Adi Da Samraj
Reading
The Book of Perfect Knowledge
October 14, 2005
You know the expression, ‘Familiarity breeds contempt’. If you approach Me in such a manner, detached and effectively mocking Me, or just treating Me as a kind of just casual familiar other, you will mock Me. You will treat Me with contempt, individually and as a gathering.
Avatar Adi Da Samraj: So the title of the book as presented at Saint-and-Ear will not be The Scapegoat’s Book of Perfect Knowledge. It’s just The Book of Perfect Knowledge, and there won’t be any description of Raymond as a captive and Evelyn as a captor, you see. It’s exchange between the great sage or Master, Raymond, and his devotee, Evelyn, his would-be devotee, his seeming devotee. This is how Evelyn presents himself at Saint-and-Ear, and so that’s how he will be referred to in this text itself.
I’ll read you the first chapter. Beyond this, the actual making of this text has only gone somewhat into the second chapter. I’ve only developed perhaps another nine verses or something like that of this second chapter beyond the first chapter.
So I don’t feel it would be especially useful to read a portion of the second chapter. I’ll will simply read you the first chapter. And in fact, it could be described as the principal chapter in the book. It contains a summation of the principal teaching contained in the Ashtavakra Gita and in this Book of Perfect Knowledge.
Chapter One: The First and Principal Instruction of the Way of Perfect Knowledge. You’ll notice Me having to rotate these pages because this is all My handwritten writing as I’m working it, so this is not typed out, and it’s all over the place to fit it on the page.
Chapter One, The First and Principal Instruction of the Way of Perfect Knowledge: Evelyn Disk said to the great sage, Raymond Darling, Beloved Master, be pleased to teach me the Way of Perfect Knowledge whereby true renunciation is firmly established and true liberation is finally achieved.
The great sage, Raymond Darling, said to his humble devotee, Evelyn Disk, Child, if you desire and seek liberation, you must consistently discipline both body and mind and thus, by means of self control, avoid and counteract the activities, the objects, and the effects of the senses and the sense-based mind, as if the senses themselves or the entire construct of psycho-physical experience were a kind of deadly poison. And you must persist in the effort to always incarnate the virtues of nonreactivity, equanimity, unshakable gravitas, constant sympathetic and selfless regard of all others, indifference toward the owning and controlling of things and others and events and unwavering commitment to the Realization of Perfect Knowledge or the State of Truth only, such that all your clinging is to these virtues alone, as if they were a kind of ambrosial nectar.
In due course, when all desires and seeking are transcended by these means and at last by simply awakening to the Truth only state, perfect knowledge itself becomes the Way of Practice. The Way of Perfect Knowledge is itself inherently free of all ideas and methods and efforts of desire and seeking.
When the Practice of Perfect Knowledge is in Truth established, renunciation and liberation are already, inherently perfected and achieved.
Now listen to the Teaching of the Way of Perfect Knowledge. You are neither earth nor water nor fire nor air nor space. You are only the actionless Witness of these, the basic constructive elements of conditionally arising experience. You are only the always prior Self-Consciousness Itself.
To only and always know the always prior Self-Consciousness is itself Perfect Knowledge, True Liberation, and True Renunciation. Merely by Self-Abiding, resting firmly as Consciousness Itself, you inherently and perfectly renounce the body which is itself composed of earth, water, fire, air, and space.
In this manner inherent and inherently perfect liberation is enjoyed at once and you are already at peace, free from all bondage and all effort. You, the very Self, are of no social class or stage of human obligation in the world. You, the Unconditional Consciousness Itself, cannot be perceived or limited by the senses. You are indivisible, without form or attachment, the inherently free Witness of all that appears or seems. Merely by Self-Abiding as that, Be Happy.
Virtue and vice, pleasure and pain, and even all possible opposites and conditions of experience and of desire, are merely attributes and habits of mind. You are prior to all of that, one and all-pervading, and NEVER of the mind. You are neither the doer nor the enjoyer. Truly you are already free, inherently and even now. You are the seer, the actionless Witness, of all that you see.
As the mere Witness, Consciousness Itself, you are inherently free of all that appears to be seen. Therefore, your seeming bondage is only this, that you suppose you are what you are not. Rather than abide in Inherently Perfect Knowledge, you suppose that you are not the actionless Witness, the Seer. Instead, you suppose you are the doer, the enjoyer, the sufferer, the seeker, the mind, the body, the whatever is merely seen.
‘I am the doer’, is the ego-idea. The ego, the I of doing and thinking, is like the poisonous bite of a great black snake. ‘I am the non-doer’, is the inherent and thought-free conviction of the Witness Consciousness. To abide as Consciousness Itself, merely the Witness of mind and body and world is tacit conviction or true faith and inherent Happiness.
