Torque of Attention – Adi Da Samraj – Yajna Discoures of Santosha Adi Da

DEVOTEE: I’ve been experiencing the same thing

DEVOTEE was talking about in terms of the importance in these occasions of regarding You with my eyes, keeping my eyes open and on You. There’s a lot of times when I’m tempted to kind of swoon into a closed-eyed embrace of a particular experience, and . . .

ADI DA SAMRAJ: This is during our “considerations” here?

DEVOTEE: Yes. And when I indulge that, I’m almost immediately swept away from any real practice. I’m caught up in it, whereas if I keep my eyes open and on You, I stay accurate in a clarity of what the sadhana is. And You keep me . . .

ADI DA SAMRAJ: What do you do in the Hall under circumstances where were not having a conversation and you’re not following a line of “consideration”? Do you do the same thing there, keep your eyes open and focused on My Murti, no matter what, or what is it you do there?

DEVOTEE: Well, I’m more relaxed about allowing them to close. But if after closing them, it seems that, instead of a deepening absorption in You, there’s a distraction, then I think I would notice that and reopen them. Sometimes it could be one, sometimes it could be the other, just depending on the force of it.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: Well, My Instruction to devotees is that in an occasion where we have no business, like a “consideration” or whatever, if you sit with Me, or sit in the Hall with My Murti present, invoking Me, that you maintain My Admonition to Commune with Me in and through My bodily human Form-in which you maintain that asana or disposition, but truly practice this self-surrendering Contemplative Yoga. But generally maintain the discipline of the, not staring but open-eyed, Contemplation of My bodily human Form, in the form of the Murti or whatever, and allow that, while practicing this Contemplation, to become the context of your Communion with Me.

So at some point, then, conditions in the body-mind might start changing, because you’re exercising this Contemplation. So I’ve said to you, generally maintain the discipline of Communing with Me through devotional surrender to Me in My bodily human Form, using the Murti or whatever. That means, don’t sit down, close your eyes, and do a technique. But do this Contemplation of Me in My bodily human Form, in and through it.

But, as I’ve said to you, if that very process begins to become profound-any number of signs are possible-if along with that, there’s a strong concentration, so to speak, inward and you’re becoming calmed and even to use the outer-directedness of the senses becomes spontaneously uninteresting, and you just become profoundly Contemplative, then you should let the eyes be closed.

Just so, if you use Mantra or self-Enquiry, do it with the tongue of the mind generally-sometimes it’s vocalized, but generally do it with the tongue of the mind, as I say-and generally continue to, at random, use these verbal means to serve your Communion with Me. But if it gets to the point where that is served, you are established in this Communion, then you shouldn’t observe some righteous rule to keep introducing it. Let it do it’s work and be drawn into that Contemplative Communion with Me, and let that be the determiner of whether you keep your eyes open or not, or use the verbal form or not.

So you should allow for this absorption to take place in meditative occasions and so on. And it seems that almost inevitably the eyes would close at some point, as it becomes true Communion, forgetting the body-mind, absorbed in Me, gone beyond even the visualization.

DEVOTEE: That’s really helpful, because I can feel a way in which I impose a check or a limit on that absorptive process, that would be best left just cooperated with-just fully participated in rather than standing back, or inhibiting it somehow.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: So you have been inhibiting it somehow?

DEVOTEE: I think so, yes. Even in a sense of, at the end of a meditation, having a kind of an attitude that I wasn’t practicing during that absorption. Rather than just me being judgmentally critical . . .

ADI DA SAMRAJ: Anti-mystical. [laughter]

DEVOTEE: Anti-mystical.

ADI DA SAMRAJ; it’s okay to meditate as long as you’re basically just relaxing.

DEVOTEE: Right. [laughs] Recharging your batteries.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: Not going off, you know-just sort of relaxing, concentrating, steadying your attention in preparation for your “overall life”, you see. [laughter] As long as you’re doing it that way, there aren’t strong taboos against it. it’s become socially acceptable to do that kind of meditating somehow. So it’s as if you are aware of taboos, or believe in them, or are getting them from somewhere and feel obliged.

DEVOTEE: Yes. I think it’s just a deeply Western orientation of “Well, that was nice, but what good is it?”

