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Adi Da Samraj

THE FIRE GOSPEL

The Gospel of John the Beloved

Da Free Johns expository translation of chapter 1, verses 1-5, of the Gospel of John the Beloved

At the Origin of everything is the Creative Spirit, the Intelligent Life-Principle, the All-Pervading Matrix of the total world. And the Living Spirit-Breath of God is always united with very God, the Radiant Transcendental Consciousness, the true Heart of the world and the Truth of all beings. Indeed, the Spirit is God, for God is the Creative Life-Principle, the Eternally Free Transcendental Reality in Whom all beings and things arise and float and change and pass out of sight.

All things and beings come to exist through the Agency of the Eternal Life-Principle, and not otherwise. And whatever or whoever exists because of the Living Spirit is indeed Alive – because everything and everyone is presently and eternally Sustained through surrender into that Living Spirit.

The Life Breath that sustains Man is also the Light that can show him the Way through the darkness and blindness of the world. That Light is now and always has been shining in the world and even in the body and mind of Man, and no darkness has ever quenched it.

THE FIRE GOSPEL

from The Gospel of John the Beloved

Da Free Johns expository translation of chapter 1, verses 1-5, of the Gospel of John the Beloved

“Introduction to Chapter 1” From The Fire Gospel

Adi Da Samraj

THE FIRE GOSPEL

Chapter 1: Transcendence of the Politics of Spirits

Introduction

All Hallows Eve, or Halloween, is the traditional Christian celebration of the transition of the spirits of the Saints and all the dead from this plane of life. Halloween Day this year had been marked by the occasion of the full moon. In the Hindu tradition the full moon in October is the day of celebration of the Shakti, the Divine Goddess or Radiant Life-Power, as the full moon in July is the celebration of the Spiritual Master. From the traditional point of view, therefore, the day on which this talk was given was a major holy day, associated with both spirits and the Divine Spirit.

The present occasion was extraordinary for still another reason. A grand conjunction of the planets, which appears only every two thousand years or so, was occurring even as we sat in the Masters room! Master Da said with his characteristic humorous appreciation of the play of the universe in all its forms, “It may or may not have anything to do with anything-but it is an interesting conjunction!”

The Mystery of the Process that is God Incarnate often produces conjunctions of events that some might dismiss as “mere coincidence” but that the devotee recognizes as the communication of Divine Humor. So it was that on Halloween night, October 31, 1982, while the children, dressed as “spirits” of every description, went from door to door, Master Da gathered with devotees to read the essay “Transcendence of the Politics of Spirits.”

“Leela by Denise Marrero” From The Fire Gospel
Denise Marrero

THE FIRE GOSPEL

Chapter 2: A Birthday Message from Jesus and Me

Leela by Denise Marrero

The following story is offered by Denise Marrero, a practitioner in The Crazy Wisdom Fellowship, as a testimony to the transmission of Spirit-Force that flows from the Adept.

One of the most remarkable events of Transmission and the obvious Grace of the Master occurred on his birthday, November 3, 1982. I had not slept at all the night before, preferring to stay awake to prepare a gift for the Master. As I sat in his Company, I was extremely tired. I struggled to stay awake and give him my full attention. Since I was sitting only a few feet away from him, I tried mightily not to close my eyes, fearing that I would actually nod into sleep.

The Master gave a beautiful discourse on a new essay that had just been read to the gathering. It was an exquisite instruction, and with every ounce of my strength I kept my attention and gaze focused on him, despite my extreme fatigue. At one point my eyes must have dosed for a split second, and I was aware that my body had completely relaxed, when I was suddenly awakened by a strong jolt of energy through my body, like an electric shock. I sat bolt upright, astonished at the intensity of feeling, and I was simultaneously Awakened into the realm of the Spirit or Conscious Being in the Masters Company.

It was the Gift of Spirit-Baptism, about which he was speaking that night. I felt not the slightest fatigue for the rest of the evening and was moved to sit in as perfect and still an asana as I could assume, receiving and releasing his Gift directly and with complete attention. Suddenly I was Awake in His Company in a participatory relationship of profound intimacy. I was aware of everyone in the room as distinct entities and yet one with the Master, not separate. It was obvious that this was the native, free, blissful, Happy state that is always already the case and that only our own self-contraction hides. It is truly the Master Presence. It is Consciousness, Bliss, Happiness, Love, Radiance, perfect permeation and Identity with That. It is the Master as Spirit-Presence, recognizable through his Great Gift of Spirit Transmission. It was completely intimate and loving.

Tears came into my eyes, my heart melted, and the Masters face became the center of the sun. The circuit of conductivity was constant, full, and blissful, and it was immediately tacitly obvious that everything is Da. I saw what a potent and perfect Source of Awakening He is.

I felt completely drawn into his sphere of Influence and instructed. I enjoyed true ecstasy-I was literally outside myself-drawn out by Conscious Being into Conscious Being. I felt so strongly: Yes, yes, yes! This is the practice, this is the Way of life, this is the relationship to the Master, this is how I want to live. It is to renounce the ego, conventional fulfillments, and every possible obstruction to this perfect relationship. Once given a taste of the Bliss of Spirit-Communion, renunciation becomes a natural response, and energy and attention are more and more given over to practice. I am so grateful to our Beloved Master and pray to use this Gift fully and respond with full participation and my whole heart.

“Introduction to Chapter 3” From The Fire Gospel

Adi Da Samraj

THE FIRE GOSPEL

Chapter 3: Surrender

Introduction

This story is about a man and an ancient holy site, a river and surrounding jungle shrouded with magical forces and elemental powers. The pool and waterfall formed by the river as it runs down from a sacred mountain were anciently used as a place of human sacrifice, and in long-forgotten times had been revered as places of great power.

The mans name is Andrew Johnson, a devotee of Master Da from the earliest years, who had been invited to serve at the Hermitage Sanctuary. One morning, Andrew accompanied another devotee along the jungle path that leads to the river. They spent several hours felling overgrown guava trees that obscured the view from a temple overlooking the river.

When nearly finished, they spotted a devotee coming down the path, motioning them to halt their work. He said Master Da had sent a message to stop working. They supposed the noise of hacking machetes and the crack of falling trees had carried up the cliffs, disrupting the quietude of the Hermitage. But since the cutting was finished and there would be no more noise, they decided to complete the task and float the trees downriver toward the mouth of the falls.

Earlier the same morning devotees who live at the Sanctuary had offered wreaths of flowers and holy ash to the river. On the way to the river they had come upon a large frog sitting on a rock in the middle of the path. The Hermitage is a natural preserve for frogs, and nowhere do frogs receive more auspicious attention than at the Hermitage of Master Da, who has an unusual affinity for these creatures. Instead of hopping away as usual at the approach of footsteps, the frog remained stationary. The devotees stopped to examine the creature more closely, as the frog held his rock. They accepted the frogs presence as a psychic sign, an omen of warning signifying caution when approaching the dangerous river. Being familiar with the intensity of Master Das approach to the river on his infrequent visits there, and accepting the frogs warning, they proceeded carefully. Performing the morning sacrament in silence, they returned up the path passing the frog still perched on his rock.

Andrew was familiar with the lore surrounding the Hermitage and the history of Master Das psychic combat with the forces there. However, having failed to observe the laws about entering such places, he became easy prey for the forces that be.

As the men began to swim the logs down the river, Andrew suddenly found himself helpless on the edge of the waterfall, realizing that within seconds he was doomed to be carried over the falls. In an instant, when no options remained, he let his life merge with the flow of the water and tumbled over the falls.

Miraculously Andrew survived without serious injury.

Later that evening, when Master Da gathered with devotees, he asked Andrew to tell the story. Andrew began: “The mass of trees floated with the current to the edge of the falls and lodged on the rocks. Frank tugged to free them on one side and I tugged from the other side. I stood in the water at the top of the falls, trying to work the trees loose and feeling safe. The current did not seem strong, and I felt I was close enough to reach the bank if I had to get out of the way, or I could dive under the water and swim upstream.

“Then suddenly everything happened at once. The mass of trees floated free, I lost my footing and fell into the water, and the current increased when the jam of logs broke. I lunged toward the bank, but a large branch blocked my way. I tried to move toward the opposite bank, but another branch caught me on that side. I was trapped in the mass of wood floating over the falls, and I realized I was going with it.

“Below me the falls fell in large steps. In places the water runs shallow over flat boulders before it makes its final rush to the bottom. I landed, still standing on one of the shallow rocks and even maintaining my balance, and then I bounced, standing up, to the shallow step beyond. The next ledge, however, was six feet below at the bottom of the falls. This time there was nothing to jump to or grab. The branches were pushing me from behind and above, and I realized I had to dive. So I dived toward the massive rocks at the foot of the falls, propelled by a force of water and trees that could have killed me or at least done me serious injury. If the skull is thrown against a rock with that much force, you know, it could crack wide open!

“I felt one desire in that moment, one very strong desire: that I would hit water and not rock. I put out my hands, as you naturally do to break a fall, with my palms open, like this. As I fell forward, I knew I would hit wherever I would hit, wherever that was, and I landed belly down in a shallow pool of water that lay in the lap of a big boulder. The water in this little pool was deep enough to break the fall. Then my hands hit the big rock, which was tilted away from me toward the stream, and the force of my fall threw me forward so that I slid over the rock and into the river as if on a water slide.”

Someone asked, “Andrew, did you make an offering to the river when you first went down there? Did you perform any kind of sacrament there?”

He responded, “No, I didnt.”

Master Da then interjected, “I warned you about this, but you still did not do it!”

The devotee who had delivered Master Das message added, “I was sent to tell Frank and Andrew to stop chopping trees because the noise was disturbing you, Master. I intentionally offered a flower to the river because I felt it was appropriate. Maybe that kept Andrews accident from being worse than it was.”

Master Da turned to Andrew. “But you were supposed to leave at that point. My message was that you should stop work and come back up to the Sanctuary.”

Feeling somewhat apprehensive, Andrew did not reply.

Master Da persisted. “Well-?”

“That was the communication, that we should leave?”

“Yes-leave!”

“Master, we didnt hear that part. We thought we were supposed to stop. But you told us to leave?”

