Part VI – Torque of Attention
So what else do you want to “consider”?
DEVOTEE: Beloved, this evening when I woke up from
sleeping, I woke up in kind of a meditative state where I
was basically hearing You talk. It was like being in the
same room again, as being in the room with You right
now.
ADI DA SAMRAJ: You were hearing My voice and such, you
mean?
DEVOTEE: I was hearing Your voice.
ADI DA SAMRAJ: So it seems like you were coming out of a
dream state.
DEVOTEE: Yes. It seemed like I was laying there for a
time, but I was conscious. It felt like I was still sitting
in the gathering with You and I could hear Your voice. I
just felt like I was laying there in Communion with You and
receiving that.
ADI DA SAMRAJ: Mm-hm. Sounds like you were! [Beloved
laughs.]
DEVOTEE: Yes. I was just feeling how this whole period of
“consideration” has swung me into a deeper level of feeling.
And I tend to be a person that’s very busy. I was also
realizing that in my practice I don’t tend to study the
higher stages of practice.
ADI DA SAMRAJ: So much the worse for you!
DEVOTEE: So much the worse for me. But I was just feeling
the Grace of this “consideration” with You. Because I feel
like in a very physical way Youve Given us a glimpse and
inspired us to really feel Your Samadhi, to take it
seriously as a way of life to be involved in for real.
ADI DA SAMRAJ: Mm-hm. That’s it.
[to the other devotees] She didn’t exactly
initiate a “consideration”.
DEVOTEE: No, I’m not very good at that.
[silence]
DEVOTEE: The first night, Beloved, in one of Your Guided
Meditations, You very intentionally Transmitted the
experience of “the Thumbs” to me.
ADI DA SAMRAJ: Mm-hm.
DEVOTEE: And I noticed that we didn’t have much
“consideration” of that after that time. And one of the
things I’ve noticed is that I feel “the Thumbs” as a kind of
a very distinctive almost like a fluid, a kind of massive
fluid, pressing down in my frontal line. I feel it as an
intense concentration of Force in the bodily base.
ADI DA SAMRAJ: Mm-hm.
DEVOTEE: There have been other times in Your Company
where I feel just this tremendous downward push, just
pushing through my body, that doesn’t have a shape to it.
it’s just Yogic Force. And I was wondering if that’s just
another variation of “the Thumbs”? Or is “the Thumbs” a
specific, something that’s specifically . . .
ADI DA SAMRAJ: Well, I’ve talked about the partial
experience of “the Thumbs”, or a variation on that full sign
that I’ve Described. You could say, generally speaking,
then, that any kind of sense of frontal Invasion has
something of the Samadhi of “the Thumbs” about it because
you’re involved in My frontal Invasion. That is what the
Sign of “the Thumbs” shows, in full terms. That full Descent
downward and an unbroken bodily base. The Force then
continues in the full Circle and a state of equanimity is
achieved, kumbhak of a kind.
There’s the rotating forward, the taking on the form of
the sphere such experiences. A loss of definition. You get
to feel something like at the center of a sphere. The
body-mind becomes or is felt like that.
So that’s “the Thumbs” in it’s fullest sense. Anything
other than that or less than that is not “the Thumbs” in
it’s fullest sense. It is a Samadhi, not merely a sensation
in the physical. It goes beyond the usual body-mind
references.
So feeling Energy Pressing down and so forth in the
abdomen or the frontal line is a common experience of
devotees. it’s not itself “the Thumbs” in the full sense.
But it’s related to that same process, is a sign of that
process.
DEVOTEE: I noticed, Beloved, that many times during these
“considerations” in receiving Your Transmission, I do feel
expanded beyond the locus of the body-mind. There’s a sense
of being in a larger sphere that is associated with You.
ADI DA SAMRAJ: Yes, of course that’s related to it, but
the Samadhi of “the Thumbs” is a very specific Yogic Event,
a Samadhi Event. The body is felt rotating and all the rest
of it, because of the sensations associated with it. And
then the body becomes a Sphere of Force. it’s not just some
sort of generalized feeling of being surrounded or enclosed
or in some sort of place of Energy. it’s a very specific
sign that is related to the body because it’s about a
transformative event in the body, or the total
body-mind.
