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THE LOVE-ANANDA GITA (1989)
Part III: I Am What you Require
CHAPTER 24
I Am My Spiritual Presence
HEART-MASTER DA LOVE-ANANDA: Anyone who comes into My
physical Company, or who, having already come into My
physical Company, Invokes Me, may experience the effects of
My Spiritual and Always Blessing Presence. It is, therefore,
appropriate to distinguish between My Spiritual Presence and
the effects of My Spiritual Presence.
PRESENCE and EFFECTS
PRESENCE
I Am My Spiritual Presence.
To Commune with My Spiritual Presence is to be drawn into
feeling-Contemplation of My Very (and Inherently Perfect)
State, or My Samadhi.
My Spiritual Presence Itself (Who I Am ) Attracts you
toward Me, or toward My Very (and Inherently Perfect)
State.
My Spiritual Presence Itself is, therefore, not to
be identified with experiences of energy, which are the
effects of My Spiritual Presence.
My Spiritual Presence Itself is not a phenomenal
state.
To truly enter into Communion with My Spiritual Presence
is to be drawn into My Samadhi, or My Very (and Inherently
Perfect) State, the Divine Self-Condition, and not to be
moved in any other way at all.
All uses of My Spiritual Presence for the sake of
phenomena occur in the context of the body-mind, and they
are, therefore, secondary uses of My Spiritual Presence.
They are forms of attention to the effects of My
Spiritual Presence, and, therefore, they are (in some sense)
a diversion from My Spiritual Presence.
If your attention becomes attached to these effects, even
if they are apparently positive, it necessarily becomes
diverted from My Spiritual Presence Itself.
MATURITY
Therefore, to practice true Communion with My Spiritual
Presence while also associating in any way at all with
phenomenal states that are the effects of My Spiritual
Presence takes great maturity.
In relationship with Me it has always been so that people
have had experiences of one kind or another (kriyas,
visions, healings, and so on).
Yet My Instruction has always been the same:
These experiences are not Divine Self-Realization, and
they are not My Spiritual Presence Itself.
They are not to be equated with My Spiritual Presence
Itself.
At most, they are effects of My Spiritual Presence
Itself.
Therefore, submit your attention to That of Which these
are only the effects.
This is My Admonition to every practitioner of the Way of
the Heart.
In the advanced stages of practice, or in the context of
the fourth and the fifth stages of life, you may experience
mystical Yogic phenomena.
My Instruction to you is to transcend them through
feeling-Contemplation of Me .
Be moved beyond them by submission to My Spiritual
Presence.
I Call you not to the Realization of the conventional
Yogic path, but to the transcendence of it.
I Call you not to the stages of life, but to the
transcendence of them.
Whatever stage of life is the evident context of your
present moment, My Admonition and Call to you is the same as
at any other stage.
I Call you to transcend the limitations that are your
present stage of life.
I Call you to transcend even the effects of My Company,
to transcend them all, by self-transcending
feeling-Contemplation of Me .
Originally and fundamentally, transcend psycho-physical
attention by feeling-Contemplating My bodily (human) Form,
and do not become diverted.
Surrender all psycho-physical states by this
feeling-Contemplation.
The more you do this, the more you will also respond with
all the signs of devotion, service, and self-discipline.
And, eventually, you may begin to become sensitive to My
Spiritual Presence Itself-to Me , Spiritually.
Any rightly prepared student-beginner (or otherwise early
practitioner) of the Way of the Heart may, by coming into My
Company, experience effects of My Spiritual Presence, but to
Commune with My Spiritual Presence Itself requires a certain
maturity, or freedom from the distracting and binding power
of ordinary attention.
Only the effects of My Spiritual Presence may, perhaps,
be noticed, but My Spiritual Presence Itself will not be
noticed if your attention is wandering, if you are not
disciplined, if your devotion is weak, if your life is not
true service or constant feeling-Contemplation of Me.
If you have not fulfilled the practice of
feeling-Contemplation of My bodily (human) Form, then you
will not truly, or certainly and consistently, enter into
the sphere of the feeling-Contemplation of My Spiritual
Presence.
One who has truly entered into the feeling-Contemplation
of Me as Spiritual Presence is relatively free of the power
of events to distract attention.
HIGHER STAGES OF LIFE
SIGNS and EFFECTS
For such a practitioner, the discipline of
feeling-Contemplation is intensified by submission to My
Spiritual Presence.
There is a deepening of meditation.
Subtle signs may appear, but they are not the content of
feeling-Contemplation.
They are secondary, and they are to be transcended, by
feeling-Contemplation.
The secret of passing through and beyond the ascent of
attention is feeling-Contemplation of My Spiritual Presence
Itself, not distraction by energy in the body-mind.
Ascending energy in the body-mind makes the fifth stage
of life and the advanced form of the fourth stage of
life.
It is not Truth.
It is not Divine Self-Realization.
How do you transcend the binding and deluding power of
ascending phenomena?
By feeling-Contemplating Me .
Feel-Contemplate My Spiritual Presence, and thereby
renounce these phenomena.
Be free of their distracting power.
Find Me .
ALL STAGES – SAME PRACTICE
In the Way of the Heart, this is the unique discipline in
the ascending course of the advanced stages of practice.