ADI DA SAMRAJ: Yes, it’s like -devotee – “Its nice what you kids are talking about here, but I’m a business man, you know. What are you going to do to make a living?” [laughter]

DEVOTEE: You’re right, my Lord, You’re absolutely right.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: Everybody here makes a living,

DEVOTEE: That’s true.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: [laughing] it’s just that they don’t devote their entire life to it.

DEVOTEE: Right.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: As

DEVOTEE said, [exaggerates His voice] you love it. [laughter] He does business cause he has to. [Beloved chuckles.] it’s like the guy in Patton, you know. Omar Bradley was talking to Patton criticizing him, and he said, “We do this because were trained for it, and you do it because you love it.” [laughter]

DEVOTEE: I’m afraid it’s true, my Lord.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: Afraid it’s true. He’s always ready to confess it, right there. Afraid it’s true. “Isn’t it so rotten. I don’t give a shit, I’m not going to change a damn thing about it, but isn’t it really so rotten, and so true of me.” [laughter] That’s the kind of guy who enquires, “Avoiding relationship?” [in a bland voice] Yeeesss. [laughter] That’s his meditation, you know. His idea of invoking Me, is, [loudly] “Lord, I’m here!” [lots of laughter] His idea of meditation is not to make a phone call for an hour.

DEVOTEE: You have the greatest treasury of one-liners. Beloved, before we came over here, and You were talking on the phone, You were talking and Your comments were being repeated to us. Daniel kept having to tell us to shush up, because we were laughing so hard at Your humor.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: [Beloved chuckles.] Tcha.

DEVOTEE: It was very loud.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: So did we address all that you wanted to “consider”, DEVOTEE?

DEVOTEE: [pauses] I think so, Beloved.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: Didn’t sound too definite, but for now that’s it?

DEVOTEE: There was another question, but I totally forgot.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: Well, see if it comes up again. Because everybody else has things they want to “consider” as well, I know, so well let them speak up, DEVOTEE. Well get back to you

DEVOTEE: Thank You, Lord.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: [No one is speaking.] Don’t everybody speak at once.

DEVOTEE: Well, DEVOTEE wasn’t quite done I don’t think.

DEVOTEE: That’s true.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: Well, go on with it. This taboo against ecstasy and God-Fullness and really having your religion affect your mind as well as your life. You know? [loud laughter] Sounds like just going in there, “Lord I’m here! Here’s my list. This is what I really want. Now how good do I have to be to get all that, Lord? [laughter] That good? Well, you can cut a few things off the list maybe.” [huge laughter]

DEVOTEE DUFF: Lord, You’re so funny.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: it’s called “deep prayer”. So you sort of belong to that school.

DEVOTEE: I don’t think so.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: You’re beginning to sound like DEVOTEE and DEVOTEE. [Everybody gasps.]

DEVOTEE: Another Bishop, perhaps?

DEVOTEE: Another Bishop.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: You could be about to get your mitre right here. [laughter] Well, go on, this is very interesting so far.

DEVOTEE: I was just also appreciating last night, when I would keep my eyes open and regard You, You not only would be actively aligning me, but more and more of Who You Are would be Revealed through the steadiness of attention to You. It seemed like You were giving me tastes of Your Presence and Your State. It just seemed like further Gifting from You.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: Oh yes, well, that’s a special circumstance however also.

DEVOTEE: That’s right.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: Where I’m not only physically present, but “considering” matters with you and so on. If a forceful meditative disposition comes over you then, fine. We can handle that. But your general feeling of course is that you should stay with it and make use of the fact that I am physically here. If you truly enter into meditation of My bodily human Form, you’ll see all kinds of things about it. But continue to relinquish the faculties to Me, turn them to Me, My Attraction, and you go beyond even all such noticings. So you were making use of that and trying to stay with the group and so on, but that’s fine in that situation. it’s not the situation of your daily meditation.

But also what you’re just describing is the virtue of eyes-open Contemplation of My bodily human Form, and so I have nothing negative to say about that, obviously. it’s just that you may have some fixity on a rule or a purpose to the point where maybe sometimes you maintain a superficial level of awareness.

DEVOTEE: It would help me if I could talk about a couple of times where, in these gatherings, I’ve allowed my eyes to close and been more absorptive. And then there’d be an occasion where You would say something to me like “Are you there?”

