THE “BRIGHTENING” WAY TALK
SERIES
THE “BRIGHTENING” WAY TALK SERIES – The Yajna Discourses
of Santosha Adi Da (1995-1996) – Gathering “Considerations”
with Beloved Adi Da Samraj, at Sugar Bowl Ski Resort and the
Manner of Flowers, December 29 and 30 1995, and January 3,
1996.
Index
The Yajna Discourses of Santosha Adi Da (1995-1996)
There’s No Escape,
There’s Only
Realization
A Gathering “Consideration” with Beloved Bhagavan Adi Da
In The Manner of Flowers On January 5, 1995
SECTION II
AVATARA ADI DA: What more is there to talk about relative
to this? Some of you are on the LRO list in one place or
another, and some of you are conspicuously absent.
DEVOTEE: The usual suspects.
AVATARA ADI DA: There’s
another thing I pointed out about it that we could maybe
discuss tonight, too, then. In a very high number of cases
actually, one member of an intimate couple is on the list
and their intimate is not. So I gave a lot of Notes about
that today.
DEVOTEE: We heard those before we came over.
AVATARA ADI DA: Good.
DEVOTEE: Beloved in this moment in this whole
conversation You’ve sensitized
me more deeply to the self-contraction, and also to You,
more profoundly in this moment. And once that level of
sensitivity is established, couldn’t
you very quickly demonstrate the hearing capacity?
AVATARA ADI DA: It seems logically so, yes. But, as I
Said, you can step out of the process. People take vacations
all the time, make the practice sort of nominal and
superficial, either consistently or in some occasions. But
if you don’t cop out, in other words if you stay with it
seriously, stay focused in it, and maintain all the
disciplines I’ve Given you, yes, hearing should come about
readily, inevitably, and it shouldn’t
take a great long time.
As I said, what are the reasons why it wouldn’t
happen? Why would it be delayed? Its taking vacations from
the totality of discipline that covers everything,
functional, practical, relational, cultural. You either
don’t let the practice become
intense, or you don’t let it
touch everything. This is how you let yourself off the hook.
Instead of focusing and listening to Me, in other words
focusing in this discovery of the self-contraction,
you’re looking for some gleeful
or distracted alternative.
So you find this by playing it fast and loose with some
aspects of the discipline, and then you otherwise get sort
of dopey and you don’t practice
Ishta-Guru-Bhakti Yoga moment to moment. You just do it
sometimes. Well, that’s why
hearing could take a long time. And many of you here are
proof of it.
Some of you characters are getting old in My Company
already. I remember Rodney making jokes about this-it seems
like yesterday, but it must be twenty years ago-how in the
future, you know, sitting in rocking chairs or whatever, and
everybody would be old here together and so forth. So I
remember him making remarks like this. And, well, its so. A
lot of people are getting up around sixty or so, certainly
into fifties. That doesn’t mean
middle age or old age. That’s
part of the social message you get, every ten years move
into another social pattern and eventually consent to be an
old asshole. But for the renunciate, the decades
don’t have that psychological
significance, and even though the body itself may tend to go
through some kind of changes, you compensate for it
Yogically and so forth.
Well, in other words many of you are proof, being twenty
years or so in My Company already. Nina has been in My
Company, for what is it, thirty-five
years? The longest listening process to date.
So Brian was just suggesting that once there is a basic
grasping, he was just describing that hearing ought to occur
very quickly or readily. It seems so.
MICHAEL: Hopefully within just a few hours, Lord.
AVATARA ADI DA: Yes, but then again, why haven’t
so many of you who have been in My Company for a good long
while, and that’s basically all
here, why haven’t you heard Me
yet, plain old, and moved on?
Because if you tell Me you have, but I see you taking all
kinds of vacations-Ishta-Guru-Bhakti Yoga sometimes,
functional, practical, relational, cultural disciplines,
pick and choose sometimes if I see you doing that, and
you’re also telling Me
you’ve heard Me, its not very
believable, you see.
So that’s another way of
saying what is My difficulty when I get these LRO lists.
DEVOTEE: You can tell shit from shinola, Beloved.
AVATARA ADI DA: Yes. You must discriminate. So
that’s the first thing I look
for in devotees. That’s what it
means to go from student-beginner on to 1.1, 1.2.
That’s supposed to be the sign,
the stable establishment and maintenance of all the
foundation practice. No vacations from then. So what there
is to observe, then, in the crisis of hearing are the unique
characteristics associated with that. But what’s
being reported to Me in general by people who make this
application to the LRO is that they’re
feeling kind of happy about having disciplined themselves
for two weeks, while they heard My talk on Ishta-Guru-Bhakti
Yoga yesterday and they’re
really intending to do it. But they don’t
have the history of even the stability that should be there
in the transition from student-beginner.