Such faith and Happiness is like nectar, the antidote of blackest ego’s bite and binding pain. Burn down the forest of ignorance with the fire of inherent certainty, the perfect tacit knowledge, ‘I am indivisible Consciousness Itself, the actionless Witness, inherently pure and free’. By means of effortless persistence in this Way of Inherent Perfect Knowledge, Be Happy and free from grief.
You are that Supreme Bliss in which the universe appears. You are that indivisible Consciousness, the inherently free Witness of all, apart from which the universe is a terrible illusion, as when a rope is mistakenly perceived to be a poisonous snake. Live as the inherent bliss that is only Consciousness Itself and be thus Happy.
One who knows inherent freedom is inherently free. One who thinks bondage is inherently, actually, or for whatever reason, yet the case, is thereby bound and thus consigned to bondage and to the search for liberation. In the everyday world, there is a popular saying, ‘As one thinks, so one becomes’. That saying is true and even perfectly true.
The True Self is the mere Witness Consciousness, pervading all and true of everyone, inherently perfect, indivisible, free, actionless, desireless, unattached, without bondage, and utterly at peace. It is only through an illusion of misunderstanding of itself that the True Self, which is the actionless seer or mere Witness, seems to be bound and deluded by the world of appearances, apparently seen as different from itself, and implying it is both separate and limited.
Stand free of all mental and internal and bodily or physical or external reflections or ideas and illusions of a separate and limited self or ego-I by the inherently perfect Way and means of Right Knowledge or tacit, effortless apprehension of the inherent state of the True Self which is the never-changing, actionless, indivisible, non-separate, unlimited, unconditional mere Witness, or Consciousness Itself.
Child, you have for so long been bound by the knot and ties of the ego-idea of a separate mental and bodily self. Cut this knot with the sword of Perfect Knowledge which is the tacit, effortless, apprehension of Consciousness Itself and Be Happy, thus and inherently unknotted, untied, and perfectly unbound.
You, the True and Very Self, are indivisible, actionless, Self-Existing, limitlessly Self-Radiant, and inherently free of all bondage. That you seek liberation, even by efforts of mind in meditation is itself your bondage. You, the True and Very Self transcend and merely witness the universe. The merely witnessed universe arises and exists only in you and as you. You are only Consciousness Itself, inherently limitless and unbound. Do not be sized down to the smallness of a mind and a body in a world.
You, the True and Very Self, are of an unconditional nature, never-changing, indivisible, impenetrable, formless, nameless, at perfect peace, and of an unfathomable depth. Be conformed only to Consciousness Itself and not otherwise. All forms or changing conditions are in and of themselves not Consciousness Itself. Consciousness Itself is inherently formless, not conditional and not changing.
By means of hearing and practicing this instruction, all bondage to forms or changing conditions, whether of mind or body or world, is perfectly and inherently transcended. Just as what is reflected in a mirror exists both on or inside and beyond or outside the mirror itself, so also the Very Self or Consciousness Itself, exists both within or behind and beyond or prior to the mind, the body, and the world.
Just as the same all-pervading space exists both inside and outside an empty jar, so also the Unconditional Actionless Consciousness which is the True and Very Self of all and the only substance of all, pervades all and IS all.
That is the end of the first chapter of this book and marks the end of the first chapter of the traditional Ashtavakra Gita. So that you have a sense of what follows, I’ll introduce the second chapter. The title I have given it is The Listener’s Sudden Joy Upon First Receiving the Principal Instruction of the Way of Perfect Knowledge.
Evelyn said, in sudden response to the first words of the great sage, Raymond Darling, Yes! [laughter] I am only Consciousness Itself. I am inherently beyond and prior to all psycho-physical conditions, all the seeming objects, states, and elements of the conditionally arising world of nature. I am inherently pure, free, and at peace.
Until now, in all the while of my life before You graciously instructed me, I have been a fool, deluded and misled by illusion and ignorance. And he goes on for a chapter [laughter] claiming immediate enlightenment [laughter] as that first line of the second chapter suggests. I thought I would read that first line of that second chapter in anticipation of what you all might say [next?]. [loud laughter].
The traditional text of the Ashtavakra Gita was presented as if you are just supposed to take seriously that the sage Ashtavakra utters a teaching and this person listening to his discourse becomes enlightened virtually on the spot. In fact, the final chapters of the Ashtavakra Gita are not Ashtavakra’s speeches. They are Janaka’s speeches. And in this case they will be Evelyn’s speeches.