Master Da hummed a quiet song of amazement about the whole event. Then he said, looking sternly at Andrew, “This morning I happened to walk to the cliff and glance into that area, something that I never do. Andrew, you could have been the first human sacrifice there in a few hundred years-subhuman sacrifice, anyway!”

In the midst of appreciative laughter, someone said, “My Lord, Andrew told me when it was all over that now he has a very clear understanding of renunciation!”

Many people have experienced the unusual psychic forces at the river. For hundreds of years the negative influences were most apparent, but because of Master Das purifying psychic work the area is now basically benign. Even so, people experience an uncomfortable force there from time to time.

“Did you have a sense of being pushed over?” someone asked Andrew. “Many people have felt an energy run up their spine as if to push them in.”

“No,” he replied, “I felt it was just the conspiring of the natural forces, the logs and the water.”

Master Da burst out laughing. “That is the way everything seems to you, Andy!”

Other devotees added their experiences. “The last time I was down there, which was quite a while ago, I had a very strong sense of something forceful. I even turned around and looked upstream because I had a premonition that a log would float down and move somebody over the falls.”

“I had a premonition, too, a few days ago that something would happen at the river. It kept me from going there for a few days and it made me very careful when I did go there.”

“Master, did you say that you rarely go down there, and yet this morning you did?”

Master Da replied, “Not to the river-I walked to the corner of the property here that overlooks the river area, but I never go there either!”

Andrew, and everyone else, knew that he was fortunate to be alive.

Andrew has red hair and a ruddy complexion, and as he listened to his beloved Master, he beamed with appreciation and awe, realizing with everyone else in the room the extent of Master Das spiritual Work. In general people tend to disregard ghosts, demonology, and psychic forces as superstitious fabrications. But as Master Da has explained often, not only do elemental and celestial forces exist, but they also have a strong influence on human beings, weather, and other natural events. The Adept works within the hierarchical ranges of these forces to purify and align them to the Radiant Transcendental Being. To transform these nonhuman energies is part of the Adepts spiritual Work.

Occasionally devotees have reported seeing a species of freshwater prawns or crawfish in the river, whose most outstanding features are their long pinchers and dark black shells. Recently one of the men noticed something unusual, which he described to Master Da and the gathering.

“A few days ago while I was performing the sacramental service at the river, I saw the biggest crawfish I have ever seen, a big, red one.”

“It was written then!” Master Da replied.

THE FIRE GOSPEL

Chapter 3
Surrender

(1) MASTER DA: We are psychologically disposed to being affected by the conditions of existence most profoundly only when the conditions of existence seem conventionally most profound. So when Andrew went over the falls today, what was his point of view? “Im going with it! Ive got to do it!” There was no returning, no alternative, only surrender. He could just as well have surrendered in exactly that way before he even came close to going over the falls. He could be doing it right now, as perhaps to some degree he is. But we do not seem to surrender as profoundly as in the moment when we feel we have no options.

(2) As long as you feel you have an option, you do not surrender completely. Your presumed options are the basis of the drama of living, and thus the alternatives to sadhana that you also want to fulfill turn your spiritual practice into drama. That drama is karma. That is ego-bondage. The ultimate principle of the spiritual process is the realization that you have no options at any moment under any circumstances. When you realize that, then you enter into the same disposition you would otherwise enjoy under the most conventionally profound or dramatic moments of life or death.

(3) Most people only surrender in some sense when there are obviously no options and when they find themselves in the worst possible moment they could experience. Such surrender is not sadhana. It is ordinary life. Real practice is to regenerate the capacity for release under all conditions so that existence becomes roleless, motiveless, free renunciation. You simply do not live in that disposition by tendency. By tendency you are trying to survive against the apparent threat of existence, always. The sense that you are fundamentally threatened at the same time that you exist is the basis of the contraction over the solar plexus, the knot of the navel. It is the basis of all the knots in the being and the motivator of existence in any form, whether you are flesh-born or existing in some subtler condition. There is always the sense that you exist and that existence is threatened, and you contract in the face of it. You look for alternatives to merely being snuffed out, and life becomes the attempt to generate alternative motivations, responses, techniques, desires, goals, all of which are efforts apart from the recognition that you have no option but absolute surrender.

(4) Absolute surrender occurs only in the moment of such recognition. In the moments of ordinary life, you feel relatively good and you can try to surrender, but when you are going over the falls and death is imminent, you do not try to surrender. Surrender is the only natural recourse. The moment of true surrender is motiveless. No contraction stands behind it, because you are no longer struggling with alternatives. This is the secret of wisdom, then, to realize that you never have any alternative, that you are always in the moment of death.

(5) When you discover that there are no alternatives and simply exist in that surrendered state, you also tacitly realize that existence is never threatened and that no one is threatened. The sense of threat is a psychological superimposition based on the apparent facts of experience. When you enter into wisdom, you have entered into the native capacity of surrender wherein you realize that there are no alternatives. That wisdom is the natural state, the clear state. It is true Samadhi, the state of clear comprehension and clear consciousness. It is not only the disposition into which we should enter when we are threatened absolutely, when we know we are to die, but the disposition in which we should always live. Then life would be another proposition altogether.

(6) But, instead of living in that disposition, we live by struggle, by problem. We all know that surrendering feels good, that it is the best thing to do. We have a native sense that surrender is good and that we really are trapped somehow and have no alternative. But superimposed on that native understanding in the mechanism of the extended personality is another that thinks it can survive, beat the odds, enjoy itself, that consoles itself with all kinds of absurd opinions and hopes, that gives itself excuses, in other words, not to surrender, not to live surrendered, not to recognize the nature of existence.

(7) You tend to play upon or be played upon by that superficial motivation. The degree to which you identify with your superficial personality is the degree to which you cannot really practice. To really practice is to be like Andrew going over the falls, before he got the idea that he could possibly survive and just slip into the water and miss the rocks. That pristine will that acknowledges the inevitable and goes with it has no content, no mind. It knows no stress. It is the native disposition. Inherent in it, deep within it, is all that is to be Realized. We must enter into it fully and continuously, therefore, in order to enter into it deeply.

(8) Go with the flow! Not the flow of events, but the flow of Being, very existence, the Mystery of existence, no holding on, no clinging, no difference, no self-possession, no contraction, no philosophy, nothing but the native state. That is Samadhi. Well-you can glimpse it, you can think something or other about it, you can be different from it, in other words, consider it, contemplate it, think about it, hope for it, but somehow or other, through the process of hearing and seeing in the context of your life, you must again become capable of it. You must recapture the awareness that it is your fundamental and inherent capability. You must enter into Samadhi. Then follows life in Samadhi, existence in Samadhi while you live in human form, in the transition of death and after death, but it is another kind of existence altogether than the one marked by the usual human struggle. The difference is the difference between surrender and self-contraction.

(9) When there is no self-contraction, when there is only the Divine Reality, Realized in native surrender, then there is wisdom. Such Realization is the principle of true or free existence. It is the principle of true renunciation. Conventional renunciation is not that at all. Conventional renunciation is something we build on the distinction between surrender and self-possession. We try all kinds of techniques to break through to Reality. Conventional renunciation is just one of many techniques, including all the techniques of ordinary life, religious techniques, mystical techniques, and on and on. Until we Realize this simple Awakening to the native disposition, all we are doing is struggling with the difference, looking for an alternative, trying to work it out. And so we are afraid.

(10) Tonight you all have been telling stories about your experiences with death. They are horrible. You can die as miserably as any wretched animal, you see. Anybody could. You could die suddenly or you could die many years from now. Who knows when death will happen to you? And in the meantime, all kinds of other calamities could befall you that would not in any sense be enjoyable. Yet in spite of these facts, you have the subtle feeling that there is an alternative, that you can struggle against death and troubles and preserve yourself. Thus, you bind yourself and make fear the necessary vehicle of all your changes.

(11) It is not necessary to be afraid. It is not necessary to suffer in the midst of limitations. There is another disposition altogether that is founded on wisdom, the native freedom. It is in that disposition that you should live and not only die.

(12) DEVOTEE: Master, I was thinking how perfect an expression of that disposition is the “Easy Prayer.”

(13) MASTER DA: Like easy death, it is the simplest presentation of the fundamental attitude of being. To fulfill that prayer most perfectly is the same as Enlightenment or Samadhi. It is also intended for beginners, because it is easier for them to do than the complicated versions of the meditative cycle.

(14) DEVOTEE: Master, I was feeling today that once I recognize something about that disposition toward surrender, no matter what occurs or what circumstances impinge upon this bodily being, I can continue to perform that action and need not fear becoming attached again or drawn into the contraction you are talking about. I felt that would be profound freedom.

(15) MASTER DA: Even if you are afraid, you can always understand your fear. Once you have truly understood, then fear is not just a something, like an object or a force outside yourself that you must endure. It is merely the psychological, emotional, even physiological expression of something you are doing. Enquiry is the expression of that understanding. You can always understand or recognize the self-contraction, which always has the same force. Every moment of suffering, unhappiness, dilemma, or pain is built upon the same mechanism of self-contraction, or the avoidance of relationship.

(16) Once you understand, therefore, you can always recognize the essential content of every moment of suffering and feel beyond it, transcend it, be established beyond it. Understanding is great arms against difficulty and a great power in time of trouble.

(17) DEVOTEE: It feels that I have finally realized a kind of mastery over this condition that before now never seemed possible.

(18) MASTER DA: Until you understand, you always relate to the self-contraction as something outside yourself, a substance, a thing, a machine, an object, something over which you have no control, something you can only endure and put up with. But truly, as I have mentioned a number of times, it is a little bit like pinching yourself and not realizing you are doing it. You feel pain in the body, a little bit like fear. A terrible feeling of pain overcomes you. When you realize you are pinching yourself, you look beyond the pain into the act of which the pain is only an effect or a sign of something else. Getting in touch with that something else is like taking your hand away. When you stop pinching yourself, the pain disappears mysteriously, no matter what the immediate origin of the pain may be. The operative effect of this wisdom, this simple understanding, will always demonstrate itself as liberation, a return to equanimity or fundamental Happiness.

(19) DEVOTEE: I have been considering your description to us recently about how our relationship to you is basically the process of allowing ourselves to be interfered with. I see how this ties in with the consideration of release. Allowing the ego to be interfered with constantly provides what you have described as the pristine release.