ADI DA SAMRAJ: Yes, well sometimes you looked like you weren’t just sitting up meditating. Your body was slumped, your face and all the rest, so that you’d look like you were asleep. [laughter] Maybe you weren’t asleep, but that’s what you looked like.

DEVOTEE: Yes. Well, when You had asked the question, I would answer. And then one time I said, “Gee, I guess I wasn’t asleep because I answered You,” and You Said . . .

ADI DA SAMRAJ: Well how do you know that’s not the way it is all the time when you’re sleeping? [laughter]

DEVOTEE: I don’t, that’s what I’m curious about.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: I mean, if somebody spoke to you at any time during the night, would you just respond?

DEVOTEE: I don’t think so. I think I would have to wake up first.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: Well, maybe. Maybe there are different levels of sleep too.

DEVOTEE: Yes.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: Maybe there’s a kind of sleep in which your awareness of the body is so diffused that you don’t even notice that you are aware of the body, and the mind is totally at rest, and you’re not particularly aware of the environment, because you’re not focused on it in any way. You’re not engaged in focused attention, and if you were to get up in the morning after spending a whole night doing that, you probably would have said that you slept. But very possibly, if somebody spoke to you, you would simply respond as if you were just sitting there in a deeply relaxed state, not noticing the body-mind, but are completely awake.

Maybe that’s the way it is all the time when you sleep, or a lot of the time certainly. Maybe becoming not only oblivious in that diffused state, but sort of concentrated inside, in the mind, or in energy, the body’s energy. Someone might have to shake you awake. So there are states like that too. But it’s interesting to “consider” which of those states you’re actually in when you’re sleeping.

DEVOTEE : Beloved, my brother used to talk to me late at night, after Id already gone to bed, and had long conversations with me about anything, just ask questions or talk about this and that. And then would ask me in the morning, if I remembered anything about it. And I never would.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: But you were responsive?

DEVOTEE: Yes, totally responsive. So he tape-recorded me a few times and played it back to me.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: That’s interesting, like blacking out from drinking, and you don’t remember some things. And yet people will report to you that you were active and talking and so forth. Maybe at some times you’re not there so to speak, and some automaticity is going on. Maybe at other times, you just lose your short-term memory. So you were fully aware at the time, but you just don’t remember it because short-term memory function was anesthetized or something.

DEVOTEE: Master?

ADI DA SAMRAJ: I’ve experienced both of those things. They are different. Hm?

DEVOTEE: I was feeling when You were describing that different state of sleep, how . . .

ADI DA SAMRAJ: Where you are aware, you mean, but just not noticing?

DEVOTEE: The way You sleep. You sleep completely different from everyone else, and in that Perfect State of Sleep, where You’re Absolutely Aware-I can feel to some degree what’s that’s like. Because that has occurred over this period of being with You in these “considerations”. I have gotten a glimpse of what You were describing.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: What’s the difference between the Witness-Position and sleeping?

DEVOTEE: In Your Case, nothing.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: I’m asking you to examine it yourself.

DEVOTEE: Well, when I come in touch with that feeling . . .

ADI DA SAMRAJ: What’s the difference between the Witness-Position and sleeping?

DEVOTEE: Nothing.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: And yet you’re not unconscious in the Witness-Position.

DEVOTEE: Right. And you don’t have to be unconscious.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: You can be oblivious to the body-mind and such, but there’s no unconsciousness in the Well of the Witness, there’s no death, . . .

DEVOTEE: And there doesn’t have to be any sleep.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: . . . there’s no change. Hm? But if you examine it, no matter what is arising, you are the Witness. Just That. What’s the difference between That and sleep? Particularly in this moment if you do close your eyes, so that you’re not even registering anything visually, just That Prior to the body-mind. Thoughtlessly aware, you see? Consciousness Itself. Well, it’s not sleep. That’s why it’s called the fourth state. It is not unconsciousness. It is not sleep. It doesn’t have the general attributes of sleep, as you recall it when you wake up. To recall having slept is different than to recall somehow, or once again re-Locate, the Witness. So it’s not the same as sleep. Like sleep, however, it has no associations, no objects. So it’s not only the fourth state beyond the three. It is the state immediately Prior to sleep.