They’ve taken so many
vacations that their claims don’t
sound very believable. That doesn’t
mean, however, that they cant get their act together and
make that transition even readily. And, like I Said, I have
to see the goods. They have to prove it. You have to pass
the tests, not just apologize for failing them and then tell
Me you’re committed to do
better. That’s Catholic, where
you constantly return to the sanctuary and apologize, and
commit yourself to doing better. And that’s
all the religious life amounts to is this constant cycle of
failing of tests and apologizing. I guess we cant say
that’s exactly how the Catholic
hierarchy intended people to do it, but that’s
how people in general do it. They never get purified, they
never get intense, they never get profound about the
religious life, and all they seem to be called upon to do
anyway is to be good citizens or something. Basically just
social morality is expected. If you do anything more than
that, as a religious person, you get raised eyebrows.
You’re not supposed to be
looking for God-Realization. You’re
supposed to be concentrating on being a productive citizen.
We don’t want to see you getting
ecstatic. Show up at the office in an exalted state? I mean
really! [Laughter.]
So the usual religious message is to be positive
in the social morality sense. So in the Catholic tradition,
for instance, they have the apology-recommitment cycle, in
other words, there’s a
conventional revision of Catholicism really, where people
just use the lesser part. So they apologize for social
infractions of one kind or another basically, and then are
asked “Are you sincere about that?”, “Yes.” And “Okay, do a
little penance and do better.”
Of course they generally don’t
do all that much better, so they just repeat the cycle over
and over again. But what its supposed to be about, even in
the Catholic tradition, at least in its origins, is a true
purification-people unburden themselves and truly change
their act and I’ve the life of
prayer and become more and more profound in their conversion
to God-Witness and God-Communion. Its like all traditions,
fundamentally about traditional God-Realization. But it gets
turned into the message of social morality in the common
world. And that’s why it seems
that so much of the time in religious history, the esoteric
part has been called esoteric because its hidden. It just
wasn’t known. Not a common
message.
It gives you the impression that the common people were
denied the Truth. Perhaps in some instances that was the
case, but people just prefer the vacation. Even if shown the
Great Revelation, they still want ordinary things instead.
In other words, they’re
distracted in their attention. So I Call you to a sadhana
that directly goes beyond all of that, and I’ve Given it to
you in every detail, and when people tell Me that
they’ve heard Me and so on, I
know what I’m looking at.
And you all have to know what you’re
about. You have to use My Teaching fully, and make it your
Law and your measure. If you do, then, yes, this hearing
crisis should awaken readily.
Today we were talking in our meeting [Beloved met
earlier in the day with Stanley, Brian, and Daniel
B.] that from the beginning
to hearing should maybe be, about a year and a half seems
reasonable. Student-novice for six months, and then a
student-beginner for six months, 1.1, 1.2, on to 1.3 in
another six months seems like a reasonable period of time
over all, for somebody who is truly serious and doesn’t
take vacations.
So a number of you have been around for a long time and
haven’t heard Me yet. This is
why. You’ve been peripheral in
your disposition, and rather casually you take vacations
from discipline and so on, don’t
maintain the focus, and you just wind up spinning your
wheels instead of hearing Me. If you really were serious,
and could readily establish what’s
supposed to be required for mature student-beginner, then
you should have basic certainty that in six months
you’ll have heard me and move on
from there. If you don’t take
any more vacations, six months ought to be enough for that,
with the year you’ve already had
behind you, or more, in the student-novice/student-beginner
process, where you’re supposed
to be adapting to this foundation practice.
So My feeling about most of the people on that list, so
far in our consideration anyway, is that they could be as
little as six months away from it. In other words if they
really are serious in this moment, they should be able to
readily establish this full student-beginner obligation and
then in about six months should have heard Me. In other
words, I feel they are some kind of student-beginner,
basically, but could move beyond that readily if they got
serious.
So that’s what I was looking
for when I asked you for that second group, the
intensive group. I knew there
would just be a small number that should be proposed as
having actually come up to level 2 now. So I wanted a
proposal that would cover the whole worldwide gathering in a
short period of time, reasonably short period of time. So I
wanted people on that list from each region.
Its hard to say at this point how many, if any, will come
through this process and actually be part of the LRO now.
But if at least that whole group and maybe even some others
got involved in this intensive, and really got straightened
out with the foundation practice right away, and worked with
one another intensively, certainly many if not all of them
should move on to 1.3 within the next six months, or in as
little as six months. But I don’t
see a lot of the signs I’m
looking for just generally speaking about that group. I see
many deficiencies which I’ve described tonight, and in
recent days. But it is a consideration, and if somebody can
prove it to Me, fine.
But I don’t take this transition to 1.3 or otherwise
level 2 lightly. Obviously, to rightly propose anybody for
this transition you have to have been involved in a true
cultural intensive with them.
And with their intimate, if they have one.