However, the essence of this same Instruction pertains at
every stage.
Transcend conditional existence, or psycho-physical
phenomena, by feeling-Contemplating Me.
Instead of surrendering attention to conditional events,
surrender attention to Me .
The practice of the Way of the Heart is the practice and
the process of ego-transcendence, not merely the fulfillment
of the tendencies of attention, even the evolutionary or
highly evolved tendencies of attention.
All of these are to be transcended.
The practice of the Way of the Heart is the practice of
self-transcendence, just that.
Truly, only that.
LESSON OF LIFE
Everything else is the potential of embodiment.
All phenomena are binding and deluding.
They are a machine of opposites.
They are not the context of Happiness, Divine
Self-Realization, Love-Bliss, Truth.
You must learn this “Lesson” of life:
Happiness cannot be Found by participating in
phenomena.
Happiness is not Realized by yielding to phenomenal
existence through the mechanism of attention.
In fact, quite the opposite.
The more attention yields to phenomenal conditions, the
more you become bereft of Happiness, or Love-Bliss
Itself.
ATTENTION
Ordinary people are not prepared to yield attention
absolutely to the Divine Self-Condition, because they have
become identified with the mechanism of attention, and, by
exploiting it, they have become associated with the
mechanics of conditional existence.
Conditionally, you are attention.
This (present) experiential appearance is the result of
attention.
And you will not immediately transcend it and enter into
the Divine Samadhi.
Therefore, you must submit to the ordeal of
self-transcendence, which is the process and the practice of
the transcendence of attention.
That ordeal is profoundly difficult, for most people even
impossible.
Therefore, for the sake of the transcendence of
attention, Grace is Given.
The One Who Is the Realizer, the Revealer, and the
Revelation is Given.
The Adept Teacher of the Heart, the True Heart-Master,
the Hridaya-Samartha Sat-Guru is Given, as the Perfect Means
for the transcendence of attention.
Therefore, My bodily (human) Form, My Spiritual Presence,
and My Very (and Inherently Perfect) State is the Great
Gift.
When you feel (and thereby Contemplate) Me at any stage
of life, you have Realized the True Means for the
transcendence of attention.
Then the Way of the Heart is possible for you, even
though, by virtue of the tendencies of attention, you may be
bound in the lesser stages of life at the moment.
If you will be moved to Me, to enter into
feeling-Contemplation of My bodily (human) Form, and to
practice devotion, service, and self-discipline in response
to Me, then the mechanism of attention will be purified,
relieved, passed beyond.
THE PRACTICE
And as this process of purification advances, you will,
in due course, become sensitive to My Spiritual Presence,
sensitive to Me as Spirit-Presence, as you originally were
(and remain) sensitive to Me as My bodily (human) Form and
Sign.
However, the practice is not to directly Realize My
Spiritual Presence, any more than it is to directly Realize
My Very (and Inherently Perfect) State.
You may experience some effects of My Presence.
You may have some sense of what My Very (and Inherently
Perfect) State or the Ultimate Condition must be, but such
intuition is not itself Divine Self-Realization.
It is not even practice.
Practice is the activity in which attention is actually
transcended.
Practice is the feeling-Contemplation Itself.
Therefore, at the beginning of your self-transcending
practice, you must practice the transcendence of attention
by feeling-Contemplating My bodily (human) Form.
FROM THE BEGINNING
This is the Gift you are Given at the beginning.
In due course, there is sensitivity to Me as Spiritual
Presence.
And then, in due course, you may enter into the Samadhi
of My Very (and Inherently Perfect) State.
The whole process is fundamentally the process of
renunciation, but renunciation Given as a Gift through
feeling-Contemplation of Me.
My bodily (human) Form is the same as My Spiritual
Presence and My Very (and Inherently Perfect) State.
This bodily (human) Form is also the Gift of My Spiritual
Presence and My Very (and Inherently Perfect) State.
In due course, you become sensitive to the Reality of My
Spiritual Presence and My Very (and Inherently Perfect)
State, by This Means [patting His leg to indicate His
Body].
This Body, not discourse, is the Teaching-Revelation.
Discourse, or the Teaching Word, is a service, yes, but
This Body, This Tangible and All-Revealing Gift, is the
Teaching.
If you would understand this and practice
feeling-Contemplation of Me, it would not be necessary for
Me to utter one more Word to you.
When you become sensitive to My Spiritual Presence, you
are drawn into My Spiritual Presence, not merely into
experiences or movements in your body, or into changes of
mind.
You are distracted beyond these by My Spiritual Presence
if you truly enter into My Spiritual Presence.
Most often, people experience the effects of My Spiritual
Presence, or even experiences that have nothing at all to do
with My Spiritual Presence.
You may, in your initial devotional movement toward Me,
feel love and responsive feelings for Me in your
Contemplation of This Body, and you may call such feelings
the experience of My Spiritual Presence, whereas they are
simply the effects of your own devotion.
To fully experience, Contemplate, or Realize My Spiritual
Presence is to be drawn into My Samadhi. My Spiritual
Presence leads directly to My Very (and Inherently Perfect)
State, just as My bodily (human) Form leads directly to My
Very (and Inherently Perfect) State.
