Developmental Signs in The Way of The Heart – The Torque of Attention – Adi Da Samraj






The following is an edited (see
White
and Orange Project
)
excerpt from “The Torque of Attention” and
The
Brightening Way Talk Series
,
The Yajna Discourses of Santosha of Adi Da Samraj,
(1995-1996), Volume 1, Number 8.

 

A Gathering “Consideration” with
Beloved Adi Da Samraj
in the Manner of Flowers on January 13, 1996

 

Keep Focused and
Become Less Interested in the Baggage

 

Table of Contents 

Hearing
Fundamental
Organs or Centers Associated with Each
Stage

Frontal
Yoga

Fourth
Stage

Egoic
Yoga

The
Spiritual Process

Relaxing,
Balancing, Opening and Purifying

Discrimination
A
Constant Consideration

You
Could Try and Do This On Your Own

Subtle
Experience

The
Search

Waiting
for the Prince

Close
but No Cigar

You’re
Always in the Right Position

Traditional
Practices

The
Way of The Heart

No
Struggle, Equanimity

The
First Stroke

Secondary
Effects

Body
Building and Spiritual
Experiences

You
Have to be Serious about Your
Situation

 

Hearing

DEVOTEE : Beloved?

ADI DA SAMRAJ: Mm-hm.

DEVOTEE: I’ve just felt over the
last several days, as a result of Your Work and Revelation
of Your Self to us in these gatherings, just this profound
attraction to the “
Perfect
Practice
“, and even though I
know I’m still in the listening position, and not capable of
practicing that, I feel profoundly drawn to that. Even at
the level where I feel like maybe I’m making the error of
not wanting to stay with the matter of Your similar
Admonition and Revelation of the
hearing
process
itself.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: Hearing?

DEVOTEE: The hearing process itself.
I guess it’s more of a confession that I feel inclined to
bypass that matter of hearing, because, even though I know
it’s not in any way….

ADI DA SAMRAJ: Well, perhaps you
imagine somehow in yourself that you can bypass
it.

DEVOTEES: Right.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: And that’s your sense
of the “Perfect Practice” and of the
Witness-Position
and so forth, insofar as you have located all of that in
this “consideration”, you may imagine that it is of the size
required for the “Perfect Practice”. But even if you made
these two presumptions, if you try to do the practice, you’d
quickly find that you just weren’t doing it, you see. So you
do have to examine your real practice.

Even so, what you’re suggesting
could be an aid to that real practice, keep it focused
toward what you’re being prepared for and less interested
then in adding baggage to it all. That’s it?

DEVOTEE: I just wanted to say that
in Your description of the hearing process that You’ve Given
us in the intensive, just the fact that You would make the
simple flip – at least in my understanding – to the fact
that the hearing process itself, or the
listening
process
to the point of
hearing, can be very focused and brief. In other words, the
dominant thing that you’ve been Revealing to us about the
practice is that it’s about
Ishta-Guru-Bhakti
Yoga
and that once the basic
foundation disciplines are in place, and the detail is in
place, it’s not a matter of spending a lot of time focusing
on that. It seems to us, by Your Grace, we can be drawn
quickly into the matter of hearing.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: Yes, well, it is a
reasonably short period of time. But we’ve covered that
also.

As I was suggesting on the phone, we
could talk about something entirely different. Everything
comes around to the Great “Consideration” ultimately, but we
don’t have to confine ourselves to specific notions, or
whatever, that relate to hearing or to the “Perfect
Practice”. We could talk about something entirely,
apparently, apart from all of that, that is just something
you have energy for, or some question about, or whatever it
may be. Because if you just fasten on this particular matter
we’ve been “considering”, without anything further in
yourself from which to generate questions or participate in
it, then it tends to be reduced to subject matter – and even
repetition, without any usefulness in the
repetition.

DEVOTEE: I did have a question from
the other night that – I don’t think I ever even asked the
question or conveyed my interest in it.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: Mm-hm.
What?

DEVOTEE: This matter of the
evolutionary structure of the body-mind, and the
“consideration” of the fact that, as you grow in the
process, literal organs actually grow – a process in which
You have said the growing being identifies with principle
sources of pleasure and fulfillment, in the first three
stages of life and then . . .

ADI DA SAMRAJ: And the same on from
there.

DEVOTEE: Right, and that the
ultimate organ that becomes the focus of your absorption and
pleasure is
Amrita
Nadi
. And I was just
wondering if You could speak about the organs in terms of
the development of the process in the five
stages.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: I could.
[laughter] I believe you brought this up the other
night, and just focused on some organs having to do with the
first three stages of life -neurosis.