Today I called all those who are considering this matter
to study the LRO vow, because it clearly describes lay
renunciate practice as a renunciate practice. Its not just a
householder practice, as opposed to real renunciate
practice. Its a renunciate order, made up of people who
generally practice in the lay circumstance but not as lay
people in any conventional sense. So the Lay Renunciate
Order vow describes complete renunciation in the case of its
members. They are here to relinquish the bondage of
“bonding”, to everything and everyone. So to do that
practice in intimacy requires a profound Yoga. How can that
Yoga be done and all the obligations of the Lay Renunciate
Order be done, if you are involved with an intimate who is
not such a renunciate?
That other one would always have some kind of demands,
expectations or whatnot, but also would be practicing in a
different disposition, not only in sexual intimacy but in
all aspects of the relationship, one reinforcing at least to
some degree something less than full renunciation. Otherwise
why wouldn’t he or she choose to
do so, to embrace renunciate practice?
So that’s why I was reminding
everybody today about this, because the intimates of many
people were not on the list, on any of those lists. And
nobody mentioned it to Me, as if it had importance. There
seemed to be an impression that single individuals can apply
to the LRO, even if they’re
involved in intimacies. But, no, the general rule is that if
you’re practicing in intimacy,
your intimate must be involved in that same sadhana, and
that there may be exceptional cases individually, where
The list I got today was more or less the general rule.
You could apply just yourself without your intimate, or not,
it didn’t seem to make a
difference to those who gave Me this list. If you are a
renunciate in this Way, you’re
entered into a profound consideration relative
to everything. And therefore you are involved in a profound
consideration with your intimate. So you cant I’ve
two lives as a member of the Lay Renunciate Order. You have
to I’ve one-pointed.
The difference in the Lay Congregationist Order is not
that they’re not practicing
authentically. I expect them to practice authentically. But
they are, generally speaking, probably encumbering their
lives with lots of this’s and
that’s and other things, that
don’t allow for the kind of intensive
of practice expected in the renunciate orders.
And also they may have difficulty straightening some
things out, like for instance this matter of intimacy.
Fundamentally to move on to the renunciate practice, Lay
Renunciate Order and so on, you have to transform your
intimacy into Yoga. That means you have to see to it that
your intimate is transformed like everything else. And
that’s part of your test of
qualifying for the renunciate order, that you and your
intimate can show up at the same time, prepared to do the
same thing. Otherwise, what the hell are you up to?
Intimacies? Stay in the Lay Congregationist Order.
So if you’re doing the work,
it works, and you cover everything, you see. Nothing is
outside of the sphere of renunciation for a true renunciate.
So, individuals who do real sadhana and who are involved in
intimacy with one another turn one another into renunciates,
or certainly into authentic devotees. This is what they
support in one another. This is what they oblige one another
to do. Now, if either one neglects it, then it becomes a
relationship purposed to serve egoity in one way or another,
or conventionality, which is basically the same thing, in
and of itself.
Do you want to talk about something else, is that it? You
had the bliss part of the evening, and now you’re
having reality talk, and you want to get back to the bliss
part? [Laughter.]
DEVOTEE: This part isn’t as
blissful.
AVATARA ADI DA: Oh, yes? Well, I’ve Said enough about it,
I think. But what we were initially considering was not your
failures of sadhana and so forth, which we just completed
talking about.
Getting back to the first two parts of our consideration,
the first was feeling beyond mind, perception, all the rest,
and entering into the Feeling of Reality directly. And youre
all doing that for a while. And then we began to talk again,
and you confessed noticing the limit on your ability to feel
thus profoundly. So I’m
interested in talking about sadhana being about going beyond
that, but in this Way of “Brightness”. In other words,
there’s a constant “Brightening”
or change in the disposition from self-contraction to
Radiance.
Then we talked about your failure of it, your failure to
do that. And you wanted to lay on to Me this hearing
transition stuff, based on something else entirely, not this
Radiance, and having gone through that real sadhana, but
some other positive changes you
want to feel good about.
But the more limitations you place on this practice of
going beyond the self-knot, the more distracted you are by
other things and so on, the more you delay the course and
the more you oblige yourself to endure dis-ease. Sometimes
without noticing it so much, because you desensitize
yourselves. You simply will not go beyond this inherently
uncomfortable, painful sensation of existence that’s
at the root of everything you do and think. And you’ll
go inward. Its traditionally
been called many things, including the state of sin, which
means to miss the mark. You’ve
become dissociated from the Inherently Radiant “Bright”, the
Blissful Divine Self-Condition, and became a seeker instead,
you see, instead of a Realizer.
So to practice this Way, you have to do the work of going
beyond the ego-knot itself. It is a Graceful process because
its done in the form of Ishta-Guru-Bhakti Yoga. It is a
“Brightening” process, a sort of Radiating process, not
merely a cutting away or a cold process, emptying merely. It
is the Way of Fullness, of “Brightness”, of the “Bright”
Itself.