(20) MASTER DA: I find you all to be a bunch of funny people! You come around me, and I ask, “Whats happening?” and you give me all your problems and your difficulties, and you are always seriously rapping your view of it all to me and to one another and being interviewed about it year after year after year. You come and sit around me and I hear it or sense it, you communicate it somehow or other in this solemn voice, this serious, self-involved attitude. But to me you are very funny. You are all sitting around here pinching your ass and describing the pain to me! I see you pinching your ass, but you are so involved with the pain and all your subjective ruminations about it that you do not even realize what you are doing, nor do you see that everyone else in the room is sitting around pinching his or her own ass!

(21) Ultimately I call your attention from this pain and all your subjective gaming about it. I grant you sufficient free attention so that you can see. “Look! Look!” That is when you start laughing. That is the moment of humor. You see what it is. You are no longer dwelling on the pain and trying to get rid of it. You see that you are just pinching yourself, sticking your nails in your ass. Well-stop doing it! When you see what you are doing, it is a laughing matter and you stop doing it. You are no longer involved in the whole affair of the self-contraction. You are not pinching yourself.

(22) To say you are pinching yourself is to use a metaphor, but what you are doing is just as obvious as that, just as crude, just as foolish, just as laughable. To get the laugh, however, you must be able to observe yourself, to move your attention away from your subjective gaming and attachments and self-meditation. Just to get your attention off all of that is a trick in itself.

(23) To say that I am functioning in a manner to interfere with you is simply to say that I am breaking the train of your attention from this sensation of pain and the mountain of subjectivity you are building on it, in effect calling your attention to the simple act that is the basis of all this stress, all this thought, all this fake philosophy, all this suffering, all this seeking. When you have observed yourself to the degree that you are not merely watching the sensations of pain and thinking about them, you can look down and see your nails digging into your hip.

(24) You can see the self-contraction just that directly. It is even a laughing moment. Suddenly there is a resource that you always have and that is always usable. You can magnify it, and you must then live it, of course, but it gives you the greatest arms there are, the greatest source of power or release or freedom. You are associated then with this moment of existence and every possible moment of existence in a uniquely free manner that has nothing to do with the ego.

(25) The ego is the pinch, you see, the self-contraction, the self-know, the fear, the resistance, the non-surrender. Until you see the pinch, however, you can try to surrender. Rudi said, “Surrender! Surrender! Rip your guts out!” (The Master takes deep breaths to mock Rudis way of using the breath to surrender) “Break through it!” And so forth. But that is just something you do when you are feeling the pain, when you have not seen the source of it yet, when you are not yet responsible. You can work on your pain, your self-contraction, your presumed disease, your imaginary disease, every day of your life, and create the struggling you all endure to try to be spiritual and to become Enlightened. But effort has nothing to do with surrender.

(26) When Andrew went over the falls, he did not make an effort of surrender. Surrender was inevitable and natural. That effortless or natural surrender is the essence of meditation and real practice. You must realize true self-observation and self-understanding. You cannot surrender otherwise. The futile effort of surrender is made before and in the absence of real self-understanding. That is why it is not sufficient.

(27) The Adept has a unique Siddhi or Work to perform in relation to others, but everyone who enters into the Enlightened disposition Awakens into a similar capacity. It is the disposition of compassion or love. Love is not attachment, romance, or conventional passion. It is just this spontaneous regard, and it becomes, therefore, a disposition that would release everyone and everything. It is a spiritual passion, but it is inherently, already free, and it sees everyone else also as already free.

(28) It is not an attitude that expresses itself within the framework of problems. It expresses itself differently from the characteristic personality that is still self-involved, still working on his or her problem, doing all kinds of spiritual stuff in isolation, meditating, and doing everything people do to somehow break free. It is another kind of activity and it is essential to our Way from the beginning.

(29) Everyone who hears the Teaching enters into this Enlightened disposition in some fundamental sense. Thus, I have considered with you that it is expressed through service, through a unique quality of relational life. In the seventh stage of life, that disposition is magnified most profoundly and perfectly, but it is the same disposition that should characterize all devotees. Those who hear me are not self-concerned anymore. They already possess the arms of wisdom. They already enjoy the Siddhi of the Divine and deal with whatever may arise in the apparent individual experience. They do that creatively and responsibly, but they do not stand as fear. So, where is their attention? Their attention is free. It deals freely with personal circumstance and is not troubled. It is thrown out of the sphere of the body into the environment of all relations and all possibilities, the environment of total existence, not merely of self-existence.

(30) Therefore the true Adept is not just exclaiming, “me-free,” “See me sitting in my cave! See how bright I am!” The true Adept is extraordinarily active. He is concerned for others, not problematically but freely, and compassionately oriented to the total sphere of existence.

(31) When you realize existence, existence is not you independent of anything. All of this exists. All of this is characterized by the One Being. How, in the case of Enlightenment, therefore, can you settle into a medium calm in your cave of meditative pleasures? It is not necessary. You need not be isolated anymore. Because of this expansive quality of compassion, a unity with all Being, the Adepts take on the “Crazy” form. Such compassion is the origin of the Adepts willingness to do anything, not speaking now in terms of the potential to do something terrible and negative, but the willingness to do anything outrageous yet benign for the sake of liberating beings.

(32) The compassionate Maha-Siddha does not do for others everything he can do within the bounds of propriety. The compassion of the Maha-Siddha is such that he will do everything, whether in the realm of propriety or not, for the sake of Awakening others. Therefore, the Crazy Adept looks crazy. He or she does what is not within the realm of conventional religious propriety. The Crazy Adept is not bound by propriety or any dualistic conceptions.

(33) This compassionate, “Crazy” disposition is the essence of all practice. It is the essence of this Way. It certainly takes a different form in the case of the Crazy Adept than in general it takes in the case of devotees, but it is not a difference in kind absolutely. Siddhis are operative in the case of the Crazy Adept, remarkable powers, extraordinary psychic abilities, all kinds of marvels that have nothing to do with the willful effort of the Adept. I have observed in my own case the arising of siddhis of all kinds that are spontaneously operative under all kinds of conditions, even though my actions seem to be ordinary and natural.

(34) These powers are not the results of effort or any yogic activity on my part that intended to create them. No self owns these powers. They are the inherent powers of the Transcendental Reality. They are unique to the Adept, but the power of compassion, the expression of Enlightenment that always works to Awaken everyone, is a characteristic of all individuals who are truly practicing this Way, because you are immediately lifted out of the realm of self-concern, self-contraction, the fear relative to your own potential destinies, as soon as you truly understand. That understanding becomes your arms in every moment, and attention is released from the bond of the self-contraction and gravitates into the Universal Field of Being. The Adept is more effective than merely gesturing toward others through the attitude of help. The Adept is aware of being others, of actually and literally being others. This unique awareness is a reflection of the extraordinary siddhis associated with the Adepts life.

THE FIRE GOSPEL

Chapter 4

The Blissful Current of Happiness
Part I

(1.1) MASTER DA: The entire course of my spiritual life has been associated with the Spirit-Power, not merely with a practice of discriminative intelligence apart from the Spirit-Power. It is characterized as a process of discriminative intelligence, real understanding, the transcendence of attention, but that primary characteristic developed on the basis of a sadhana that was wholly involved with the Spirit-Power, the Living Divine Spiritual Force. And my life has been involved with that Spiritual Power not only as a Force or Energy but as an actual Personality.

(1.2) Other characters, other Adepts, in human history have also enjoyed and suffered this unusual kind of life of associating with, even consorting with, the Living Divine as an actual Personality, a Person seen, spoken to, played with, and played by. The Spirit-Power may be found to be Personified as a Transcendental or Divine Individual.

(1.3) In the Hindu tradition, this Spirit-Power, this Person, is called “Shakti,” or “the Goddess,” and in some aspects of the great Hindu tradition this same Power is called “Maya.” It is simply the Creative Power of the universe. As such, the Shakti leads to bondage. The Shakti as spontaneously self-modifying Energy leads only to its own modifications. Therefore, from some traditional points of view, one is advised not to associate with the Shakti, nor with the evidence of the Shakti in the form of body-mind, worlds, others within the world, and so forth. Those who are called to asceticism are fundamentally called to an exercise of dissociation from Maya or the Spirit-Power as Creative Energy. The effort to dissociate from the World-Power is an effort to dissociate from all the effects of that Power in the form of the world itself, in the form of the pleasures of this world, and in the form of what is traditionally characterized as “women and gold,” sex and fame and relations and all the rest of the worldly distractions.

(1.4) In my case, however, you see an individual who submitted openly and completely to that Power and that Personality, because this Great One may be characterized, or is characterized, or characterizes Herself, in two ways. One of Her Aspects is the Creative Energy of the universe, the Self-Modifying Power that always leads to changes and conditional states and that could be called Maya. The other Aspect by which She may be known is the Liberator, the One who draws the ego of the devotee to Herself. Instead of involving Her devotee or Her lover with conditional existence, She submits Herself in turn to the Transcendental Divine State, to What is also called “Siva” and “Brahman” in the Hindu tradition.

(1.5) Thus, this great Shakti has two Aspects. One is the World-Power, the Creative Energy of the universe that is always being modified according to the tendencies of attention or the state of mind-Maya in other words. In Her other aspect She is the Liberating Power, who ultimately dies or gives Herself up in the Self-Radiant Transcendental Condition or Siva. As Maya, She is wild, independent, not submitted, and leading beings to bondage, but as Liberator, She is the Wife or Consort of Siva, the Transcendental Condition, and She submits Herself to that Condition constantly.

(1.6) It is this Goddess Who was and is the Consort of my life. You see, therefore, in the history of my own submission to this One, that the process ultimately became Transcendental Realization and not merely attachment to gross or subtle planes or conditions of experience. The practice began with whole-bodily submission to this One, to this Living Presence or Living Energy, but it also developed through the exercise of discriminative intelligence and became the transcendence of attention through the practice of enquiry, as I describe it to you, in the form “Avoiding relationship?”