Traditionally the Ashtavakra Gita is translated and interpreted as if it is just as plain as that. Ashtavakra is a sage, he speaks to this king, who is also in some traditional texts described as a kind of sage himself. And so it’s a kind of equal exchange, even, you could say, even though Ashtavakra is the principal one, and the Master being approached by Janaka, King Janaka presumably.
But the Ashtavakra Gita is composed, not only of chapters that are Ashtavakra’s teaching communications, including his queries and counters to what Janaka says when Janaka says something further and so on, but ultimately it’s Janaka’s statement, as if realization is the case with Janaka.
And the presentation I will make of this text, the fact of Evelyn’s enlightenment is something that cannot merely be assumed on the face of it and so there is, by virtue of how I am presenting the text I’m developing, a clearly different understanding required of the nature of this dialogue by understanding the nature of the two individuals and the nature of the circumstance in which Raymond is existing, in which He is teaching and in which He is being approached by this individual, Evelyn.
This puts the dialogue of the exchange in a totally different light, and suggestively puts the Ashtavakra Gita also in a different light. Indeed, it puts all traditional texts relative to which it has been suggested by various people and even the traditions themselves suggested in various texts of one kind or another, that suddenly all five thousand people attending were enlightened and so forth. Or merely upon some verbal exchange between two people, the listener is suddenly perfectly enlightened.
Correspondingly, there is the situation of you all who are under vow as devotees of mine and how you are approaching Me and what you have in your minds when you listen to My Perfect Practice Teaching and what you think of yourselves while you’re listening to this Teaching. This text I just read to you is My Perfect Practice Teaching and perhaps something about it seems Self-Evidently true to you. Perhaps while I was reading it something about it seemed to be plain old true. And perhaps I would be receiving a visitor shortly at the microphone somehow indicating in one manner or another that this was somehow true of him or her.
I hope, in fact, that by having read that first line of the second chapter, I have cancelled that possibility [laughter]. I hope you all also have some understanding of how my circumstance is like that of Raymond Darling and what is the nature of your devotion and of your participation in the culture of Adidam and how you as a culture and institution and so forth relate to Me.
How is it like Raymond being confined by Evelyn and the members of Saint-and-Ear? This of course is fundamental to the lesson in The Mummery Book. It is a Revelation book of Mine that I call on devotees to take seriously on many levels and relative to countless matters, including everything about the relationship to Me that you actually live, and that you presume culturally, and that you maintain through various institutional means.
You are listening to My Perfect Practice Teaching, in some sense illegitimately, as Evelyn receives the Teaching on the Perfect Way from Raymond by approaching Him secretly at the state mental facility where Evelyn and the others at Saint-and-Ear are keeping Raymond. What kind of circumstance is that for someone calling himself or herself a devotee, to approach one he or she calls Master?
And how is that situation like the one in which you are approaching Me in which you are effectively confining Me, in fact. What are the circumstances in which YOU are receiving My Teaching? What rightness of relationship to Me do you actually live and uphold as an individual, as a culture, collectively, and as an institution with many different modes of responsibility?
What does it actually amount to? What is the circumstance in which you are receiving this Blessing, this Revelation, this Teaching? Is it right? Is it legitimate? Can you rightly claim to be My devotee? Are you relating to Me rightly, correctly, through gifts, appropriately. Or are you like a member of Saint-and-Ear?
I call you to consider this very seriously, even as a basic fundamental consideration of this culture, this gathering, on a constant basis because the errors of egoity as they may be enacted on Me as your declared Master, those errors are always at hand. If you enter into some kind of collective indifference or agreement that corresponds to those errors, then you have institutionalized falsehood and wrong relationship to Me.
So these Five Issues with Me and so on are about correcting yourselves and not indulging in falseness in relation to Me. Even though you may be false in relation to Me you still have access to My Perfect Teaching and to Me, and you may claim to benefit from this access, from this reception of Instruction.
How much of it is true? And what of it is not true? You should consider this and inspect what you do in relation to Me, because it’s easy to create a prison for Me here by coming into some kind of collective agreements that inadvertently institutionalize Narcissus and call it Adidam. It is easy to institutionalize mummery, which is what Narcissus makes when he becomes many. And mummery is a prison house, a state mental facility for Me. I can’t live with it, and I can’t get away from it.
So if you’re having access to Me and to My Teaching including My Perfect Practice Teaching and you’re doing so on the basis of similar, in any respect, similar to what is going on at Saint-and-Ear in The Mummery Book, or what is going on in this text I’ve begun to introduce to you, in the secret meetings wherein Evelyn exploits Raymond and His imprisonment, an imprisonment enforced by Evelyn himself—if there’s anything about this that is true of you, that is factual about you, you must correct it.