But to live it, you cant just
dance around with conventional religiosity. You must enter
into real Communion with Me at the root of the knot. And you
must do this consistently. And you cant do it if you take
vacations from the whole round of disciplines I’ve Given you
that covers everything. And you cant do it without
practicing true Ishta-Guru-Bhakti Yoga moment to moment.
So I expect all devotees to understand what I’m
talking about and make the culture altogether right on this
basis. And this LRO consideration has to go on taking these
matters seriously and establish an intensive
of those who can move on to the LRO in the next six months
or so. And then otherwise discriminate between them and some
others you may feel who are truly qualified to move on,
instead of just presenting Me a bag of who knows what? Horse
manure.
Do you have any questions about all of this, or any
excuses? Excuses for whatever you’ve
been doing instead? Or what? Anybody got anything to say
about any of this? Besides Stanley?
CARL: Sounds really good, Lord.
AVATARA ADI DA: It sounds really good, Lord?!!!!! I cant
believe it! Twenty-three years later, this extraordinary
Ordeal, and the voice comes out of the gathering
representing all, “Sounds really good, Lord.” Cyrano was at
some sort of a gala, and some guy thought he was going to
get really snotty with him. He stepped up to him after much
prodding from his friend and gesticulated with a
handkerchief, and said to Cyrano, “Your nose is rather
large.” [Laughter.] You know that play, right?
DEVOTEES: Yes.
AVATARA ADI DA: It was really funny. Of all the things
that could have been said, in other words.
We could just do the whole thing all over again. Ill talk
for twenty-three years to say all the things I did Say
before, but in order to say what you could have said.
[Laughter.]
That’s it?
HAL: It could be an interesting thing to try, Lord. Shall
we begin?
AVATARA ADI DA: Sadhana?
HAL: Consideration.
DEVOTEE: Beloved, I feel like what we considered thus far
this evening, I don’t think this is just a casual
conversation, or something we got just in passing. I’ve felt
the thread of this since that most extraordinary guided
meditation.
AVATARA ADI DA: Tcha.
DEVOTEE: But since that time I’ve continued to feel this
same realization that I noticed there in the very beginning,
which was different for me. I really felt the difference
between what I generally engage in and think is real
practice and real recognition of You. And then that actual
moment that I got to and continue to feel in the moment
since the beginning here, of feeling the contraction but
also feeling Your Radiance so “Bright” and beyond it, and
feeling like if I can just stay in that-staying in the
process always and not taking vacations-I can feel how that
can be very quick process.
AVATARA ADI DA: Well, that’s
what its supposed to be.
DEVOTEE: That’s what its
supposed to be.
AVATARA ADI DA: I’ve Given you the process, and
I’m here to quicken it, you
see.
DEVOTEE: It happened very quickly.
AVATARA ADI DA: But then you have to do what I Say. If
you want Me to Do what I Do, you have to do what I Say. You
have to do the sadhana.
DEVOTEE: Master, that’s why I
value these times with You during these occasions so
greatly, because its such a Gift and a lesson for me.
AVATARA ADI DA: Tcha.
DEVOTEE: And I thank You.
AVATARA ADI DA: Tcha.
Now, I accept those thanks. But prove it.
DEVOTEE: Yes. I hear You, Lord.
AVATARA ADI DA: You’ve had a
lot of time around Me here, along with a lot of others. Then
this matter is very direct. Simply establish the practice
I’ve Given to You. It is very direct, because its not
dependent on the kind of accumulations and artifices
associated with the ego-developmental religiosity or
ego-developmental esotericism, whatever you want to call it,
which is just buzzing with distractions all the time.
There are many reasons why this Way is quick. But its
because its focused on this one matter and not a lot of
distractions. But somehow or other you reverse it. You make
the establishment of all the foundation practices into some
sort of a thing in itself and don’t stay one pointed in what
this listening to Me is really all about.
We use these kinds of occasions –
we’ve done them in the past and hopefully now-to
focus on real listening to Me. The ancient texts are called
“upanishads”, or some of the ancient texts, a group of them
are. It means “at the foot of”. Well, what does that mean?
Its to be established in the discipline at the Feet of the
Master and to listen, and hear and see, and Realize. So if
there is an occasion such as this, or any occasion of
consideration with Me under any circumstances, you should
use it rightly, use it to your, advantage.
So let this consideration serve real hearing in you. And
whatever correction you have to make in your practice, let
it serve your absolute commitment to doing so.
I’ve talked to you many times about point of view-being
in a position of the separate personality, but as a
psycho-physical personality-and how this governs your sense
of reality, as long as you’re
not entered profoundly into the reality process. Your
presumption of a separate point of view in space is the
naive realism of your daily
life. Your sense of reality in space is determined by this
being fixed as a physical body in it. You see? And so you
are perceiving the room to be however it looks to you. But
somebody else sitting in another place in the room is doing
the same thing. But the room doesn’t
look to that one exactly as it looks to you. It has some
general likeness, of course, but its a different view
altogether, even if its the same room. And that ones
perception of the room is just as authentic as yours. Its
not that one of you is seeing the room rightly and the other
is experiencing an illusion. So both of those perceptions of
the room are true. And so as you add all other perceivers,
they all have a different view of what the room is, just as
authentic as yours. And all of them are true.
