The Torque of Attention – Adi Da Samraj – Yajna Discoures of Santosha Adi Da

 

What were we just talking about?

DEVOTEE: Being attached to the body-mind.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: Yes, it’s not about Me perpetuating the body-mind. It was a necessary Work. But what I’m Revealing to you is the transcendence of it. So why should there be any intention to perpetuate the act. I’m always urgent about it, and Work to cover everything, waste no time.

So I don’t stop Working. it’s impossible to have a vacation.

So, do you imagine I’m going to give you My fullest and right Revelation by choosing to perpetuate the very thing I Call you to transcend? It will not be demonstrated that way. You see? Because that is so, know you must Realize.

[silence]

So I don’t have to leave anything behind to be means. The entire Cosmic Mandala is My means. And I am the Means Itself, and What is, Who is to be Realized.

So it’s not by leaving anything behind but by Demonstrating it Most Perfectly that I Give you My fullest Revelation. Hm? [silence]

You give up the body because the Samadhi is so good.

[silence]

Is that the true color of that orange flower there? This is not dyed?

FEMALE DEVOTEE: That is the natural color.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: But sometimes they are dyed? They look like an odd color, somehow so uniform.

FEMALE DEVOTEE: I think that’s how they grow.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: So you think this might be it’s true color?

DEVOTEE: I think so.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: Well, it’s amazingly uniform.

DEVOTEE: it’s beautiful.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: Sort of the quality of a marigold, I guess. Especially in sunlight it might seem to glow.

And that bush did that to attract a bug.

Do you think the plant does that?

Its a machine, but not the root of it.

And that bush didn’t grow that flower itself any more than you grew your own genitals. It did it the same way, because it’s patterned not only without, but within altogether patterned, in a scheme of infinite unity. In that pattern containing all, is the root of physical appearances. It is the basic governor of how appearances appear. But you know that already. Right?

DEVOTEE: Yes, Lord.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: Overall life is sorrowful and depressing.

DEVOTEE: Yes.

ADI DA SAMRAJ What else?

DEVOTEE: Beloved, the . . .

ADI DA SAMRAJ: I was just noticing Navaneeta. Probably her least favorite subject of any discussion is the passing of This Body. [laughter] And she’s engaged in the “Perfect Practice”, and still has this pattern in mind of fear, sorrow, and depression about all that kind of business. So you cant go any further or deeper than youve gone, as I’ve told you so many times, till you go beyond that. The Witness doesn’t know any of that.

So it’s a kind of mechanical maintenance of an association with mind. But it affects not only the meditation, but the uses of it in life. it’s not that you have to get to like death and it’s results in the human sphere and so on. it’s that you must Realize the Position that is Prior to it, and hold to It, and not the mind forms.

There’s no concern in the Self, no death, no separation. That is what’s to be transcended. What epitomizes more this identification with egoity in the body-mind than this sorrowful clinging-to-the-threat-of-death stuff? What’s the point of the process if you’re going to cling to such a notion, or a position in which that’s your concern? That’s what there is to be transcended. There’s no ultimate religious message that allows for anything but that.

You cannot get a perfect circumstance in the body-mind. As soon as you get something you like, you want to cling to it. That’s the ego-game. And yet that’s not merely to be snuffed out it’s that it is a trouble. You enter into all of this deeply to Realize the Condition that is Prior to it. Then the Yoga is Identification with That, not with the body-mind. But if you do that, it changes even the quality of mind. You see right through it.

You cant have your Vivekananda and Realize Him too. [laughter] I mean, if you consent to drop the Realizing for a while in order to do the having, it’s not permanent anyway. So it does not sound like the wisest course.

DEVOTEE: it’s Vivekananda’s birthday.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: When.

DEVOTEE: Today.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: Oh yes? How amusing. [laughter]

Dan, you were going to say something?

DEVOTEE: The description that Youve Given of conditional reality, the patterning, and how that expresses itself in the periphery of nature is completely different from the Darwinian approach. You would describe how it couldn’t possibly have happened just that way.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: Mmmmmm. Well, of course not. He was making observations at a physical level. That’s fine, they have their significance. But he wanted to make a total philosophy out of it. He wasn’t much of a philosopher. He was a good naturalist. He made some conclusions based on something he felt he was observing, clearly was observing. But that doesn’t mean he’s thereby equipped to account for the totality of existence! [laughter]

You look at everything from the point of view of the material body, you think that everything is material, just because you’re fastened on the body, and forgot to look deeper. it’s all this materialistic garbage. it’s just amateur-mindedness, pretends to be full of philosophy.

But what about it?

DEVOTEE: Well I was particularly in moments when I’m Contemplating You, and feeling You as the Divine Person . . .

ADI DA SAMRAJ: Well, what else is there to feel Me as? [laughter]

DEVOTEE: Nothing. And I wondered about the whole matter of this patterning of conditional existence, whether it’s influenced by Your Radiance.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: Yes. It is all made of It.