DEVOTEES: Right. Only
two.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: He couldn’t remember
the genitals. [laughter]

DEVOTEE: I said that it seemed like
the middle heart would be the next organ that would
awaken.

Table of
Contents

Fundamental
Organs or Centers Associated with Each Stage

ADI DA SAMRAJ: Well, if you notice
in The Dawn Horse Testament, particularly, elsewhere as
well, I do describe the stages and the process in terms of
such things – particularly fundamental organs or centers
associated with each stage, and also including then the
first three stages of life in their natural development. In
the fifth stage, for instance, the brain core, the Ajna
door to the crown
and so on.

Frontal
Yoga – Fourth Stage

The frontal Yoga is associated with
the left side of the heart, but also the
middle
. We’ve talked about the organs associated with
the pot-shaped, the lower body as a Yogic mechanism,
in which the bodily base is all connected and intact. But
there’s a kind of a pressure of living energy in the lower
body that makes it feel almost just like a skin-empty inside
otherwise, and somehow inflated with energy, and it even
feels like the air in your lungs goes right down to the base
of your body, you see.

So those are matters related to the
organs of the body. In this case, I was merely talking
about the physical features
. When the Spiritual Yoga is
done in the body from the egoic seeking point of view, for
the achievement of effects of one kind or another, then
there’s the focusing of received Transmission in the
body-mind itself – not only the gross organs, but the
subtler dimensions also. So that, in effect, the
Spiritualization of the various organs in the Circle
and so forth, is cultivated, and results in all those areas
are pursued, and held on to, and mulled over, and so on.
Things like visions and such become cultivated also – subtle
phenomena. Perhaps even abilities in the physical that come
from the energization of the internal subtle
mechanisms.

Egoic
Yoga

So when there is that cultivation of
Spiritual Energy by the body-mind for the sake of egoic or
psycho-physical development, then of course especially you
see the various potential organ and body changes and all the
rest of it associated with those developments. You see them
in My Case of course, but in the case of devotees, it’s
not necessarily going to develop like that because the
Spiritual practice is founded on hearing
, and therefore
the process is always about direct ego-transcendence, rather
than seeking or otherwise clinging to phenomenal
appearances, even the kind of things that are generated by
Spiritual “conductivity”.

So if those processes are not
themselves cultivated, then the effects associated with them
are not going to be developed. Each devotee is different.
The mechanics are set up differently, and so on, so there
will be some people who will show evidence of more
involvement in the effects of My Spiritual Transmission, and
some more of those developments in the body-mind may occur
then.

Generally speaking though, or in the
general case, even though there are various kinds of effects
in the body-mind that would be experienced. It is generally
the case with devotees that there’s some of that, but it’s
not cultivated, it’s not the purpose of the practice.
Always in every moment it is direct transcendence of egoity
in Communion with Me, rather than focusing on the effects.
That’s the sadhana.

Table of
Contents

The
Spiritual Process

The Spiritual process then is
basically finding Me, recognizing Me Spiritually – being,
through the hearing exercise and Ishta-Guru-Bhakti
Yoga
, altogether fully entered into Communion with Me,
not fascinated with effects and so forth, although some
things are purified and there are some noticings. So the
Spiritual process is really this: See Me, and take up the
“Perfect Practice”. You see, it’s very direct. If you are
entered into direct locating of Me, Communion with Me,
rather than registering the effects, you find you are
drawn to My Position, you are Attracted into My
Position
. Not just standing off and getting Shined on.
You are Absorbed in Me. You become right-heart directed,
spontaneously.

Relaxing,
Balancing, Opening and Purifying

That being the case, then, speaking
generally of devotees, the process is a simple one. Some
purifications, some this and that, but fundamentally it is a
matter of simply relaxing, balancing, opening to some
degree, as necessary, purifying the Circle, rather than
developing it, rather than dwelling on any center and so
forth as a fixed intention of practice. There is simply this
Attractedness into
Samadhi,
Spiritual Communion with Me, founded on self-transcendence
through hearing.