[silence]
DEVOTEE: Beloved, when You were talking about the Samadhi
of “the Thumbs”, You were talking about a rotating
forward?
ADI DA SAMRAJ: Yes. There’s a full feeling of My Invasion
in the frontal line. it’s not that you actually roll over
and fall on the floor, whatever.
DEVOTEE: Right.
ADI DA SAMRAJ: But because of that Forceful Invasion in
the frontal line, if the body feels like it’s rotating
forward, it’s just the beginning of the assumption of this
spherical shape, because it passes in the full Circle and a
balance is achieved next. You see? And that balance is felt
to be in this sphere form at the center of it, but it’s not
thinking or acting in any sense at all. it’s just this sense
of your Condition.
And then if you direct yourself to thought again, and so
on, or try to re-associate with ordinary body sensations,
somehow, it passes. It inevitably passes due to something
like that, at some point. So it’s not a grave misfortune if
it happens. Of course, if it prevents the experience
altogether, that’s a limitation. But the Event itself, just
happening, even if experientially it doesn’t seem to last,
is a very fundamental part of the restructuring of the
circuit of the being an opening of it, a purification of it,
a re-connecting of everything, a balancing. it’s very much
internal, but in “the Thumbs” experience it’s felt also
bodily and so on.
So it’s a sign of the full connection and essential
establishment of the Circle as a free passage for Me. All
the signs of maturity must appear, but it’s part of the
readying to be attracted beyond the Circle to the root of
Amrita Nadi. it’s the preliminary to it. it’s what allows
that to be the case. Otherwise, My Force is trapped in the
Circle one way or another.
So “the Thumbs”, the full Samadhi of “the Thumbs”, is a
sign of the right asana of the circuit. It may have to
happen more than once, even over time. But devotees may have
such an experience early on. Nonetheless, the Work must be
accomplished. You cant really map it all that exactly. The
accumulation of all of it becomes what is required.
Anything more about that?
DEVOTEE: Well, some experiences that I’ve had in Your
Company I was wondering how they would relate to that, if
they do relate to it. Because I’ve had that sense, in times
in Communion with You, feeling absorbed where it’s almost as
if I’ve turned upside-down. There’s a sense of going forward
and I lose any sense of direction. I don’t know if my body
is upright or where I am. But I don’t get involved in that.
I just kind of stay surrendered. But it seems like my body’s
upright. And then there’s
ADI DA SAMRAJ: Well, that’s also a way of losing “the
Thumbs”. As I Said, to become reoriented to the body sense,
what it is to be upright or whatever it is, breaks the
spell, so to speak, of “the Thumbs”.
So “the Thumbs” itself, the rotation, everything
altogether, is a transformed condition, a form of Samadhi.
And it loses the definitions of ordinary body-consciousness
up, down, forward, backwards. it’s just a sphere. it’s not
merely a circle. it’s a sphere. It is the body as Energy. So
it’s a process in which the body is thoroughly established
as such in Energy, in My Presence. So it becomes,
effectively, a Yoga body, a body in which the Spiritual
process can work.
But the full proof that it is so is the Spiritual
maturing at level three and moving on to the “Perfect
Practice”. it’s not just the energy moving in the body or
the feeling of some disorientation, whatever that’s not it.
Those are features somehow that can be associated with it.
It is the Samadhi. it’s this body given into the condition
of energy utterly, such that you feel Sublimed or simply in
a Sphere of Force, with no bodily definition. But as soon as
you think, or try to re-associate with the physical
sensation, it disappears again. Well, it’s not that you have
to remain in that state always, at that stage in your
practice. it’s a sign of the developing of the Yogic
body.
This Body is always in “the Thumbs”. So I don’t have the
experience of it anymore in terms of an Event. I mean, there
was a certain stage when I was a boy, integrating with the
physical then the re-Invasion, re-Initiation, of the
“Bright”, “the Thumbs”, trying to re-Establish Itself, was
felt by Me, usually at times of rest and so forth. I could
feel it resuming the body again, re-entering the body, come
down it felt to Me like gagging. The thought I had at the
time was like a mass of thumbs, gagging and suffocating and
so forth. In other words, the body had to be contracted to
have to then suffer this re-Invasion. It should simply be in
this Yogic state.