[silence]

Just imagine: Whatever you’re perceiving now, everything else exists every kind of possibility therefore, whatever two can make. Add a little fear and imagination, and it’s show time! [laughter]

DEVOTEE: Beloved, once I was driving with You in the Mercedes to Marin. And as we were driving through Middletown, I had this experience of feeling all of the life that was being animated in the houses that we were passing through.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: In Middletown?

DEVOTEE: Yeah. And it was an overwhelming experience to me. And I’ve often Contemplated the feeling that You Are, to feel everything that arises and to be perfectly just for You to I cant imagine, I cant comprehend the feeling that You Are to have all of that arising in You, and feeling all of it in Your Being, Perfectly in relationship to all of it, Loving and Blessing all of it.

DEVOTEE: Well, You are it.

DEVOTEE: You are it.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: Hm-hm.

DEVOTEE: So it feels better that way.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: Hm. [silence]

So, as you say, Who I Am, What I’m up to, has very little to do with this body-mind here.

[silence]

Another aspect of the Native Condition is It has no psyche.

DEVOTEE: Right.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: Well, you’re used to that as well. You see?

DEVOTEE: Yeah.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: No memory, self-identity based on memory, psycho-physical experiencing, no archetypes, no images, no thinking, no concepts, no language, no numbers.

DEVOTEE: Sounds like heaven. [laughter]

ADI DA SAMRAJ: it’s not confused with anything. You see? it’s not entangled in anything. But the “Perfect Practice” is about getting used to this accepting the Well altogether.

You’re used to having a psyche. So a kind of peripheral association remains. You come in and out of direct association, but it’s always there. You see? But not in your own Position it’s not there at all. So the more you are established in That, or It is magnified, it comes to the point where it’s utterly acceptable to have no psyche whatsoever no thought. Whereas in your common moments you are constantly dream-active, psyche-active, stimulating it constantly. it’s a kind of addiction. It just goes on and on and on. You wonder how to stop it, how to get some relaxation from it. But natively you have no such goings on at all.

So the “Perfect Practice” also is about growing out of being a body-mind outgrowing it.

You neither require nor imagine any associations whatsoever.

Fully Conscious, fully Awake.

That’s peace.

Another characteristic of the Native Condition inherent equanimity, Perfect “conductivity”, no stress or anxiety.

If you don’t establish yourself in that Position, you never refresh yourself, you never know this. You just come barely in touch with It sometimes, feel a little bit about It, but you’re not established as It. How can you allow yourself this luxury, if you don’t invest yourself in It? Remember It until you become so profound with It that It becomes proficient.

You don’t need a body-mind, you don’t need a psyche. Youve got to grow in that transcendence of it, but inherently it is not required. You’re demanding it in your body-mind effort, but you, yourself, do not require it, are not associated with it.

This Realization has to become wisdom and one-pointedness until you see the point arising in yourself, and have Translated into the Condition of Consciousness Itself. In some sense, then, to Awaken to the Witness is to be Translated into the Divine Domain. The final seventh stage Demonstration of It is still the same thing.

So if you can invest yourself, refresh yourself in That, you can invest yourself, refresh yourself with fearlessness, peace, and Bliss allow It to be a Shine that continues into your life, your “overall life” not by then attaching you more to your life, but by replacing that attachment with this Very Condition that is Native.

So It shines in your overall life, but It Liberates you from it.

[silence]

Sometime a moment will happen where you realize that you actually are about to die, the body-mind is about to die, you see?

DEVOTEE: I’m always amused, Lord, when somebody says, well, “He died in his sleep.” You know? No way. There’s that split second before he died.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: Maybe if he woke up.

But the time will come when that happens. You’re anticipating it and anxious about it, afraid of it, and always mulling on it. You have some sort of feeling of what that sensation maybe is going to be like. Already youve had some experiences of it, perhaps. But then it passed. The death didn’t occur. But a time will come when there is a moment of complete conviction that that event is about to happen. You all will experience it, and you all will have to deal with it.

And in that obviously very challenging moment, you will do what you are able to do about it. In other words, you’ll do what you have done already with this matter of conditional existence. You’ll have been in circumstances in life where you were afraid, or perhaps death was suggested, or whatever and in many lesser circumstances. Youve had to encounter, in other words, the frustration of self-will, and the experiencing of negativity, and threat and so forth.

So in the death process, when youve discovered that this is about to happen and there’s nothing to be done about it, you will use whatever youve used to that point to deal with the fundamental matter of threat, or egoic disturbance generally. So your manner or stage of practice will determine it.