Among the things you must correct, then, is false views about yourself altogether. You can, by simply listening to My Teaching, all its modes, including My Perfect Practice Teaching, enter into a kind of presumption that you are actually realizing this Truth—that you are somehow, because the mind is operative and the statement is clear to your understanding, it’s easy to imagine that somehow it’s just true of you.
And you may not make speeches to others or speeches to Me in making claims of that kind, or you might. It’s been done. But you may think that way, imagine in your inner room that it’s true of you, that Realization is true of you, that you are far, far beyond the beginning, you don’t have to fulfill the conditions of the beginning, the conditions of right devotion to Me, right discipline according to My Instruction, and so forth. You can somehow bypass that and yet something about ultimacy is true of you, you may imagine. Something is spiritually true of you, something is true of you in the Perfect Practice sense, the Perfect Realization sense.
The ego-I, Narcissus, is of such a nature, is of the nature of mind and is easily convinced of its own illusions of virtue and of Realization. It’s worth perhaps My repeating the first two verses of this first chapter in this text, A Scapegoat’s Book of Perfect Knowledge, or as Evelyn presents it, simply The Book of Perfect Knowledge, because something of the point I just made to you is there in just these first two verses of instruction.
Evelyn Disk said to the great sage, Raymond Darling, Beloved Master.
Does Evelyn Disk relate to Raymond Darling as his beloved and Master? He is full of utterance, full of lip service, of devotion and adoration and so forth at Saint-and-Ear, Evelyn Disk, when he speaks of Raymond, and to Him, and about Him to others, and so on.
But you know his history if you’re familiar with The Mummery Book. Here he is speaking to Raymond in a cell in an insane asylum, a prison, where Raymond has been placed by the members of Saint-and-Ear and dominantly by Evelyn himself and here’s Evelyn making this visit and saying, Beloved Master, his first utterance, Beloved Master. You have to understand, this is the text as Evelyn presents it at Saint-and-Ear also. He is heard saying Beloved Master. And the way he puts it, The great sage, Raymond Darling, said to his humble devotee, Evelyn Disk, in reply. Is Evelyn Disk Raymond’s humble devotee?
You should study this text, examine it on the basis of having an understanding or of being familiar with The Mummery Book in order to understand the significance of this exchange, and the dreadful falseness of this person, the profoundly deluded nature of his state, Evelyn, and the mockery he is making even by these words, Beloved Master.
He sounds sincere. He is mocking Raymond. Raymond is there in a cell, kept prisoner, being ignored to death by this man and his whole cult of the Raymondite religion. Understand that this is the basis on which this exchange is taking place, and listen to the words and feel the dramatic meaning it has.
This is why I say this could be recited. The Mummery Book Guild could take this text when it’s completed and do a dramatized recitation of it in which the characteristics of the two individuals in this exchange are made plain to those who are otherwise present.
Evelyn speaks all kinds of profundities and claims that they came from Raymond, visions he’s had, experiences he’s had, a whole lifetime of many years he has lived in His Company, virtually alone with Him. He speaks in all kinds of profound terms of praise at Saint-and-Ear. He rigs up this dreadful fastening in the door with dead Quandra in the tabernacle and when Raymond will NOT accept this bondage and this mockery at Saint-and-Ear, drops the egg.
He is put into this situation where Evelyn is now approaching Him as if to flatter him, Oh Master! Beloved!, you see, fawning, perhaps genuflecting, you might imagine. How sincerely? Do you imagine that Raymond, if He is a great sage, does not know when He is being mocked? Can you see His compassion, His tolerance, to even speak to this person and utter words of great instruction, even referred to him in a loving manner as child, His child, someone in His care, someone He is willing to instruct even though this person treats Him hatefully, and is, in fact, holding Him under a death sentence, which He does not survive ultimately.
That’s the dramatic situation. You need to understand these characters and what the real situation is. It’s not just the words then, you see. Beloved Master, be pleased to teach me. Be pleased to teach me. This is a phrase that’s used directed to Me by devotees in various expressions in writing and so forth. Beloved Master is also uttered and Beloved and so forth.
If it is mockery of Me, do you think I don’t notice? It’s not that I don’t teach, and so on, and bless and so on. But I’m not a fool, and I see what’s in front of My eyes and I know everyone who approaches Me. It is as if it’s all written on your forehead.
So Raymond knows this person. He knows his situation. So He’s approached by this fool who remains a fool even though he says he is no longer one in the next chapter. Beloved Master, be pleased to teach me the Way of Perfect Knowledge whereby true renunciation is firmly established and true liberation is finally achieved.
Is this anything more than a philosophical exchange, some kind of casual conversation with a familiar such as you might imagine Evelyn must have had with Raymond at least in his mythological version of Raymond’s life? Just casually talking over the table, having tea in the place in the forest. It’s just a topic of conversation, such as perhaps the editors might bring up at the microphone in one of these discourse occasions, a kind of official question that has nothing to do with actual experience and it’s not a reflection, therefore, of their own approach to Me. It’s just subject matter.