So over the years, the reappearance’s of this experience
spontaneously in adult life and so on part of the whole Yoga
was this establishment of the Body in the Condition of “the
Thumbs”, such that ultimately it became permanent. The
pot-shaped Mudra of Force. The body is not an
obstruction.
So the Sign of “the Thumbs” is just a sign of that Yogic
body transformation that provides the vehicle for the
transition to the “Perfect Practice”.
The Samadhi of “the Thumbs” is not merely the pot-shaped,
or the feeling of Force in the body. it’s the utter
Capturing of the body, utter Infusion of the body. And a
loosening up of attention.
The Samadhi of “the Thumbs” is a kind of kumbhak. So when
it becomes permanent, effectively kumbhak is permanent. So
this breathing in This Body is sometimes very slow.
Sometimes it stops. Sometimes it moves in the daily
circumstance. But all the while the Samadhi of “the Thumbs”
is permanent. The body is in the Yogic state of kumbhak.
So like the purring cat, it is a permanent resonance.
So I Am Present.
I’m not really in the Body, going through it, you see,
Shining through it. The Body is given up, into My Presence.
So it is an Energy Body.
The physical is a rather diffuse experience.
Diffuse.
Identifying with the body, you take on it’s form, you are
very discretely aware of it’s shape, it’s various
characteristics. But to Stand in the Radiant Position,
really Force in the body just that that identification is
not there. So the sense of the body is sufficient for
functioning a little bit! [laughter]
DEVOTEE: Beloved, I had the experience of “the Thumbs”.
And it was finding myself in this Condition that You were
Describing of cascading forward and into a ball shape,
becoming like a sphere of blue light. And . . .
ADI DA SAMRAJ: There was a visual aspect to it?
DEVOTEE: Yes. And then I was aware that I wasn’t finding
You in that place. And I Enquired of that, “Avoiding
relationship?” And I was taken to a position behind this
ball of rotating energy, I suppose. But what my question is,
You mention in The Dawn Horse Testament that Your devotees
can have any variety of experience because Your Siddhi
arises Prior to the Cosmic Mandala and You Shine through
that. And so the having of these experiences is a sign of
Your Shining on us. And I wondered if I was wrong in my
assumption of that sphere of blue light. Is that the energy
of the body-mind? Or is that Your Light? Was I wrong to
ADI DA SAMRAJ: You see, as soon as you start trying to
make the judgments, even exercise discrimination, prior to
thinking, you lose the condition. So it’s simply an event in
which to be disarmed. Whatever it looks like. Whatever the
appearances associated with it. it’s just the body given up
to the Condition of Energy.
Now, is it Me? Well, yes, however profoundly or not you
may be experiencing Me. So also there’s the element of
natural energy and own-body-mind characteristics. But you
can locate Me there. It is Me. You are entered into My
Sphere. But you must enter into it most profoundly.
One of the things that makes “the Thumbs” phenomenon
brief is that you don’t do that. You don’t enter into the
depth of it. You become immediately superficial, after a
brief noticing, enjoyment, whatever, then you start
exercising the body-mind again and it passes. This whole
process of entering into it in the fullest sense is to enter
into Samadhi in Communion with Me.
Well, if that is the case, then not limitations in that
Event in your case but My Very Presence will be what absorbs
you, you see? If that is the case, then the Samadhi of “the
Thumbs” would last a while longer than it might
otherwise.
The other thing I could Say is that if you have to ask,
it’s not Me! [laughter]
DEVOTEE: What happened next in that meditation was that I
Enquired again of that Position of Standing and observing
the sphere of Energy, and I was taken to another place. You
were there. And I was absorbed in a great Happiness that was
all about You.
ADI DA SAMRAJ: In each of your descriptions you just
gave, you described certain visual or visionary phenomena
that you became involved in.
DEVOTEE: Yes.
ADI DA SAMRAJ: They are not themselves part of “the
Thumbs”. But when something of the Samadhi of “the Thumbs”
has been your experience, youve moved from it as a base into
subtle states of Contemplation, with objects. You see?
Rather than just immediately waking up into the gross
bodily associations, you appear to enter into some level of
subtle perception visionary, or dreaming, or whatever the
content at the moment. So that can very well be the case.
Those phenomena are not themselves part of the Samadhi of
“the Thumbs”. But something of the Samadhi of “the Thumbs”
can occur, and subtle phenomena arise because of the relaxed
disposition, availability for it, and so forth.