But part of your practice is this “Perfect Practice” “consideration”, whether it was your formal practice or not up to that moment. So the death process can be such a circumstance that proves your practice most profoundly, and moves it beyond what it was. It becomes a conclusive sadhana perhaps, quickened profoundly by this event. So maybe, then the “Perfect Practice” a depth and then the “Perfect Practice” can be Realized by any devotee, potentially, in that event. Maybe not, but it is certainly possible if there is sufficient full exercise of sympathetic Identification with the Witness, and so on, with sufficient strength that everything else falling away It is resorted to.

So the death process can be such a Yoga, you see, of going beyond the limitations in your Yoga to date, leaping forward in the practice, into the “Perfect Practice”, because the death process is a kind of performance of all the aspects of sadhana that precede the “Perfect Practice”. But it does depend on your disposition. You will use what your disposition determines.

So the present physical passes, but the subtle part does not. It proceeds to gather around other associations as soon as it’s detached from the elemental, which focuses attention in the gross appearance. Sometimes in your life you may have entered into a deep state and had dreams or premonitory experiences or visions of one kind or another. Those are a sort of a breakthrough from the usual habit of the body-mind. In the death process, however, that gross body-mind in it’s gross habit ceases to be effective. So the subtle being, the mind, is not encapsulated, so to speak prevented by the brain, the nervous system from going beyond a certain point. So you enter into the dream world, the subtle realm. And what your experience will be is determined by many factors associated with the mechanics of your disposition.

DEVOTEE: Including other past karmas, Lord, as well?

ADI DA SAMRAJ: Mm-hm. Whatever is yet effective in the subtle dimension of the continuing personality.

DEVOTEE: Angelo Druda used to give a presentation on Easy Death, and one of the lines he used to have when he was describing when you’re going through the death process, and what you get attached to, what draws you back “DEVOTEE and I,” he said, “we went for a pot of sauce.” [laughter]

ADI DA SAMRAJ: [laughing] Tcha. [silence]

Its not all dreadful. There could be some difficulties, and they pass. it’s no more or less dreadful than human life. it’s the same old shit, in other words! [laughter]

DEVOTEE: [laughing] Does it ever stop? Yes it does.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: No, it doesn’t. But you can transcend it. But it never stops. So you have to transcend it.

[silence]

I’ve seen the whirring wheel that makes all shapes. I’ve seen what it looks like when it’s not associated with time. Everything is in it simultaneously.

DEVOTEE: it’s just light?

ADI DA SAMRAJ: Yes, it is certainly that, but it’s full of shapes.

DEVOTEE: Discernible even without time?

ADI DA SAMRAJ: No. They are so rapid, the mechanical event even as quick as a thought is too slow to comprehend it. So there’s maddening motion in it. Somehow you see shapes, divisions, whatnot, but you cant discern them. it’s just an endless flickering of shapes. It seems totally chaotic. it’s just a plastic, utterly meaningless everything in it, but rotated in on it and then folded in on it and mixed. It is chaos, endlessly changing, cannot be stopped. But there are other factors in it time, point of view. These results arise in it, and persist temporarily.

The Cosmic Mandala is a wheel of this sort. Time and place cause you to not notice it, it seems. So you keep imagining that this place is supposed to be justified on it’s own, and you’re supposed to perfect it somehow because you cant see deeper and feel the bondage in it. You think it’s necessary because you cant figure out the bondage. But you’re afraid and reactive, and so it becomes a more and more confused and difficult thing with it’s pleasures too, if you can manage it. But it’s just this whirl of enforced experience, in which you feel trapped, and struggling, then, to get out, or at least achieve some state within it that’s more tolerable.

All the non-humans acknowledge this. And all the wise have acknowledged it. it’s the bound who don’t notice it. You see? They cant see their way out of it. They’re so confused with it, entangled in it, and so full of the stress and search, and they don’t realize all the while they’re clinging harder and harder to it like the man pinching himself.

So the torment is in it’s ordinariness, not in your hallucination of hells. The mere fact of it, just as it is, is the torment. But that’s just the way it is in itself. That’s not Truth.

DEVOTEE: Right.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: But if you look at it in itself, that’s what it’s about. And, of course, being attached to it just as it appears is what you do. But it’s a fault. it’s not Reality. You must undo this fault, and recognize Reality.

So all the wise have said this. There is the Infinite, the Unborn, the Radiant, the Untouched, the Undying, the Divine, the Truth. All these different words Nirvana, and on and on, the One Self. All kinds of language has been used to point to what is beyond psycho-physical existence, and therefore beyond the suffering of conditional existence. This communication has been made by all the wise. And a serious examination of things, done by anyone they can become thus wise, given right help. You see?

So that which you fear is worthy of being feared. But you need not seek within it. The Truth, Reality Itself, is Always Already, and Free of this.