Discrimination

So yes, there will be Yogic signs in
the body, since there is that Force associated with the
practice and you are breathing Me. But compared to how it
could be if you developed it intentionally, the actual
development of the organs in remarkable ways won’t in
general be the case. I mean, you could do all that, like you
could go to medical school tomorrow and get a degree and
become a doctor. You could do all kinds of things that
you’re not doing now. But as My devotee you’re here to
exercise your discrimination, you see. “What is fruitful,
what is Happiness, what is the Way that supports it, that
serves its Realization? Is this a wrong course or right
course? Is this distraction, is this something to follow?”
It’s
always discrimination
,
always a profound sensitivity to the self-contraction and
its effects, and the whole mechanism of bondage. Sensitivity
to all that is fundamental to the Way of the Heart. So it’s
not just a gleeful good feeling, “come and get your
Kundalini”, just feeling energies and letting it rip-without
any fundamental focus in ego-surrender, ego-transcendence,
without any true discrimination relative to what you’re up
to.

That’s a religious self-indulgence
of a kind, because it’s ego-based, just as much founded in
the
self-contraction
as anything else you might do. So you could take a long time
in the Spiritual stages – bit by bit, yes Communing with Me,
but dwelling on all the effects, and letting them build, and
becoming exaggerated with them, and carrying on with all
that, even right on through the fifth stage of life. You
could do that. All of those things occurred in My own Case,
you see?

Table of
Contents

A Constant
Consideration

But in My own Case, it was a
constant “consideration” – Is this it? Is this fruitful?
Constantly examining it, seeing its limitations. And after
all, when it came down to it, I didn’t spend any years or
extended time in the side trips. It was all very direct. I
had to examine everything to establish that direct Way, but
devotees need not – as if they have no Guru, no Revelation.
They need not, or they should not, just blithely enter into
developing experience.

You Could
Try and Do This On Your Own

So if you wanted all kinds of Yogic
signs, body signs, psychic signs of a Spiritual nature, all
that – well, this is of course possible. There’s many
requirements even to do that – ultimately requires someone
exceptional for all of that to be developed fully, and
exceptional Grace, or Transmission altogether. But it would
take a lot of time, you would be totally occupied with it –
which is making use of the ego-method, indulging in
experience. Fundamentally it’s not any different indulging
in experience in the subtler domain of possible experience
than it is in the gross. Yes, different objects, but it’s
the same bondage, it’s the same structure of bondage. You
see how readily you’ve all not only gotten bound in the
gross dimension of existence, but have even continued to
develop it further in My Company, become distracted by all
kinds of things, essentially gross, over the years. And you
see how years later you’re still working on the same
foundation.

Subtle
Experience

Well, the same kind of thing happens
when the subtler dimension of experience is opened and
magnified hugely. An intense desiring motive occurs there, a
kind of subtler counterpart to lust, you see it’s very
distracting. You get distracted by pleasurable associations
in the physical – what makes you think you wouldn’t likewise
be distracted in the subtle? The subtle is basically the
subtle side, the energy side, of the senses, and of the
faculties generally. So it’s still about the same structure
of existence, it’s just on a subtler, so to speak more
interior, level of it. And certainly while alive there’s
still some physical associations.

There are, therefore, pleasures
associated with the subtle tour of body-mind, but you feel
the same as you do in the gross tour. I mean, you have
extraordinary days where you feel extraordinarily well in
the gross dimension. So there are those days in the subtle
search, where you have a good day, you know?
[laughter]

DEVOTEE: A good trip
today.

Table of
Contents

The
Search

ADI DA SAMRAJ: Yes, some really
delightful visions and you feel good, and you go into
Samadhis perhaps a little bit. But the next day, you’re in
there grinding away at it, trying to get up enough Shakti to
even make your breath even. [laughter]

So in other words you’re always
working on the mechanism, on its limitations, you’re always
possessed by your search, your dis-ease then. And sometimes
there are breakthroughs, but they’re always temporary.
Altogether the course is another version of struggle like
what you do in the gross play of the world. And, yes, there
are high attainments in it certainly – they are not eternal.
But there are such things, other planes. There is transition
to such planes – while alive and after death. This is
certainly possible, but it is not that the Truth has been
Realized. It’s temporary, as I said. It has certain kinds of
limitations of it’s own. It’s still fundamentally rooted in
the dis-ease of the ego, which must constantly be gone
beyond. Contemplative states are achieved, this and that is
achieved, as a temporary matter.

