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There Is the Fist, and
There Is the Open Hand
The Fruitlessness of the Analysis of Ego
“Statements with which you want to analyze yourself and…feel your insides, and, when you feel good,
say, “That is my Guru, I am meditating on my Guru…they are not statements associated with Realization.”
True Hearing
A Discourse Given, by Sri Da
Avabhasa on, January 20, 1994
Summary
Devotee asks about the awareness of ‘I’ and Consciousness. If ego was not ‘inserted’ would there only be Consciousness? The answer is ‘Yes’. The devotee continues to ask about the subtle dimensions of ego, subtly aware of a ‘watcher’ viewing and analyzing awareness. The devotee sees his error and does not want to do it anymore. Adi Da points out that is still the ego wanting not to exist. Then the devotees continued the investigation into the nature of ego and consciousness Adi Da points out that it is only “ego talking to itself’. Even with what appears traditionally as ‘insight’ it is still ego viewing and analyzing. Even in the devotee’s practice of surrendering it is the ego surrendering, not the full turning of Him.
The devotee then goes into not wanting to ‘do that anymore’. The devotee is reminded that the activity of insight is the thinking mind and that activity itself is the self-contraction. Devotee sees that the whole activity is based on a limited assumption. Adi Da points out that when realizing all of the analysis – the search – is fruitless that is hearing. “Whatever angle you have on it, however you may be thinking about it–is simply the self-contraction” When hearing is your responsibility that you are always in the position to forget the self-contraction with ‘just a glance” until attention itself is recognized as the self-contraction. Attention being the root of mind.
The subtle nature of surrender is also something to be seen and understood. Adi Da points out that in the early stages of the devotional practice it is the ego surrendering. The practice is one of continued purification until all ‘difference’ disappears. This is an ultimate recognition and most profound. Until then there is only partial understanding and still “struggling to get an angle on sadhana”. Only in the fullest discovery of hearing is sadhana then profoundly simplified.
“Realizing that all of that is fruitless is hearing! That is
what hearing is to realize that all of it — when you are at
your best, when you are at your worst, whatever angle you
have on it, however you may be thinking about it–is simply the self-contraction“
DEVOTEE: Beloved Heart-Master, does
the natural faculty of awareness have to have an “I”? I am
noticing that I add an “I” even to that.
SRI DA AVABHASA: You are talking
about your awareness right now, so you are doing it and
talking about it at the same time.
DEVOTEE: Yes. If I did not insert
the “I” into that awareness, would consciousness then be
awareness without limit, or Consciousness Itself?
SRI DA AVABHASA: Yes.
DEVOTEE: I was feeling that the
subtle dimension of my existence has consciousness, or is of
consciousness, but still I see that I am always adding an “I
to everything.
SRI DA AVABHASA: Are you also adding
consciousness to everything? Are you attributing
consciousness to the body, and to the mind, and to the
subtler aspects of your personality?
DEVOTEE: I don’t tend to,
no.
SRI DA AVABHASA: You just said the
subtler part was “of consciousness”, whatever you meant by
that.
DEVOTEE: What, I meant was that
there is the physical body and the senses, for example, and
then there is the self-sense.
SRI DA AVABHASA: But you call it
“I”.
DEVOTEE: Absolutely. And I
understand from Your Wisdom-Teaching that there is no -such
“I”, because it is just something I am doing, and it is a
whole colony of interdependent functions.
SRI DA AVABHASA: But when you call
it “I”, are you not attributing consciousness to
it?
DEVOTEE: Yes, when I am sensitive
that the “I” is consciousness and not the separative
self-sense. But otherwise I do not attribute “I to anything
more than the physical and sensory body-mind.
SRI DA AVABHASA: But how does the
body-mind get to be “I” if you do not attribute
consciousness to it?
DEVOTEE: This is what I was
“considering” today. “I” seems to be a presumption of
collective senses that focuses in the nervous system and the
brain and that identifies with a point. I call that
“I”.
SRI DA AVABHASA: What about
it?
DEVOTEE: I do not want to do it
anymore.
SRI DA AVABHASA: “I” does not? If
“I” is all of that, it does not seem to Me that it does not
want to do that anymore, because then it would not exist
anymore. Why should this “I” not want to exist?
DEVOTEE: The separative sense of “I”
feels itself as suffering and un-Happiness and full of
everything about fear of death and all the complexes of it.
So that “I” does not want to continue, that sense of
“I”.
SRI DA AVABHASA: It doesn’t? Which’
“I”? The, “I” that is identified with the body-mind, even
though it is associated with difficulty, is also associated
with pleasure and amusement – and a sense of existing. That
“I” it seems, would rather continue to enjoy itself in spite
of difficulties.
DEVOTEE: Yes, I expect that it
would.