[silence]

I was just looking at this frog on the leaf again, thinking about some of the absurd drawings and pictures devotees make sometimes for fun. I remember seeing images drawn using frogs, because they’ve been associated with Me. When they want to show a frog meditating, they show him sitting up like you all do in the lotus pose and so on. [laughter] I mean, you don’t see frogs doing that so that’s why you presume they don’t meditate. This is what they do when they meditate. You see? [Beloved is gesturing to the small frog on leaf figurine he has had on his tray throughout the gatherings, given as a gift to him by a devotee.]

What else?

JULIA KNOX: I had a question, Beloved. In the first stage of the “Perfect Practice”, Your Admonition is to “Be Consciousness”. Do you Be Consciousness by standing as the feeling of relatedness?

ADI DA SAMRAJ: No. The feeling of relatedness is attention, the root self-contraction. The Witness is Prior to that, Prior to attention.

JULIA: If you allow the process to develop to the point where you are at the root of attention, isnt being at that place Standing beyond it?

ADI DA SAMRAJ: Not being at that place, but literally transcending it seeing, feeling it arising in the midst of Consciousness Itself, and Realizing that Consciousness Itself is your Position, Prior to attention, Prior to the feeling of relatedness, of separation, of difference, Prior to all the mechanics of the body-mind. To stand as attention is to observe, to watch, to be associated. The feeling of relatedness is the feeling that transcends the avoidance of relationship, or self-contraction. So the more you feel beyond self-contraction, the more you feel simply the feeling of relatedness, or the point of attention, feeling-attention, not contracted.

And that’s the last thing to notice. That point is arising in Consciousness. You Realize that That’s Where you Stand, in Consciousness not attention moving through the feeling of relatedness. You’re the Consciousness in Which that is arising. And That is the Position Prior, utterly Prior to the body-mind.

But the feeling of relatedness is the root of the body-mind, so it’s not meditation on that that is the Realization of the Witness. But the Witness is Realized when Consciousness is Realized to be Prior to the feeling of relatedness. It is that Depth before you register the feeling of relatedness, or move attention, generate attention, a point before that. You Stand before that Prior to it, have nothing to do with it. And it just vanishes from the view of Consciousness when you are Established in Consciousness Itself. Attention is forgotten in It.

JULIA: But in terms of refining the process to the point where you are feeling as the feeling of relatedness, in order to notice that that’s there at all, it seems to me that you have to be Standing behind it.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: Mm-hm. You Always Already are. But as the feeling of relatedness, as attention. That’s what you are. To move beyond all self-contraction, to be concentrated in the feeling of relatedness, is to notice the causal point, Prior to mental and physical operations, the point of attention, the point of feeling-attention. But it is specific, concentrated.

Where is that arising? In the View of Consciousness, in the Well of Consciousness. So yes, there may be the noticing of the feeling of relatedness, but this Awakening to the Self in Which it is arising is the transition to the Witness. The feeling of relatedness may be noticed in that. And then there’s this Awakening Standing Prior.

But merely noticing the feeling of relatedness, dwelling on it, is to rest in the heart-knot on the right, the knot of the heart on the right, the causal knot, the ego-root, separate “I”, attention, the feeling of relatedness, the feeling of separateness. it’s a fundamental, primitive sensation. Everything else comes from it. Realize that it is arising in Consciousness, and you Stand Prior to everything.

But it cant be done as an act of will. There is this sudden Awakening, in Communion with Me, feeling beyond self. Suddenly you get to the point where you cant feel beyond it. It is as “beyond” as feeling can feel but it is this point of the feeling of relatedness. Because it cant go any further, suddenly there’s the Realization of the Position in Which it’s arising. You see? But that cant happen as an act of will. It is an Awakening. It Awakens because you are in Me. It is a Realization of Me, of the total Reality, not merely an inner reality that’s personal.

But It is not Realized in it’s Fullness beyond separate person until there is the Immersion in that Well, accepting it’s Nature to the point of Most Perfect Awakening. But it’s not the Well that does it. I do it. I’m the One Realized, the One Spiritually Active in that Place.

So the Witness adjacent to the body-mind is the jumping off place, the holy jumping off place. You all know that story, right? I have to tell that story again?

DEVOTEE: Oh. Well. it’s good one.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: it’s a story My father used to tell Me. My father used to tell little stories or jokes, some of them repetitively. I don’t mean every five minutes, but there were some stories that I would hear him tell over and over again over the years. He must have learned them when he was young, a boy or something, whenever. So one of them, for whatever reason he told Me this, or anybody else, was a story about a man of means who wanted to hire a chauffeur. He put an ad in the newspaper and interviewed the men, in this case, who showed up to apply for the job, interviewed them personally, and then he would ask them to take him for a drive to show their skill. And they would drive out from the mansion into the main road. Came along to a point where the road goes right up next to a cliff edge. And just as they would approach, in each case, with each of these applicants, whenever they would approach this curve out toward the cliff edge, he would ask the man to stop, and look forward there at the road. And he said, “If I were to hire you as my chauffeur, and we were driving here, how close would you get to the edge of that road up front there?”