Waiting for
the Prince

But all of the beings there, thus
more sensitized, long for release in their celestial
palaces. They are like brides in a tower, waiting for the
Prince. Therefore, they don’t exactly luxuriate in their
situation. Their motion toward Contemplation is profound, a
profound tapas. Even having done what was necessary to
achieve a plane of delights, their longing is so profound,
it’s all ashes in their mouth. It’s all nothing to them, you
see. It’s only to those who have not yet arrived that this
looks like paradise. When you get there so unsheathed, so
sensitized to the Divine Potential -and yet still sitting on
that knot of separateness? So it’s in those high planes
where the greatest longing is, and the least distractedness.
Whereas from the lower dimensional point of view you think,
if you could only get into that situation – you know, like
politicians say, “If you could just give people food and
housing and so forth, then they will live the happy life,”
and so on. More is required.

It’s when you actually get into such
a situation that that’s not enough. And there’s great
striving there. It’s not automatic that they go to
God-Realization always. And some just descend again. It’s
too close and too agonizing perhaps. So these are not final
attainments. The planes themselves pass, and change all the
while, and the Realization is not satisfactory yet. High,
but not finished.

Table of
Contents

Close but No
Cigar

Well, what’s the difference between
that and, while alive, Realizing conditional Nirvikalpa
Samadhi and seeing that it is not finished? You see, it is
the same state -achieved temporarily there as it might be
achieved temporarily, and on and on again, through effort
elsewhere. So all of the wisdom is potential in the human
situation. You need not go elsewhere to Realize it. Of
course, many do, even using subtle means, serve their
purposes in the gross plane, and others serve them in the
subtle plane. These are karmic entities doing karmic things.
All in need, all seeking. All the planes are dual, made of
opposites. They all have their limitations.

You’re
Always in the Right Position

So the Way is to Realize the Truth
of the world, the Truth of the conditional domain, the
Cosmic Domain – rather than commit yourselves to the Cosmic
Domain itself. You’re associated with conditional things,
therefore you’re in exactly the right position. You can use
those things as means of God-Realization. You need not look
for other things. Instead of seeking, you should put your
place in order where you are, and enter into this
heart-seriousness, going beyond egoity, with Me.

Until you find out and Realize that
Truth, you’re subject to many illusions and less-than-Truth
motives, and you are easily stimulated by all kinds of
means. Those who Realize greatly are capable of one-pointed
concentration. They are immovable, fundamentally. They don’t
suffer that distractedness that constantly draws the
apparent being into entanglements, adventures without a
great end.

Distraction is bewilderment, you
see? This is why it is, in the traditions, called “Maya” and
such – even called a place of evil in some traditions. It’s
constantly about bondage. You’re bewildered, can’t figure it
out, it always ends in death – every cycle. It’s possible to
become so absorbed in your desiring in the indulgences, that
you cease to be serious altogether, for a time, and become
more and more profoundly degraded, hardly even noticing
it.

All desire is seeking. Just as
you’ve discovered about the motions of mind in our
conversations here, how they distract you from the Witness
and so on. Yes, there are thoughts in life, but there’s a
lot of action, and action is associated with thinking, but
through the medium of desire – or desire is even the leading
force in it and mind or thoughts play around it. So you also
must notice then how the mechanism of desire binds you,
dislocates you from the fundamental Position.

So any indulgence in the motion of
attention exploits the same mechanism of dislocation from
the Source-Position.

Table of
Contents

Traditional
Practices

In general, the traditional
practices involve the controlling of attention, controlling
of all motion from the Source, away from the Source, however
that is conceived. Since it’s all one mechanism, various
traditions engage in their pursuits by exploiting one or the
other of the leading faculties – and thereby hope to control
the rest. I’ve talked to you about the four principle
faculties to constantly be turning to Me, forgetting content
and feeling beyond it in Communion with Me: The body,
everything called emotion, the mind, which is epitomized as
attention, and the breath. All the traditional Yogas include
approaches that exploit one or the other of those, or
perhaps a combination of them sometimes, in order to control
all of them. It’s generally felt if you can control one, you
do in fact effectively control the others. So there are many
Yogas which exploit one or another of these capabilities
associated with these faculties. But, of course, that also
tends to become a dead end in itself and develops
modifications which then themselves become the basis for
seeking.