SRI DA AVABHASA: It is not wanting
to commit suicide. Is there some other kind of “I” that does
not want to be associated with this other “I” that is the
body-mind?
DEVOTEE: Yes, the sense of happiness
and freedom.
SRI DA AVABHASA: Is that different
than the “I” of the body-mind?
DEVOTEE: I just put all these
notions of “I” into one pot, without inspecting
them.
SRI DA AVABHASA: It does not seem
that you are throwing them into one pot. You are saying you
do not want to do this or that anymore, you do not want to
be associated with this or that limitation. And on the one
hand you say you are “I”, and on the other hand you say you
are not “I”, or would not-like-to be the “I” anymore, or do
not want to be associated with the “I’. So, is there more
than one “I” that you are referring to?
Anyone can feel pain, for instance,
and not want to experience that anymore. But if you feel
identified with that which is experiencing pain, you will
not be talking about destroying its existence. You will just
talk about relieving its pain, and you will still be talking
from the point of view of identification with it.
So — this “I” that is the body-mind
would like to not experience pain. Is it possible for that,
“I” to not experience pain?
DEVOTEE: As long as I stay in that
point of view, if I avoid pain here, then I get it there.
There is no way of getting away from pain.
SRI DA AVABHASA: So you are just the
ego talking to itself. You do not really want to bring it to
an end. You just want it to have pleasurable experience, or
non-painful experience, which is an ordinary enough desire
but it is not about any great profundity.
DEVOTEE: Yes. Then there is the
other side of it, which is that when I feel surrendered to
You and “consider” Your Great Wisdom-Teaching, and apply it
to what my life is all about and surrender.
SRI DA AVABHASA: There is still this
“I”, this “my”, “my life”, “the body-mind”–it is still the
same point of view. You are trying to arrange things so that
this body-mind or ego-“I”, can enjoy itself as much as
possible. But you are not talking about entering into
another condition entirely.
DEVOTEE: I am in “consideration”
relative to why I am not practicing moment to moment, in
every moment, constantly.
SRI DA AVABHASA: Practice can be
moment to moment and still be occurring in the context of
the body-mind. In fact, it originates in the body-mind. The
body-mind is the context of practice in the beginning.
Ultimately, when persisted in profoundly, practice enters
into other conditions, ultimately into the Ultimate
Condition. But you are not
talking, about any greater or ultimate condition. You are
talking about yourself as a psycho-physical ego.
DEVOTEE: I am addressing the
mechanIsm that persists when I am not practicing.
SRI DA AVABHASA: It persists even
when you are practicing.
DEVOTEE: Yes, but it is surrendered,
it is given over, it is addressed, it is
released.
SRI DA AVABHASA: Something about it
is surrendered, yes, and forgotten, but the all of your
practice, all of your experience is still occurring in the
context of the body-mind. It is not occurring in some other
dimension that is not involved in this apparent
body-mind.
And so?
DEVOTEE: I am just trying to clarify
what is the mechanism that I accept that does not allow my
moment to moment practice.
SRI DA AVABHASA: That is another
matter, altogether. But it is not what you have been talking
about so far. You have not been suggesting so far a question
about how to practice more profoundly. You have been
suggesting something about examining your experience,
examining the body-mind, examining the “I”, and coming to a
greater presumption about it that is not associated with the
body-mind.
DEVOTEE: That is probably what I
have been saying, but I have been trying to express that I
do want to practice more profoundly.
SRI DA AVABHASA: If, in fact, you
do, then you would do so. If you do not practice more
profoundly, it is still “you” that is not practicing more
profoundly. And if it is really true that “you” want to
practice more profoundly, then “you would just flat do so.
The fact that you do not suggests
that you are not totally taking into account everything that
you are. When you say “I want to practice more profoundly”,
you are not describing the “I” altogether. You are
describing one impulse of this “I”, and asking why it does
not practice more profoundly. You are saying, “I want to
practice more profoundly”, and then you are asking at the
same time “Why don’t I practice more profoundly?”
There must be some other
characteristics to this “I” than wanting to practice more
profoundly. The “I” is, not just one impulse or one
intention. Something deeper in the “I” does not want to
practice more profoundly, perhaps. Some greater depth of it
is reluctant to practice more profoundly–or perhaps
something equally superficial.
DEVOTEE: Clearly, Lord, that is the
point, If I wanted to practice more profoundly, then the
transition through the stages of life would be happening so
much more rapidly.
Thinking is the Thinker
“There is
not some sort of thought about it you can have or
examination of it you can enter into that is different from
doing the self-contraction”
SRI DA AVABHASA: What is the
difference between this conversation and any other
meditation on separate self, which we have discussed
together and agreed is not fruitful? Meditating on separate
self, analyzing it, talking about it, dramatizing it —
this, is noT fruitful. There are things to observe, take
into account, confess, agreements are made, you discipline
yourself –fine. But the sadhana itself, the fundamental
sadhana itself, is not a matter
of meditating on separate self and analyzing it. It is
simply a matter of your devotional-response
to Me–surrendering and forgetting yourself in that response
and simply Communing with
Me.
