEE: No.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: Then how did it happen to say “yes”?

[Beloved chuckles.] Does the body-mind know about you in the Witness-Position?

DEVOTEE: No.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: So did you use it somehow to confirm yourself as the Witness? Has the Witness got something to do with this “yes”?

DEVOTEE: Does the Witness have something to do with . . .

ADI DA SAMRAJ: The “yes” that you are established in the Witness-Position. The body-mind cant know about it. So it didn’t speak on it’s own to declare this. So how did you, the mere Witness, wind up it appears to have the body-mind confirm it?

DEVOTEE: Hm.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: In this exercise we’ve been doing, everybody finds themselves established in the Witness-Position. At the same time, I go on “considering” matters with you, and they don’t unless it’s just a long excursion of blah, blah they don’t disturb the Witness-Position, and you can speak about it, in fact, at the same time you are fully feeling Established in It. So how did you do that?

Maybe it’s true, but as soon as you made the gesture of attention to move on to say it, you left It. The information turned out to be true, but it’s not true at the moment you wind up saying. But it was true of that moment before you pressed on the attention button.

Think so?

DEVOTEE: Beloved, I haven’t felt that when I’ve been speaking.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: What do you feel?

DEVOTEE: I feel like the speech is just informed by the Position itself.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: Yes, but how?

DEVOTEE: Well, when the speech is going on, there’s not even any thought that’s going on. That’s what’s interesting about it. it’s not just thinking. it’s just spontaneously generated by . . .

ADI DA SAMRAJ: So is thought.

I mean, speech is a form of thought. it’s just you use a vocalization along with the thinking. it’s the same as thinking at any other time.

You don’t think. But thinking happens, strangely. You’re in the Witness-Position, and yet thinking happens.

Now does every time an operation happens mean that you abandon the Witness-Position? Well, if not, then how could these operations go on that seem to be reflecting the Disposition of the Witness, but which are themselves conditional?

DEVOTEE: In that Position they seem like they’re just tools for communication of that. It seems like even if thought goes on apparently, it doesn’t go on. [Beloved is chuckling.]

ADI DA SAMRAJ: Well, it’s very mysterious. I mean, you never see things. All you experience are events in Consciousness. You never experience anything without being conscious of it.

So you never experience anything apart from the Consciousness of it. You talk about seeing things this, that, and the other thing but it’s wholly independent of you in that you actually experience things themselves. But you never experience anything apart from the Consciousness of it. Everything is an event in Consciousness. That’s your actual experience. But you talk about materiality and things and so forth, and how much of a mystery they are to you, because you deny the fact that these are conscious events, events in Consciousness. And you never see them otherwise. You know?

So to “consider” reality based on your actual experience, you cant just be talking about things and materiality and objectivity and so forth. That’s not your experience. You never have any such experience. You don’t experience the world as something independent from you. You experience it as an event in Consciousness. And that’s exactly what it is. But you want to go on some long excursion or human beings want to go on this long excursion of trying to affirm somehow that objects have independent existence, and that’s all there is. Consciousness is a kind of a mirage or a piece of a machine or something nothing more than that.

All the experiences you declare these are all events in Consciousness. But you talk about them as if the content were the only thing there is, as if you’re not noticing that this is all an event in Consciousness. It is a part of it. it’s fundamental to it. You don’t pay enough serious attention to this fact. You think the world is physical, whereas it is psycho-physical. All the realities are real in it. You see? Some are senior.

So why would you discount the more subjective part in order to affirm that only the grosser part is real? when you have no such experience whatsoever. Consciousness is the dominant aspect of all of your experience. it’s not merely a part of it. No matter what you experience, the overriding factor is your Consciousness. You’re always making a reference to yourself, but you’re pointing at this pictured body you get through the senses. You don’t comprehend utterly that you are Consciousness.

Well, then to make a judgment about the nature of Reality, you cant just on and talk about the material factors. So this is what the tradition of Advaita Vedanta is always getting at people about, through their principal argument about waking, dreaming, and sleeping, which we referred to earlier. You want to make a total judgment about Reality based on a denial of a principal part of the content of your experiencing even the dominant part.