If you truly feel-Contemplate My bodily (human) Form
without distraction, you will (in due course) Realize My
Spiritual Presence and My Very (and Inherently Perfect)
State.
It is simply that now you are bound to your attention,
which (as your experience should tell you) is a karmic body
full of tendencies that animate themselves and move to
fulfill themselves.
PART II
In your daily life, even in your formal Contemplation of
Me, you suffer the tendencies of attention.
You may sit to meditate, intending simply to feel (and
thereby Contemplate) My bodily (human) Form, and yet spend
an hour thinking about everything you did the day before, or
everything you are going to do that day, or everything you
wish you had done.
How much of that hour was spent actually feeling (and
thereby Contemplating) My bodily (human) Form?
Likewise, with the experiencing of My Spiritual Presence.
There may be some feeling for My Spiritual Presence, some
glimpsing of It, but as with the Contemplation of My bodily
(human) Form, attention moves and plays upon My Spiritual
Presence. Attention is a diversion. You may experience My
Spiritual Presence by the submission of attention. You may
also experience My Spiritual Presence by becoming diverted
in your attention. Because of the movements of your
attention you experience My Spiritual Presence as a variety
of effects, whereas if your attention were truly submitted,
if you were mature enough in your practice to submit your
attention, then you would Find My Spiritual Presence as a
profound Grace that leads to My Very (and Inherently
Perfect) State.
(26) What you experience in My Company has everything to
do with your relative maturity as a practitioner of the Way
of the Heart, and it has everything to do with all the
stages of life in which your attention is active. Your
diversions of attention, your tendencies of attention,
govern your experience in My Company. The experiences are,
therefore, truly secondary. They are really not the point.
The point is to do the sadhana of the submission of
attention, to actually practice feeling -Contemplation. It
makes no difference what the tendencies of attention are.
They are to be transcended by feeling-Contemplation of Me .
The practice is simple, and very direct. It is to use the
Gift of My bodily (human) Form, My Spiritual Presence, and
My Very (and Inherently Perfect) State as Means, by
feeling-Contemplation, for the transcendence of attention.
Always return to this feeling -Contemplation. Return from
the diversions of attention, over and over again. This is
the process. If you will do this, then responsively you will
also increase your demonstration in daily life of all the
signs of devotion, service, and self-discipline.
(27) And these signs are necessary. The process is
fundamentally a process of renunciation. The transcendence
of attention is the transcendence of the body-mind.
Attention moves in and as and through the body-mind. If
attention is transcended, then it affects everything about
the orientation to the body-mind.
(28) If, in due course, there is significant maturing in
the demonstration of devotion, service, and self-discipline,
then renunciation characterizes you more and more
profoundly. It is when this responsive renunciation has
achieved a level of significant maturity that
feeling-Contemplation of My Spiritual Presence Itself
becomes possible. Until then, yes, there may be glimpses and
there may be experiences of the effects of My Spiritual
Presence, but true feeling-Contemplation of My Spiritual
Presence, of Me As Spiritual Presence, requires significant
maturity, renunciation, real signs of devotion, service, and
self-discipline, real responsibility for attention. All of
that is required in order to truly be sensitive to My
Spiritual Presence As It Is, and to be truly able to feel
(and thereby Contemplate) My Spiritual Presence, rather than
to be diverted from My Spiritual Presence.
(29) The practice is to overcome the motions of attention
by this feeling-Contemplation of Me, this submission. It is
progressively a self-renouncing process, a self-forgetting
process, a self-purifying process, a self-transcending
process. Yes, there may be glimpses of My Spiritual Presence
and even of My Very (and Inherently Perfect) State, but
ultimately they are not the point. The point is to do the
practice in every moment. Whatever arises, feel (and thereby
Contemplate) Me . Transcend attention by feeling (and
thereby Contemplating) Me in the context of this moment.
(30) Whatever arises, it is the motion of attention,
which is a diversion from Happiness, or Self-Existing,
Self-Radiant Love-Bliss. Only when attention does not arise,
when there is no motion of attention, is there inherent
Identification with Happiness, Love-Bliss, the Divine
Self-Condition. Every motion of attention is a diversion
from That. This discovery, this lesson, is the true
beginning of sadhana, and if you only learn the lesson a
little bit, then you will do sadhana only a little bit.
(31) Sadhana must cover all aspects of the motion of
attention, including all the blind spots of attention. You
must take into account and transcend all your automaticities
by the deepening of the process, not only in meditation but
in daily life. Whatever deepening, whatever profundity,
whatever purification occurs in meditation must be
demonstrated in daily life as increased devotion, service,
and self-discipline. Such practice of the Way of the Heart
is progressively self-renouncing.
(32) Everyone begins with this simple practice, which is
the foundation of all practice. From the beginning, you must
establish self-forgetting feeling-Contemplation of My bodily
(human) Form. From the beginning, you must do that, with a
little devotion, a little service, a little self-discipline.
This is the minimum practice. This is what you begin with.
And (thereafter) you must increase this practice,
responsively.
(33) I have Called you to experiment with the various
forms of the conscious process and conductivity that I offer
to you from the beginning. Experiment with them while
practicing in this basic fashion, and see which of the forms
of the conscious process and conductivity enhance the
process for you. What works? Experiment, and then
spontaneously notice what works, what best enables you to
effectively transcend self-attention in
feeling-Contemplation of Me.