What is the difference between this
rather analytical discussion of separate self and any other,
form of meditation on separate self? What makes you think,
that this conversation will be
more fruitful than a conversation about some habit of yours,
or some complication, some problem of a more ordinary
life-based kind? What makes you think
that this conversation will be more fruitful than
that?
DEVOTEE: Because when I started to
evaluate what is the limitation…
SRI DA AVABHASA: That is what I mean —
you started to evaluate what is the limitation instead of
responding to Me, and surrendering and forgetting
yourself.
DEVOTEE: Absolutely, Lord. I
understand that.
SRI DA AVABHASA: Well, that is
exactly what I mean. It is no more fruitful to do that than
to meditate on yourself in any other terms. If, by
meditating on yourself, or applying any other form of
self-examination, you could be relieved of the “problem”,
then that would be the way.
DEVOTEE: Yes. You have Told us this
more than a million times.
SRI DA AVABHASA: Self-meditation
does not lead to an answer. It does not lead to a conclusion
that relieves you of the problem or limitation that you
refer to as “I.
DEVOTEE: But relative to this whole
matter of the self-sense, there is, nothing to do but
surrender, there is nothing to do but practice, there is no
other thing to do.
SRI DA AVABHASA: Separate self is
not an entity, it is not a “thing” it is not an object. You
describe it as a kind of point, a focus. It is not that,
either. Such a description may be a way of thinking about
it, perhaps, or being centered on it, or being sensitive to
it somehow, but separate self is an action. The “I” is the
activity of self-contraction, the avoidance of relationship.
To do any examination of it or meditation on it, you see, is
to do the self-contraction.
DEVOTEE: That is great, Lord. You
are pointing out that even addressing it is the
limitation.
SRI DA AVABHASA: To address it is to
do it, not to be abstracted from it, observing it as if from
some sort of distance, being free of it. To examine it is to
do it, to be the self-contraction, to enact the self
contraction, and to be “possessed” by it. And at the same
time you are talking about it as if you have a different
point of view than it and as if you were going to work it
out. But you are not working it out. You are dramatizing
it.
DEVOTEE: In fact, the whole address
to it requires that I totally identify with the limited
assumption.
SRI DA AVABHASA: Well, then!
Realizing that all of that is fruitless is hearing! That is
what hearing is to realize that all of it — when you are at
your best, when you are at your worst, whatever angle you
have on it, however you may be thinking about it–is simply
the self-contraction, the actual present-time dramatization
of the avoidance of relationship. It is all that. There is
not some sort of thought about it you can have or
examination of it you can enter into that is different from
doing the self-contraction. It is alll the doing of the
self-contraction.
This is what must be understood. And
it is understood not in the context trying to figure it out
or meditating on the self-contraction. It is understood in
the responsive Yoga of Ishta-Guru-Bhakti, or the practice of
surrendering and forgetting separate self in Communion with
Me. That is the Yoga. In doing that Yoga, things are
observed and you take them into account and apply greater
discipline to your practice of Ishta-Guru-Bhakti. That
process goes on and on, however long it must go on
for you, until there is this
most fundamental understanding that you are only doing the
self-contraction.
Insight is Another Form of the Self-Contraction
DEVOTEE: When some of us were
talking about it, when I started looking at it, I thought,
my God, it is completely psychotic, there is schizophrenia
in everyplace in this body-mind. The body is divided and
divided and divided …
SRI DA AVABHASA:
Blah-blah-blah-blah-blah. Such “insight” is another form of
the dramatization of the self-contraction. It is another
form of not understanding. It is another form of
non-surrender. It is another way to not forget yourself. The
only thing that is not the self-contraction is That Which is
not the self-contraction. And That is Realized only in the
state of self-surrender and self-forgetfulness in true
Communion with Me.
When you realize that anything other
than That is the self-contraction, that is most fundamental
self-understanding, or true hearing. And then, instead of
addressing, examining, and following the self-contraction,
you do surrender. You forget the self contraction. You
forget to do it. At any time when the self-contraction tends
to be happening, with just a glance it is obvious.
Instead
of this [Sri Gurudev clenches His hand in a fist],
it is this [He opens His hand].
“All the levels of subtlety are still the
self-contraction”
SRI DA AVABHASA: As long as you think
there is some angle you can get on self-contraction, some
examination and trying to figure yourself out that you can
do, as long as you think there is another attempt you can
make to, otherwise deal with the self-contraction, you have
not heard Me yet.