You want to make a kind of waking state affirmation also, of physicality, of materiality, as if it is the overriding factor. But the Vedantins say you don’t just experience the waking state. You have the same experience as the dream state and the sleep state. You’re the one who’s underneath all those three. it’s characteristics are apparent in all three cases. They change, but you are the something that is the same whichever of those states arises. So that is Reality.

There are forms apparent to the senses and so forth, yes, but you cant just speak of that when there’s all of this else. How can there just be materiality if you’re not the body-mind? And you know you’re not. In the waking state you feel you’re the body, but you’re the same one in the dream state or the sleep state. You do not have the actual experience of being the body your presumption about it, essentially in the waking state. But your experience, looked at totally, is not one of being the body. Some appearance that suggests that is in one of those states but not in the other two. Certainly not in deep sleep. And yet you’re that one as well.

So if you simply looked at the normal experiences of daily life, particularly in these cycles it was the point of view of that school of Vedanta that it should convict you of error and Enlighten you. If you were the body-mind in the waking state, you would never sleep or dream. But you know that you dream, you sleep. You know yourself in those terms. If you know you do all three, then you know you’re something that’s not any of them, something prior to them Consciousness.

So this Vedantic analysis is intended to prove to you that your Position is Consciousness, and it’s not the body-mind or any psycho-physical form, because all of these are changed or abandoned in the normal passage through the three daily states.

So it was intended that this be enough to Establish the Witness at least that “consideration” entered into again and again. That was the intent, at any rate. But it is basically just again and again done that way, as you can do any time. it’s again and again. it’s not just, “You do that, you Realize that, and that’s that”.

So all these doings that are supposed to be directly about Establishing the Witness-Position are not the way to Realize the Witness-Position. They are means to help you to “Locate” It, see that it’s so. But you have to do the sadhana to Realize it. And the sadhana is not simply an intention to be Established in the Witness or ask your self “Isn’t it true. . .” No, it’s the process I’ve described to you, which allows, by Grace, the spontaneous Awakening in that Place, rather than become an intention directed at that Event which you just repeat over and over again because you’re not in the Position of the Witness in the means you used to “Locate” It. You used a reorientation of attention in the body-mind to “Locate” It or suggest It to yourself. So it’s established by that and held in place by that. it’s not It, in any final sense. So it is not continued. It is interrupted by re-identification with the body-mind.

So the way to Realize It is this Way, which I wont describe again having done it so much. It Realizes the Witness Where you Stand, instead of by means of the body-mind. So you are just the Witness, but if you use the body-mind to “Locate” it, then you still are established there. it’s movements otherwise will capture you again. You realized the Witness because the body-mind let you do it, parented you even. You see? it’s rather infantile, as compared to the actual direct Realization, in place.

It suddenly becomes obvious that that is simply the case. it’s not that you used some words with yourself to locate it.

So it doesn’t depend on the body-mind for it’s continuation, and that’s why the true Awakening doesn’t stop. But it does occur in the midst of an investigation in the process of Contemplation. So it is the sudden Realizing of attention, the feeling of relatedness, in your view, in yourself. Or, in other words, you Realize Where you Stand. You’re not attention, not the body-mind. But you don’t use the body-mind to get to this Stand. It just suddenly dawns, essentially it dawns, in this instant where experiencing is reduced to attention or the feeling of relatedness not a, in other words, complex situation, but that simplicity.

And suddenly you Realize it is in Consciousness and always was. All of this endeavor to locate the Self or to Realize the Real Condition was happening in the Condition itself but was forgotten. So it seemed to you you had to seek it. But all the while you’re standing there simply as Consciousness Itself, not noticing yourself because you’re enamored of this reflection, you see? Not aware of your own position.

So in spite of this not noticing it yet, all of your experiencing moment-to-moment is in Consciousness. Whatever the object may appear, however the object may appear, you’re conscious of it. So Consciousness is coincident with this appearance, and that’s the only form in which you have experience. That is your only knowledge of Reality.

