THE METHOD OF THE
SIDDHAS
Chapter 7
My “Bright” Word
by Adi Da Samraj
The Divine Siddha-Method Of The
Ruchira Avatar
Relationship and
Association
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: I was talking
to someone here the other day about certain associations
everyone has with people, with environments, and so on. This
person was wondering whether some of his old relationships
would continue, now that he had become involved in the
practice in My Company. He wanted to know if these
friendships would necessarily come to an end, or if they
could still continue now that he is doing sadhana as My
devotee.
I pointed out to him that many such
involvements are not rightly to be regarded as
relationships. Rather, they are associations. They are
(essentially) forms of your own desire. Therefore, they are
not true friendships. Such associations with people, and
even with environments and objects, enable you to indulge
certain qualities of experience at will. Even though there
seems to be something there-a person, a place, a thing-in
fact, you are not truly enjoying relationship. You simply
have an association that reflects your desire, and (thereby)
gives you the opportunity to indulge it, to satisfy it, to
suffer it.
Associations come and go, just as
desires come and go-but relationship is, in the context of
conditional existence, the living function and living
condition of Conscious Existence. And, truly, relationship
has neither beginning nor end. When there is genuine
relationship with an individual, a place, a thing, an
environment, it is not subject to the quality of desire.
Desire does not generate the relationship. The end of desire
or a change in desire does not bring the relationship to an
end.
When relationship is discovered and
lived, it never comes to an end. Its quality may change, and
there may be apparent separations in time and space-but the
relationship itself is fundamental, continuous, real. Where
there is relationship, there tends to be apparent growth,
intensification, change-but the relationship itself does not
come to an end.
Associations, however, come and go.
Associations belong to periods of one’s life, stages in
one’s experience. They are functions of time, space, and
desire. Therefore, when some particular desire-or desire
itself-ceases to be the point of view of conscious
awareness, then associations tend to fall apart, disappear,
come to an end. But, when (by Means of My Avataric Divine
Spiritual Grace) there is most perfect “radical”
self-understanding, then there are no longer any
associations at all. There is only relationship, only
relatedness. There is no separation, no separateness. And
relationship is enjoyed under all circumstances, all
conditions, with all beings, in all environments.
Because people are identified with
their own desires and live by the habit of association
rather than relationship, there is suffering. Because people
do not become more for one another than extensions of their
own minds, their own desires, there is no
relationship.
Until there is “radical”
self-understanding, there is the tendency to live mere
association through desire-even with those with whom you
enjoy the quality of relationship. Thus, until there is
“radical” self-understanding, all your relationships involve
conflict. They are always threatened by mere desire, mere
association. You move in and out of them. You never truly
enjoy them, except in brief moments.
Where there are simply associations
in the form of desire, your connections tend to disappear,
and certain relationships tend to become corrupted,
destroyed, impossible at times. But all separateness is an
illusion. It is impossible for there to be any separateness.
There is no such thing. It has never occurred. There is no
separately existing thing anywhere. There is no separately
existing being anywhere. There is no separate anything!
Separateness is only an impression caused by disturbance, by
this compulsive contraction I have often described. When
self contraction comes to an end, when the avoidance of
relationship comes to an end, there is no
“difference”.
All separateness is an illusion, and
all attainments are an illusion. There is no separateness,
and there is no attainment of union. The state of the
traditional Yogi is as much an illusion as the state of the
ordinary person who is suffering and dying. If you are an
ordinary sufferer, you think you have become absolutely
small-whereas, if you are an expansive Yogi, you think you
have become absolutely great. But, when you think you have
become great, you truly suspect that you are small. In
Truth, there is only the penetration of your search, the
understanding of it-and, then, existence becomes capable of
being lived Freely and Happily.
People are busy communicating their
own mind-forms, their own contracted perceptions, rather
than living from the “Point of View” of Truth. Thus, people
are only, punishing one another. Everyone causes pain for
everyone else. Everyone reinforces the illusion of separate
life. Therefore, everyone is seeking. Everyone suspects “it”
(whatever the presumed goal of anyone’s life may be) is
somewhere else, or that “it” does not exist.