I use the editor simply as an example of, a hypothetical example, [laughter] as it might be with an editor, perhaps, [laughter] or with anyone else, any of you, just simply approaching Me, talking about subject matter, mere concepts, has nothing to do with you, has nothing to do with right approach to Me, it’s not a serious question. You’re not about to follow any instruction I give you. It’s just a familiar exchange, or an exchange with a presumed familiar.
You know the expression, ‘Familiarity breeds contempt’. If you approach Me in such a manner, detached and effectively mocking Me, or just treating Me as a kind of just casual familiar other, you will mock Me. You will treat Me with contempt, individually and as a gathering.
How serious could this person be? Teach me the Way of Perfect Knowledge? What does this person have to do with an inclination to find the Way of Perfect Knowledge? You might imagine that this isn’t even something he has come up with on his own, but he’s probably heard Raymond make this reference to Perfect Knowledge at one time or another in some kind of circumstance or association in the past or in this very circumstance on some other occasion.
The text is a reflection of some dialogues that occurred. There might be other conversations. Maybe Raymond just said something spontaneously in the garden when Evelyn was there arranging for subtle intensification of abuse of Raymond by the doctors or something and Raymond was just talking out loud and mentions Perfect Knowledge and such and so Evelyn might bring that up. Where would he come up with it otherwise? What does he know about that?
Teach me the Way of Perfect Knowledge whereby true renunciation is firmly established. Does Evelyn look like a person interested in renunciation? You know the description. You’ve seen actors perform the character. Does he look like a renunciate to you? Or anyone who’s interested in it? So he wants to know not only how true renunciation is established, but how true liberation is finally achieved.
Does he seem to be a person who has the slightest interest in finally achieving liberation? Or does he want to hold on to every present and next moment of possible self-fulfillment, and not be released of all of that possibility at all or ever?
Your own resistance to anything like self discipline, anything in the mode of renunciation, you see, is clearly, if you examine yourself, based on a disinclination to be in a situation that’s not self-fulfilling, that does not somehow or other fulfill desire or purpose in body or mind or in the body-mind. If you weren’t attached to that, you wouldn’t have any difficulty with self-discipline or renunciation.
So it’s not about the whatever in particular you may be called to discipline or renounce. It’s a conception of life, of Reality altogether, that you are holding on to, all its particular specimens of possibility of self-fulfillment or secondary to that fundamental idea or attachment which is to be a separate body-mind in a position to be fulfilled by various possible means.
So a monstrosity such as Evelyn knows nothing if anything about Perfect Knowledge or the Way of it, or has no interest in renunciation and NO impulse to liberation, and yet this is his question. It’s the beginning of this text; in fact, this question is the source of the entire text. The entire text is really an answer to this question. It’s a dialogue in answer to this question.
The question is false because the questioner is false. Merely as subject matter, the question has some interest as a matter of something to think about or talk about. Even to just casually talk about it is still possibly interesting, but all the characteristics, the framework for asking it, with the address, ‘Beloved Master’, the whole circumstance, the nature of Evelyn.
If you consider all of those elements, this question is false because Evelyn is false. And yet for you as a reader, the question might not be false. It may be true of you somehow, or it may not. All the elements are present in a single question here or request for instruction. He is asking for instruction in a Way, a Way that is Perfect, based on Perfect Knowledge, but it’s also combining that in the same question. It’s all one thing, a query about renunciation and liberation altogether.
The Way is about Perfect Knowledge and inherently, then, about Renunciation and Liberation. It’s not merely about a something in the mind that can be called Perfect Knowledge. If there isn’t Inherent and Perfect Renunciation and Inherent and Inherent and Perfect Liberation, there is no Inherent and Perfect Knowledge.
Merely as subject matter, as something the mind may entertain, as such, the subject of Perfect Knowledge could be discussed. The subject of the Way could be discussed, and this dialogue can be regarded as just that—just a conversation. Or it could be of ultimate significance and profundity.
What does it take for it to be of ultimate significance and profundity? Well, Raymond Darling’s reply to this false person and with reference to this question that is otherwise a true question—but when addressed to Evelyn, not just in response to the question as a verbal remark—the great sage, Raymond Darling, said to his humble devotee, Evelyn Disk…. He is anything but humble, but when Evelyn publishes this text and recites it at Saint-and-Ear, he will say ‘humble devotee’ with tears in his eyes and indulge in the pretense of humbleness in front of the crowd of Saint-and-Ear.