He did this each time. The first time he did it, the man said My father always used to say “boss” when he told this story “Boss, I could come within two feet of the edge of that road.” Well, he said, “Thank you very much,” and had him drive him back to the house, and said, “You’ll be hearing from me if I’m interested in giving you the position.”

So then the next man came, same routine, drove out there and stopped the car, and he says, “If you were my chauffeur, how close would you come to the edge of that cliff there?” And this guy looks and he said, “Boss, I could come within a foot of the edge of that cliff.” [laughter] He said, “Thank you very much,” had him drive him back to the house.

A number of applicants, all day long, each of them within a foot, within two feet, whatever their sense of their heroic skillfulness suggested to them. And finally late in the day there’s just this one guy left, and he asked him to take him out. Same routine is done. He said, “If you were my chauffeur, how close would you come to the edge of that cliff?” And the guy looked forward, and he said, “Boss, if I was your chauffeur, Id stay as far away from the edge of that cliff as I could get!” [laughter] And he got the job. [laughter]

Now why did I tell that story? Why did My father always used to tell that story? I had a sense that he identified with the last chauffeur, the one who got hired, and that there was some really crafty wisdom about it. [laughter]

DEVOTEE: [laughing] Right. Passing it on down to his son.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: Yeah. What did he mean by that? [laughter]

DEVOTEE OKHI: The holy jumping off place.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: [In a W. C. Fields voice] I guess Ill never know. [laughter] I think he told it because he liked this clever little chauffeur idea of himself. I don’t think there was any much more point to it than that.

The true holy jumping off place, or the edge of the cliff, is this transition from attention in all of the body-mind to the Position of Consciousness Itself. it’s an unfathomable leap, different from any leap ever taken previously. It is the Ultimate one. And yet it’s not a leap. But you can see the difference between the two positions, infinite difference. So relative to that true jumping off place, you have to do it, and not as My chauffeur. [pause]

You know the jumping off place mentioned in the Br’er Rabbit stories? That’s another expression I guess I recall My father using the jumping off place, when wed go up to the top of a hill or something.

Anyway, there’s some kind of sense that in a worldly circumstance you’re supposed to cleverly avoid recklessness and dangers of all kinds. But relative to the Great Matter of Liberation, quite the opposite is true at the jumping off place. There’s ordinary preservation of life and so forth, but the profound requirement of your existence is that you, in effect, leap from the place of mortality into the Place of Immortality, rather than struggle to preserve what is mortal at that great point. You see? it’s not suicidal. it’s not against the body. It has no such effect. But it’s a profound transition from identification with the body-mind to Identification with the Native Self-Condition. And when it really happens, you have to make a whole life out of it. [pause]

Anyway, so are you all into this God stuff?

[Devotees say they are.]

ADI DA SAMRAJ: Oh! All of you?

DEVOTEES: Yes.

DEVOTEE: Absolutely, Lord.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: Oh, that’s good. [laughter]

I haven’t told you any bullshit at all. In any case, it’s been a “consideration”. This is how I’ve always done it. I haven’t just given you pronouncements. That could have finished up the Work in a few weeks or months anyway. it’s always been a “consideration”, in other words involving you in examining everything. So in the case of this particular “consideration”, then, the examination was many great things hearing, the Witness, and all this. It was done as a “consideration”, not a lecture, so that you would enter into it profoundly and prove what is being communicated. So you’re not believers. You’re initiates.

There’s a great difference between religion done on the basis of belief and religion done on the basis of initiation. Initiation is not merely the words in the ceremony. Initiation is investment in the Reality confessed, through “consideration” and Revelation.

So the Way of the Heart is not a system of beliefs. it’s not conventional religion. It is esoteric religion, religion that grows by initiation in other words, by real investment in that which is being “considered” and would be Realized. Mere believers just do the usual life, with a little adjustment here and there, a little discipline here and there maybe, expecting that the reward for their belief and their sort of well-intentioned life will result at death in a transition to heaven, to the ultimate Divine Circumstance, whatever it is. Well maybe they were eased up a little bit by that message and consoled by it. So it serves that much of a purpose. But it’s not about God-Realization or going to the Ultimate Domain.

So believers use beliefs to console themselves, and they do not invest themselves in the process of perhaps for now we could call it experiential religion, esoteric religion, religion of direct exercise in Realization, direct inspection of everything. That is the nature of the esoteric process. Belief is part of the system of faith religion, which is basically a mechanism to console people and to organize their behavior according to moral expectations. So it’s not about Realization. it’s about bringing some kind of order to the human world and giving people a little hope.

But that’s as far as it goes. It doesn’t actually result in a transition to the heavenly worlds. It serves a purpose in this life. Belief serves a purpose in this life. It has minimal effect, therefore, relative to the whole matter of Realization.