So the previous stages of sadhana, in the context of the first three stages of life and some of the fourth, it’s all the waking state disposition. The point of view is always that of the physical body-mind. it’s your sense of yourself that’s the domain of your experience. And you discount dreaming and sleeping basically as just sort of incidents that happen to happen, but what you are is the waking state character. So it’s all, then, waking state Yoga in the beginning, in this sense. Then there can be another aspect of your experience in practice, or a period within practice, where the gross busyness is quite relaxed, and the exploration of subtle possibilities begins to become expansive.

This develops potentially in the fourth stage of life, particularly when it comes to it’s ascending phase, and in the fifth. it’s a resort to the dream dimension. The subtle domain is presumed to be Reality. The gross is incidental to it, peripheral to it. In effect what is being affirmed is that the dream state is the state one should be in, or is the state presumed to be the essential Reality with which one is identified-not the gross physical but now the subtle persona, essentially the domain of the ascended mysticism and such. So that’s sadhana done from the point of view of dreaming. Whereas previously sadhana was done from the point of view of the waking state body-mind.

So the “Perfect Practice”, you see, or the practices associated with the sixth stage of life, are exercised toward or from the position associated with sleep and the transcendence of it-the domain of objectlessness, all objects one way or another relinquished as not it, or merely conditional and so on. So rather than focusing on the body and the mind, there’s a focus on the Domain of Consciousness, the Domain of the Witness, and so on, the Condition Prior to the body-mind.

That passage is a transition from the Yoga of the waking and dream states to the Yoga of the sleep state. But that’s just the transitional requirement, the “Perfect Practice” itself. In the context of the sixth stage of life, it’s done in the mode of what is called the fourth state, turiya, or Consciousness Prior to the body-mind, as sleep is, and yet prior to a particular limitation that is still there in sleep.

The right side of the heart is associated with anandamayakosha. It is the seat of sleep, the seat of egoity, the first knot. it’s also the doorway, or the last place Prior to the Unconditional Domain and the fourth state, and ultimately turiyatita, beyond it.

So to move from whatever stage of practice-maturity at stage three, practicing stage three, or whatever, beyond it-to the “Perfect Practice”, is through sleep, or first, in other words, to the Position Prior to the body-mind, Prior to objects. That itself, just as a condition, is sleep. But the passage is into That which is the mere Witness. So attention itself without objects is sleep. All of the associations of egoity, all the characteristics of egoity, are there in sleep. This is why it’s the third state, not the fourth.

Separateness, corresponding disturbance, contractedness, the feeling of relatedness-these are there at the root of sleep. So it’s not an investment in the Infinite Domain of Conscious Being. It is simply a relinquishment of the motion of attention toward objects. Attention comes to rest. But attention is the self-contraction, so it still has the essential quality of egoity. So it is close to Bliss, you see. It is even to a degree infused by it. But it is still dwelling on the self-knot. Through that self-knot, beyond objects-through that self-knot of sleep-beyond that is the Witness. It is the Witness even of attention, you see. It is not attention. Attention is the root of sleep. Mind is the root of dreams, and also of the waking state.

So attention can proceed toward all those mechanisms, and that’s moving from sleep to perhaps dreaming and waking and all around in those possibilities. But the root of it all is the same. Waking, dreaming, sleeping, it is the same. But sleep is the root of the three. it’s the root of waking and dreaming, because it is the domain of attention. And when attention relaxes from body-mind, things subtle and gross, it is rested from that disturbance of body-mind, not noticing it, but is still established in it’s root-separateness. But in a kind of ease as such. It is simply not Conscious Bliss, without qualification. It is not that. it’s a kind of intoxication, so to speak.

So you get up from having slept, but you do not claim to have become Enlightened-as you are not. Unless some remarkable event occurred there [laughter]-as must otherwise occur in your practice, meditation, and so on, in the period prior to transitioning to the “Perfect Practice”.

The meditation must achieve a depth, then, DEVOTEE. Dealing with gross things first, and then whatever there is of the subtle impulses. But it must become deep by all of that, so that it can rest beyond psycho-physical agitation. So it must become something like sleep, a Samadhi like sleep, just a blissful relaxation of psycho-physical agitation and noticing.

There can still be some kind of thread of attention in it. it’s not perhaps like ordinary sleep. So the meditation must go into that depth of fundamental objectlessness, even if there’s just a minor peripheral awareness of the body and so forth. it’s like sleep, being beyond association with objects.