But, when there is the most perfect
understanding of that entire search, then there is only the
Communication of Consciousness Itself-That Very Power, That
Condition, That Is Reality Itself-in relationship. And the
ultimate form of that Communication is Satsang with Me-the
Communication, Condition, or Company of Truth. When the
Presence of Reality (or the “Bright” Conscious Light Itself)
is Communicated in Satsang with Me, you are Assumed by This
Presence, Acquired by It. This Communication undermines all
ordinary assumptions-until you cease to believe them, and
you become intelligent with Truth.
Apart from “radical”
self-understanding, all human beings are distracted and
turned in on themselves. They appear to have been born, but
they are still bent. Every human individual, in fear of the
born-condition, lives not-yet-straightened from the curve of
the womb. And all the people who surround you, since they
are also in the same state, only reinforce the fear that
makes you bend and curve inward.
I Am the Man of “Radical”
Understanding. I Exist and Live as the Communication of That
Which makes it possible for people to open, uncurl, be
turned to relationship.
The process of restoration to Truth
has been called “second birth”. Until you become capable of
existence in this apparent (human) form, open in
relationship, you tend to reject the force of existence in a
continuously repeated ritual activity, like vomiting. The
force of life is abandoned constantly. Even laughter is a
form of this ritual abandonment. Non-regenerative sexual
activity is a form of it. Ordinary perception is a form of
it. It is to throw off, to fail to conduct, the force of
life. It is unconsciousness, sleep, the refusal to be born.
And its symptom is a life that is not in relationship, that
is not whole, that is full of dis-ease, confusion. Such a
life cannot function. It only forever seeks its own release
as if release from life were the goal of life.
In Satsang with Me, this rejection
of the force of life, this rejection of birth, tends to
become quieted-such that, more and more, the life-form
conducts the force of life rather than rejecting it. The
subtle form of the human structure is something like a
Sphere, in Which the Current of natural life-energy (and
also of the Divine Spirit-Energy) continually descends in
the frontal line, and. then turns at the bodily base and.
ascends in the spinal line. In Satsang with Me, that Current
is not rejected-It is conducted.
The force of life rounds the heart,
like the planets round the Sun. And the True Divine Heart Is
the “Sun” of the living human form. The Fullness that people
begin to feel in Satsang with Me is this Circle of natural
life-force (and, eventually, also My Avatarically
Self-Transmitted Divine Spirit-Energy), allowed to be
conducted in descent (down the frontal line), and allowed to
be conducted in ascent (up the spinal line). When that
Fullness is felt, there is no more rejection (or “ritual
vomiting”) of the Current of Energy. Rather, by means of
spontaneous “conductivity”, the Current (of natural
life-energy and, in the case of My by-Me
Spiritually-Initiated devotees, of My Avatarically
Self-Transmitted Divine Spirit-Energy) is turned and
re-turned-in a spherical Cycle that is completely at ease,
without dilemma.
When (by Means of My Avataric Divine
Spiritual Grace) the “Sun”, the Living Heart of Reality, the
Divine Conscious Light That Is the Self-Condition (and
Source-Condition) of all of this, is Most Perfectly
Realized, That is most perfect “radical” self-understanding,
Most Perfect Divine Self-Realization. From That “Point of
View”, all of this is Obvious.
The religious and Spiritual
traditions communicate various aspects of this phenomenon of
“second birth”. The religious search, particularly the form
of seeking that is characteristic of Westerners, is a
strategic effort to receive the Spirit, to receive the Power
of the Divine, and to bring the Grace of this Power down
into life.
The traditional Eastern seeker-and,
in general, the practitioner of Spirituality-is sensitive to
the ascending movement of Energy. Traditional Yoga is a
ritualization of this process of strategic ascent to the
Divine just as traditional religion is the strategic ritual
means for becoming at ease, receptive, full of the
Divine.
