Adi Da Samraj, September 2004
The relationship to Me is not a conventional one. It’s not a social relationship. It’s not an organizational relationship. It is not merely a ceremonial relationship. I’m not the other to the ego in any form it takes. So you must not only recognize Me. You must have some understanding of My Nature, even using a right study of the traditions as I’ve indicated to you, so that you can understand something about how to LIVE the relationship to Me.
I also point to individuals in the Great Tradition who are examples of genuine realizers of one degree or another in the context of the six stages of life who not only exemplify a certain mode of realization within the Great Tradition but who exemplify, whose devotees exemplify something of the nature of that universal rule or way of life that is the relationship to a Realizer. So I point to individuals such as Ramana Maharshi, Baba Nityananda and so on, even though they are realizers of a different kind, Maharshi in the sixth stage mode and Nityananda in the fifth stage mode. Devotees related to them fundamentally in the same manner, as realizer.
In other words, the devotees of these individuals represent the tradition of guru devotion. And how to practice the relationship to a realizer is something you must understand by living your true recognition-response to Me, your true devotion to Me and also having that be informed by an understanding of the tradition of such relationship. It is a universal tradition, a tradition, in other words, that transcends the stages of life represented by the characteristics of particular realizers. It’s simply the universal tradition of guru devotion, devotion to a realizer, Satsang or the life of that relationship, and participating in the company of the realizer, what the process of that company is, what it’s about, how it differs from an egoic relationship to an ego’s other in any worldly context, how different it is from the relationship between an ordinary practitioner of some tradition relating to a religious official, you see, or an ecclesiastical authority, you see.
There’s a profound difference between devotees relating to a realizer in the mode of such as Nityananda or Ramana Maharshi or Ramakrishna or Vivekananda in terms of those who were really devotees of his, virtually no comparison between that kind of a relationship, between devotees and such persons and the relationship between a member of a religious tradition relating to a priest or even high ecclesiastical authorities, Lamas, the Dalai Lama, the Pope, Cardinals. It doesn’t make any difference what tradition. In any formal tradition there are religious authorities and there’s a way of relating to them through modes of social, organizational and cultic or sacramental or ceremonial association called for and appropriate under those circumstances.
And there are modes of maintaining authority in such circumstances that have their own peculiarities or particular characteristics, but the relationship to a realizer is NOT that, you see. The relationship to a realizer is very different from the relationship between a practitioner of a religion and a religious authority or a representative. A realizer is a person of another nature and the relationship to a realizer is of another nature than the relationship to a mere religious and organizational formality or social otherness.
It’s a relationship of surrender, which is one word to use in summary. It is NOT for egos, you see. It’s for the undoing of egos and it has its own laws. The relationship to Me therefore is to be understood in terms of that tradition of devotion to the realizer. And what is the nature of a realizer? Well it’s described in all different kinds of modes according to the traditions and the stages of life with which they are associated, but there’s a universal tradition, you could say, of which all of these kinds of relationships, with all the different kinds of realizers, were examples.
It is the fundamental law of relationship to a liberated person, however conceived in the tradition, it’s still NOT an ego’s relationship with some other.