The process of Realization is the content of esoteric religion, not popular or social religion or conventional religion. It begins and grows by initiation, by direct Revelation, through profound “consideration”. So you are Initiated into every stage, because you see what there is. You don’t believe your way from stage to stage. You practice. And you practice directly with real things. [pause]

What else?

DEVOTEE: Beloved, I feel this process of initiation that You were just talking about has been part of the process of these “considerations”.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: Yes, exactly. I refer to it, in fact, to Give you the illustration. What we’ve been doing here is an illustration of how the Way of the Heart is founded and grows and so on a process of initiation, of “consideration”, of direct address, rather than believing about things.

The other night we tried to amuse ourselves by finding out if anybody was still carrying around curious beliefs. It didn’t go too far but I’m sure there’s a lot of beliefs, a lot of curious beliefs. They may refer to something true, also, but you haven’t invested yourself in them to the point of finding out whether they’re true. They’re just sort of presumptions you make, and are, probably rather superficially underneath, maybe not so sure about. But you use them to console yourself or entertain yourself or to justify some particular orientation, perhaps. But the real process is not about believing anything at all. What you find out that’s the basis of what you practice.

So I don’t ask you just to believe a bunch of things. I tell you to “consider” this, examine this, whatever it may be. And then we do what we call “consideration”. I do it with you. We examine it from all different kinds of approaches, until the matter is fairly understood, until you get to it by that concentration, to the point where youve covered it entirely youve not merely become it but understood it. And in your understanding of it, you see, you go beyond the being it, the becoming of it, the identification with it.

So among other things, I’ve always said that the Way of the Heart is a “consideration”, is a process like that, rather than a process like believing and affirming. it’s a process of responding and noticing, taking responsibility and going through changes.

DEVOTEE: it’s Your “Eternal Conversation”

ADI DA SAMRAJ: Mm-hm.

FRANS: Beloved, Youve also shown me what an ordeal it is, and how when I don’t resort to You, I’m literally lost. And I felt a lot in these days like, I think You in the past sometimes talked about the man who’s drowning, how he needs his breath. I feel You have Initiated in me that I need to drink from Your Well, Commune with You in every moment.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: Mm-hmmm.

FRANS: And Youve actually Given me the arms to do it.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: You even have to breathe the water itself.

[silence]

I was just thinking about water and breathing. Ordinarily you don’t think of the two of them going together. You think of the lungs, the breath system as just sort of an open, empty space. And you want to keep it open and empty. And it’s interesting to consider that the air you breathe in and out of your lungs is itself a fluid. And you are, in fact, breathing fluid in the lungs constantly, the fluid of gaseous air. it’s not just empty space. it’s a fluid, a sea of gases. So you’re in a similar situation to the underwater non-humans. You just adapted to a somewhat more subtly organized fluid than water. But you’re constantly combining with this universal fluid, and all the energy of that fluid. And you’re constantly doing it, the body is constantly doing it.

Even yang and yin, let it out and take it in. This simple play of bodily opposites, this rhythm, is something like cats do when they’re making their purring. You do the same thing. There can even come a balance in that, where the fitful repetition of opposites relaxes, there’s an equanimity, and the breath can stop. it’s generally associated with a rather deeply composed physical state also. it’s possible to notice in that that the body is still breathing, but not air, not exercising the lungs. The essential component of the air, the force, the energy, is circulated by the body without the medium of the lung breath. Breath is suspended, then.

That is called “kumbhak”. It can last some time, even. And, if you notice, there are other conditions of the breath where it becomes very minute. it’s very regular, but very occasional, hardly moves at all. How could you be getting enough air? You’re usually sucking it in there, and reactive. And here the body seems to be suggesting it doesn’t even need the air, but that it functions directly with the energy that is being ingested and so forth with the breath.

I mean, what does the body take otherwise of the liquid and solid foods? The breath is the same it’s a gaseous food. So then when you take liquid and solid food, it’s just this little step down from there, a little grosser than gas. What does the body use of it? It treats it like it didn’t need it to begin with. [laughter] It just throws it off, basically.

But what does it keep? Yes there are gross chemicals and so forth, as there is in the air also. But fundamentally what it’s feeding on is the universal energy, and it has to go through a transformation process to separate that element out. But that’s what the body’s active with, this “conductivity” of universal energy, gone through various kinds of transformer mechanisms that separate out the energy, and along with it, some very subtle elemental’s perhaps.

But very little of what is breathed or drunk or eaten is actually embraced. it’s the participation in energy that all of this is about. All this is about the participation in energy, the condition of energy.

So you can notice sometimes the breath getting very slow and shallow, hardly moving at all, not much air being taken in or out. And you can also notice beyond that the possible kumbhak where there’s no air circulation whatsoever, no movement in the lungs. Even the heartbeat may stop for a period. There are different degrees of all of this. But it’s a profound equanimity in any case, however it shows itself, in which the body-mind functions beyond it’s various transformer mechanisms, simply assumes the condition of energy, in touch with universal energy, and so to speak feeds on it not even so to speak, literally feeds on it, using mechanisms less gross than the usual breathing and digestive organs.