(1.7) I told you all the other night how at one point in my visit to India in 1970, I moved beyond the forms of the human Guru. I was associated with Nityananda as Spiritual Master at that time, but I began to be distracted by the Goddess in a Personal Form. She began to tell me to do things. She appeared as the Virgin Mary as you remember, had me go off to Bombay to find a rosary, and directed me to pray the rosary associated with Mary. All of this seemed ridiculous to me in some sense, although it was also something that I did with a great feeling gesture of submission. There was something about it that seemed funny to me, because I had no history of envisioning the Virgin. I also knew what was occurring. I knew that it was the Goddess playing with me and playing on forms of mind associated with the religious mind that was part of my birth.

(1.8) I went one day to Nityanandas burial place, where I always had either visible or otherwise tangible spiritual contact with him, and he showed me an image of himself that I found and purchased in the stalls outside. Then he indicated that the Goddess had accepted me as Her devotee, that She was now going to be my Spiritual Master, and that neither Nityananda nor any of the human or even nonhuman individuals who had Taught me before were to be my Master. The Goddess, Who is the One in whom all these possible Masters or Teachers or Influences arise, would be my Guru and in fact had chosen to be so and was Teaching me already.

(1.9) Thus, Nityananda simply acknowledged what I also was perceiving. Nevertheless, it seemed appropriate to perform the natural and psychic ceremony with Nityananda, and he confirmed it by showing me his image, which I found outside the temple. Within hours I gave the picture to a devotee at Muktanandas Ashram and went to a small temple that held an image of the Shakti or Goddess in benign mode. There I made the gesture of submission and acceptance of Her and voluntarily cooperated with what She wanted me to do.

(1.10) I left India that day and began to travel through Europe to the places associated with the Goddess in the past, many of them Christian. Eventually I returned to the United States and was drawn to Los Angeles and then to the Vedanta Temple, where She appeared always more and more directly in her True Form, and where I went through the ultimate process described in The Knee of Listening .

(1.11) This Goddess was not merely the Maya or deluding Power of the universe. She may seem to be Maya, just as God seems now to you to be this world, seems to be controlling you and attracting you and involving you in the form of this world and the possibilities of your body-mind. But God is also prior to the world. God is Transcendental, God is All-Pervading, God is the Force and Ultimate Being in which all of this is arising. Just so, the Goddess Who entered into relationship with me as Spiritual Master was not the Divine in the form of Maya, but the Divine in the form of the Spirit-Power that Liberates.

(1.12) When I entered into relationship with the Divine in this Form, the last stages of my sadhana or spiritual practice were fulfilled in a few short months. The Shakti in this Form is the Divine Being as a Living Person. Her Force is not that of Creative Energy but of Love for the Source, Love for the Transcendental Condition, Submission to the Transcendental Condition. She transcends her Creative Aspect and is only Submission to the Source. She dies in that Source. She attracts some rare individuals to become Her devotees and brings them into a state of Embrace and ultimate Unity with Her in which She then dies or submits Herself to the Transcendental Condition. She does this when the devotee has achieved a state of Unity with Her through Her attraction. Then Her death becomes the devotees death, not ordinary personal death but perfect death, the transcendence of the ego in Transcendental Self-Realization.

(1.13) This Aspect of the Goddess is also indicated in a number of traditional Teachings among the Hindus. In the Krishna sect not only is Krishna the subject of devotion, but also Radha, His principal Consort. Thus, the Name Radha-Krishna, or the combination of the Names of Radha and Krishna, is frequently used by devotees in that cult. Other paired Names appear in other traditions, Sita-Ram, or the combination of the Names of Rama and His Consort Sita, for example. Through these dual Names the Divine is pictured or imaged or personified on the one hand as the Spirit-Power, the feminine aspect of the Goddess, and on the other hand as Transcendental Consciousness or Being, the Formless or Transcendental Source. The feminine Name, or the Name of the Goddess, precedes the masculine God-Name, to point to the esoteric Teaching that the Goddess as the Liberating Power leads to the Transcendental Source. One submits to the Goddess-Power or receives the Grace of the Goddess-Power first, and the Goddess-Power in Her devotion or love for the Source, Her submission to the Source, then brings about Transcendental Realization.

(1.14) I entered into the God-State via the Goddess. This is the characteristic aspect of my sadhana. And, having Identified with the Source, I am your means of Realization. I stand in place surrounded by the circle of the Spirit-Power. My devotees do not practice the way of submission to the Goddess, because I am the Goddess. I have been the devotee of the Goddess to the point of Realization. Such a process of Realization does not occur very often, but when it does, the Spiritual Master is the Son of God and Goddess. He is Identified with both, and therefore all aspects of the way of Realization are manifested and magnified in the Spiritual Master and developed in his Company.

Part II

(2.1) Not having entered into personal relations with the Goddess in this specific form, you do not practice the Way in the special form that I practiced it, but the essential form of your practice is the same. You attain Realization of me as the Transcendental Self via the Spirit-Current, or through submission to the Power in which you are Baptized in my Company. You do submit to the Goddess in the form of the Life-Current, but you do not submit to the Goddess in the personified form that characterized my special practice and Way. Nevertheless, because it is fulfilled in me, the same Way, the same Blessing, is available to you, and the same One is Blessing you.

(2.2) The Way you practice is my own Way, and the Eternal Way, the Universal Way. The easy Way of submission to the Spirit-Power is granted to devotees who turn themselves to this Teaching and prepare themselves. The Way is granted to them through my Baptism or Spirit-Blessing. They submit naturally and easily into that Spirit-Current, bodily, at every level, not merely at the level of the musculature or the superficial sensation of the body, but at every level of the body, including the nervous system that is the essence of the body and the brain. Their natural submission into this Current supports the most basic process by which they come to me or Realize the Transcendental Self-Condition.

(2.3) The Current that is Awakened in you in my Company is the One that submits to its Source. It is not merely the Energy of manifestation. Its purpose is not to lead you to have experiences. Experiences naturally will occur because you are already having experiences, yet its purpose is not to generate experiences. I am always criticizing your tendency to become attached to conditions in this world, gross states of the body-mind and also mystical and subtle states, conditions that arise in the yoga of meditation. This Power is not granted to you for the sake of developing experiences and moving you into the spirit-planes or the planes of possibility in this world or in any other world. Its purpose is to return attention to the Source, and the yielding of attention to the Transcendental Being or Source is the right attitude, the right “asana,” the right “mudra” of your practice.

(2.4) Thus, submission to the Life-Current is always associated with the conscious process. All the disciplines of the process of conductivity are secondary and supportive, purifying, balancing. They release energy and attention. They do not merely develop the possibilities of energy and attention. All the while this simple submission is enjoyed in daily practice, the conscious process is to be generated, based on understanding of the self-contraction. In every moment and with free energy and attention, consider, observe, understand, and feel beyond the self-contraction. Attention, consciousness, and all energy enter into a state of identification with the Source, and when this Realization is full, that is Enlightenment, “open eyes,” or Sahaj Samadhi. In that disposition, all the spontaneous modifications of the Radiance of the Self, or the Shakti of the Divine, are recognizable and have no binding power. They are only the Source Itself, and they are recognized as Such.

(2.5) In the seventh stage of life all modifications are understood, inherently transcended, played without bondage, and their seeds gradually dissolved, so that a state of indifference or motiveless renunciation appears finally. Then all of the tendencies of attention to move into the modifications of the Goddess or the Shakti or the Spirit-Power or the Radiance of the Self are Outshined by the Radiant Transcendental Being, and the conditional being is translated into the Divine Domain, or the Transcendental Condition.

(2.6) The Way for you is based on the Way as it has been for me. It is God-made, God-given, dramatic, and unusual. It is a product of the intervention of the Divine. It is the product of personal consorting with the Divine. It is a God-made Way. Your practice essentially duplicates not the particular or personal features of my own practice, but the universal and essential ones. The Way you practice is the Way of bodily submission to the Spirit-Power, which frees energy and attention from the complex of the body-mind for the devotion of attention to its Source, or the transcendence of the self-contraction.

(2.7) All three forms of the Way that I consider with you are this same process, and all three forms of the Way are ultimately resolved into the ultimate process I have described. The process ultimately becomes just that one process and is perfected in that form.

(2.8) As I have been saying to you all on so many occasions, the first aspect of the Way (beyond the rudimentary or preparatory stage of considering this argument and applying yourself to the disciplines of the “yoga of consideration,” which free you to listen), the real beginning of your involvement with this Way is in the moment of Spiritual Baptism, when the Goddess-Power or Spirit-Current, manifesting through me in my Company, becomes tangibly evident. You grasp the mechanics of bodily association with the Spirit-Power and feel how it relates to the spinal line and to the submission of the body from base to crown in an ascending gesture. You feel how it relates to the cycle of breathing, descending in front and ascending in back, breath after breath, inhaling and receiving downward, exhaling and releasing upward in the Circle of the Life-Current in the body. You feel how it relates to the heart, the disposition of feeling, and how submission to the Spirit-Principle or Spirit-Current at the heart is a matter of feeling in all directions, as if in a perfect sphere, to Infinity or without limitation. The event of Spirit-Blessing or Baptism involves the tangible reception of this Blessing, and observation and responsibility for the practice of conductivity in these three forms, relaxing base to crown, breathing in the Circle, descending and ascending, and feeling from the heart in all directions.

(2.9) When the practice of conductivity has become your responsibility, the conscious process begins to develop and show the signs of its authenticity. Other more profound disciplines are then associated with the functional extension of this technical exercise of conductivity or the bodily submission into the Life-Current. Those disciplines include your basic life-practice of health, exercise, diet, “sexual communion,” self-transcending service, and so on. All these disciplines are aspects of living in the Spirit, and they express the practice of surrender into the Living Current. Their purpose is not to bring you more and more into an elaborate and more interesting experiential and knowing life, but to release energy and attention from the complications of life, so that the conscious process may be more and more perfectly effective.

(2.10) Therefore, the Way begins with Baptism, or spiritual submission. It is fulfilled in Enlightenment, or the Realization of the Transcendental Self, which is Self-Radiant, Appearing as everything, and eternally Free. The Way is perfected in Translation, or the Outshining of conditional existence, including all spiritual planes, all worlds, all things of Nature, high and low. In the Outshining of all of these planes and possibilities and conditions in the Transcendental Condition, the Self-Radiant Divine Condition, Goddess and God, Spirit and Source or Self are in a Condition of Eternal Undivided Unity. In that Great One we exist eternally in the perfection of this Way, and those who are Translated from the conditional planes will simply see what such a magnificent God Is !