DEVOTEE: Beloved, this is very
similar to Your Consideration with us about cosmic reality.
One cannot come from being separate from it to talk about
it. It is the same thing with the self-contraction. One
cannot do anything with it whatsoever…
SRI DA AVABHASA: …without just
being it, yes. No matter what you try to do about it, you
are doing it. As long as you are addressing it, you are
doing it. This is what you must find out about yourself.
Finding this out most fundamentally is the ordeal of
listening to the point of hearing. Then you have no energy
and attention for your strategies, because they are all the
same. They are all the one dramatization of
self-contraction. There is no attractive or binding force in
them.
DEVOTEE: Beloved, I also noticed
that all the levels of subtlety are still the
self-contraction. Anything in that self-reference is the
self-contraction, from the gross to the most
subtle.
SRI DA AVABHASA: Yes. Attention is
the self-contraction. Ultimately, this is
discovered.
DEVOTEE: I appreciate this very
much, Beloved. It just shows me that the one simple practice
that You have Given is the entire Way of the Heart, and it
is sufficient. The practice of Ishta-Guru-Bhakti Yoga is
clearly what is to be done.
The fact that I do not practice
Ishta-Guru-Bhakti Yoga in every single moment, all the time,
must indicate that I am sympathetic with something else. My
sympathy seems to be with staying mediocre and not
addressing things all the time.
SRI DA AVABHASA: What? Now you are
back to that again? “I’ am not addressing things all the
time”. You are talking about not addressing things all the
time.
Surrender
DEVOTEE: In other words, I am not
surrendering, not practicing Ishta-Guru-Bhakti Yoga every
moment.
SRI DA AVABHASA: What is the context
of this surrendering of this Ishta-Guru-Bhakti?
DEVOTEE: Everything that
arises.
SRI DA AVABHASA: No–the
Attractiveness of the Guru!
DEVOTEE: Well, yes.
SRI DA AVABHASA:“Well, yes!” That
is it! The surrender in itself is not the Way of the Heart.
It is what you do, attracted beyond yourself by the
Realizer. But you are talking about yourself again, your
efforts. At first you were talking about your examination of
yourself. Now you are talking about surrendering yourself.
In and of themselves, examining yourself and surrendering
yourself are all self-occupations.
We have all heard you speak at many
gatherings, recently and in the past. I remember especially
how you used to speak, a year, or two ago, and I would
Criticize you for it. You were talking about yourself just
as you are doing now, about the things you were doing and
the things you were experiencing. You were referring to your
experiences, your sense of well-being, happiness,
love.
That is what you have your attention
on, and you are saying to Me, “That is You, the Guru”. But
you are pointing to yourself. You are experiencing yourself,
you are distracted by yourself, you are involved with
yourself, you are keeping attention on yourself, and you are
naming that “the Guru”. Ishta-Guru-Bhakti Yoga is not
about naming yourself or your
insides “Guru”. No. It is about Me. Not what you are, or
what is inside you, but Me. Me Beyond you. The One to Whom
you are, here in bodily (human) form, related. Not the one
you are in your bodily human form, but the One to Whom you
are related in your bodily (human) form.
The sense of “difference” disappears
only ultimately. Your practice is a matter of relationship
until it becomes Identification with Me Most Ultimately, the
Realization of My Very (and Inherently Perfect) State, by
Grace, without “difference”, with all the sources of
“difference” Transcended. The context of practice, even of
Realization, is relatedness, or relationship, until the
process becomes Most Ultimate, Most Profound, Most Perfect.
Then all “difference” is Divinely Recognizable, and there is
no impediment.
You have been tending to speak from
your present point of view, as a beginner early in this
Great Process. Yet you want to use language and concepts
that are true only in the case of Most Perfect Realization.
In this manner you make the Way of the Heart into just
another form of conventional religiosity, just as in the
context of conventional religion people speak of the Divine
as the “Creator”, and then they become all kinds of troubled
when things do not turn out too well and they want to blame
God.
The only “Point of View”, if we can
use that phrase at all, in which God truly is Realized to Be
the Creator is the “Point of View” of Most Perfect Samadhi,
because in that Most Perfect Realization there are not all
kinds of creative entities and forces. There is Only One
“Creative” Force. It may perhaps Appear through Signs, but
the “Knowledge” in the Great Samadhi is that there is just
One, the Very Divine, Only God.
In the Samadhi of Divine
Self-Realization, the paradoxical communications about God
as Creator have their right basis. But as an affirmation
from the egoic point of view, the notion of God as the
Creator is a justifier for egoic life and for involvement in
it, and for efforts to make life turn out to please you. The
notion of God as Creator is misused by the ego to justify
egoity itself and worldliness. When there is the
Realization that there is Only One,
then even the expression “God is the Creator of all” is not
binding. In that State of Realization, such a confession is
not a justifier for egoity.