(34) If you establish yourself in the original practice
of self-forgetting feeling-Contemplation of My bodily
(human) Form, and if you exercise devotion, service, and
self-discipline progressively, and if you experiment with
the various options I have Given you, then, over time,
sooner or later, you will discover what works. Some people
discover it rather readily, and others go through a longer
course, just as some may take longer to develop any of the
signs of practice.
(35) Very probably you will not stably determine which of
the various options of the conscious process and
conductivity are practice-enhancing for you until you have
otherwise developed all the foundation features of practice
in general, which must “come together” in order for you to
decide very basic matters like this. You will have no true
certainty about it until there is basic establishment of the
original practice, and a true practice of devotion, service,
and self-discipline. You must test and prove your approach,
in other words. The experiment will not prove itself until
you have established the essentials of the practice
altogether. If a person is without true devotion, real
service, and authentic and effective self-discipline, how is
he or she to decide whether to practice self-Enquiry, or to
practice Sat-Guru-Naama Japa, or just to use My Sat-Guru
Name, “Da”? How is a person to decide? What is the point of
deciding, anyway, if the essentials are absent?
(36) The basis for discovering everything in the course
of your practice is to embrace the Call to devotion,
service, and self-discipline, and to practice
self-forgetting feeling-Contemplation of My bodily (human)
Form. A person may be inclined to do these only minimally at
first, but these must be there at the beginning, and they
must increase. When they have increased to the point of
establishing a basic practice, then you will at that time be
likely to be clear about which of the various options of the
conscious process, for example, are most workable for you.
It makes absolutely no difference which of them you choose.
They are all equally direct. It is simply a matter of
discovering by real practice which works for you.
(37) For some, the practice is always very basic and
simple-devotion, service, and self-discipline, and
feeling-Contemplation of My bodily (human) Form, and perhaps
the use of My Name to Invoke Me. For some, it is as simple
as that, and it may remain so indefinitely even for a
lifetime.
(38) DEVOTEE: Heart-Master Da, it is magnificent for me
to see You here in this circumstance of Your Hermitage
Ashram. I have a question about my meditation that has to do
with Your Instruction for Contemplating Your bodily human
Form. I have been corrected, in the sense that what I used
to do in the past was to indulge the energies in the
body-mind. In meditation now I feel drawn to You by
Contemplating Your bodily (human) Form. And I was wondering
about the Contemplation that occurs when I keep my eyes open
as opposed to what occurs when I close my eyes. When I am
drawn to close my eyes, I feel a profound sense of Your
Form, and I feel You Pervading my body-mind. Sometimes when
that occurs, I also feel a profound stimulation of energies
in the body. Sometimes I am confused about whether I should
allow these energies to occur, or if my eyes should return
to simple Contemplation of Your bodily human Form.
(39) HEART-MASTER DA LOVE-ANANDA: If you have to think
about it or talk about it, keep your eyes open and look at
My Picture. If, when you become moved to close your eyes,
something about the process becomes confusing to you, or if
you feel that your attention is simply wandering, then very
possibly you should open your eyes and feel (and thereby
Contemplate) Me via My Murti.
(40) It is not the content of the meditation that is the
point. The transcendence of the content is the point. If
there is a spontaneous and clear movement to close the eyes
in the feeling practice of Contemplating Me, obviously
closing the eyes can be allowed. Feeling-Contemplation of My
bodily (human) Form even continues, then, through a mental,
or otherwise feeling, Recollection of Me. A thread of
feeling-Contemplation of My bodily (human) Form somehow
continues. Each person so moved to close his or her eyes
will likely give a different report about what kinds of
experiences arise. But there is one essential Teaching, and
that is to transcend whatever arises, physically, mentally,
and emotionally, through continued feeling -Contemplation of
Me.
(41) Feel (and thereby Contemplate) Me to transcend the
motions of attention. This is the process. If the eyes
close, feeling-Contemplation of Me remains the process. It
is not a matter of wandering in your attention with the eyes
closed, but of feeling (and thereby Contemplating) Me with
your eyes closed. If this is what occurs, then obviously the
meditation is effective. If something else occurs, if you
are simply turning away from feeling-Contemplation of Me
(via My Murti, or My bodily human Form) in order to wander
in your mind and your body like Narcissus, then this is not
good meditation. This is self-possession being
dramatized.
(42) Always it is a matter of the feeling -Contemplation
of Me . Feel-Contemplate Me with the eyes open until the
eyes close spontaneously, but, when the eyes close, continue
to feel (and thereby to Contemplate) Me, and (thus) continue
the thread of that feeling-Contemplation of Me that
developed when the eyes were open. If with the closing of
the eyes there is a clear sense of My Spiritual Presence, in
the form of some effects or as My Very Presence Itself, then
this becomes the circumstance and the substance of the
feeling-Contemplation. But if you are being distracted in
your attention by the effects of My Spiritual Presence, then
your attention will tend to wander in bodily energies,
descending or ascending, and in potential Yogic events,
descending or ascending.
(43) The fact that these phenomena arise spontaneously is
not a fault, any more than it is a fault that in any moment
a sensation arises, or a thought, in the context of bodily
awareness. However, the practice is not to yield attention
to these phenomena, but to feel (and thereby to Contemplate)
Me, to forget your self, to forget self-contraction.