But these two-East and West-are
simply modes of exclusive (and ritualized) attachment to one
or the other of the two principal aspects of this Real
Process, or “second birth”. Thus, the East is traditionally
very busy with the ascending Power, knowing little of
descent-and the West is traditionally very busy with the
descending Power, knowing little of ascent. And both East
and West approach this “second birth” in the seeker’s
mode.
The “second birth” truly is a
possibility. It is the only Real possibility for human
beings. And its Process is most perfectly enacted only in
Satsang with Me-in the living, present-time, devotional
(and, in due course, Spiritual) relationship to Me, the One
Who Is the True Divine Heart Itself. Not someone who only
suggests the Heart Itself, who has (at some time) merely
experienced It, who merely envisions It, who only thinks
about it, or who only teaches about it-but the One Who Is
the True (and Living) Divine Heart, without any limitations
whatsoever.
I Am That One. When My devotee lives
the conditions Given by Me, in the context of Satsang with
Me, then the Circle of descent and ascent is restored-in a
very simple, natural manner. As My devotee, you need not
apply yourself methodically to the generation of that
Circle, to the strategic restoration of that pattern of
Energy. As My devotee, living Satsang with Me as the
Condition of your very existence, you do not exercise any
kind of strategic approach, nor do you engage any of the
remedial methods of conventional religion and conventional
Spirituality. My devotee’s practice is to live the Condition
of this devotional (and, in due course, Spiritual)
relationship to Me.
My true devotee is not distracted.
by any form of the religious or Spiritual search-whether the
search to “be filled” by the descending Spirit-Energy or the
search to “escape upward” by means of the ascending
Spirit-Energy. My true devotee turns simply to Me-and is
(thereby) turned to the Real condition of life, which is
relationship. As My devotee, you pass through various forms
of crisis, until there is spontaneous insight into (or
understanding of) the ordinary pattern of your life, which
is the avoidance of relationship. By Means of My Avataric
Divine Spiritual Grace, the direct observation of this
pattern becomes “radical” self-understanding. And Most
Perfect Realization of such “radical” self-understanding is
Absolute Truth.
The Real Spiritual process alive in
Satsang with Me involves no problematic concern relative to
the reception of My Avataric Divine Spirit-Baptism. The
process in My Avataric Divine Spiritual Company is generated
and maintained by the Spontaneous and Intelligent Siddhi (or
Real Spiritual Power) of the “Sun”, the True Divine
Heart-Which Is Reality Itself. My devotee is not engaged in
a strategic (or ego-based) process of (downward) reception
of Divine Blessing, or of (upward) return to the Divine
Source, or of both. My devotee abides simply in relationship
with Me-and the Primary Intensity of My Divine Heart-Light,
the Conscious Spirit Power that proceeds in Satsang with Me,
is the entire Means for the crisis in consciousness (or
self-understanding) that must occur in My
devotee.
In the meantime, there may be
secondary phenomena associated with Satsang with Me-and
these are the effects of My Avatarically Self-Transmitted
Divine Spirit-Current, in Its Flow through the descending
and ascending arcs of the Circle. But all such phenomena are
purely secondary. They are simply conditional enjoyments.
Like right diet, they are not (in and of themselves) Truth.
If you are distracted by such phenomena, then you contract
(and thereby separate yourself) from all forms of
relationship.
Only relationship is appropriate.
There is no need to be concerned with the effects of the
Descent or the Ascent of My Divine Spirit-Power. There is no
need to seek My Divine Spirit-Power or to grasp It. All such
concerns are an expression of the root-dilemma.
DEVOTEE: What is it about the
experience of this Force (or Light) that causes people to
reject It? Is the experience itself painful? Or is it
somehow threatening?
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: It is not so
much that the forms of rejection are an effect of something
else. They are the action. The rejection (or reaction) is
spontaneous. It is the self-contraction. But its basis is
subtle-preceding life, thought, and perception. The
perceiver and the perception are already bent. They are
(themselves) this rejection. They are already forms of the
root-dilemma.