What does the room really look like, then? Because the
room itself exists in all kinds of terms. And yet it
doesn’t exist merely as you are
perceiving it. It exists as it can be perceived from
absolutely every point of view, and not only from every
point of view in space in the room but from every point of
view in space-time. That’s the
condition of the room. And yet you are not experiencing the
room as such. You’re not
experiencing the room itself. You’re
simply perceiving it from a point of view.
Just consider what the room itself looks like. And yet it
exists.
DEVOTEE: This would really be true in terms of subtle
experience also, then, I mean obviously.
AVATARA ADI DA: Any kind of experience, you see, …
DEVOTEE: Right.
AVATARA ADI DA: … in the mode of a separate
personality, is a partial view, a point of view, and not an
awareness of Reality Itself, even the conditional reality
itself. You are not aware of this room as it is , and yet
the room as it is exists.
Contemplations such as this are profound, because
I’m not just Calling you to
imagine something like a blue elephant. I’m
Speaking to you about a Reality that you all share and need
not invent. But It is Itself profound beyond your usual
consideration.
DEVOTEE: And we don’t know what it is.
AVATARA ADI DA: Mm-hm. Not only don’t you know what it
is, you cant even perceive
it.
DEVOTEE: You cant feel it, touch it, taste it.
AVATARA ADI DA: Right. You cant think it. You cant
comprehend it.
DEVOTEE: Master is that the equivalent to what You were
describing earlier as withdrawing to the point of infinity,
perceiving it from that point of view, except in the
opposite direction?
AVATARA ADI DA: Withdrawing to the point of infinity?
Well, I don’t like the word “withdrawing”, really.
DEVOTEE: Well, You described it earlier. Reducing, I
think You Said reducing to the point of infinity.
AVATARA ADI DA: Yes. You can reduce anything you
perceive, break it down into different physical components,
chemical, molecular components, atomic components.
Eventually you get to That of Which all of it is a
modification, or a level of appearance. It is Light Itself.
You cant reduce Light to anything further. Or Energy, you
cant reduce It to anything further. It doesn’t
have any parts. It doesn’t have
a deeper part. There is nothing on the other side of It.
Likewise, if you enter into the domain of you own
psycho-physical self-awareness, you go through all the
levels of it-the physical, the blood, the chemicals, the
molecular structure, the energy levels, states of mind-you
get to Consciousness Itself, and you cant reduce It further.
There’s nothing on the other
side of It. It has no parts.
By investigating the objective, you get to the point of
Light. By investigating the subjective, you get to the point
of Consciousness. And They are the same Thing. They are
irreducible, fundamental Reality. They are to be Realized
most profoundly, but this consideration is available to you
even now, regardless of your stage of practice or
Realization.
If you investigate physical phenomena or everything
objective, you find Light. Right? [DEVOTEES: Yes.]
Anybody have any doubt of that? Its the same Consciousness
through the subjective
investigation.
Well, these are ways of entering into the Ultimate Sphere
of Reality, and that is the Sphere in Which the room exists,
but even now.
DEVOTEE: Beloved, could we go back to “you cant feel it”?
Somebody was saying we cant feel it.
AVATARA ADI DA: Yes, I assume Brian must have been saying
it. He was talking about using emotional states to contact
it. Feeling itself is another matter.
DEVOTEE: It was when we were talking about Consciousness
Itself-you cant see it, you cant-
DEVOTEE: We were talking about the room itself.
DEVOTEE: But is that what were agreeing, that one cant
feel it?
AVATARA ADI DA: No.
DEVOTEE: No, I don’t agree to that.
AVATARA ADI DA: Cant feel what exactly? The Divine
Condition? Consciousness?
DEVOTEE: One cant feel Radiance? I wouldn’t
say that that’s true.
AVATARA ADI DA: The Radiance of Consciousness is what you
call light.
DEVOTEE: And Love-Bliss, though? Doesn’t
that-isnt there-?
AVATARA ADI DA: The Inherent Nature of It is Love-Bliss.
It is Self-Existing Consciousness, Self Radiant. And Its
Nature is Love-Bliss. It is the “Bright”. It is Me. This is
what you must Realize in Communion with Me.
Well, to do so, you cant just strain your eyeballs to
find the room as it truly is. You have to go beyond point of
view. You have to directly transcend egoity.
Its not that then, necessarily, you’ll
be having perceptions, some extraordinary perceptions, of
the room in some unimaginable condition that you
couldn’t describe, but rather
you’ll Realize the Condition in
Which the room also Exists Ultimately, the Divine
Self-Condition, Conscious Light of Divine Being.