(2.11) We do not turn attention to possibilities. We submit attention to the Source, and, being Translated through such submission, we will see if there are worlds with God that are beyond conditionality, egoity, separation. In any event, perfection of the Way is a matter of perfect Union with the Transcendental Source through love, or submission to the Spirit-Current, which is Love. It is a Blissful Current of Happiness that leads to Its Source-Condition. The Current of Happiness ultimately leads into the Current on the right side of the heart and finds the Transcendental Self, the Ultimate Domain of Siva, and then Siva and Shakti, or the Goddess, are in a play of Union with one another through the mechanism of Amrita Nadi, She Radiant above the crown and He Self-Existing in the right side of the heart. Although you are not likely to see Them as Persons, I use this figurative language because you are moving to Realize them as a Condition.

(2.12) Then in the seventh stage of life, the Living-Current of the Spiritual Divine moves up in the body toward the place above the crown, beyond all planes of possibility. In the case of Translation, the Goddess, the Living Spirit-Radiance above the crown, above all worlds, and above all of Nature, is Realized to be in a state of Perfect and Absolute Unity with the Transcendental Divine Being. I distinguish here between Unity and Union with the Transcendental Being. There is One God, and God is shown in these Aspects and in all forms and in all beings and in all forms of the Play and in all dynamics. On the conditional plane the Divine may seem to be two beings, the Spirit and the Source, or three beings, the Spirit and the Source and the Spiritual Master, or many beings, many kinds of powers and gods and goddesses and Enlightened personalities. But in the ultimate event of Translation the Singleness of the Divine is absolutely Obvious, and there is no separation from that One.

(2.13) In the Enlightened condition there is also no separation, but the play of existence remains, and the mechanism whereby it is shown in us bodily is the line of Current or awareness between the space above the crown and the right side of the heart. That is the Condition of Perfect Awakening, Perfect Enlightenment, Perfect Awareness, Perfect Identification with the One Divine. It is coincident with the play of existence, but this play is more and more profoundly Radiated, Transfigured, Transformed, ultimately Outshined through the power of recognition in the seventh stage of life.

(2.14) When the body-mind is Outshined, then Amrita Nadi is also Outshined, and there is only One Absolute Condition of Bliss, beyond differentiation and beyond description.

Part III

(3.1) We do not yet have a significant written description of my spiritual history. A version of it, covering the years of my life up to 1970, is given in The Knee of Listening . It is not meant to be fully elaborate, however, but it is an economized description. Nor is my Teaching Work described there. People perhaps tend, therefore, to have a rather abstract idea of my life. In The Knee of Listening I certainly describe my relations with the Goddess, but I think perhaps that, not knowing there is such a One and not having any experience of such a One, people tend to think that I am speaking metaphorically or that I may be a little crazy. Who knows what you think? At least you think more abstractly about it.

(3.2) My life, however, is a real life of real association with a real Person, with many real persons, in fact, who were extraordinary. It is not a common life. Likewise, my Teaching Work was not developed on the basis of any conventional interest in Teaching people. In fact, I do not like Teaching very much on some level. It is a great burden. It requires a great sacrifice. It has occurred spontaneously in my case, but I would not have casually chosen it. I have been obliged to do it.

(3.3) Every feature of my Teaching Work has been like every feature of my life before it, a spontaneous event, made by the Divine, made by the Goddess even, associated with the Goddess and with the Divine as my own Identity, and yet somehow I am in play with that One. Such a life-process is unheard of in the Western world and only occasionally heard of in its authentic form in the East, but it is a real life, real just as it is described in The Knee of Listening , and made very dramatically evident in the years since that time. We must, therefore, write about it very fully so that people may understand just how real and unusual it is and be helped to overcome their prejudices and their self-based religiosity.

(3.4) Spiritual life is a matter of literal consorting with God, submission to God literally, Who is a Person with Whom we are ultimately Identified and relative to Whom we are in Play in this world. You are in Play with the One who is your Self. You are also in play with me, and I have Realized a state of perfect Identity with you. But I Play with you at the same time, attracting you into a process of submission wherein you will transcend yourself and Realize the sublime Condition of God-Union and God-Oneness.

(3.5) The Living God is always Present. The Living God is a wild, indescribable Character, a Person ultimately without qualities and without differences. But in the Play of Nature, God is evident as a Living Personality. Everything that arises in Nature, not all of which is beautiful, sublime, or desirable, is evidence of that Personality. The Play of Nature is a kind of Madness that is not comprehensible to the ego, which seeks its own survival and the survival of the things to which it wants to attach itself. Nature is a Great Sacrifice, a Fire Sacrifice, a Sacrifice of selves, not merely a place of selves who should be permitted to live forever. As soon as a self comes into being, it wants to live forever, and everything that counters its desires to live forever and to live pleasurably it considers to be an evil that must be escaped.

(3.6) Such reactivity is an expression of our egoity or our self-possession. Actually the movement of Nature is in the direction of sacrifice. Thus, things come to an end, and all the plans of the ego are frustrated. When we are dissonant and self-possessed in relation to the Divine, we suffer and are bewildered and crazed by the events of our experience. But when we enter into the play of submission or sacrifice, then we transcend the motion of the world and the intentions of our egoity, and our life begins to be lived differently and serves a greater purpose. The aspects of our lives that are self-generated, that create disharmony and loveless results, are purified, and naturally in the spiritual process we become happier, but not immortals and not individuals clinging to temporary events. Ultimately we go beyond our present tendencies toward embodiment in other, higher worlds than this one, which are also part of the Humorous Insanity of the Great One, not an end in themselves, not permanent, not altogether blissful, but part of the Fire. They are deep in the Fire and oblige us further to the sacrifice of self.

(3.7) One Way may be intuited, through the Grace of God, which cuts directly through this cycle of the sacrifice and performs the sacrifice directly and instantly and realizes the fruit of the sacrifice, which is Oneness with the Transcendental Condition. Instead of merely suffering a seemingly endless sequence of changes and births and deaths, we may enter directly into this Fire of Sacrifice and be liberated entirely from the cycle of changes, fulfill the Law of that cycle directly, through submission into the Spirit-Fire and the free transcendence of attention in its Source.

(3.8) The more we involve ourselves with this direct process, the more the karmas of possibility are dissolved in us. Therefore, when the process becomes perfect, we stop migrating or transitioning from death to new lives in the spirit-planes of Nature. We are consumed in the Spirit-Fire, reduced to ash or perfect Oneness with the Source of the Fire. This is the great disposition of devotion. True devotion is not merely an emotional gesture toward a conceived God. Such a gesture is ego-based. It purifies us to some degree, but it tends to move attention into other embodiments, other states and planes in the spiritual hierarchy of Nature.

(3.9) True devotion is perfect transcendence of self, perfect submission to the Fire, submission without withholding or self-reference, submission to the point of utter self-transcendence, transcendence of the contraction that is egoity and that is the difference.

(3.10) DEVOTEE: Master, as several of us men talked together last night, it became clear that this point had finally begun to sink in. All of us could easily confess, because of your Grace, that we can locate the Spirit. That was about as far as we would take it, however, and we now feel our responsibility to enter into this play of submission, which is an active process, and the gesture to which you are now calling us.

(3.11) MASTER DA: You have no right to luxuriate in the Spirit, you see. It is a Fire. It will burn you up. You cannot luxuriate in the Company of the Goddess when you are in personal association with the Divine in such a Form. Nor can you luxuriate in my Company, Who is the Goddess. You do not have the right. As soon as you are criticized, tested, forced into the dead-ends of Narcissus, you are obliged to transcend yourself. So, you are right-this responsibility is the key to reception of the Spiritual Baptism.

(3.12) The Spiritual Power is necessarily coincident with the ability to respond or surrender. The Spirit-Current Itself is surrender. If you relax into It, you become surrendered, and then It does the sadhana. The Spiritual Blessing is the Power of practice. What you receive as Spirit, what you become intimate with as the Spirit-Power, is the Power of submission, the Power of surrender, the Power of the Love of the Source. You need not generate effort from the ego-base, but enter more and more profoundly into the Spiritual Being and submit into Its tendency. It circulates in the body and It rises up constantly. It Radiates in the body. It does not contract. Submit to It and you submit to Its characteristics, which are all the signs of practice.

(3.13) If practice is difficult, you are self-contracted, not submitting to the Spirit-Current and allowing It to characterize you. You must be lived and, paradoxically, to be lived by the Divine is easy. What you are trying to do on the basis of self-effort and the problematic self-contraction is actually very difficult. Life is very difficult. You lead a very unhappy life because you do not receive enough Shakti, enough Spirit-Power, to be spiritualized, to be submitted, to be transcended. But you are granted all power through Baptism, through association with me. The Spirit will do everything, but you must cooperate with It, you must submit to It, you must be animated by It and magnified by It. Its characteristics are the movers, the doers, of the practice. You must simply submit to It and enable It to do Its work.

(3.14) Part of Its Work is to purify you, to release energy and attention, to balance you, to free you from aggravated karmic tendencies and destinies that limit the spiritual possibility. It is a difficult process in the sense that it is not congenial to tendencies. On the other hand, it is easy. What you must fundamentally do is easy, and what you must do fundamentally is what you must always do.

(3.15) The Way begins on the basis of Baptism. It is spiritual life. It is ultimately summarized and perfected in the conscious process, but the conscious process is itself an evolute or expression of the Spiritual Nature, the Spiritual Being. You are not merely given energies to vitalize you, but you are granted the Spiritual Blessing of the Divine. You are granted intimacy with the Divine, intimacy with the Spirit-Current as the Divine, intimacy with the process that is burning up the ego and returning to a state of Identification with the Divine. You cannot luxuriate in It, in other words, and merely use this Baptism to enjoy your life or improve your circumstances. You must submit to It and allow It to purify your life, consume it and steady it and simplify it, and free energy and attention for the profundities of the ultimate conscious process.

(3.16) This Current is not merely pranas or energies in the body. The energies in the body are also present. They are like all the energies in the world. The energies in the body animate the senses, the body, the desires. They animate all of your relations also. They animate all of Nature. Through Spiritual Baptism you contact the Current in which all energies, all pranas, all motions are arising. It is their core, the white substance in which all the colors and motions develop. It is a resonant force prior to all these motions. We must submit ourselves to It, breathe It, feel It, relax into It, and then live through all the disciplines of life and the changes and purifications that are our obligation, and practice the real meditation of the conscious process.