The coincidence of Consciousness in form is your experience. But even by means of your education, you are caused to focus on the objects as if you are experiencing them as an independent Reality apart from yourself. That’s your education, you see? Scientific materialism is a version of all that, or the cultural circumstance of all that, ultimately.

So you are asked to deny your real experience, your actual experience. it’s just another belief to be affirmed without discriminative investigation. You don’t experience mere material. You don’t experience things independent. Your entire “consideration” of Reality takes place in the context of being Consciousness, and you don’t see things otherwise. They are always a conscious event that cant be differentiated from Consciousness. The entire thing is something of which you are aware. Right?

DEVOTEES: Right.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: So Consciousness is a fundamental element of Reality, not to be denied. But what is the paradox of this all about?

Its Reality coincident with the objects, so it is as much there to be “considered” as the object part. Enter into that most profoundly and you discover that all of existence arises in Consciousness not the separate awareness of the individual but in Consciousness Itself, which is the actual Situation of the apparent individual.

Its not that all of this is a strange material conjunction and Consciousness is some sort of part of the works in there so the machine can do it’s thing. it’s not that Consciousness basically can just be discounted because really all there is is material force and form. No, it is an inherent element of Reality and upon investigation proves itself to be the Reality.

Consciousness is how you become aware that you are combined with everything and non-separate, identical to Consciousness Itself. So if you never see the world as anything but an event in Consciousness, why do you presume that the world is anything but an event in Consciousness? It sounds like maybe it’s naive or something, and you don’t feel like it could possibly be that straightforward. But you’re actually, every moment, experiencing it the way it really is but you’re just denying it.

I mean, that’s your experience. Why don’t you just tell everybody? Why doesn’t everybody act on the basis of that’s the way it is? Consciousness is the Reality in which events are arising. You never experience anything except as an event in Consciousness, so it’s not just material existence it’s Consciousness. And there’s a certain quality to these appearances now perceived which could be “considered”. But if this is your experience, why cant you presume that it’s Reality? Why do you imagine you’re playing a trick on yourself and it’s not just the way it obviously plain old is? And then you go through all this convoluted scientific materialistic stuff to try and prove the assertion that there’s independent existence to materiality. Whereas it’s patently clear in your experience that so-called materiality is an event in Consciousness, an apparent modification of Consciousness. That’s how you experience it.

Why do you think you have to become a genius to figure it all out when it’s just the way it is? You have the experience of it right now in every moment. You never have any other experience.

Strangely enough you doubt it, though, because of your attachment to the physical and fear about it all. You know it’s threatened, so you begin to doubt Consciousness. You begin to think that Consciousness depends on the body continuing. it’s just a sort of offshoot of the body or reflection of it the real event is the body. Consciousness is some threatened “you” who is just a sort of a mirage riding on a body, you see.

You attribute the purpose of existence to the form rather than to the “I”. How could there be form without “I”? How can there be form without Consciousness? In what? For what?

So Consciousness Itself is the principle of all of your experience waking, dreaming and sleeping. But it is Prior to them all, the Witness of them all, unlike them all. And that is merely the Witness. it’s the principle of all your experiencing, of existence itself. it’s patently obvious, but you want to argue otherwise. And doing so you deny your own direct experience. Reality Itself, patently obvious, is certainly Consciousness. And there’s this mysterious conjunction within it which you are struggling with. But it’s never not about Consciousness.

DEVOTEE: Right.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: That is always the primary factor and the wonder about all these associations.

The house is for the host.

The “I” is the reason.

What is behind the “I”?

Its because it arises in That that it arises at all.

Consciousness Itself is also a sea of Energy.

Not merely Consciousness is aware of Energy. It is Energy.

The One Reality has the characteristic of Energy and of Consciousness, and of Self-Existence, Self-Radiance, and of Love-Bliss.

What else, then?

If the Witness isn’t Reality, then what is it for?

Think the body decided it needed Consciousness to run itself and then it invented Consciousness? [laughter] That’s the materialistic theory.

Anything else?

Consciousness is the only matter of interest. You’re not concerned about the world, anyway. You’re concerned about your self, Consciousness, just trying to get it on for the delight of the Big C.