So to Realize Me, you must transcend point of view,
self-position, egoity, the separate position. You cannot,
through any exercise of the separate position or the
body-mind, Realize the Truth. The body-mind is simply a
modification of That, like the room itself. Its a
complexity, or a maya, that cannot be comprehended.
So rather than exercise the separate self, as if to
Realize the Truth in the manner of the “great path of
return”, you see, the separate self is directly transcended.
That is the “radical” nature of this Way that I have Given
you.
So that’s the work
you’re here to do. That’s
the sadhana you’re here to do.
And you must have a clear understanding that it is so, or
you will re-invent the Way, as you all have done,
individually, even collectively-re-invented it in your own
likeness or according to your own egoic disposition, instead
of adhering to My Word and maintaining this profound
consideration moment to moment, and doing so in the context
of embracing all the disciplines I’ve Given you. Then you
are involved in the direct listening process.
See, the listening process is not just struggling with
the practices, the disciplines, all that. That’s
all just something to do. The listening process is this
profound consideration, engages Ishta-Guru-Bhakti Yoga,
making use of the technical elements of practice, of the
“conscious process” and conductivity”. The disciplines and
such are simply the order, the structure, within which you
do this profound consideration, because you cannot become
profound in it or one pointed in it if you don’t simply
establish those disciplines covering everything.
There’ll always be vacation-land
for you.
So it has always been My expectation, even, that you
would embrace all these disciplines, all these forms of
practice, and enter seriously, profoundly, into this
consideration, and move on through these stages, get on with
this process. But individually and collectively you’ve
been rather retarded about it.
Obviously, then, a Lay Renunciate Order must be made up
of people who are most profoundly engaged in this Yoga of
ego-transcendence, for real, rather than just being people
who are really in the world of the first three stages of
life and want the religious life to essentially be a social
order and a cultural distraction, a cultural consolation. So
I Call all My devotees to this seriousness, and the formal
renunciates must be the most exemplary. And others should be
moved to do likewise.
To really be in touch with the self-contraction in this
Communion with Me is to be on the verge of hearing. It
shouldn’t take long, if you drop
your vacations and just stay on the job.
DEVOTEE: Every time we find You, Beloved, we drop the
vacation right away.
AVATARA ADI DA: Tcha.
If you’ve heard Me, then
you’re in that position of your
own making, that knot you’re
making, or that pinch you’re
giving yourself. And you cant get rid of it, you cant shake
it. You don’t allow yourself to even make an effort in that
direction.
So it is tapas. It is a profound ordeal. At the same
time, it is full of absorptive
Communion with Me and all the things associated with right
life.
You must constantly be dealing directly with this
self-contraction. And if you are in touch with it, then you
don’t like it. You want only this Communion with Me. You
don’t want this
self-contraction, but you’re
having to feel it every moment. And its your doing, you see.
Its kind of in a spasm. You’ve
got to do the sadhana to relax it and be full of Me, so that
My “Brightness” Radiates through it and releases it
quickly.
So if you have heard Me, you don’t want to spend a lot of
time getting beyond that knot, because its not comfortable
at all. You become profoundly sensitized to it if
you’ve heard Me, and likewise
profoundly sensitized to Me. That’s
why seeing is next.
But the knot is there, and its unavoidable, and you
don’t like it. It is pain. It is
fear. This is what makes a renunciate out of people, the
discovery of Me and the self-contraction at the same time.
In full hearing and seeing, that’s
what makes people renunciates, because it is pain. Its
extraordinary pain, at the same time extraordinary bliss but
the pain is where you sit, and you are moved to feel out of
it, and be relieved of that enclosure, that divorce from the
Divine, that sinfulness. You dislike it so much, you dislike
that knot so much, that you become utterly concentrated in
going beyond it. Its not that you have to just sit in a room
all the time, but you’re just
all the time feeling beyond it, practicing the exercise of
going beyond self-contraction into the state of Radiance,
Love-Bliss, Energy, Light. And you would not be distracted
from It, because you do not want to be simply sitting in
that pain of self-contraction.
This is basically what Rudi was referring to, not really
knowing altogether what He was talking about. He just wanted
to deal with this incredible stress, frontal stress. But its
the ego-knot. You cant bust it from outside. You cant relax
the body that much. You have to deal with the root of egoity
itself-its in the conscious domain-and in Communion with Me
move beyond it. You cant just work on the body-mind. You
have to find out the ego-act, and exercise the flower
constantly, every moment.
But it is a pain, and its associated with lots of
adaptations that keep producing results somehow. So
you’re always going to have to
feel beyond egoity itself, but also all of its results. So
that makes it an ordeal of pain, of tapas, which you endure
because you’re also in Communion
with Me and have My Wisdom. But its still pain. Hm? But you
become intelligent with it. You know what you’re
doing and can make this exercise of going beyond the
contraction, the self-contraction.