Raymond in response is speaking to the questioner, not only to the question. He is correcting Evelyn and informing anyone who might consider this question.
Child, if you desire and seek liberation—if you desire and seek liberation—you must consistently discipline both body and mind, and thus, by means of self control, avoid and counteract the activities, the objects, and the efforts of the senses and the sense-based mind, as if the senses themselves or the entire construct of psycho-physical experience were a kind of deadly poison.
And there’s a second part of what is required. If you desire and seek liberation,—and you know from what is said later, that the principle of desire and of seeking, the principle of ego, the active doer and so forth, is [he] specifically criticizes as having nothing to do with the Way of Perfect Knowledge.
But to continue the response in the second part, If you desire and seek liberation, the second part of the response is You must persist in the effort to always incarnate the virtues, which are then enumerated. There are virtues there to be incarnated. There is self-control, self-discipline relative to the body-mind, various kinds of self-discipline that must be engaged and there are also various kinds of virtues that must be enacted. And the virtues as enumerated here that you must incarnate if you are desiring and seeking liberation are, you must incarnate the virtues of non-reactivity, equanimity, unshakable gravitas, profound seriousness of disposition, constant sympathetic and selfless regard of all others.
Keep thinking of this as something He’s saying to Evelyn, remember who Evelyn is and what Evelyn does and consider these virtues with reference to Evelyn.
Going on further: indifference, among the virtues, is indifference toward the owning and controlling of things and others and events. He doesn’t simply say you shouldn’t own anything and become an ascetic and so on, but the virtue is that of indifference toward even perhaps inevitable conditions that have some characteristic of owning something and therefore having it under your control—indifference to that condition of owning and controlling of things and of others and of events. It is indifference rather than some kind of cutting off that is described as the virtue.
And then the ultimate one, the principal one among them all, unwavering commitment to the Realization of Perfect Knowledge or the State of Truth only such that all your clinging is to these virtues alone as if they were a kind of ambrosial nectar.
So immediately He speaks to Evelyn as a desirer and a seeker, and as such you have the ego characteristics that fit you to a life of desiring and seeking. And that being the case there are disciplines required, disciplines of body and mind, disciplines of life necessary to bring that into an orientation—a transformation of the orientation, in fact—of the whole body-mind, that is compatible with what ultimately will be the Way of Perfect Knowledge, but as long as this desiring-and-seeking characteristic remains, there are these disciplines of self-control and these virtues that you must continually confront your life with, and which must be expected of you.
But in due course, Raymond goes on, when all desires and seeking are transcended by these means, by the disciplines and virtues, in other words, and at last simply by awakening to the Truth only State, the State of Perfect Knowledge.
When all desires and seeking are transcended by these means and at last by awakening to the Truth Only State, Perfect Knowledge itself becomes the Way of Practice rather than desire and seeking being the principle that characterizes the life as an ego and requiring then especially all kinds of modes of self-discipline, self-control, positive transformation through virtuous enactment of life. Instead of that being the practice that’s required, the practice becomes that of Perfect Knowledge itself. Perfect Knowledge itself becomes the Way and it’s a different Way than the Way based on egoity and therefore on desire and seeking.
And that different Way comes about in due course when desire and seeking are transcended. You must persist in that course of self-discipline and embrace an incarnation of virtue until Perfect Knowledge is established, the State, the Truth only state is established.
Then the Way becomes that Perfect Practice and not before. As long as you are characterized by desire and seeking, as long as you are characterized by identification with the separate ego-I, body-mind itself, the notion of being the doer of body and mind and so on, actually thinking, being the actor, the body’s acts, as long as this is the notion, the obligation is to live in accordance with the instruction about discipline that relates to the disposition full of desire and motivated to seek.
But when that is transcended, when the ego-I is transcended, then Perfect Knowledge itself awakens. The Truth only state awakens, and that, established truly, beyond all desiring and seeking characteristics associated with identification with the separate self, then and only then the Way of Perfect Knowledge itself, the practice of Perfect Knowledge, becomes the Way.
The Way of Perfect Knowledge is itself inherently free of all ideas and methods and efforts of desire and seeking. When the practice of Perfect Knowledge is in truth established, renunciation and liberation are already inherently perfected and achieved. So it is not that Perfect Knowledge, when it awakens, means that nothing about Renunciation and Liberation is required. It doesn’t mean that Renunciation and Liberation no longer have anything to do with Perfect Knowledge, and that it’s just some kind of presumed interior state of mind or whatever that doesn’t inherently affect the life or the body-mind.