So it’s at that point, then, that such meditation can allow for the transition beyond sleep. Because you have to get to that depth first to enter into the Domain of the Witness in this profound steady sense. So you must penetrate sleep, penetrate objectlessness. The only thing there is attention, at rest. So it is the transcendence of attention, noticing it in the formless Field of Consciousness. it’s the last noticing of the self-contraction. That’s how you penetrate sleep. You move beyond mere objectlessness into the Fullness, the Radiant Love-Bliss-Fullness of Consciousness Itself. Not asleep in attention, and not agitated by all the subtle and gross objects, you see.

So you must, so to speak, then, go to the Witness through sleep, in sleep. The process of Communion with Me must be such that you can penetrate the limitation of mere objectlessness-sort of resting as separate self, but attention in a profound state of equanimity. There’s no Illumination in it, no identification with Consciousness Itself. You’re being attention just like you are now with physical awareness. So it must be penetrated, this last, or really first, noticing, or first moment of the event of self-contraction. But you don’t do anything in that moment to attention itself. What occurs is, instead of identifying with attention, you are Witnessing it. You suddenly Realize it is in you. And you are Prior to it. it’s by that that identification with attention relaxes. it’s not that you do something to attention itself. So the stand spontaneously transitions from the knot of attention to Consciousness.

When that has occurred profoundly-it may occur briefly sometimes, but when it has occurred profoundly-there’s no return to sleep. And that’s when the Witness is True. That’s when the “Perfect Practice” can begin. Such people are not asleep, then. Their meditation may look something like that, because it has nothing to do with the body-mind. There’s no doings with the body-mind associated with the “Perfect Practice”, the second stage of the “Perfect Practice”.

Some may look to you like they go to sleep, and perhaps they do sometimes, but they are truly Awake. There’s no agitated use of the body-mind in their in-depth meditation. So they’re fully conscious, but they’re not associated with attention and with the body-mind. So it doesn’t go anywhere, so to speak. It simply more and more profoundly allows the revelation of Where it is, or more and more profoundly feels it.

So this transition to the “Perfect Practice” is not generally made in actual sleep, at night and so forth, but it does occur however when you’ve matured in meditation to the point of a fundamental equanimity, where your meditation has depth and is not just trying to relax the body, getting beyond agitations and preoccupations in mind for something that you’re not doing at the moment. It goes beyond that, as well as beyond just checking out all the interior-even interior of the physical-and becomes a Swoon of self-surrender and self-forgetting, without self-referral, and becomes deep, becomes objectless.

Well, effectively that is sleep already, you see. You are not associated with objects in that Deep, but you are still attentive, still there as attention, doing this practice, but you become so, so to speak, interiorized that you’re just not significantly noticing anything of the body-mind. So it’s when you’ve matured enough such that your meditation can have that quality that it’s possible to wake up Prior to attention, Prior to sleep.

But if you’re not allowed to go deep enough, if your practice altogether doesn’t become very profound, then you remain in the more superficial position, just of physical life and your motivations in it, and just physically relaxing, a little bit of mental relaxing, that’s all that meditation is. You get stuck in the waking state position. You cant be established As the Witness from that point of view. You can relocate it for a moment, if so directed, but you cannot be established As It, because it’s on the other side of sleep. It has nothing to do with the waking state.

Then if you give up further and become less physically agitated, and give up the need to keep your eyes open, and become more interiorized, more subtle-interior phenomena in the body and then the mind possibilities-and don’t go deeper than that, forgetting that, then that’s as far as it goes. Again, you could recollect the Witness, but you cant Stand as It, because you’re being the dream state, coupled with waking state motivations as well, otherwise.

So how can you be Awake in that sense, in that case? How can you be in the fourth state, when you haven’t even gotten to sleep yet, when you haven’t become so profound in the deeps of meditation that you are relinquishing objects, and coming to rest, attentive but at rest, not preoccupied with anything gross or subtle.

So it’s only when your meditation accomplishes effective sleep, or objectlessness, that you can do the final noticing that establishes you as the Witness. And for meditation to be thus deep, obviously there has to be much sadhana altogether, to allow the disposition to be changed by these transformations, and be purified at the level of attention-in other words, attention getting to the point of being in a state of equanimity rather than moving toward it’s objects fitfully.