The nervous system itself feeds. The core energy is refreshed or increased. it’s so fitful to catch your next breath, or keep water out, or fitful to eat or drink these are all habits of a rather exteriorized or superficial disposition, the urge to exploit all of that, disturbed association with all of that. So basically the body-mind must be released in the practice of “conductivity” to assume the condition of energy. And, therefore, the grosser transactions breathing, drinking, eating, and such become economized by that, but also you understand just how to use that in such a way that is totally conducive to ingestion or “conductivity” of universal energy.

So this is the ultimate basis for right diet in this Way. You see? You practice “conductivity”, and that is the basis for your practicing of all of the disciplines. They are versions of it. They are about the same thing. They serve the establishment of the body-mind in the condition of energy. So you have dietary habits and such that have to do with all kinds of things, including emotional matters. And so with breathing too. You breathe in all different kinds of rhythms and so forth, always changing, reflecting an emotional state of one kind or another. So all your ingestion, including breathing, drinking, and eating, is governed by an emotional disposition, and all kinds of other ways you acquire habits. But when you enter into the right disposition, true disposition, of Ishta-Guru-Bhakti and responsibility for “conductivity” and so on, then the matter of diet must be looked at.

How do you serve the body’s basic “conductivity” and good health? How do you integrate it with the process you’re engaging day to day? How could you expect to do it rightly, if you constantly put the body in some kind of a condition that is gross and obstructs bodily participation in the condition of energy? So you enter into this dietary “consideration”, then, seeing the various effects of it and so on, and refine the dietary practice until it gets to the point where it is wholly conducive to what your practice is altogether.

You must be purified, able to conduct, not bogged down, not full of toxins or burden on the system, not using a lot of energy. So generally then, right diet is a maximally raw diet, taken with discipline. Maximally raw doesn’t mean how much raw food would you like to have today. And then you put % on your retreat card! [laughter] Maximally raw means either all raw, or something close to it, unless there’s some medical justification for doing otherwise, temporarily. But basically any health condition would be best served by that kind of diet anyway, generally speaking. So then, food taking becomes like right breath, free of emotionalism. When that is the case with the breath, then the breath relaxes and is not fitful. There is equanimity, emotionally but physically, and right “conductivity”. Well, the same with right diet. it’s like right breath. It allows the body to be in a state of equanimity possible kumbhak not fitful, not obstructed.

Now a number of you are supposed to be . practitioners. Right? What that must mean, if it’s true, is that your dietary practice is, generally speaking, raw or minimal cooked food, and just the kind of a diet I’ve described in all of these years. Now does the fact that you’re all said to be . practitioners most of you anyway mean that this is your dietary practice? Do you actually do that?

I don’t really feel that what I’m observing is a community in which people are practicing this kind of diet. I see it at Hermitage, because that’s all we serve there. [laughter] But I don’t really have the feeling that’s what’s going on everywhere else. And yet a lot of people are said to be . practitioners. I’m wondering what’s going on here?

Well, these are among the leftovers from your student-beginner days that you’re going to have to reexamine in that intensive that you’re going to be doing shortly, right? These are among the kinds of things that I feel I’m looking at when I’m looking at . practitioners. I’m looking at people who don’t practice this dietary discipline not just during this period recently, obviously, with accessories being used. And people tend to modify the diet if they feel they need more protein, or whatever which may or may not be true. But, apart from that, before you started having the gatherings with accessories a couple of months ago, you obviously were not practicing this dietary discipline. So it’s how you bargain with Me, you see? You think this is just a physical matter.

Any of you have anything to say about that? [silence]

FRANS: It occurs to me, my Lord, that this is all based on the previous point of view we’ve been talking about. If you don’t come from the liberated and radical point of view, that’s what you’re going to do.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: Yes, but you’re supposed to be My devotee, under vow to Me. You don’t tell your Master what you’re going to do, you ask. This isnt a subject of bargaining, up to a vote to the community. This is My Instruction to you. I expect you to do it. it’s your obligation. Yes, work it out with medical consultation, fine. Do it rightly. But this is the discipline. This is part of the Ishta-Guru-Bhakti Yoga with the body.

Because you’re identified with the body, you overburden it with self-indulgence and you don’t know what the hell you’re doing with it. And then you think that the body has nothing to do with it, you’re just some interior. You’re the whole ball of wax. The head, the tail, and the whole damn thing. And either you do sadhana with the body or you don’t. Either you conform it to Me or you don’t. But as My devotee, you’re obliged to do so. You’re supposed to be culturally accountable to do so. It is not a picking and choosing matter.