When the separate self is the basis of identity, desiring and seeking are characteristic of the life and there is necessary self-discipline and virtue, right life that must be practiced. When ego, the principle of ego, the conditional self mechanism and all its desiring and seeking are inherently transcended in the true awakening of Perfect Knowledge, then simply the practice of Perfect Knowledge is not only sufficient, but it is itself inherently the perfection of everything about Renunciation and Liberation.
The method of self-control and virtue is no longer the Way. Perfect Knowledge is the Way. But Renunciation and Liberation are what Perfect Knowledge is all about and therefore Perfect Knowledge manifests inherently as part of its characteristic of Self-Manifestation or demonstration, the Inherently Free Disposition that IS perfect Renunciation and Liberation from all the implications of conditional existence.
Some might interpret the Ashtavakra Gita itself as suggesting that no practices are required. One of the elements in this first chapter which I read to you in my rendering of it earlier is sometimes translated that you meditate IS your bondage. Well, there’s something in the text that appears in the form of what would suggest such a statement, somehow stated. But to simply put it that way suggests to some people that practice is not required, oh, you just don’t meditate, you just presume this Perfect Knowledge perspective, and now you’re already enlightened.
There are popular, even commercialized forms of sixth stage teaching in the consumer world of esotericism these days in which virtually just that is promoted—just this fundamental sixth stage idea that you are Consciousness, the Witness, the Self prior to body-mind is presented as a sufficient teaching to come to some basic understanding of those words and what they suggest is regarded to be Enlightenment or Jnana, Realization and you simply have to get a proper lecture about it, or read a text that states it.
Well, if that were sufficient, you see, you’ve had teaching from Me for decades in which I speak in the terms of Perfect Knowledge or what the Perfect Practice is and so on. It hasn’t been hidden from you by Me; however, it hasn’t produced Enlightened devotees to this day. It’s not sufficient. The sixth stage utterance of the philosophical conception of Truth is not sufficient. The verbal message is not sufficient.
Why not? It’s sufficient as a statement about Truth. It somehow says it, but who is listening to it? Who is reading that instruction? Who is hearing that lecture? Who is hearing Me make this utterance, No matter what arises, even attention itself, you are the actionless Witness only and so on? The utterance is true, but you do not realize the state of it.
You are not prepared to receive it perfectly, because you are present as the ego, Narcissus, not as one on the verge of Realization, but as one, in fact, disinclined, even profoundly disinclined and unavailable, to the Realization of Truth. You are active as ego, the ego-I, Narcissus, self-contraction. You live in a world of mummery with others, a false world, a fabricated world based on separate identities and conventions of perception that are entirely about bondage and illusion and suffering.
So even though some of this perfect instruction may make some kind of sense at the moment, you cannot receive it. You cannot realize it. When Baba Muktananda said to me, You are not the one who wakes or dreams or sleeps, you are the Witness of these states, I went to My room and entered into spontaneous Nirvikalpa Samadhi. It was uttered to Me in a circumstance of Transmission and also of readiness, and so it coincided with a significant moment in the process of My own Manifestation here.
There were many others in the room when Baba Muktananda made that utterance to Me personally. They did not go to their rooms and enter into priorly ascended Nirvikalpa Samadhi and even after so many years, they STILL have not. Nor, generally speaking, to those who examine sixth stage teachings, including study My Own Perfect Practice Teachings, they do not enter into Realization or the process of manifesting the Truth of that instruction.
So I am not denying you the instruction. I call you, in fact, to study My Perfect Practice Instruction, even daily, listen to it, to be moved by it, to be instructed in all aspects of My communications about it. My Teaching carries with it certain fundamental criticisms of the state that you bring to Me, just as Evelyn is taken into account by Raymond when Raymond replies to Evelyn’s first and principal question.
He doesn’t just immediately tell him or teach him about the Way of Perfect Knowledge itself. He first addresses him in terms of being a desirer and a seeker and if that’s what you are, the Way of Perfect Knowledge is not for you, yet. You can listen to Me discourse about it. I will give you instruction about it, Raymond is saying, and He does.
But He knows Evelyn cannot receive it and will not realize it on the spot. He states it anyway. One of the reasons might be that Evelyn is able to tape record it. Raymond can’t get out of that room. He is a prisoner. He will be kept there until he dies by Evelyn and the group at Saint-and-Ear, you see, but the tape recorder is on and through it Raymond can be listened to in the form of His Instruction, to anybody at all in the entire world forever.
This is one of the reasons why, it would seem, one of the reasons for him to be consenting to be instructive to Evelyn is because others will also listen to this Instruction, but they will also listen to Instruction that pertains to them, just as it does to Evelyn, even though they are not as gigantic a monster as he, except insofar as ego is that altogether, no matter who or in the form of what body-mind presumed person it is lived.