(3.17) Over time the conscious process becomes more profound. Our life, on the other hand, becomes more simple, more like the residue or the ash of a sacramental act. It ceases to contain knots. It ceases to represent differences or any kind of separation from the Divine or the Divine Purpose. This Way is greater than being sensitive to energies in the body. Anyone can be sensitive to energies in the body-you are sensitive to them all the time. Spiritual Baptism is to become sensitive to the fundamental Current in which the body-mind and all of Nature are always established, and to submit to Its tendency, which is submission, or love for the Source. We endure that Fire, and then more and more energy and attention are released for the conscious process and permit the conscious process to fulfill itself.

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“End Notes” From The Fire Gospel

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THE FIRE GOSPEL

Chapter 5: Salvation and Liberation

Introduction

To use the Spiritual Transmission of the Adept and ultimately benefit from a life of spiritual practice we must start at the beginning and grow toward spiritual maturity. We mature spiritually through a totally different process of learning and testing than is provided in the common world. Many individuals highly accomplished in various fields of endeavor have approached Master Daprofessors, writers, businessmen, models, scholars, whiz-kids, lawyers, designers, boxers, artists, evangelists, psychiatrists, doctors, and healerswhom we could characterize as ordinarily mature individuals. However, these conventional qualifications do not signal preparation for the spiritual Way.

Turning to the Great Tradition of religion and spirituality, we find innumerable accounts of individuals who approached spiritual teachers and had to endure a dramatic trial of self-purification and humility. If spiritual maturity is to develop, we must enter the gate of self-understanding and behold the ego and our God-denying actions directly. The vision is sobering, but it is required of all who would be Awakened to the spiritual Way.

A striking example from the traditions is the encounter between the Indian Sage Naropa and his Guru Tilopa.1 Naropa learned twelve difficult but great lessons from Tilopa and, we are told, in the end was Enlightened. Each lesson confronted Naropa with the harsh realities of life and, having fully participated in the events largely created by Tilopa, he was then instructed in the exotericism of those lessons.

The fourth lesson on “the mystic heat” is a classic example of what the serious aspirant recognizes as a revelation of the real encounter between a great Teacher, like Tilopa, and an advanced pupil, like Naropa.

Tilopa again sat motionless and silent for a year in a border country. When Naropa had made the appropriate gesture, circumambulated him with folded hands, and asked for instruction, Tilopa said, “Follow me,” and went away. Then sitting near a dark and deep pool, full of leeches, he said to Naropa: “If I had had a disciple he would have built a bridge over this pool.” Taking these words literally Naropa began building a bridge. When he was waist-deep in the water, he slipped and went under. Since the water had been disturbed, leeches and other vermin came in swarms and bored into his body. The loss of blood gave him the sensation of being dissolved, and the water flowing into this emptiness made him feel frozen. Tilopa asked: “Naropa, what is wrong with you?” And Naropa answered:

I dissolve, I freeze, through the bites of leeches,

I am not master of myself and so I suffer.

Tilopa said:

This pool of your body fashioned by former deeds

Deserves to be turned into ice, Naropa.

Look into the mirror of your mind which is the mystic heat,

The mysterious home of the Dakini.

When he had healed him by touching him with his hand he gave him the instruction on the mystic heat in which eternal delight and warmth are self-glowing.2

Barring none, all who approach the Adept must pass through the fire of self-knowledge. The true Way depends on self-transcendence, and the education whereby we discover such self-knowledge is, as Master Da likes to refer to the culture of The Crazy Wisdom Fellowship, a hard school.

In the trial of self-knowledge, humor is an indispensable attribute. Master Da has written: “Never abandon the attitude of humor, which is intuitive freedom from the necessity of any condition high or low.” The following testimony is an example of self-knowledge gained with appreciation by a student of The Laughing Man Institute named Byron Duckwall.

Since I was seven years old I have pursued a career as a professional cellist, so when I came to the Spiritual Master, he began to work with me relative to this important aspect of my life. This story recounts his instruction to me.

In 1976 I offered to play for the Spiritual Master as part of the program for a major Celebration. I rehearsed for weeks, wanting to do my very best for this special occasion. Secretly I worried that I would not be good enough, and when the day of the Celebration came, I was quite anxious. It was the most important performance I had ever given. I wanted more than anything that the Spiritual Master would like it.

After the first piece, the audience applauded my playing enthusiastically, and I plunged into the next work, all my anxiety gone. The performance was really going quite well, when, about halfway through the solo, several loud explosions brought my playing to an abrupt end.

Someone had tossed a lighted string of firecrackers at my cello! I was disoriented by the noise, and made confused, angry, and helpless by the interruption. I was totally offended that some ill-mannered crazy person had done this to me. I experienced in that moment the perfect frustration of all my motivations, desires, and feelings.

The stage manager waved me off the stage, and I listened, still dazed, as he informed me that it was the Spiritual Master who had thrown the firecrackers at my cello. More perplexed and bewildered than ever, I wondered, “I know he loves mewhy would he do this to me?”

As Grace would have it, while working at the Ashram bookstore a few nights later, I was invited with another musician to play again for Master Da. This time the Master asked me to finish the piece that had been interrupted by the firecrackers. I played what I could remember of it, but my playing was not very good. Master Da laughed at my attempt and said, “You really cant stop showing off, can you?” Then he took my cello like a violin under his chin and pretended to play it. Since then, Master Da has blessed my cello by handling it on several occasions, and I am witness to the forceful effect of his blessing on my music.

I was invited to stay for dinner that night, a great honor for me. As I moved to take a seat at the end of the table, Master Da said, “Byron, why dont you come and sit next to me?” I was ecstatic. I conversed during dinner with Master Da and another devotee whom I knew well. As we talked about other devotees and the events of our lives, I was able to ask the Master all the questions I had always wanted to ask him.

Suddenly I became aware that two conversations were going on simultaneously. Coincident with the apparent small talk of the dinner conversation was the silent conversation of the Heart. I was asking the Master my most secret, intimate, and heartfelt questions about the nature of existence, true Bliss, and true Ecstasy. Were they what I had always intuited? And in this silent conversation Master Da revealed the Happy Truth. I was overwhelmed. I realized at one point that he could not know these questions unless he was me. And as this thought occurred to me, I looked up at him and he roared with laughter. It was true.

At this point I fell madly in love with him. Eventually he left. As the car pulled away, I rushed toward it, reached out, and kissed him, proclaiming my love for him. He acknowledged, “Tcha,”3 and the car pulled out into the night.

This was an incredible Grace and since this initiation my life has gone through many, many trials, successes, and failures, but this has always remained to somehow shine through.

Devotees are first called to approach the Spiritual Master as Teacher. Too often people try to bypass the essential confrontation with the “tooth” of the Adepts radical Argument. The Teaching awaits all who accept the Masters invitation to practice, but if it is to be effective, the power of this Gift must be received, its lessons learned, its disciplines taken up, and its radical Way fully exercised.

In the sixteenth century, a lieutenant of the Spanish army, by the name of Nunez Cabeza de Vaca, was shipwrecked off the coast of Florida. With the two members of his forces who had not been slaughtered by natives, he walked across the continent from Florida to the Pacific in an odyssey that took him eight years. At the end of his ordeal, during which, through the Grace of the Spirit, he had been Spiritually Awakened, he wrote to the king of Spain:

If one lives where all suffer and starve, one acts on ones own impulse to help. But where plenty abounds, we surrender our generosity, believing that our country replaces us, each and several.

This is not so, and indeed a delusion. On the contrary, the power of maintaining life in others moves within each of us, and from each of us does it recede when unused. It is a concentrated power. If you are not acquainted with it, your majesty, you can have no inkling of what it is like, what it portends, or the ways in which it slips from one.4

To use the gift of Liberation, we must also want to be liberated. Traditionally the most important sign in a student was the urge to Realization. People imagine themselves to be serious about the search for Truth, but the heat of actual practice has proved too hot for many a seeker. Truth is a fire few have the good fortune to endure. Having found it is one thing, but to accept it is another matter entirely. We should make no mistake about the Adept behind the Teaching in this book. Master Da is one of the rare species of God-mad Siddhas for whom the Happiness of Realization is unequivocally manifest. The purifying release or salvatory Grace that may be gained at the beginning of practice is only thatthe beginning. To rest in the sublimity of self-improvement while the fire of emancipation is blazing all around is not possible for long.

The Adept and the Teaching never let the ego rest. Master Das Crazy Wisdom is aimed at provoking full Realization in those who come to him. Here the reader discovers a finely tempered sword, unrelenting in its motion to sever the cord of egoity. The Adept knows there is no vicarious salvationthe urge must be there. If it is not, there will be no reception and thus no Awakening. This all-important qualification is made plain by the Tripura Rahasya:

The most important of the qualifications is the desire for emancipation. Nothing can be achieved without it. . . . (XIX:35-37)

Again, Rama, a casual desire for emancipation is also vain. Such desire often manifests on learning of the magnificence of the emancipated state. It is common to all but never brings about any abiding results. Therefore a passing desire is worthless.

The desire must be strong and abiding, in order that it may bear fruit. The effects are in proportion to the intensity and duration of the desire. (XIX:38-40)5

Great Realizers are born with the urge to Emancipation, which may develop in others through respectful association with the Teaching and Blessing of the Adept. Without the good fortune of spiritual desire, salvation and practice are just a fancy suit for dressing up the ego.

There can be no holds barred if the Liberating Work is to be accomplished. The devotees bond with the Adept is that Realization will be accepted, valued, and prized above all else. Vivekananda Swami,6 in his intense search for a Spiritual Teacher, wandered throughout India looking for a vehicle to aid him in his spiritual quest. He asked all he met if they had seen God. As he rightly reckoned, if a man had not seen God, how could he possibly speak of God and teach God to others! Finally he encountered Ramakrishna.

After the first meeting, Ramakrishna indicated to him that he had foreknowledge of Vivekanandas coming. He took him aside and said, “Ah! You have come very late. Why have you been so unkind as to make me wait all these days? My ears are tired of hearing the futile words of worldly men. Oh, how I have longed to pour my spirit into the heart of someone fitted to receive my message!”