(44) You must resort to Me as Means, whether the eyes are
open or closed. If you cannot Find Me in
feeling-Contemplation with the eyes closed, then you must
keep the eyes open until not only the eyes close but they
close with the continued capability to feel (and thereby to
Contemplate) Me. Originally, this capability is exercised
through the Recollection of My bodily (human) Form in the
minds eye, or through a tacit feeling-awareness that is a
continuation of the feeling-Contemplation of My bodily
(human) Form with the eyes open.
(45) Always this is the practice, to feel (and thereby to
Contemplate) Me, to forget the tendencies of attention, in
other words to direct attention differently than the way it
is going by tendency. If you do this with eyes closed, you
must be able to maintain the Recollection of My bodily
(human) Form somehow or other, or else you must be advanced
into the direct feeling-Contemplation of My Spiritual
Presence and toward My Very (and Inherently Perfect)
State.
(46) This is what you must answer for, then, about what
goes on in meditation.
(47) Whatever else may arise in the form of energies in
the body, when the eyes close, do you continue this
feeling-Contemplation of Me?
(48) DEVOTEE: Many times I feel a movement associated
with You. I feel a sense of . . .
(49) HEART-MASTER DA LOVE-ANANDA: But My Spiritual
Presence does not move, you see. Movement necessarily is
phenomenal. You are not to merely submit attention to
movements in the body. They are just that, movements in the
body. My Spiritual Presence Stands Prior to whatever may be
arising in the moment, that motion, that vision, that
sensation. It is fine if the experience arises, but to
transcend the binding power of this tendency you must Find
Me, you must “Locate” Me, you must feel (and thereby
Contemplate) Me. Otherwise, the experience leads to
involvement in another independent and self-possessed state
of existence.
(50) If the eyes close, you must either Find Me visually
or in feeling, as My bodily (human) Form, or you must Find
My Spiritual Presence As It Is, As I Am, My Spiritual
Presence Itself, Me, and not merely motions.
(51) If a practitioner of the Way of the Heart in the
context of the fifth stage of life experiences the phenomena
of ascending spinal energy, not only in the form of kriyas
but also in the form of visions, sounds, and touch, how will
he or she transcend this illusion? Not by merely
surrendering to the ascending Yogic current that is
producing extraordinary states of the body-mind, but by
surrendering to Me, by feeling-Contemplating Me. To do that
you must “Locate” Me. You must Find Me as Spiritual
Presence, Prior to these motions and experiences. Then, even
though you may be experiencing the ascending process for the
moment, you are surrendering attention, transcending
attention, by feeling-Contemplating Me. This is the
necessary practice in the context of the fifth stage of
life.
(52) In the Way of the Heart, practice in the context of
the fifth stage of life is not submission to the spinal
current itself. In the Way of the Heart, practice in the
context of the fifth stage of life is practice of
“Ishta-Guru-Bhakti Yoga”, or direct feeling-Contemplation of
Me. This is how you transcend the phenomenal motions of
attention. If you do this consistently, the process develops
stage by stage. Ultimately, the Perfect Practice becomes
your capability, if you are practicing the elaborate form of
the Way of the Heart by stages. (Otherwise, the equivalent
of Realization of My Samadhi becomes your capability, or
your Gift, in due course.)
(53) Until that time, the mechanism of the body-mind
structured on three regions of the heart and on the
descending and ascending Circle is the potential of
attention, which wanders naturally in these structures until
it is submitted to do otherwise. Attention must be brought
under control, but you cannot (to the Perfect degree)
willfully control it. To try to control attention is itself
the act of self-contraction. To work on attention is egoic
activity.
(54) You must respond with your attention. You must
respond to That Which is Prior to attention. You must
respond to the Gift of Grace, which is the unique Means.
Yes, attention must be transcended, but that does not mean
you must work on attention. To work on attention is to be
Narcissus, enamored of himself. The Way is to love the
Beloved, to surrender to the Revealed Beloved, to practice
Ishta-Guru-Bhakti Yoga.
(55) This is the secret of practice of the Way of the
Heart: In every moment of experiencing, you must Find Me,
“Locate” Me, and practice self-forgetting
feeling-Contemplation of Me. It is not a matter of
surrendering to experiences, whether they are ordinary
life-experiences in the context of the first three stages of
life, or emotional and frontal experiences that develop in
the context of the fourth stage of life, or the ascending
experiences that occur in the advancement of the fourth
stage of life and then in the context of the fifth stage of
life. None of this is true practice of the Way of the Heart.
As you mature in your submission of attention and in your
development of the signs of devotion, service, and
self-discipline, the stages of life will be Revealed
progressively, but, as they are Revealed, you must practice
the Way of the Heart, which transcends them.
(56) The phenomena of the stages of life are not the true
Gift. They are only a secondary Gift (in the form of the
signs of growth). The true Gift is the Gift of
feeling-Contemplation, which is the Means of the
transcendence of these limitations, these signs of growth,
in the developmental context of phenomenal life.
(57) [To the questioner] So then what occurs? You
give yourself up to your insides?
(58) DEVOTEE: Sometimes.