In the process, there are things to be endured and felt
beyond, and that’s a purifying
process. But you would not-if you really truly have heard Me
and are sensitive altogether-you would not have that take a
long time.
Now up to 1.3, you don’t want to waste much more than the
weekend getting to the “Perfect Practice”. If you really
heard Me, its an urgent matter then.
DEVOTEE: Beloved, I wanted to thank You, like everyone
else has, for that guided meditation. It was so Graceful.
But at one point You were suggesting that we allow ourselves
to feel that speck of egoity, allow ourselves to just feel
that, the epitome of egoity.
AVATARA ADI DA: Mm-hm. You liked that reference,
didn’t you?
DEVOTEE: Well, yeah, I did.
AVATARA ADI DA: It made some sense to you.
DEVOTEE: It did. Well, I just had an instant response to
it, because I felt this spot immediately. It was right,
right, bodily right here …
AVATARA ADI DA: On the right side of the heart,
you’re saying?
DEVOTEE: Yeah. It felt like a black spot, though.
AVATARA ADI DA: Mmm.
DEVOTEE: And the more I allowed myself to feel into it,
the more I felt it was like utter pain, torture, disease,
suffering. It was everything in that speck. Its everything
that I fear, everything that I avoid, because its so
intense. And for me I got-
AVATARA ADI DA: Do you feel outside the speck or inside
the speck?
DEVOTEE: I was outside the
speck-well, I don’t know. There were some points I
wasn’t sure, but I could see it
visually. But then I would get overwhelmed by it so I don’t
know exactly where I was.
AVATARA ADI DA: Well, to feel like its inside you, or
feeling that psycho-physical result, is to be outside, is to
objectify it. To be inside it, on the Source side of it, is
what hearing is about. And at the same time that its a
knowledge of a knot, its a knowledge of how to go beyond it.
Its a most fundamental self-understanding to realize that
you are always in the position of manufacturing this pain
and can feel beyond it.
DEVOTEE: I’ve never felt the overwhelming strength of
that so fiercely as tonight.
AVATARA ADI DA: Tcha.
DEVOTEE: I’ve experienced this bindu that she’s
talking about, this place, too, recently.
AVATARA ADI DA: That’s to be
outside it, as I just said. Its not wrong. Its just a level
of finding it, of locating it. Any of you could perhaps, by
some exercise of attention, feel something about the right
side of the heart. That doesn’t
mean that you’re established in
that position.
DEVOTEE: Oh, I didn’t feel it
there.
AVATARA ADI DA: Well, she was talking about it, Janis
was.
DEVOTEE: Well, that’s just
where it was.
AVATARA ADI DA: But the profound transitions in practice
are about being inside, or at the Source-Position.
The exercise of hearing, then, is to be sensitive
to it as contraction itself, to be in the position of the
pain, not outside it or avoiding it but actually in that
position. It is not comfortable at all, not likable. It has
all kinds of artifacts-physical, emotional, mental, and so
forth, even in the breath. So the self-contraction itself is
fundamental pain altogether, disturbance altogether, and
ordinary life is motivated by it, because it is so profound,
and it is detached from the fundamental Reality, the Divine
Reality. It is lost in maya, in appearances, presumptions,
even imagining that you are seeing the room, whereas in fact
you’re just seeing one little
view.
So its confusing. You re not
seeing Reality, then. You re
seeing an appearance associated with your own egoity. You
cant be in another position. You cant be in the position of
the totality of the room. What position are you in? Some
self-enclosure of thoughts and perceptions.
So its very uncomfortable to make this discovery of
egoity. But as I said to you earlier, its not truly
profoundly discovered except in the condition of Grace, of
Communion with Me, and reception of My Teaching, and then,
its in that total context that the ego is located also.
That’s hearing, the true
discovery of the self-knot, coincident with this whole
process of Communion with Me, full of the Wisdom of
Instruction that you apply.
What about that?
DEVOTEE: I think You re
talking about the matter of hearing includes, then, this
reception of You.
AVATARA ADI DA: Mm-hm. I know what we were talking about!
[Laughter.] I wanted to know if you had a response
to it.
DEVOTEE: Beloved, I feel, like You’ve
always Said, feeling-Contemplation of You is primary. The
first thing you have to do is “Locate” You before you can
even become sensitive to the
self-con traction.
AVATARA ADI DA: Yes.
DEVOTEE: It seems the whole listening process is just
staying with that feeling-Contemplation of You, but along
with whatever the body-mind goes through.
AVATARA ADI DA: But always give
Me the leading faculties. don’t be played upon by these
natural arisings. Even the intensity of converting life to
sadhana can sometimes produce more arisings, reveal more
things, that require to be purified or made “Bright”, which
is what purification is really all about.
Once you dare to allow yourself to hear Me, then the
process becomes intensive and
profound. Maybe you have some sense of that, those of you
who are taking a long time to get to that point. And
that’s why you’re
taking vacations. Its even a kind of fear of the
self-contraction, a fear of becoming aware of the limited
nature of your experiencing, and then the mortality that
you’re locked into because of
that. You re afraid of it.