So if you want to balk at that and not really do that, you see, you can give yourself lots more time, build in lots of time to this beginners process. And then even when everybody tells Me their urgency, everybody’s practicing more intently, lots of transitions, “We got lots of .s now”, and so on even then you don’t bother to oblige people to fulfill their obligations. So for some reason or other you wink at diet obligations, community obligations, all kinds of things. What kind of a culture is that?

I keep looking for the signs of growth in you seriously, and you’re still quibbling about money, food and sex pretending you’re not My devotee and have no obligations, you’re just here to do as you please. it’s not what I tell you to do, it’s “what does the community want to do about it”, or “what do you personally want to do about it”. You want to fashion this according to your own design, then.

Then, of course, there’s the emotional-sexual business that seems to go on forever for so many people. Not the establishment of Yoga in right relationship, but a search based on all kinds of problems, and seeking for all kinds of absurd fulfillment, as well as what is right fulfillment. So that’s another thing that has to be reviewed in that intensive anything about your emotional-sexual practice that does not conform to My Word about it.

And relative to the Yoga of sexual exercise itself, I expect you to be proficient in it, before you move on from student-beginner. Instead of practicing your seeking games and so forth with emotional-sexual matters, I expect you to practice “true intimacy” which is based on your relationship to Me, not on emotional-sexual seeking. [pause]

You’re all very quiet when I discuss these things. [laughter]

DEVOTEE: Struck to the core.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: So you’re telling Me you’d rather fool around with that instead of Realizing Me?

DEVOTEES: No.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: Well, in every moment you choose to be loose about these disciplines, that’s what you are effectively saying to Me. Because what are you choosing if you are not simply, straightforwardly embracing this discipline? You’re bargaining with the body-mind and playing religious games. It doesn’t go anywhere to just be sort of congenially religious and a little cleaner than most. That doesn’t go to heaven. That is just what it looks like. it’s its own reward. it’s as much as it gets. it’s not enough. Purifying the body, maintaining it through right diet, is not an ascetical discipline. And it’s not interesting in and of itself, or done for it’s own sake.

Of course there’s some interest in just examining it and working it out, but it’s not a fastener for attention such that then you become devoted to the “Paul Bragg School of Flex and Grin”, you’re just all kinds of enthusiastic about physical health. [laughter] No, it’s a straightforward matter, ordinary matter. it’s not itself the Way of life, not itself the Way of the Heart. So it’s nothing to be dwelt on. it’s just to be set straight, that’s all. It has it’s simple balanced pleasure then, this food-taking stuff. it’s not aberrating, and it doesn’t undermine the body’s mudra, asana, of Contemplating Me.

Right diet, as I said, allows the body then to be a conductor. It allows it to be established in the condition of energy moment to moment. How can you submit yourself bodily to Me Spiritually if the body is grossly bent, grossly self-involved, gross as a result of it’s malpractice? It must be able to be established in the condition of energy in the natural sense, in order to be a vehicle of Communion with Me Spiritually as Energy. So you have to fit the body for Spiritual life. You have to make it a Yogic body. it’s not ascetical. it’s simply right life.

You use all kinds of up-here and observer-intelligence lines when you’re looking at things that disturb you, or that you’re wary about and want to control. But as soon as you’re associated with something that you desire, you get totally stupid. Youve totally abandoned the intelligent observer and take a beeline to your underwear. [laughter] So you discriminate when threatened. And you get stupid when pleasurized.

So this pattern you’re into by seeking pleasures has to be subject to your right practice, in Communion with Me. If you want Me to do what I do, you have to do what I say. So I’m not going to take anybody seriously who doesn’t embrace these disciplines for real. I tolerated your amateurism about this when Instructing you, but the Teaching is given.

DEVOTEE: Beloved, during this intensive period with You, I’ve noticed . . .

ADI DA SAMRAJ: You don’t want to talk about diet, is that it? [laughter] Go ahead.

DEVOTEE: I have already begun the process of purification, now it’s just going to take a little time.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: Well, fine. So it will be with everyone. Were getting to that time of year, so it’s good to start getting involved with it. [softly and ominously] Feast of Water and Fire is approaching quickly hot on the heels of the fleeting Danavira Mela. [laughter] But it’s not just “Purify once again, and then stuff your gut for the next months”! [laughter]

I’m not inclined to toxify This Body in order to Teach you anymore. So it means you have to get My lessons about all this kind of business, embrace this dietary discipline for real.

So I guess wed better talk about something else then.

Poor little things. [Beloved gestures toward devotees sitting in front of Him, and speaks in a mock drunken voice] “You were talking about the Witness-Position, now look at what we’ve got. I don’t need that discipline. I can get into the Witness-Position any time! [laughter] No matter what arises, you’re still the Witness, you know what I mean? Even if it is fat, it’s still something I’m just Witnessing! [laughter] I’ve got the secret, I don’t have to do any disciplines. And the secret is the Witness.”

You’re all laughing because you must delude yourselves like that.