Likewise with other kinds of
statements with which you want to analyze yourself and
somehow conceptually separate consciousness from the
body-mind, or feel your insides, and, when you feel good,
say, “That is my Guru, I am meditating on my Guru when I am
meditating on that.” All these kinds of things are
confusions in the popular mind. They are not statements
associated with Realization. They are ego-games.
DEVOTEE: Beloved, I feel that I have
gotten that lesson. I did not think that I was dramatizing
that here.
SRI DA AVABHASA: I am Talking about
what we know of you from all our conversations over time,
from My having Addressed you on that very point over and
over again. Aspects of what you were just communicating
suggest the same point of view, such as the self-examination
game you were just describing, or your saying that the Way
of the Heart is self-surrender. Then I Say, “No, it is this
attraction to Me, and the surrender, the self-forgetting,
follows from that spontaneously, and then voluntarily. And
you go, “Oh, yes, yes, of course.”.
It is not “Yes, yes, of course.”
That is it! You are tending, still, to assume the lesser
principle, the lesser point of view, because you are
exercising that point of view rather than simply being given
over in devotional absorption in Me.
Having found the Realizer for real,
and responding to That One in the discovery, why should one
want to do anything else? What would be the reason?; What
would be the motive? People find that motive, of course,
simply because — although yes, they have made this
discovery in some sense but still rather superficially–they
are not fully operating on the basis of a devotional
response to Me. Therefore, they are still struggling to get
an angle on sadhana, or involve themselves in some kind of
self-cure, or self-absorption, rather than absorption in the
Guru, absorption in the Divine Condition.
When there is the fullest discovery
of the Guru, or the Realizer, everything is profoundly
simplified. It is self-evident that the Guru is the Way. Not
many explanations are required to prove it — in fact,
proving it does not require any explanations. The matter can
be discussed, of course–any matter can be discussed with
someone who has made that discovery–but the Way of the
Heart itself is self authenticating. It is just inherently
obvious, because in that discovery, when it is most
profound, full, there is surrender. Separate self is
forgotten. The Liberating condition of Divine Communion is
found. It proves itself inherently. There is no argument
against it.
And, truly, there is no argument for
it. It does not require an argument. It is not proven by
arguments. The thing itself proves itself, authenticates
itself, re-proves itself in every moment for one who has
discovered the Guru. Therefore, diversions are not entered
into. There is no puzzling. Any retreat back into separate
self is the same business, the dramatization of
self-contraction. It is the limit of egoity. It is suffering
and dilemma. And all of that also is obvious to such a one.
There is no puzzle about it. All the forms of ego are
tacitly obvious to be the same thing.
So it is for one who has heard Me.
There are no other angles to try out or to figure out. It is
inherently obvious: There is this [He makes a’
fist], and there is that opens His hand]. And that
is that.
When the self-contraction is that
obvious to you, that is true hearing. And there is no true
hearing apart from true Ishta-Guru-Bhakti. Hearing is not
something you figure out and then you become a practitioner
of Ishta-Guru-Bhakti. This most fundamental
self-understanding awakens only in the context of
Ishta-Guru-Bhakti. Therefore, you must grow in that Yoga,
authenticate that Yoga, long before true hearing. If hearing
is true, Ishta-Guru-Bhakti is true, and it cannot be
otherwise.
This is not to say that any Guru to
whom you submit would involve you in a process in which this
is the discovery. Not so. Traditional Gurus all fall into
the context of the first six stages of life. They may be
drawing you beyond limitations — that is certainly,
usually, the case with authentic Realizers — but they
themselves are still functioning in, and calling you to
function in, the context of egoity. Perhaps not gross
egoity, not the worst of it, but still egoity is the,
principle, the self-contraction, the search. This is the
basis of the recommendations founded in the first six stages
of life. They all have that characteristic, the
characteristic of egoity, or self-contraction.
True hearing is not a realization
that awakens in the context of practicing in traditional
forms. It is not something that awakens simply on the basis
of devotion to the Guru, even what might be called
“Ishta-Guru-Bhakti Yoga” in relation to traditional
Realizers. Much may be gained by those relationships and
much may be gained by such devotion. There certainly is
growth in it. But this most fundamental factor of true
hearing, which, along with true seeing, allows the Most
Perfect Realization, is not possible in such relationships
or in the practice of such traditional dharmas.
I repeat. It is not that there is no
virtue in traditional sadhana, but the Great Tradition is
not about the Great Matter, of Most Perfectly
self-transcending God Realization, which is the most
fundamental understanding of egoity and the
transcendence of it Most
Perfectly.
ANOTHER DEVOTEE: Sri Gurudev, You
have Said that it has never before been possible to realize
most fundamental self-understanding.