But they may not be as monstrous, as apparently monstrous, as Evelyn; nonetheless, they are living on the basis of desire and seeking. So Raymond points out, I’ll tell you the Way of Perfect Knowledge. I’ll be getting to that in just the end of one sentence. Very shortly I’ll tell you—but first let Me point out, if you are a desirer or a seeker, if you are identified with the body-mind, if you presume yourself to be the separate actor, the doer of thinking and physical actions in a world that somehow exists as a thing in itself—you don’t know what it is—if you are the ego in the presumed independent world, and you are living on the basis of desire and seeking, I’ve first got a teaching for you, you see.
It’s not this Way of Perfect Knowledge, but I’ll tell you about that Way and ultimately may you be blessed to awaken to it. But you have to understand and I’m not going to mention it again—and he does not for the rest of the book—but simply understand, there are requirements and you cannot avoid them and you must not. If you are serious, you will not.
There are requirements for the reorienting of life, for the disciplining of body and mind, a transformation of action, such that it is purifying and releases energy and attention for the awakening to the Truth Only State or to Perfect Knowledge or Consciousness Itself, the mere and actionless, inherently actionless, Witness.
It is not merely philosophically true. It must be Realized. The Truth of it must be Realized. There are preparations for realizing it, and there is blessing required for the awakening. This one statement then is as a basic statement, unique in this text, and I have elaborated it fully here. It accounts for the ego. It accounts for the state of life that is not ready for the Way of Perfect Knowledge, and until you ARE ready for this Way of Perfect Knowledge which Raymond will elaborate in the discourses, you must fulfill this course, the beginner’s course, the course of one who is preparing for Perfect Knowledge and the Way that is simply the practice of Perfect Knowledge.
The Perfect Practice of this Way is Perfect. It is not an exercise in the body-mind. It requires prior establishment as Consciousness Itself, free of all effort, all conceptions of practice that have to do with exercising the body-mind. Renunciation and Liberation are therefore inherent in the Perfect Practice of this Way, not merely by dissociation from the body-mind, but because there is, in the Perfect Practice of this Way, already no identification with the action that is the ego-I, the idea of separate self or with the mechanism of body-mind that seeks or operates on the basis of desire.
There is no identification with that nor is there any practice, therefore, in the Perfect Practice of this Way, that’s about psycho-physical exercises. That doesn’t mean there ARE no psycho-physical exercises, or there is no psycho-physical discipline in this Way. There IS. It’s there from the beginning. It’s the course for the beginner. It’s the course in the process, a very particular and unique process that ultimately is a Spiritual process that establishes the Perfect Practice and the Way of the Perfect Practice, the Way of Perfect Knowledge, the Way of the practice of Perfect Knowledge.
All of that course must be fulfilled until a disposition Inherently free of identification with the ego-I, the body-mind, and its exercise, is transcended. The Perfect Practice is not a method established in mind and body and life. It is a tacit Realization, a tacit apprehension of the actual condition of existence.
It’s given on the basis of right devotional practice, right fulfillment of My Instruction, right relationship to Me and right Communion with Me, participating in My Spiritual State until the Perfect Practice is established by Spiritual means and ultimately perfect means.
So Raymond speaks of this to Evelyn. Evelyn will go on yammering about his perfections in later chapters and Raymond will continue to instruct him, knowing who He is instructing and never forgetting it. What Evelyn may say or think about himself independent of Raymond’s mastery is another matter. That’s the source of his manner and doings and speech at Saint-and-Ear. He is the ultimate insider, the ultimate revisionist, the ultimate falsifier. Even when he utters words that correspond reasonably to Truth or to what is true, it is all still false, because he is false. And that is the difference.
It’s not true because the words are true, it’s true because one who utters the words is true. Raymond is true, Evelyn is false. The happenings of falseness are something to understand, and I will make this book to serve the understanding of egoity and falseness relative to what is Truth Itself.
Evelyn’s utterances may come to a point where they seem reasonably true to you. Remember who is speaking, and be self-aware and make use of those utterances intelligently. Raymond is true, so consider His Words based on the knowledge that He is true. That he is true, that I am true, must be understood and seen in relation to yourself. You must be true to Me, or My Nature and Realization is in some sense beside the point.
It will take Me some time to make this book. You will receive the rest of it in due course. In the meantime you can take what I’ve just read. I will have the editors perhaps have it typed and it can be used as a recitation. I may yet develop the language further, but it could be used for recitation and so on and studied in the gathering. Use it for recitation as you do My Perfect Practice Teaching otherwise.
If you have questions now, you can dare to speak. [laughter]. I’ll take a break for a moment while you consider questions.
Avataric Revelation Discourse #54
October 14, 2005
Land Bridge Pavilion
Return to Interview with Julie Anderson, Session 14