Vivekananda was startled. He said to himself, “What is this I have come to see? He must be stark mad.” But in listening to Ramakrishnas wisdom, he eventually intuited the spiritual presence underlying the Saints rather unconventional nature. Vivekananda asked him, “Sir, have you seen God?” Ramakrishna replied: “Yes, I have seen God. I have seen Him more tangibly than I see you. I have talked to Him more intimately than I am talking to you. But, my child, who wants to see God? People shed jugs of tears for money, wife, and children. But if they would weep for God for only one day they would surely see Him.”7

Throughout Master Das literature and in all of the years of his Teaching, he has always witnessed God to devotees and shown the Living Force and miraculous Power of the Divine that manifests through him to countless numbers of people. But Master Da also asks, “Do you see God?” This is a constant theme when he gathers with others. One day devotees on retreat at the Hermitage Sanctuary were invited to an outing with the Master at a nearby beach. The Master sat gazing out across the water and then turned to one of the men and asked, “Andrew, do you see God?” The devotee swallowed, looked around, stammered a bit and, without saying a single word, shook his head.

The Master waited for a time and then turned to another devotee and asked, “Charles, do you see Her?” After hesitating, the man replied, “Yes.” Not convinced by the depth of conviction in the mans reply, the Master again sat in silence. He gazed out across the bay at the mountains and along the shore at the people preoccupied with the play of sun and water. Then he returned his gaze to his devotees and said, “I see Her everywhere. She is the wind in the trees. She is the ocean. She is everywhere. Everywhere I look I see the Great Mother dancing.”

d* * *

dNotes

1. Naropa (A.D. 1016-1100) and his Guru, Tilopa (A.D. 989-1069), were both Crazy Wisdom Adepts in the Buddhist tradition that began in India and flowered in Tibet. Tilopa is said to have been taught and enlightened by dakinis, or Spirit Goddesses. As an Enlightened Adept, Naropa served as Guru to Marpa the Translator (A.D. 1012-1096), who introduced a refreshed form of Buddhism to Tibet that eventually developed as the Kagyu school of Tibetan Buddhism.

2. Herbert V. Guenther, trans., The Life and Teaching of Naropa (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1963), pp. 53-54.

3. “Tcha” is Master Das characteristic expression of acknowledgment, affirmation, blessing, and approval. He has told us that this expression, which he uses constantly and spontaneously, has no verbal or conventional meaning. It transmits a sense apart from verbal meanings. He said, “I just began to use this expression without meaning so that when a person hears it, he or she is required simply to confront it as an event, to associate with me in the moment and with what is being transmitted at the nonverbal level.” To devotees, “tcha” has mantric force and carries the Power of the Divine Siddhi. To hear this sound is to receive the Divine Blessing, the initiation of understanding.

4. Haniel Long, Interlinear to Cabeza de Vaca: His Relation of the Journey Florida to the Pacific, 1528-1536 (New York: Frontier Press, 1969), p. 35.

5. Swami Sri Ramanananda Saraswathi, trans., Tripura Rahasya or The Mystery Beyond the Trinity, 4th ed. (Tiruvannamalai, S. India: Sri Ramanasramam, 1980), p. 161.

6. Swami Vivekananda (1863-1902) was the principal disciple of Sri Ramakrishna (1836-1886), the modern Indian saint whose teaching he made widely known in the West.

7. Swami Nikhilananda, trans., The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna (New York: Ramakrishna-Vivekananda Center, 1969), p. 57.

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Darshan

Practice

Study

Guilds

THE FIRE GOSPEL

Epilogue

The Incarnate Spirit of the Transcendental Divine

(1) The Realm of Nature, or the total world of beings, is a multidimensional psycho-physical cosmos.

(2) The Transcendental Divine is the Ultimate Identity of all beings and the Truth or Real Condition of the entire Realm of Nature.

(3) While yet remaining utterly Transcendental, the Divine Being is unqualifiedly Radiant as the Identity and Condition of the total world and all beings. Therefore, the Divine Being pervades the total world and all beings as “Spirit,” the Radiant Life-Current, or the literal Sea of Light, of which all beings and things are but temporary and finite modifications (made of the various constituents or elements into which this Sea of Light is fractioned in the Mystery of Nature).

(4) The Spirit of the Transcendental Divine pervades the total world. Therefore, It is the Substance or Condition of every appearance, thing, process, state, place, moment, or dimension.

(5) The Spirit of the Transcendental Divine pervades every individual being. Therefore, It is the Substance or Identity of every being and every part, function, or apparent state of being.

(6) The Transcendental Divine is the Truth of the world and every being. The Life of devotional Unity with the Spirit of the Transcendental Divine is the inevitable evidence of the Realization of Truth. Spiritual Life is that practice which is founded on the understanding of self and the Realization of Truth. Apart from such understanding and Realization, the self is an effective obstruction to self-understanding, Transcendental Realization, and Spiritual Life. Until there is profound self-observation, self-understanding, and Transcendental Realization, the self is the active forgetting of the Spirit and of the prior or eternal Oneness of self, the world, and the Radiant Transcendental Being. Such forgetting of the Divine Truth, Reality, Identity, and Condition is “sin.”

(7) Sin is the self-contraction, the presumption of a concretely independent, separate, and separative self. It is the act in which the Transcendental Spiritual Divine is simultaneously denied and forgotten. It is the act in which the world, or the total Realm of Nature, is conceived as a concretely independent, self-contained phenomenal process, without any obvious association with the pervasive Spiritual Being that alone grants Reality and Happiness to beings and things.

(8) Because we actively contract upon self, we actively separate from, deny, and forget the Divine Being. The action of self-contraction is chronic, complex, and not generally observed or understood. Therefore, the act of separation, denial, and forgetting relative to the Divine is not commonly observed or understood. (We are simply left with the feeling of un-Happiness, dilemma, the sense of emptiness, or the absence of Profundity, and we are chronically possessed by the urge toward release, or even annihilation.) Such separation, denial, and forgetting are the consequences of self-bondage or sin, but they are not themselves consciously or strategically pursued.

(9) Sin is terrible in itself. Its apparent consequences are merely a reading of what it contains in its very nature. Sin is an act, but it is primarily or instantly shown as a kind of consciousness. As an act, it eventually produces profoundly negative experiential effects, but the act itself immediately coincides with a consciousness, or a state of presumption, that “designs” the very world un-Really, so that even what is perceived is no longer recognizable in Truth, as the Divine, Radiant with Bliss. Sin is, therefore, its own “punishment.” Ultimately, it is not the effects of sin that we must transcend, but sin itself.

(10) Sin is not properly associated with any mythological or collective past, but with the functional individual in the present moment. We are presently performing and suffering this action. We are in a state of present forgetfulness relative to our own Identity and Condition. And we continue to live and act in all relations on the basis of this forgetfulness, which is a consequence of self-contraction.

(11) But our separation from the Divine and our denial of the Divine are not so much acts (in the strategic sense) as they are a state of consciousness that reflects the self-contraction. We are suffering sin, and in that sense we are “guilty” of sin. But if we will observe and understand sin itself, we will spontaneously “Remember” or Realize the Divine, and we will no longer live on the basis of or according to the results of sin (or self-contraction).

(12) On the basis of certain traditional religious and social conventions, the idea of sin as the violation of certain behavioral norms or legalisms is developed in the common mind. Therefore, exoteric religious ideas of sin tend to be centered around social and behavioral conceptions of guilt, law, justice, punishment, penance, purification, restitution, moral redress, repentance, forgiveness, salvation from the consequences of wrong-doing, and so forth. Such conceptions are the common psychological basis for traditional social order as well as exoteric religious culture. But sin must ultimately be addressed by Wisdom. Sin is not ultimately a matter of conventional moral transgressions but of Spiritual un-Happiness and the non-Realization of Truth. We can go on forever “improving” our behaviors and being punished or forgiven for our presumed wrong-doing, but we will not transcend or go beyond real sin and its ultimate consequences until we observe, understand, and transcend the self-contraction, and so Realize the Spiritual Divine, directly, in Truth, free of the act or the effects of sin.

(13) It is perhaps good for us, in our relative immaturity, to Awaken sufficiently to acknowledge the Divine, and likewise, to acknowledge and truly feel that the Divine is not merely lawful (like Nature) but forgiving. The conception of the Divine as forgiving is ultimately based on the presumption or the Realization that the Divine transcends Nature (and, therefore, somehow has always already forgotten or released what takes place in the mechanics of Nature). The Divine is the Truth of Nature and is, therefore, in a Free Position relative to mere causes and effects. Thus, human beings are always free to affirm that the Divine Condition and Identity can be turned to, embraced, and ultimately Realized, if we will understand, presently transcend, and thus effectively abandon sin, or the limitations that egoity places on the Divine Spirit.

(14) The acknowledgment of the Divine coincides with the idea that the Divine should not be associated with any predisposition to regard past sin (or denial of the Divine) as an insoluble impediment to the present Realization of the Divine. Sin can simply be abandoned. We are inherently free to abandon it (once we have understood it), because self and world exist in the Radiant or Spiritual and Transcendental Divine Being. But we must outgrow our childish orientation to the Divine as a mere forgiver. Such a conventional idea tends to be a part of religious exotericism, wherein the human concern is to escape from the consequences of bad behaviors (as a child seeks to be free of the consequences that follow upon violation of parental rules). In the first three stages of life we may be dominated by such behavioral and social psychology, but we must ultimately go beyond the immature and neurotic concerns of the childish and adolescent personality. Spiritual Life is the Occupation of the maturity of humankind, and it develops only on the basis of Wisdom in the later stages of life (particularly the seventh stage, which is the stage of ultimate Divine Realization and Revelation).

(15) The Divine is not merely a forgiver. If such were the case, there would never be any consequences for sin. Indeed, sin itself would not occur, and born existence would be a constant state of pleasure and Happiness. The Divine should not be conceived as a mere Creator of laws and consequences. But we do in fact experience all kinds of laws (or obligations and limits) as well as consequences (positive and negative) of action and presumption. We are not merely or casually forgiven for sin. Rather, the complex results of sin will ultimately become a forceful Argument for self-understanding and Spiritual Realization of the Divine.