[silence]
And of course, this resonating of the Circle by Me can,
if you’re so disposed, expose subtle objects for your
interest, or gross as well rather than remaining in the
Samadhi beyond psycho-physical references, you see. This is
the kind of tendency that certainly can be dealt with during
the period of the frontal Yoga but might, in some cases,
require going on to the fourth or fifth stage of practice.
Not necessarily. But it suggests the possibility of it.
It also suggests that the Samadhi of “the Thumbs” is not
complete that there was opening of the frontal line and some
release of the Force into the spinal line, but it only went
so far. You began having visions. If it passes fully in that
sphere, fully to the fullest in every part, then it doesn’t
stop with such subtle phenomena.
Its sort of the spinal version of when, in the frontal
Yoga, you feel the Energy stop at a certain point, your
throat, whatever it doesn’t come down. Well, it’s the same
thing it doesn’t go all the way up, doesn’t freely go up. So
it strikes on the subtle level of the faculties and animates
them, instead of just simply passing through.
So the full Samadhi of “the Thumbs” is full passage
through, frontal and spinal. it’s a kind of Nirvikalpa
Samadhi. And one especially important in this Way.
Sufficiently, to be effective, it must occur in the case of
all those who are going to go on to the “Perfect Practice”.
Perhaps have different ways of showing itself in different
people, but effectively the Work must be done. But if you
drift into internal conditions, and so forth, then it’s not
complete yet.
Its not that there’s something to object to about it.
it’s just an indicator of how the process is working, you
see?
So the full Samadhi of “the Thumbs” requires you to be
given up utterly. But it can also occur partially, and show
signs of that partialness.
DEVOTEE: I think I see. What I was doing is, at that
time, perhaps feeling uncomfortable with that feeling and
then moved out of it, into these incomplete places You’re
describing.
ADI DA SAMRAJ: Mm-hm. But you like these ascending kind
of experiences, these subtle experiences.
DEVOTEE: Mm-hm.
ADI DA SAMRAJ: Perhaps more consoling to you, less
harmful, in your view than possible gross happenings.
DEVOTEE: [laughing] Mm-hm. Mm-hm.
ADI DA SAMRAJ: You get to twinkle with all those blue
lighty-lighties, you know? Visionary throne rooms?
[laughter]
So it may have gone up at that moment, but only
partially. And it stopped going down. You see, “the Thumbs”
wasn’t what was happening then, but just another form of
internal concentration.
Anyway, it’s not so much that “the Thumbs” has to
repeated over and over again. It has to happen as often as
it must, but it doesn’t have to accomplish the full
evolutionary Yoga. it’s there to accomplish simply the
“conductivity” of the Circle.
When you fall into the Fullness of “the Thumbs”, you’re
simply attention. Mind is relaxed. Body obviously relaxed.
You become simply this sphere, this Circle which is a
sphere. But you’re just attention. And as soon as you
activate attention to what’s between attention and the body
any faculty of mind or energy or familiarity and so forth
then the phenomenon of “the Thumbs” stops. it’s changed into
something else.
So “the Thumbs” precedes the transition to the “Perfect
Practice”, or any deeper meditation which amounts to the
same thing. No activation of body-mind, but just attention,
the feeling of relatedness. it’s when there is that kind of
concentration and equanimity that the transition is made to
the Witness, because it’s there that attention, the feeling
of relatedness, is found in the Self. The Position of
Consciousness is suddenly assumed. Because the view is so
simple.
But it’s not about identifying with or viewing or
penetrating a spot a bindu, a point of any kind. it’s a
matter of Standing Prior to it.
[silence]
[to devotee] Did you ever figure out that
question you had a few hours ago?
DEVOTEE: The question, Beloved?
ADI DA SAMRAJ: Yes. I think you said you had three
questions. You remembered two, and there was a third, and
you couldn’t remember it?
DEVOTEE: Yes, I did. That was the question I was asking
about, the Samadhi of “the Thumbs”.
ADI DA SAMRAJ: Mm.
DEVOTEE: It seemed like my question was if “the Thumbs”,
the Samadhi of “the Thumbs”, is primarily the Samadhi of
Your Assumption of the body-mind, the body-mind of Your
devotee, and only secondarily Yogic in nature.