You re not merely afraid of it.
It is fear.
DEVOTEE: It is fear.
AVATARA ADI DA: You don’t want to be afraid, so you
distract yourself and minimize your awareness of this. But
you must stand in that position. That doesn’t
mean to go insane with fear or anything like that. Its about
being in that place where you make this knot, this
fundamental discomfort. Yes, it has the characteristic of
fear, but you basically experience that fear as a kind of
anxiety in the pit of your stomach or something.
If you are but really-in touch with the self-contraction,
you do experience the anxiety that is the constant
underlying everyone’s behavior,
everyone’s moment to moment
existence. They just build all kinds of stuff on top of it
and desensitize themselves, but the self-contraction is the
quality of anxiety, stressful anxiety, and so on.
So, as I Said, you may want to forestall that
realization, because you cant get rid of it once you got it.
Once you get bit, that’s it.
Unless you find yourself out, you cant escape it. And so
that’s when the sadhana really
begins, you see. That’s when it
starts becoming effective at a
profound level. Before then, there are life-improvements and
so on, fine. But this is how the sadhana gets intensified,
quickened, full of light, full of heat, therefore.
And it should then be quick to the “Perfect Practice”.
But it requires the Spiritual transition So there is the
basic minimum of the level 2 and level 3 process, as the
means for moving on to the “Perfect Practice”.
Most devotees, as I said, wont have anything to do with
levels 4 and 5. Some might. Some will have experiences
certainly associated with the ascending process. But very
few will actually do sadhana in the context of the fourth or
the fifth stages of practice. They will do the sadhana in
level 2 and level 3 and move directly from there to the
“Perfect Practice”.
Level 2 and level 3, then, for them will be just this
fundamental true seeing of Me, not a tour of experiences but
an entering into My Spiritual Sphere, so that I can Attract
you into the situation of the “Perfect Practice”. Those who
make much of the experiences otherwise will add time and may
in some cases have to practice at level 4 or 5, or both,
rather.
You see even student-beginners and so on having-even
apparent to all-experiences, kriyas and all kinds of things
going on with them. But that’s
not seeing Me. Those are effects, and they can be sought or
clung to and whatnot, and become means to delay the course
like anything else.
So those who are involved in the seeing Yoga may very
well have kriyas and so on as spontaneous happenings, but
they’ll be focused in this
direct Spiritual “Locating” of Me, given up in Me utterly,
because of the foundation of hearing, so that you can be
entered into the Source Point of the “Perfect Practice”. To
engage in the “Perfect Practice” you must be at the Source
Point of egoity, not on the other side of it, wandering in
the body-mind. To Awaken to the Witness and then enter into
the profound “Perfect Practice” is to Stand on the other
side of the ego, and the focus of the practice is no longer
dealing with the body-mind, feeling beyond egoity in the
mechanism of the body-mind. Its a matter of entering
directly into the Self-Radiant Sphere of Divine Being.
Of course its done most profoundly in meditation, where
you separate yourself from other matters. And so, even
though the practice is also engaged in a fundamental sense
in every moment, there still is, after the profound
meditation, return of ordinary associations.
And the associations will not necessarily themselves
change all that much. Its in the seventh stage of life, the
third stage of the “Perfect Practice”, that the
Source-Position Itself is Realized utterly, and no
conditions are placed on It. It is not held in place by
anything whatsoever. So the gesture of dissociation drops,
and the “Bright” Realizer Expands into the sphere of the
body-mind. And through the process of Recognition, all
aspects of the body-mind are “Brightened” by that already
Realized Condition. So someone engaged in the “Perfect
Practice” in the context of the sixth stage of life shows a
very different sign than a devotee who will have Realized Me
in the seventh stage of life.
So once you truly hear Me, once you get the taste of all
of this, you will not want to delay the course. Everybody
has their own manner, and the imperfect qualities of the
body-mind in its adaptations, so everybody’s
sign in the course is different. Some may be, in their
depth, apparently more a renunciate than others and so on,
or more intensively involved in all the aspects of practice
than some other. If they’ve
truly heard Me, they all practice from the same disposition
and would not delay the course.
Its just like if you’re ill,
you don’t want it to last. Maybe sometimes you don’t mind
feeling a little woozy, a little sniffly, and hanging around
in bed all day. But if you’re
really sick, you don’t want it to go on. Well, to hear Me is
to be really sick, you see. [Laughter.] Its to get
really sick, at the same time really well altogether and
knowing what to do, but otherwise really sick, really in
touch with the ego-act and its result and its disposition
and so on. And you do real work with it, because its such an
urgent matter. You don’t want to be sick anymore.
That’s how sick you have to be,
in other words, to have heard Me, because it is a profound
motivator, a profound capability.