(16) Sin is not merely or even fundamentally a matter of behaviors. Sin is a matter of separation from Truth, Reality, Being, and Radiant Happiness. Even if we are somehow purified, or forgiven for “sinful” behaviors, we will not thereby cease to sin. Therefore, those who are addicted to the childish rituals of penance and forgiveness are always “sinning,” and being “forgiven,” and “sinning” again. Even if we accept responsibility for behaviors that negatively affect ourselves or others, we will not cease to sin merely by changing those actions.

(17) Spiritual Life requires the abandonment of sin, or else there is no Enlightenment and no end to sinning. What must we do? We must understand sin itself. We must constantly observe and understand Narcissus, the machine of self-contraction, and always presently Awaken to that Disposition which is prior to the self-contraction and its consequences. We must Awaken to the Divine Self-Condition. We must cease to sin or suffer sin by Realizing the Divine Condition, Identity, Reality, Truth, Happiness, and Spiritual Substance. Only in that case do we transcend sin itself and live the Truth in the world.

(18) The Divine seems to be absent from the world, because we are actively forgetting the Divine Reality and Condition. As long as we live in sin (or self-contraction) we cannot Realize the Divine and enjoy Spiritual Oneness with the Divine Being. The consequences of this forgetting are every kind of suffering due to the reduction of the self-in-Nature to lower, random, and unbalanced patterns.

(19) The Divine is obvious only when sin (or the self-contraction) is transcended. It is only when we understand and transcend the “I” that the Real is obvious in consciousness (and even bodily). Thus, when sin is transcended in present understanding we, in effect, constantly Remember (or tacitly Realize) the Transcendental Divine Self. And only on the prior basis of such intuitive Realization of the Obvious can we live and act in Oneness with the Spiritual Radiance of the Divine. It is only when sin, or the veil of forgetting, is transcended that the self is found in the Divine Self and the Spiritual Divine is found in the world. When self and world are Realized in the Divine, then, and only then, is the Divine found in the world of selves. Apart from this Realization, we struggle with limited experience and knowledge, conceiving the self on the basis of mortal finitude and the world on the basis of nonsensical materialism.

(20) The Divine will be found (in Itself and in the world) only if we (each “I”) Remember, Identify with, and thus Incarnate the Radiant Transcendental Divine Being. Apart from such “Remembrance” or Realization of the Identity of self (or consciousness) and the Condition of the phenomenal world (including the body-mind), there is no Happiness. And apart from the Spiritual Awakening (and the Process of Spiritual Incarnation) that develops on the basis of true understanding, there is no apparent or obvious Divine Being, Reality, Truth, Spirit, or Love-Bliss.

(21) Even if we are somehow moved to embrace the Divine as Presence, or Spirit, or Ideal-if we do so without moment to moment understanding and transcendence of the self-contraction (and the egoic search for knowledge, experience, or release), our “Spirituality” is only another expression of sin (such as tends to be expressed in the errors of the fourth, fifth, and sixth stages of life).

(22) Apart from real and present understanding, our ideas of the Divine Spirit and the Incarnation of the Divine Spirit in the world and the body-mind are merely conventions of the ego (or sin itself). The world, seen in itself, is un-Real. The self, contracted upon itself, is un-Happy. There is no Spiritual Purpose that is obvious in the world itself. There is no Incarnation of the Spirit in the self-contracted body-mind. What seems to be the Divine Spirit from the point of view of the ego is merely another form of the world. Such a “Spirit” is an energy or force moving in the plane of Nature, but it is not recognized or Realized in the Divine.

(23) The Way of Truth is the radical Way of always present understanding and transcendence of the self-contraction and its conventions of knowledge and experience. The Way of Truth is not itself a matter of the inversion of attention upon the inner self, nor is it principally a matter of “conductivity” (or surrender to the Spirit). The Way of Truth is principally a matter of present self-observation and active understanding or transcendence of the self-contraction. On that basis, the Transcendental Divine is intuitively “Remembered” or Realized. And on the basis of the conscious process of such Realization, the Life (or conductivity) of the Spirit is inevitable, natural, and Real.

(24) The Spiritual or All-Pervading Divine is not a consoler of the ego. The contracted self is constantly suffering the blows of the Spirit in the form of the “Play” of Nature. Those who console themselves with ideas and experiences of the Spirit are yet ego-bound. They are only dramatizing the effects of the self-contraction in relation to the subtler energies of phenomenal Nature. The Divine Spirit is the Spirit of Truth, not merely the subtle life-force. And until or unless there is present self-understanding and intuition of the Transcendental Being, there is no Spiritual Process or Incarnation of Truth. Therefore, the conscious process of understanding is the Way, and true conductivity (or the science and art of bodily devotion to the Spiritual Divine) is simply the functional or bodily expression of understanding.

(25) The Incarnation of the Spirit in the world and in the body-mind is not a matter of the concentration of Life and attention in the body-mind and the world. (In that case, Life, the body-mind, and the world will be seen only in themselves and not recognized in the Real Spiritual Divine.) Rather, the Spiritual Divine Incarnates or becomes Obvious in the Living body-mind and the world when attention is released from the self-contraction into the Divine or Transcendental Self-Identity-and when the body is released from the self-contraction and from the egoic mind into the Free Condition that is the Matrix of Nature and the Current of Life and Light that pervades the total world.

(26) If we found ourselves in the conscious process of always present understanding-or the present transcendence of the self-contraction that is sin itself-then we will also and naturally be moved to Live in the Spiritual Divine. Our sins will begin to be purified and fall away once we begin actively to transcend the act and presumption that is sin itself.

(27) Therefore, understand. Attend to me and hear the Arguments about Narcissus and Ignorance. Practice that hearing or understanding as true “Remembrance,” and so let real meditation develop. Receive the Spiritual Blessing that is Radiant in me. Be converted in your heart to the Spiritual Divine. Then practice the science and art of real meditation and Spiritual discipline.

(28) If you will allow Spiritual Life to develop on the basis of the real meditation or conscious process of always present understanding, then even the lowest and highest phenomenal appearances that arise in the Spirit in any moment will be directly and tacitly transcended in the unqualified Radiance of Spiritual Happiness. And if all phenomenal appearances of the Spirit in the body-mind and the world are thus transcended through moment to moment understanding, then understanding will be Perfected in ultimate Realization of the Transcendental Divine Identity and Condition that eternally Outshines this unfathomable Realm of Nature.

(29) In our suffering we ask: Does God exist? But the question seems reasonable only because of our alienated state. The self-contraction is expressed as alienation from the direct intuition of Transcendental Being, or the Reality and Truth of existence. In that state of alienation, expressed as “I,” the Radiant Transcendental Divine Being cannot be inspected or observed. (Therefore, “I” does not know what anything is .) The “I” state is simply un-Happy, or alienated from inherent Happiness. And so the sinner seeks fulfillment and release.

(30) The search for egoic fulfillment and release is generated in the form of the six lesser or conventional stages of life. Even the Divine Spirit is embraced through mystical phenomena in the higher stages of that search, and the ego inverts upon the being (to the exclusion of the world and the Divine Spirit) in the sixth stage of life. But it is only in the seventh stage of life, or Real Awakening, that the Transcendental Divine Being is naturally Obvious and the total Realm of Nature is recognized in the Spiritual Radiance of Truth.

(31) We must transcend our egoic illusions of the Spirit. We must go beyond the mystical consolation of self and even the bliss of the relationless interior of consciousness. We must transcend sin and emerge Awake into the Joy of Spiritual Reality.

(32) The Way that I Teach does not involve the strategic negation of either the functional self or the Realm of Nature. The self-contraction is simply to be observed, understood, and transcended, so that the Divine Self-Identity is Revealed. (The Divine Self-Identity is not within the self. It is not an interior subjective essence. The Divine Self-Identity is that Radiant Consciousness from and in which the egoic self-consciousness is contracting. Therefore, the Realization of that Self-Identity is not a matter of the inversion of attention within the body-mind, but it is a matter of direct understanding and transcendence of the contraction that is the conscious self.) And every aspect of Nature (including every phenomenal state and relation of the body-mind) is simply to be observed and ultimately recognized in and as the Radiant Divine Spirit. (In this manner, the phenomenal Realm of Nature is not negated, avoided, or escaped, but it is simply Revealed in and as the Spiritual Divine, so that it is ultimately Outshined by the Divine Radiance Itself.)

(33) When the alienation from Radiant Transcendental Being is transcended, the Divine Being is Obvious and the Condition of Nature is Obvious. It is only sin, or self-contraction, that makes us incapable of Realizing the Obvious. Therefore, the Way is not a matter of believing in God or seeking for God. The Way is simply a matter of observing and understanding and so transcending the self-contraction-and on this basis the Obvious is directly Revealed and naturally engaged.

(34) The Divine Identity and Condition is not Obvious to the conventional mind. Nor do the traditions of the “God-Idea” necessarily even approximate a right view of the Divine. Such traditional views are designed for and by the sinful being. Therefore, God is commonly conceived to be the Creator, utterly separate from Nature and all beings. But all ideas of separation are expressions of the alienated egoic consciousness, or sin. All conventional dualisms are transcended in actual Realization. It is only in true ecstasy, or in the state of natural self-transcendence and inherence in the Divine, that the Divine is Obvious and also rightly viewed. The “existence of God” is Obvious only on the basis of non-differentiation from Transcendental Being (or the Divine Self), and that Realization is expressed as participatory or bodily surrender into the All-Pervading Spirit that is the Substance and Truth of Nature. (The oriental mind typically tends to conceive the Transcendental Reality to be utterly separate from Nature but somehow identical to the self-essence. And the occidental mind typically tends to conceive the Transcendental Reality to be utterly separate from the being but somehow evident in the forms or processes of Nature. Both of these conventional tendencies and views are transcended in the sin-transcending view of Transcendental Spiritual Realization, wherein self and Nature are recognized and transcended in the Radiant Transcendental Divine Being.)

(35) Therefore, understand. Transcend the self-contraction and all of its effects. Awaken from the sleep of alienation. Realize and Incarnate the Love-Bliss or Spiritual Joy of Transcendental Being, until self and Nature are themselves Outshined in the Happiness that is God.