ADI DA SAMRAJ: Right. it’s My Invasion of you, not merely
you lining up the body somehow with a technique. I’ve
Described it as a kind of Crashing Down. In other words, not
about coddling egoity, but Shining Me through it. Undoing
it. But there are also any number of physical sensations
that may be associated with it. Action in the throat, maybe
the gagging there’s any number of signs the tongue pressing
to the palate.
But if it’s Me, you’ll know it. [soft laughter]
it’s not just you feeling like you usually do, feeling your
energy, and you saying it’s Me, you know? Everything’s Me.
Good old Me. [laughter] Kind of an honorific
believers kind of affirmation that’s not based on
initiation, into the Truth of it.
So it’s by actually receiving Me, recognizing Me As I Am,
Spiritually, and seeing Me Work, noticing My Work
Spiritually in the body, and so on. You have no doubt it’s
Me! it’s not like anything else, and it’s not something that
was your usual experience and you renamed it Me. it’s as
obviously Me as My Body must be familiar to you by now, or
My face.
So it’s an Invasion. It comes from without. it’s not
something inside you. But then, having Entered, the total
body-mind becoming conformed to the Divine Infusion, then
it’s not something outside anymore. The only reason it
appeared to be outside anyway is because of
self-contraction, locking it out.
DEVOTEE: Yes, that’s what I realize now.
ADI DA SAMRAJ: Mmm. Otherwise it would just flow through
the circuit of the body-mind freely, like running water into
a tub.
DEVOTEE: But You get in there and blow us up,
Beloved.
ADI DA SAMRAJ: [Beloved chuckles.] So it’s
clearly Me in every sense, and not just Me because you
notice there’s an effect in the body and therefore you know
it’s Me. it’s Me directly in Spiritual Communion with Me. So
that when you are Contemplating Me Non-Separately in the
“Perfect Practice”, it’s still Me, even though there’s no
motions, no other signs in the body-mind. But it’s Me not
because you declare it Me. You know, it’s not really just
your Self, and I’m Saying “Its Me” sort of a poetic
exchange, you see? [Devotees chuckle.]
No. If you’re truly located in the Witness, with all the
Yoga I’ve Described, it is to be in My Spiritual Company.
You identify Me directly. You are attracted by Me, in that
Form. “Atma Murti”.
So it’s not merely what you Always Already have been.
Youve Always Already been in that Position.
But you haven’t Always Already been Being It.
I Am That.
It is only by your Non-“different” absorption in Me that
you can then grow to Realize Me.
The “Perfect Practice” is a process. So to be Established
as the Witness is still to be you essentially. In other
words, it has not yet Realized the Nature of it’s Situation,
because it hasn’t given any allowance for it. It has been
devoted utterly to attention and it’s business. So the
“Perfect Practice” is the process of Realizing Me, not
merely affirming your self. It is a devotional practice, the
Most Perfect devotional practice, done without “difference”,
Non-Separately. But it is devotion. Not merely
self-referential meditativeness. It is to be given up. Not
merely to Stand in place, but to be given up in place.
[long silence]
The Witness does nothing.
Think, while were “considering” here, how you relate to a
thought.
Feel that you’re just the Witness.
And that is always so. You’re only the Witness.
The Witness is not active.
Then where is all this activity coming from?
You declare yourself to be that actor, because you get
the pictures from the eyeballs. You make these
presumptions.
You presume you are the actor.
But the Witness is no such actor.
And yet, Realizing the Witness, you notice somehow that
the body-mind activity goes on.
But you are the Witness.
So you don’t have the connection to the things arising
that a cause has to an effect, or a motor has to a machine,
you see?
You’re not active in the body-mind, as the body-mind.
No matter what is going on, you’re the Witness of it.
But you have the feeling that you’re doing it, because
you’re identified with the body-mind, which is a pattern
that is active, in a universal field.
Its not personal. There is no person, individual, in it.
That is a presumption. The body-mind does what it does
because it is part of a pattern. It is a Shakti pattern, you
see, so it moves. By identification with the body-mind, you
think you are the doer, because you think you are the
body-mind. But you’re not. You are Standing in the
Witness-Position.
In the Bhagavad Gita, this is described as the gunas,
called the gunas. You’re not the actor, the doer. The gunas
are. You all have heard this term, haven’t you?