SRI DA AVABHASA: Exactly That is
exactly what I am Saying. Hearing is not a component of the
Great Tradition.
DEVOTEE: Even to simply realize that
level of most fundamental self-understanding.
SRI DA AVABHASA: Exactly that. What
I am calling “true hearing”, or “most fundamental self
understanding”, is not a component or a characteristic of
the ways and paths of the Great Tradition in, the- first six
stages of life, obviously. This component is missing. In the
Way of the Heart, however, it is at the foundation. In the
traditional course of practice, true hearing is not-required
for entrance into the advancement of the religious life.
Instead, one, simply takes on the practices associated with
the fourth, the fifth, or the sixth stage of life, and the
component of true hearing is not required at the base of it,
or even in the course of it.
So, what occurs in the course of
such traditional ways? Self-development. Evolutionary,
growth, possibly. Enlarged experience, potentially. But not
true hearing. And not Most Perfect, Divine Realization.
These are aspects of Realization that are
unique to the Way of the Heart, and
unique in this relationship that My devotees have with Me,
and, therefore, unique to the Ishta-Guru-Bhakti Yoga that is
your practice.
If you devote yourself to one who is
more evolved than you, who enjoys greater Realization than
you, in the fourth; or the fifth, or the sixth stage of
life, you are still devoted to one who is a manifestation of
egoity — if you understand what I mean by “egoity”. Such
individuals are profoundly Awakened, much advanced, much
purified, usually- fine. Such qualities do not make them
egoless in the Most Perfect, Divine sense. They may have
some intuitions of the Most Perfect, Divine Realization, or
feelings in that direction. They may use language that
suggests, it. But they are not manifesting the Most Perfect,
Divine Realization. Therefore, devotion to them does not
lead to it. Such devotion is not meditation on That Which is
Most Perfectly egoless. It is meditation on that which is,
not in the ordinary sense, a manifestation of egoity, but
that which is, nonetheless, a manifestation of
egoity.,
ANOTHER DEVOTEE: Sri Gurudev, this
“consideration” helps me to understand better Your
Confession of God as Guru, because until You Appeared here
before us, God could not be Realized or even Manifested or
Exhibited Without contraction. It is only because You are
here, because the Divine Guru is here, that God is Without
contraction.
SRI DA AVABHASA: And the Divine is
not Realizable on the basis of self contraction. Divine
Self-Realization is not a matter of merely purifying the
ego. The techniques for purifying the ego are given in the
Great Tradition, but the Way of the Heart is about the utter
transcendence of egoity, utter. And the practice of the Way
of the Heart, even in the context of the advanced and the
ultimate stages of life, or the fourth, the fifth, and the
sixth stages of life, is founded on true hearing. Practice
of the Way of the Heart must be founded on true hearing
before you can move on even to the fullness of the fourth
stage of life.
The process of directly transcending
egoity is fundamental to the practice of the Way of the
Heart in the fourth, the fifth, and the sixth stages of
life. It is a unique practice. In contrast, egos practice in
the fourth, the fifth, and the sixth stages of life in the
traditions. The ego principle is fundamental to the
tradition of conventional religious and Spiritual practice.
In the Way of the Heart, however, the transcendence of the
ego is the context of practice in the fourth, the fifth, and
the sixth stages of life, although not from the very
beginning, of course.
In the listening stage, the
listening process is something most fundamental yet to be
grasped. So, you practice, yes, at the very beginning, in
the context of the fourth stage of life in My Company. You
deal with various elements of the first three stages of life
as well, and, yes, there is surrender of separate self,
forgetting of separate self, in Communion with Me. But you
do not have the foundation to go further even in the fourth
stage of life until there is the genuine awakening of true
hearing.
If that awakening were not required,
many of you would be practicing in the advanced and the
ultimate stages of life in the Way of the Heart, in the
context of the fourth, the fifth, and the sixth stages of
life. It would be no great matter to just pass on practices
associated with those evolutionary stages, as they are, on
the basis of egoity, to people who at least have a basic
foundation of discipline and devotion, and fundamental
clarity. But then you would be practicing in those stages on
the basis of the ego principle. They would be evolutionary
practices, self-developmental activities.
DEVOTEE: Beloved, it seems, then, it
could even be said that before You there were no real
fourth, fifth, or sixth stage practitioners. They had a
sense of it, they had a practice, but…
SRI DA AVABHASA: There were such
practitioners in the evolutionary sense.
DEVOTEE: In the evolutionary sense,
but not in the fullest sense.
SRI DA AVABHASA: Not in the ultimate
sense, or the sense that leads to True, or Most Perfect,
Ultimacy.