The Way
of The Heart

So in this Way that I have given
you, the faculties – the content of the faculties, the
functioning of the faculties in the context of the body-mind
– are all simply turned to Me, rather than exploiting the
content and so on. In each moment of Ishta-Guru-Bhakti Yoga,
you’re turning these faculties to Me instead, surrendering
through these faculties, forgetting the content of the
faculties, the distractions of body, emotion, mind, and
breath. And, in that forgetting, Contemplating Me, entering
into fullest Contemplation or profound absorptive
Contemplation. And by disregarding the content, you weaken
it, you are less bound to it. It progressively relaxes, it’s
purified, disappears from non-use – because it’s part of
that Law I’ve told you about, whatever you meditate on you
become. But if you cease to look on that which you’ve
become, turn the faculties in Communion beyond, then the
meditation keeping it in place relaxes. You achieve
wholeness, or another kind of wholeness or structural
arrangement, not requiring those things which you’re
disregarding. And you find a fullness and well-being in that
new adjustment, which hasn’t made use of these binding
qualities, and that’s how they become thoroughly
obsolete.

Its only in your emptiness or
dis-ease that you meditate on things, so to speak – desire
them or not seek them and so forth, and become entangled in
them. But if you can forget about them long enough to
establish a new wholeness, a wholeness that doesn’t include
those aberrating factors, then they’re truly obsolete,
because you already have that fullness which you otherwise
would look to achieve by those involvements. So you don’t
need them. They’re not a need in you. They’re not about
desiring.

Table of
Contents

No
Stuggle, Equanimity

That’s what happens when it gets
fully that way, but even in the meantime there are degrees
of purification and relaxation of the binding tendencies,
and you enjoy more discrimination about them and discipline
is effective more readily, simply. Eventually it’s not a
struggle at all. But when there is this true, fully
established equanimity, there’s also great concentration,
freedom of energy and attention, and the previous
adaptations that were binding have been made obsolete by
non-use, through discipline, through Ishta-Guru-Bhakti Yoga,
all of it. So you are full, whole, not seeking, the
body-mind in a state of equanimity. You see how you’ve
become disentangled. So that’s what the original period of
the process is about. And as it moves into the Spiritual
dimension of the exercise, it Realizes Spiritual equanimity,
a fullness unagitated.

And that fullness, of course, is
especially magnified in the profoundest exercise, in
meditation and so on. But when you’ve entered into that
sphere of equanimity – no longer agitated such that your
practice is undermined – it’s then that you are presenting
yourself, or established in equanimity and in Communion with
Me, such that energy and attention can become directly
focused in the right side of the heart. Attention not
agitated, attention can be transcended directly.

If attention is simply moving about,
you’re always noticing its objects. But if that fitfulness
relaxes, you can be sensitive to attention itself, because
it’s steady and doesn’t just jump to objects. It has a
certain kind of equanimity itself, such that attention can
be comprehended. And it’s the last thing in the space –
everything is epitomized as attention. When it is found in
the Self-Condition, in Consciousness Itself, it’s something
like the hearing matter. You’re in the position of that
first contraction. In fact it is the hearing matter, but
exercised at this later stage. It’s like the original
hearing understanding, because you suddenly grasp it – the
self-contraction and the ability to feel beyond
it.

Table of
Contents

The First
Stroke

So in this noticing and equanimity,
this noticing of attention is the first stroke, really. It
is the feeling of relatedness, the feeling of separateness.
It is the root-disturbance, but you’re feeling beyond it.
But yet you notice this is a sensation in the midst of
Consciousness Itself, an apparition there. Suddenly you
become aware of the Self-Field in Which that primary thought
or gesture is arising. So this shift, in other words, is
from being identified with attention, by focusing on it, to
being identified with the Consciousness in Which it’s
appearing.

So that is the basic event in which
there is a transition to the Witness-Position. It’s not that
it’s just an idea you study in My Teaching, and someday it
happens. This is the process, you see. It is simply a matter
of suddenly Realizing that attention – yes, anything arising
– is simply within the sphere of Consciousness, and that
That’s Where you are. That’s What you are. You have yet to
Realize altogether What it is, but it’s clear that That is
the Position in every moment of experiencing. And all
experiencing is of fundamentally the same nature – whether
it’s gross, at the level of the body and its relations, or
deeply interior, or at the level of attention
itself.

Instead of that fitful
re-identification with attention and the whole cycle that
goes beyond it, there’s an inherent dwelling in the Position
of Consciousness Prior to all of that. And whenever
attention and all of its following reappears, the state of
Consciousness Itself is clearly the case. Every moment then
becomes, so to speak, meditation on this Sphere that is
Consciousness, this Depth, this Condition which you’re
always in. But you are, like a child pressing its face in
the window looking into a house, all kinds of absorbed in
the sensations of all of this entanglement, and never feel,
enter into, profound identification with the State you’re
already in.