DEVOTEES: Yes.
ADI DA SAMRAJ: The fundamental patterns in the field of
energy are the doers. The patterns are patterning. The
patterns are acting. You, presuming to be identical to the
body-mind in this pattern, think you are doing it. Because
you are identifying with what is doing it.
But you are simply Standing as the Witness. It [the
pattern] is doing it! It is that kind of a thing. The
mind is as much part of it as the flesh. It is the doer, but
it is not a separate individual. it’s part of the vast web
of the gunas, of the fundamental patterning, structures
active, inactive, or densely inactive, stopped, and then
more the quality which is rather balanced. Or yang and yin
and kumbhak. Perfect equanimity. This fundamental torque
that’s in attention.
So it’s that structure structuring and doing. You only
think it’s you because you think you’re the mind associated
with the body. But you’re merely the Witness. The mind and
body are part of the universal web of the gunas, of the
Energy Event.
You Stand Prior to the doer. And the doer is not
personal. The doer is a universal structure. Then, of
course, that accounts for anything that looks like it’s an
individual within it. If you identify with that, then you
feel you are the doer. But you’re the Witness.
Any identification with conditions makes you forget your
Position. So the sadhana has to deal with that fault, or you
will not Stand as the Witness. So that’s all the preliminary
practice, just as I’ve Given it to you. it’s not a matter of
you trying to re-manufacture it and “guru” yourself, play
games with it, you see? “Consider” the matter and do exactly
as I’ve Described it to you. Exactly those stages. And none
are to be bypassed, except perhaps the fourth and the fifth
practicing stage. But not bypassed in the sense of being
strategically avoided. Bypassed because it is
unnecessary.
Effectively My devotee who truly enters into the full
Samadhi of “the Thumbs” has, in that, accomplished, or
enjoyed the accomplishment, of the ascending Yoga. It has
been, as it was in My Case, an event in which Nirvikalpa
Samadhi was instant, rather than progressively ascending,
with all the phenomena that can be part of that.
So this is another way to understand “the Thumbs”, and
why, in it’s fullest sense, it’s not merely a feeling of
some sensation descending in the body. It is full Samadhi,
Nirvikalpa Samadhi, and it is associated with the various
signs I’ve Described to you.
DEVOTEE: Beloved, it’s so clear in how You Describe it
now why the Samadhi of “the Thumbs” would be a prerequisite
for the transition to the “Perfect Practice”.
ADI DA SAMRAJ: Mm-hm.
DEVOTEE: Because it seems like You replace the body-mind
of Your devotee. That’s the way you Stand Prior to the
body-mind. Not by some sort of mechanical device.
ADI DA SAMRAJ: Mm-hm. Right.
So the Flow in that sphere must be Full, Complete,
Unobstructed, so that you can locate Me at the
Source-Point.
The gunas, the structures of appearance that apparently
modify the Divine Force, are the doers. it’s a pattern
patterning. it’s that wheel I Described to you. Seen all at
once, it’s an immense chaos. But seen in time and space,
conditions, it is everything. So everything exists. How
could only some things exist?
So you have the option to torturously pursue everything
if you don’t understand Me. But if you “consider” it
intelligently, you’ll see the virtue of this most direct
approach. And then, having understood that, and observed
everything you must observe about it, you do it. That’s what
it takes to be an adult man or woman, not parented, but
having all the faculties available.
[silence]
Its fine to have a physically living mother, but not a
“mommy” in other words, somebody mothering you. Or that role
transferred to your intimate, perhaps. Or to Me, as we were
discussing earlier. I’m not here to replace your faculties.
I’m here to conform them to Me, to the whole process of
Realization. So you have to responsively offer them as the
gift. That’s the Sacrament of Universal Sacrifice. That’s
Ishta-Guru-Bhakti Yoga.
So you cant ask Me to go to your mommy and daddy and ask
them to give Me the discriminative intelligence and will
part. They cant do that.
So much of conventional religion is a stupefaction that
doesn’t require the exercise of the faculties of the being.
It doesn’t require some of them, especially. So
discriminative intelligence is not very much exercised. Some
acts of will are sometimes required, not too immense. But
not based on the exercise of discriminative intelligence
rather, based on commands, parental signals, and beliefs.