(59) HEART-MASTER DA LOVE-ANANDA: That is the same as
being distracted by thoughts.
(60) DEVOTEE: I feel very Instructed by the practice of
the feeling-Contemplation of Your bodily (human) Form. And I
have finally begun to understand something about the
Wisdom-Teaching You have Given over all these years.
(61) HEART-MASTER DA LOVE-ANANDA: You must use all the
arms I have Given you. There is this basic practice, this
self-forgetting feeling-Contemplation of Me, but the
varieties of the conscious process and conductivity are what
you might call the technical aspects of this simple
submission. If the eyes close, what form of the conscious
process do you practice? If attention is tending to become
wrapped up in bodily energies or blisses, whatever they may
be, what form of the conscious process do you practice? What
form of conductivity do you practice?
(62) Conductivity is not a matter of yielding to the
tendencies of attention to be moved by energy. Conductivity
is a support of the conscious process, which goes beyond the
tendencies of attention. The practice of conductivity is not
merely a matter of giving over to the energies in the body
but of moving through the structures of tendency, moving
beyond them, disciplining them, conforming them to the total
circuit, and thereby enabling the submission via the
conscious process to be complete and profound.
(63) Conductivity is a support of the conscious process,
the submission of attention through feeling-Contemplation of
Me. Conductivity does not merely enable you to experience
the energies in your own body. Rather, it is the (secondary)
means to go beyond them, or to submit them. Conductivity is
a specific discipline to be done intentionally. Conductivity
is not merely the automaticity of experiencing energies.
Conductivity is what you do when such experiences occur. The
conscious process is what you do primarily . To support
that, to align the body-mind to the conscious process, you
practice the conductivity exercises.
(64) Feeling-Contemplation of Me is never a matter of
passively indulging in the good feelings (themselves) that
may occur when the eyes close, any more than at some other
time it is a matter of indulging in all the bad feelings
(themselves). If you have good feelings in life or in
meditation, you are also guaranteed bad feelings in life or
in meditation. There are always two ways about it. If you
experience the positive signs of conditional existence, you
will inevitably also experience the negative signs.
(65) There is no absolutization of positive signs. There
is no conditional Heaven, or Paradise. All conditional forms
are made of opposites, or cycles of opposites. They are
illusions of attention. Attention is a dimensionless point
of view that moves in an apparently boundless sphere, or
matrix, of potential modifications of energy. It is
shapeless, omnidimensional. It is also an illusion, and it
is terrible, full of pain and, alternately, pleasures that
keep you coming back as if to absolutize them. You think
that you are absolutizing pleasures, pursuing pleasures as
if you could have them completely. But you are doing it as
an automaticity. You do not know any better. When the
Perfectly Subjective Condition is Realized, attention no
longer tends to arise conditionally in this matrix of
illusions.
(66) The Process of the Way of the Heart is
self-renunciation, self-transcendence, the transcendence of
seeking, the transcendence of attention. The Means is
feeling-Contemplation of Me exercised in the various forms
of the conscious process, and, supportive of that, in
various forms of conductivity, but originally, principally,
it is self-forgetting feeling-Contemplation of My bodily
(human) Form in meditation, demonstrated through signs of
devotion, service, and self-discipline in daily life.
(67) This Process becomes a progressive experiential
Revelation of the stages of life, and with each such
Revelation the same Teaching must be fulfilled: Feel (and
thereby Contemplate) Me so as to transcend these
limitations. Be utterly committed to Happiness Itself,
nothing less, to the Divine Itself, nothing less, to the
Hridaya-Samartha Sat-Guru, nothing less, to no “separate”
one, no “other” one, but only That One. Practice
Ishta-Guru-Bhakti Yoga with the total commitment of your
existence, and by Means of that feeling-Contemplation you
will transcend karmic destiny, bondage, illusion, suffering,
un-Happiness.
(68) The Way of the Heart is not a conventional process
of self-fulfillment, or a self-help game. It is the Process
of Liberation by Divine Means. And it cannot develop any
further than you will allow by your demonstration of
devotion, service, and self-discipline. You cannot Realize
anything beyond your present level of renunciation.
(69) DEVOTEE: Heart-Master Da, I want to make sure I
understand the Event of Your Divine Descent correctly. The
Divine Self acquired Your body-mind completely-is that what
is different? Is that what has made the difference? It has
always been my practice to allow myself to feel my
love-attraction to You.
(70) HEART-MASTER DA LOVE-ANANDA: How profoundly were you
moved to do it?
(71) DEVOTEE: More so since then, and I am also more
available to You since then. And that is what I was
wondering about.
(72) HEART-MASTER DA LOVE-ANANDA: That is the difference.
Before that Event, the Vehicle of this body-mind bore your
likeness in a rather ordinary sense. It was a Means of
Submission to you, a Means I used in order to consider the
Way of the Heart and its practice. Because no one was
interested in practicing the Way itself, as it is, I
Submitted to consider the matter with everyone. The
Wisdom-Teaching was the same then as it is now. The practice
was the same then as it is now. But no one was equipped to
do it, or even moved to do it beyond the most casual or
ordinary of gestures in that direction.