ANOTHER DEVOTEE: Sri Gurudev,
sometimes when we look at our own community, we appear to be
beginners when we compare ourselves to people who are
apparently practicing in the advanced stages of life. But,
in truth, and You were recently Talking about
this, it is clear that if we did not truly practice in the
context of the Wisdom of the seventh stage of life there
would be individuals amongst us who would apparently be
practicing in the advanced and the ultimate stages of life,
but falsely, as others do elsewhere.
SRI DA AVABHASA; The word “falsely
need not be used. You would be practicing in the
evolutionary, or cosmic, sense, if you like. But such
practice is not the point of the Way of the Heart. The Way
of the Heart is not about ego-development. It is about
ego-transcendence. And you must make it so ego-transcending,
early, in the fourth stage of life.
ANOTHER DEVOTEE: Sri Gurudev, even
sixth stage Realizers such as Maharshi, when they spoke of
the transcendence of the ego, were only perceiving, of the,
ego as a thing rather than an activity.
SRI DA AVABHASA: They perceived it
as an entity, not as a thing like an object, an entity that,
by dissociating itself from all objects — gross, subtle,
and aspects of the causal –can feel itself to be boundless,
or self-sufficient, or beyond harm. It is a kind of
Realization, but it is not Most Perfect, Divine Realization.
It is a great Realization in the evolutionary sense, but it
is not Most Ultimate, or Most Perfect, Realization, in the
egoless sense.
DEVOTEE: Is that the Realization
that You call “sixth stage Sahaj Samadhi”‘ functioning in
that Realization traditionally, being in the state in which
one is feeling egoless in the sense of at one, beyond the
ego, and functioning from that point of view but not having
truly transcended
SRI DA AVABHASA: The sixth stage
Realization is not fundamentally about functioning. It is
about detachment.
DEVOTEE: Oh. So that is why sixth
stage Realizers were fundamentally content to rest in that
Realization.
SRI DA.AVABHASA: Yes. Their
Realization is about detachment. What they say about it,
because they are detached and yet seeming to function, can
sound sometimes like the language of the seventh stage of
life. There are signals in what they say that may sound
something like the seventh stage Realization. Even Realizers
of the fifth stage type, enjoying the fifth stage form of
“Sahaj Samadhi”, may make statements that sound sometimes
like sixth stage Realization, or that may sound through some
– of their language to be – something like the language of
the seventh stage of life, as I Communicate it to you. But
the Realization is not the same.
DEVOTEE: Sri Gurudev, it was only
Your extraordinary viveka, or discrimination, that was the
seed of the impulse that drove You beyond such contentment
with detachment, drove You to dissatisfaction with resting
in the apparent Realization, drove You beyond
that.
SRI DA AVABHASA: Yes. And all the
Realizations and all the experiences on the way to them and
associated with them — these all occurred in this One’s
case. But they were clearly understood not to be sufficient,
to not be it.
DEVOTEE: Just that dissatisfaction,
that extraordinary discrimination.
SRI DA AVABHASA: It is reasonable
enough to ‘describe it’as “discrimination”, fine. But
discrimination was not the source of it. This Awakening did
not occur from the body-mind side. It had already occurred
on the Prior “Side”.
DEVOTEE: Yes. Your Inherently
Perfect Identity already Existed.
SRI DA AVABHASA: It was always
tacitly the case, so that any form of Realization
in the first six stages of life when it
occurred, even any experience when it occurred
within the context of those stages, was
tacitly unsatisfactory. Such realizations experiences were
not binding. They were not embraced as Divine Realization.
This was not merely the result of discrimination from the
body-mind side, the cosmic side.
My Prior Condition, rather than
discrimination within the embodied condition, Enforced the
Divine Realization. Of course, there was such
discrimination, apparently things were said, things were
thought, things were done, fine, in My Appearance. But all
those things were clearly felt to be unsatisfactory because
My Position was beyond the body-mind and the cosmic domain.
Divine Self-Realization was always My Position, My Prior
Position.
ANOTHER DEVOTEE: Beloved, this Truth
epitomizes why it is the real fact that You are the Ishta,
with nothing of the process that goes on within our
body-minds. You are That Which Draws us beyond this, and we
must use discrimination. That is why there
is the Way of the Heart. That is why
any one of us could not possibly, under any kind of
circumstances, do what You Do.
SRI DA AVABHASA: You are not in a
position to do it. I am. You enter into My Condition and
forget your apparent condition. You Realize My Samadhi. Even
at the beginning, in your devotional response to Me, finding
Me Attractive so that you surrender and forget
yourself–even then, tacitly, although You are aware of Me
as My bodily (human) Form, Me being physically Present,
tacitly you acknowledge Who I Am. You are sympathetic with
Me, not only Spiritually but Ultimately. My Very (Inherently
Perfect) State is What you are attracted to, even though you
could not describe It in words or conceptualize It or define
It in terms of your experience. You are simply attracted to
It, attracted to Me, to the Very Condition That I Am. And
Ultimately That is What you Realize by being drawn into My
Samadhi.