Just dished out as such. “This is it believe it!” Hm? No
call for the exercise of discriminative intelligence. Maybe
the will, but without the discriminative intelligence part.
it’s just a parentally controlled kind of behavior game,
then.
You must be able to use these faculties for the great
purpose. And you have to have them all intact, therefore,
and not merely devoted to conditional ends.
This Way is a Way of “consideration”, where you become
integrated with the whole matter. You exercise all the
faculties, including discriminative intelligence and will.
The origin of this Way is that process, not beliefs.
DEVOTEE: You always call that participatory
knowledge.
ADI DA SAMRAJ: Yes.
So you become integrated with the thing itself, you
become integrated with Me. You find out. You don’t just
believe something and try to energize your will by believing
as hard as you can. You find out! When it’s true, clear,
straightforward, then the will should readily follow,
because there’s nothing ambiguous. it’s not a belief and
you’re pressing as hard against your unbelief to maintain
it, you see? it’s knowledge! Direct experience. Clearly
examined.
When you were brought up in a religious circumstance when
you were a child, this is how you got religion. It was given
to you in the form of beliefs to affirm. And by affirming
them, with a will, you were called to change your behavior.
But just that your behavior. And only within certain norms
in any case. You weren’t called to Divine Realization!
DEVOTEE: No.
ADI DA SAMRAJ: Basically, you were told, “not to bother
with that, you’re separate from God”. You see? So you got
religious through this parent-child command system through
beliefs. Which is only rather superficial method for
controlling behavior socially.
But instead of mere beliefs, there is the exercise of
discriminative intelligence and real examination, real
“consideration”, and entering into the domain of what’s
there, what must be changed, what it is when it’s gone
beyond, you see? Truly examining all the features of
whatever the discipline or “consideration”.
Then you are not obstructed by belief. You’re not
obstructed by the opposite of belief, which is doubt, or
disbelief, or whatever. Doubt and disbelief are for people
who don’t know anything. If you know something, doubt and
disbelief have no function. And they don’t affect you.
Nobody else’s doubts or disbelief’s affect you in the
slightest, if you know something. [laughter] But if
you don’t know anything, especially if you don’t know
fundamental things, you’re full of doubt and disbelief and
attempts at belief. And you don’t know what to believe!
[laughter]
You don’t know what to believe!
DEVOTEE [laughing]: That’s right.
ADI DA SAMRAJ: If it’s a matter of you choosing what to
believe, you don’t know what to do. Unless you’re in some
situation relatively parented about what you’re going to
believe, you have no way of deciding what beliefs to believe
in and what ones not to, because just thrown into the realm
of possible beliefs, you cant figure it out. So the only
time you get believing in the slightest is when it’s rather
commanded in a parent-child kind of situation.
But even then, it’s working against what must always be
there where belief is and that’s doubt and disbelief. And to
some degree people are rather independent-minded these days
not so much parented, rather adolescent. They “don’t want to
believe what they’re told” kind of disposition. But they
don’t know what to believe, then. There’s all kinds of
suggestions everywhere. You cannot comprehend this Maya.
There’s all kinds of propositions.
So if your will and your right life depend on belief,
you’re always being undermined in your intention to be
religious. The firm foundation of the religious life is
knowledge in other words, certainty, actuality, direct
investigation, with real attention, discrimination. Receive
the help, be shown, fine, but look at it don’t just believe
something about it.
So, as I said, when you know, it’s got nothing to do with
doubt. It was your direct experience, you examined it
directly doubt has no function. As I said, doubt has a
function only for those who do not know.
Then you find out. Instead of being in the “you don’t
know” position and trying to figure out what to believe or
striving to believe what you’re told because doubt is there
inherently, because you don’t know. Beliefs don’t have real
support. You could be somehow stimulated a little bit into
affirming them, but they only go so far, they only go so
deep. You cant hold on to them.
So as I said, you must establish this firm foundation for
the Way, by exercising what as a child you did not exercise
discriminative intelligence with a will. Truly enter into
the “consideration” I Grant you by My Word and see that this
is so. Then you’re out of the realm of belief and doubt.
You’re established in discriminative certainty. And you
practice directly.
Part I –
Part II – Part
III – Part IV –
Part V – Part
VI – Part
VII