(73) I accumulated everyone to My Self in that process of
Submitting to your likeness, and ultimately Submitted My
conditional self to My Divine Self. The one I Submitted to
My Self was every one. All these human limitations, then,
have been overcome, Submitted, purified. This bodily (human)
Form is the Revelation of that overcoming, the Proof of it,
the Demonstration of it, and therefore the Means of its
Realization. This Body is the very Means, and it is no
longer moved to make the gesture of Submission, no longer
aware of that likeness. No likeness is found.
(74) I Am What you must Realize. I am not like you. I Am
you. This Body is not the Revelation of your likeness. It is
the Revelation of the One you must Realize. It is the Very
Means for your Realization of That One. By Submitting This
Body, which is every one, to My Self I performed a Sacrifice
so that others may now respond to Me. I made it possible
that I would not have to Teach. Therefore, even though the
same One is also now Revealed, that possibility has become
magnified absolutely. People are being drawn into at least
the beginnings of a serious response without My having to
make the Sacrifice to be like others, to enter into the play
of consideration with you.
(75) I am not interested in that. I have done it
completely and finally. There is nothing to consider.
Fundamentally, there is nothing to discuss. There is a basic
practice to which I Call you, but it is just that. How much
is there to say about it once it is fundamentally stated?
Previously, This Body was able to move you to consider the
Way of the Heart. Now, in Its Perfectly Transformed State,
This Body is able to move you to practice the Way of the
Heart. This is the Great Change in My Work. Therefore, by
first Submitting to you, I moved you to consider the Way of
the Heart. And now, by not Submitting to you, I move you to
practice it.
(76) You may be looking for some sign that I am the same
person with whom you were familiar and who entered into this
Play with you in the past. You may want to re-acquire some
familiarity with Me, find a likeness to yourself, in other
words. This interest of yours will not be satisfied. I am
not like you, and I am not here to Submit to you. Nor am I
here to tolerate your abuse, which continues to this very
day, except that I do not tolerate it, you see. It does not
move Me to enter into the Play of Submission as I did in My
Teaching years. Now I only suffer you.
(77) You all must go through a transformation in response
to Me, a transformation that requires you to accept
responsibility for the life of this practice. That is
exactly what you refused to do during all the years of My
Teaching Work.
(78) There are also many aspects of that Great Emergence
that are not communicable in words. They are a matter of
Siddhi, Effective Power, Divine Work, that Accomplishes the
Great Thing. Beyond a point, such things cannot be accounted
for in speech. They may be Revealed to you in one manner or
another in the course of your practice, in the course of the
development of your sensitivity to My Revelation, or they
may not become Revealed to you in any concrete way, or they
may be Revealed only in part. You cannot size Me up, acquire
Me with the mind, round Me out here, “This is Me,
understood”, you see. You can only go beyond your self, and
be moved to do so.
(79) My Sign has always been the Means. And this Sign has
been Revealing Itself more and more profoundly. Now the
Revelation of My Sign and My Word is complete, Given as
Means for you to practice, simply and in summary form made
available to you, not merely for your consideration but for
your response, or, in other words, for your real
consideration. What you all call “consideration” is just
diversion. True consideration comprehends and accomplishes.
True consideration becomes practice. Your consideration in
all My Teaching years never became practice. My
consideration made your practice possible, and My
consideration of this practice became complete in the Event
in 1986. By considering the Way of the Heart, therefore, I
have made it possible for you. This is a Mystery ultimately
beyond comprehension, but something about it may be tacitly
appreciated by you.
(80) DEVOTEE: I want to thank You for the Grace of Your
Darshan. You are so Beautiful. Earlier we were talking about
visualizing You. I feel I respond to You in the “Sat-Guru
Puja” and in meditation through self-surrender and
Contemplating Your Murti. My question is, is that feeling of
You what I should also be practicing throughout the day?
(81) HEART-MASTER DA LOVE-ANANDA: Should you be? You are
asking Me if you should do it at other times? Certainly,
yes. Yes, of course. During the day you are generally active
in one fashion or another, and, therefore, I have Given you
forms of devotion, service, and self-discipline that apply
in every context of life. Conform your daily life to these
practices as a means of intentionally Remembering Me and
Contemplating Me. Do not do these things instead of
Remembering and Contemplating Me. Do them as Remembrance and
Contemplation of Me. In the Communion Hall (when you sit for
meditation), if you only feel (and thereby Contemplate) Me ,
no other action is associated with that moment. When you sit
for meditation, you are Called to transcend all conditions
by feeling (and thereby Contemplating) Me.
(82) In the circumstance of such intentional activity,
you are Called to transcend your self by
feeling-Contemplating Me, but because you are also active in
various other ways, I Call you to transform the life of
action into feeling-Contemplation of Me. In daily life,
therefore, you do not neglect to act. You do not sit in the
Communion Hall twenty-four hours a day. In daily life you
act, but you change your action so that your action becomes
feeling-Contemplation of Me. You are Called to change every
moment of activity into a direct expression of devotion,
service, and self-discipline, and to feel (and thereby
Contemplate) Me through those actions, to forget your self
through those actions, in other words to forget
self-contraction through those actions.
(83) The practice, then, is perpetual. There is no
circumstance of existence in which you are not Called to
practice. Over time, the practice becomes more and more
profound. Over time, you adapt to it more and more fully,
and you practice it more and more effectively. At the
outset, you practice only minimally, partially,
experimentally. But, over time, you mature in this
practice.