The true answer to any question is
always prior to words, not able to be spoken. Indeed, even
the question itself (if it is true, or real) is prior to
words. The question that is phrased in the form of concepts
is not the real question. Your real question is the
sensation of self-contraction that motivates your thoughts
and words. The answer, likewise, is not in the form of
concepts. The only true (or real) answer is the direct
observation and understanding of the root-activity that is
your real question, your suffering, your dilemma, the
motivation of your search. Nothing else can satisfy. No
explanation is equal to this direct
self-understanding.
There is a sense in which the entire
process of rejection (or the avoidance of relationship) is a
spontaneous reaction to the action that is conditionally
manifested existence. Wherever there is an action, there is
an equal and opposite reaction. There is the True Divine
Heart (or Reality Itself), there is conditionally manifested
appearance, and there is the self-contraction that is the
reaction to that appearance. People are living as that
reaction. When My devotees turn to Me, and (in that turning)
observe and understand their own activity (which is their
suffering), then (by Means of My Avataric Divine Spiritual
Grace) they Realize the True Nature of Consciousness As the
Living Divine Heart Itself-Which is Always Already Open,
Which is Prior to conditional manifestation, Which is not
any form of dilemma.
The genuine roots of your suffering,
your disturbance, are not truly explainable in any
conceptual terms. They can only be undermined (or obviated)
by means of the self-understanding that becomes possible in
Satsang with Me. Therefore, moment to moment (whole bodily)
turning to Me (thereby allowing self-observation and
self-understanding to take place) is the root process of
sadhana, the spontaneous and intelligent process of Satsang
with Me.
There is no “second birth” apart
from Real Spiritual practice in My Avataric Divine Company.
There is no “second birth” apart from Satsang with Me,
actual moment to moment living of the heart-relationship to
Me-the Divinely Self-Realized Siddha Guru, the Avatarically
Self-Manifested Incarnation of the True Divine Heart Itself.
The form and function Given (by Means of My Avataric Divine
Grace) to human beings for living this Satsang is the direct
relationship to Me-the One Who Lives As the Very Divine
Heart Itself, the One and Only (and Self Evidently Divine)
Reality.
When people realize that they are
suffering, that they are bent, that there is a root-dilemma,
then they begin to seek. The only places where it is
possible to seek are the gross, subtle, and causal
dimensions of existence, which account for the entire
structure of conditionally manifested life. Therefore,
people go about the business of alternating between
exploitation and discipline-until they realize the failure
of the search. When that realization occurs, they have
become capable of Satsang with Me.
DEVOTEE: Is it necessary for us to
have a True and Conscious relationship with You and with
everyone we know if we want to live a True Spiritual life, a
life of understanding?
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: It would only
be nicer! If it were necessary as a precondition, then
Satsang with Me could not take place. If this process
depended on people already enjoying the relationship with Me
Consciously, perfectly, then the process would never begin.
it is certainly a positive sign when the process becomes
Conscious, when you begin to move into the natural
“conductivity” of Satsang with Me, when you begin to live
Its True quality, Its in-depth quality. But such is not
required as a precondition.
There are no conditions for
relationship. It is already the case. Some are conscious of
it, and some are not. In some cases, you may enjoy the Real
condition of relationship with another, while (to that
other) you serve only as a form of association (and, thus,
an extension of desire). And the opposite may also be true.
When there is such an apparent discrepancy, you must decide
whether you have the strength or the interest to live that
relationship, whether you should release that relationship
or (otherwise) change the quality or the conditions of that
relationship.
DEVOTEE: Do we have a responsibility
to make the other person in a relationship more
conscious?
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: That
responsibility is inherent in relationship itself. The very
fact of living in that direct, relational manner, rather
than in the usual self-contracted manner, is (itself) a
means to serve the communication of True intelligence.
Therefore, that responsibility is already satisfied by the
simple fact of living the relationship itself. It is not
necessary to add to that relational force any secondary
motivation to change the other person. When such motivations
appear, your relationships tend to become an extension of
your own search. To that degree, you fall back into
association again. But, when you live relationship with
other beings, you even extend and serve the form of Satsang
with Me because that form is heart-relationship to
Me.
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