ANOTHER DEVOTEE: Beloved, I was very
much impressed one time when You Said that the Realization
of Ramakrishna and Swami Vivekananda was all that they knew.
That is all that there was in their time. I was dumbstruck
by the fact that I take for granted
what I have received from You and the awareness of the
seventh stage Realization, as if in some sense it is
something I know.
SRI DA AVABHASA: All you have
received from Me is Me. All you are Realizing, to the degree
you are Realizing it, is Me. If you start attributing it to
yourself, you are just dramatizing another form of
self-meditation, egoic “self-possession”.
DEVOTEE: I meant that Your
Realization has never been Realized before. I had looked on
the spectrum of mankind and its Realizations as if men and
women somehow were aspiring to the seventh stage, whereas it
has never been known before.
SRI DA AVABHASA: People may in some
sense have been tacitly aspiring toward it, but they settled
for something less, until That Which Is Beyond is Revealed,
Offered, made altogether concrete as a process.
ANOTHER DEVOTEE: Beloved, I am so
impressed, amazed, and appreciative. And I feel that God
cannot Exist or Manifest other than to the extent to which
the Guru can Exist or Manifest.
SRI DA AVABHASA: Otherwise, you are
meditating on or noticing appearances — observed, presumed,
thought about, understood — from a conditional point of
view. You cannot penetrate what is arising. You cannot not
be it.
ANOTHER DEVOTEE: Beloved, the
traditional recommendation is that “Guru is God”. Even if
one’s Guru is limited, one just feels that by doing the
practice of devotion, one goes beyond to where one sees God.
But there has been no understanding of the Truth that You
have Given and Revealed that “God is Guru”. Only in that
Confession can separate self be surrendered and gone beyond.
There are many traditional examples of people who practiced
surrender profoundly, and I had always thought their
devotional practice must have required true hearing. But I
can see what You are Saying.
SRI DA AVABHASA: Such traditional
forms of surrender require great seeking, intense power of
seeking, and all seeking is founded in egoity, all
seeking.
ANOTHER DEVOTEE: Beloved Lord, when
You mentioned the terms “ego development”,
“self-development”, I felt a great, great clarification in
my being. Evolutionary realization as it is spoken about in
the traditions is regarded to be more, a reduction of the
ego, so to speak, rather than the sense of its developing to
some epitome that seems to be God-Realization, or the ego
that is without harm, as You have Said.
SRI DA AVABHASA: Some traditions,
the fourth stage traditions, for instance, like to make a
distinction between the ego and the soul. They propose that
the “most inward part’ so-called, is non-egoic, yet
nonetheless still a “someone” from that traditional point of
view. Though it is a “someone”, from the traditional point
of view it is not an ego, whatever may be meant by “an ego”.
What is traditionally meant by “an ego” is some kind of
impurity, some sort of away-from-God orientation. The
traditions generally do not understand egoity itself, which
reduces the Very Divine Being and Condition to a cosmic
appearance in limitation.
In the evolutionary sense, the ego
can be reduced, in the sense that it becomes purified in its
effects, humbled, opened to greater experience, some forms
of Samadhi, “Soul” is just another name for the ego, if you
understand what egoity is. The most apparently “inward”
dimension of the cosmically manifested person is still the
self-contraction, still differentiated. It may be detached
from grosser aspects, even from subtler aspects, or from
lower dimensional subtle aspects. But it is still egoity. It
is still established in the cosmic domain and not in the
Divine Self-Domain.
When consciousness is established in
the Divine Self-Domain, or the Divine Self-Condition,
everything cosmic is inherently Divinely Recognizable.
Nothing is binding in any sense whatsoever. There is no
“difference”. There is no relatedness. There is no
separation. There is no insertion into cosmic existence.
There is simply the Divine Self-Domain Itself, the Divine
Self-Condition, the Divine Person, just That,
Only, period — that is it. Yet in the
context of appearances, that One can look like another human
being in any dimension, even speaking the language of the
natives, the language of you all. Not only did I have to
speak the language of you natives, but I had to live the
life of you natives, in every apparent fashion. Not for My
sake–for your sake.
I am not here merely telling you how
to evolve, how to develop in this context of ordinary human
life, or in some life much more psychically opened and
awakened. I am here to Grant you
the Way of the Heart, to link, you to the Divine Condition,
so that your practice can be fruitful to the degree of that
Divine Realization, Most Ultimately, Most
Perfectly.
 
“HEAR ME HEART-DEEP” A Guide to the
Listening-Hearing Process in the Way of the Heart as
Revealed by the Divine World-Teacher and True Heart-Master,
Da Avabhasa (The “Bright”). Only edition: 1994.
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