(84) I Call you to turn every action into direct service
to Me. If you are serving someone, you are aware of him or
her while you are doing the service. Instead of just acting,
therefore, act as service to Me and Remember Me, Contemplate
Me. How much feeling you generate in the process is of
course dependent on the intensity (and the concentration) of
your practice of Contemplation in such service. But you must
understand that the practice is not merely a matter of
generating an intense emotional state. There may be times
certainly when an intense emotion is generated. That does
not mean, however, that, if practice is to be authentic,
some intensely emotional condition must be generated. The
practice is a self-forgetting practice. You are Called to
surrender through feeling-Contemplation of Me , not merely
to feel good (or even to feel “feelings”, or emotions,
themselves).
(85) Feeling-Contemplation of Me is not the same as
remembering your boyfriend or your girlfriend. You would not
think of somebody as your boyfriend or your girlfriend if,
when you thought of that person, you did not feel good. That
is the only reason why people get girlfriends and
boyfriends, because when they think about them or have
something to do with them, they feel good. When you stop
feeling good when you think about or associate with someone,
you do not call her or him your girlfriend or boyfriend
anymore. You call her or him wife or husband or spouse.
[Laughter.] You get bored, or start coping.
Ishta-Guru-Bhakti Yoga is not like a relationship to a
boyfriend or a girlfriend. Remembering Me does not
necessarily feel good at the moment. It does not necessarily
become a kind of adoring or blissful emotional state.
(86) Remembrance of Me, devotion to Me, takes place in
the context of a completely different purpose of existence
than common relationships. I am not here to fulfill the
purpose of boyfriend and girlfriend, or any other
conventional relationship. Your relationship to Me is (or
must be) Purposed to Divine Self-Realization, Perfect
self-transcendence. You do not (or should not) Remember Me
or associate with Me merely to feel good in your body-mind.
You should associate with Me and Remember Me in such a
Manner that you transcend your body-mind. Sometimes there
may be pleasurable bodily states, mental states, and
emotional states, but at other times you may simply be
making the counter-effort of feeling-Contemplation in the
context of negative or unpleasant bodily or emotional or
mental states, and you will be forgetting and going beyond
them (just as when some pleasurable physical, emotional, or
mental state arises in feeling-Contemplation of Me, the real
force of feeling-Contemplation is a counter-effort, an
activity of surrender that goes beyond those pleasurable
states).
(87) Devotion is Remembrance of Me, feeling-Contemplation
of Me, to the degree of self-forgetfulness, not merely to
the degree of self-pleasure or enjoyment, physically,
emotionally, mentally. To Remember Me is to forget your self
Utterly, all your states, bodily, emotional, and mental.
This is its Significance. This is its Purpose. The degree to
which you actually do forget your self in
feeling-Contemplation of Me is the measure of your practice
at the moment. Of course, at the beginning, that
feeling-Contemplation or feeling Remembrance is not so
profound as it is at some more advanced stage of maturity,
because you are dealing with grosser limitations at the
beginning.
(88) DEVOTEE: When I read the traditional descriptions of
the Guru-devotee relationship, I feel there is something
that those devotees practice in relationship to their Master
all the time, always Contemplating their Master, that I feel
and want to do in my practice.
(89) HEART-MASTER DA LOVE-ANANDA: You will not from the
beginning, simply because you are moved toward Me and moved
to practice, be likely to qualify as someone like one of the
great devotees of the past, unless you are uniquely born as
My devotee. You will show great signs of devotion only in
due course, only over time, as you go through the process of
self-purification. You must simply seriously enter into the
practice as I have Given it to you, really practice it as a
discipline of daily life and meditation, truly enter into
this process of feeling-Contemplation of Me to the degree of
relinquishing or forgetting bodily, emotional, and mental
states.
(90) When you are purified of self-contraction by that
process, then, in due course, this devotion, this Communion
with Me, will become Realization of My Divine Condition.
Then you will demonstrate more of the characteristic signs
of the great devotees of the past. The signs they
demonstrated that are so highly prized were the signs of
Grace. In due course, they showed the Shine of their Master.
Their hearts Realized, at least to a significant degree, the
Blessed Condition of their Master.
(91) Likewise, in due course, the process of devotion,
service, and self-discipline begins to show signs, by Grace,
in devotees in the Way of the Heart. And those very signs
are evidence of Me . You make room for My Demonstration by
self-forgetting. You have no demonstration to make. The only
Demonstration is Mine. Your business is self-forgetting
through feeling-Contemplation of Me. My business is to Shine
where you give Me room to Shine.
(92) You, therefore, have no business being concerned
about what kind of state you are experiencing, bodily,
emotional, and mental, at the moment. Your business is to
feel (and thereby to Contemplate) Me, to exercise this
devotion fully, bodily, emotionally, and mentally, through a
real sacrifice in meditation and in daily life. You must
accept it as an ordeal of life, because you do not begin
this Way as some sort of naked absolute. You begin this Way
as a karmic entity suffering bondage.
(93) Therefore, you must resort to Me, resort to Grace,
and be willing to pass through the ordeal of
self-purification. And, in due course, the Grace of My
Company will be shown, as Grace will have it.
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