So, Realizing the Witness is just at
that moment, just beginning, like taking your face off the
window. You sort of stand back. It’s there, but you’re not
dwelling on it, not attached to it through the mechanism of
attention. And from then you enter deeply into the feeling
acceptance of that Well, that Domain, in which I am
Non-separately There, Attractive to you, drawing you into
that Depth. That’s the Nature of the Spiritual process of
the “Perfect Practice”. And I am that Very Consciousness
Itself, which you’ve Realized non-“differently”, by Standing
in My Place -in the Transcendental Position Prior to the
body-mind.

Table of
Contents

Secondary
Effects – Body Building and Spiritual
Experiences

So that’s the nature of the Way of
the Heart. The question that was asked about developmental
signs in the body-mind, including the very organs of the
body-mind and such, well, I’ve essentially covered it, and
this is in My Teaching already. But it is entirely
secondary. It’s not cultivated in the Way of the Heart. It’s
not the goal of the Way of the Heart. So it’s really about
different matters than the Way of the Heart, at least in its
fundamental nature, is about.

I mean, you could get a bunch of
body-building magazines and see the results and the
physiques of the people shown there and decide to start
engaging in an intensive program of body-building so that
you can get to look like that. There’s a lot of development
of organs in that. [soft laughter] But you’d have to
almost entirely devote your life to it – to do it like it
looks in the magazines, you see. And what’s – [Beloved
chuckles.] what difference does it make anyway?
[laughter] It’s just something to do, you see. Well,
the same with the possible desiring and choosing of things
subtler than the gross world, or the gross entanglements of
the body. It’s the same motive, same mechanism, you
see?

You could, by a long course of
discipline and preparation and so forth, if you found the
right contacts, put the body in a position to be steadily
conducting an immense cosmic force, and you could develop
every function, every center, every potential for vision and
experiencing, potentially. And it would be very difficult,
but you could choose to devote your existence to that. And
having done so, it doesn’t make any difference. So what?
It’s just like doing body-building. Maybe you can amuse
yourself with it for a while, but it doesn’t change anything
to do it or achieve it, you see. It doesn’t change anything
fundamental or profound.

So Spiritual experiences are
superficial, like body-building, and they’re based on the
glorification of the ego, the separate person. It’s not easy
to do, and even if you do it, things quickly start falling
apart again. If you don’t keep lifting those weights, the
body loses its definition. You’ve got to keep pressing on
those subtle exercises there, you know, to develop
otherwise. And there’s only a relatively small likelihood of
any great achievement with it anyway. Just like very few
really develop their physique good enough to get in the
magazines.

Table of
Contents

You Have to
be Serious about Your Situation

But you have to be really serious
about your bondage and the course beyond it and so forth –
be really full of the true signs of this Way – to be that
direct and clear about it such that you waste no time in the
side-shows, gross or subtle. If everyone gets distracted in
this or that or the other way through their desiring, in
this Way you must practice for real and gain the
discrimination and the capability and the Grace of
Contemplation to release your search.

You see, there is a certain amount
of fun and pleasure in conditional domains. One can enjoy,
up to a point-never utterly beyond fear and anxiety and
limitation and mortality. [laughter] But you can be
amused and take pleasure in various kinds of self-indulgence
and so forth. This is why you must exercise yourself more
profoundly from the center, at the center, and with real
discrimination, real self-understanding -because you can be
very easily seduced by your entanglements and associations,
and lose the thread.

But you also must understand this is
not an ascetical Way that just mechanically dissociates from
pleasure or pain. We’ve compared this Way to the Tantric
tradition – could compare it to other traditions too that
have, not an ascetical approach, that just cut things away,
but an approach full of wisdom and discrimination, that,
even while associated with such things, conforms them to the
Greater Purpose.

Still, some can choose to do it even
more simply. They can be celibate renunciates and such, if
they have the disposition for it. It should make things
simpler, give more time and energy and attention for the
serious core of practice, and the “bonding” entanglements
and all the rest are not there, at least as much as they
would be in the situation of maintaining intimacy and so on.
So that certainly is an option. Some people are involving
themselves in that.

A large number of others, I guess
the highest percentage of devotees, are disciplining but
maintaining ordinary life-circumstances. Of course, when
they don’t quite properly or effectively discipline it, then
their practice becomes mediocre.

Top of
Page

Table of
Contents

Further
Study
:

The original talk and more “The
Torque of Attention” from
The
Brightening Way Talk Series

The Yajna Discourses of Santosha, Adi Da (1995-1996), Volume
1, Number 8.