You cant be attention, active or not, and Realize Me. You can submit and move toward it, but you cant even be attention, you see, which is the last of the first bit of you. That’s where you begin. With a small “y”, you know. So not only cant you be exercising attention and be established in the Native Position, you cant even be it.

Some in our discussions here are suggesting that they had Realized the Witness-Position in our “consideration”. I remember in DEVOTEES case we were talking how what he was really describing was not moving into the Witness-Position but moving into a kind of absorptive meditation, typical of what he does daily. You may remember the exercise I called him and others to do then. Close your eyes and see three cats and look at one, then the other, then the other, and then slowly move from the middle to the outside one and notice attention.

When you’re noticing attention itself, you are in the Witness-Position, you see. it’s just a matter of Realizing that. So you said that seemed to be effective at the moment. But it just points out again that the position of attention is not the Position of the Witness. The observer is attention. The observer may even appear to be rather active, moving toward this, that, and the other thing, you see. But the observer is attention coupled with root-intelligence and such. And that is not the Witness, but it can feel something like it, because it’s standing prior to most of what you usually notice to be objects-just relaxed, observing, not identifying with mind-forms or physical sensations or perceptions. That’s the observer, that is not the Witness. That’s attention, limiting what it’s identified with. it’s dropped back to identify just with the attention position, the self-contraction, you see, and basic intelligence, discrimination, discriminative awareness.

So, DEVOTEE at that particular moment, and some others-sometimes seem to be suggesting that. But the Witness is Prior to attention, and all the objects of attention. The Witness is not attentive. The Witness stands Prior to the body-mind, Prior to attention, Prior to the act of attention, Prior to the objects of attention. You can feel it. Even standing back from the objects of attention, that’s the observer. And that may feel something like the Witness to you, as I said, but it’s not. You are attentive. You are self-contracted. You are even focused on the domain of objects, anyway.

So that is not the Witness. The Witness is Prior to all, including attention, and in itself oblivious to conditional existence. I mean it is inherently Immortal. Not mortal, not bound, not limited, not conditioned, not changing, not beginning, not ending. it’s not merely a Position. It is a Domain. It is the Very Divine Person. So the “Perfect Practice” is to enter into the Domain of the Divine Person, the Very Condition of the Divine Person, without “difference”, the Divine Condition Itself, Reality Itself.

So to do that you must transcend attention, the position of attention. You must be able to notice attention, or the feeling of relatedness, in the midst of Consciousness. You see? You must go through and beyond objectlessness, beyond sleep, beyond oblivious attentiveness, and feel your attentiveness in Consciousness, feel it arising there. You’re the Witness of it. You’re not even attention.

The second stage of the “Perfect Practice” is to allow, relax into, so to speak, That which is otherwise Witnessing, or Standing by.

So that is the Contemplation, so to speak, of Consciousness, the entering into the Well, oblivious to objects, but Profoundly conscious of the Well Itself, the Field of Being.

Its inherently deathless, is inherently obvious.

It is not bound to the body-mind.

Its not what dies when the body-mind dies.

Its not what’s affected when there are psycho-physical changes.

It is unaffected, utterly Free.

Its Condition and Characteristic, then, must be allowed Most Perfectly.

Attention is the root of the domain of conditional existence. it’s possible to notice, then, how attention arises in the midst of Consciousness Itself. But it can easily be relaxed beyond, because one is Standing Prior to it.

If you really don’t want to die, this is where you go.

But you have to go beyond sleep, beyond death, therefore beyond objectlessness.

Simply attentive, self-aware, but oblivious to objects-no, you have to go beyond this, Realize that that is arising in you, in the Field of Being.

And has no necessity whatsoever because you are Prior to it.

It is the feeling of relatedness, the feeling of separateness, the contraction to a point, rather than Radiant without center.

The Witness is Radiant without a center, not attentive, not focused, just Abiding as Itself.

[long pause]

My special Presence or Shakti does not move there. Is Infinitely Radiant, but without motion, without opposites. It is the Hridaya-Shakti, not merely the Cosmic Force in the midst of duality when felt in the body. Not the Kundalini or Cosmic Shakti merely, or exclusively. Hridaya-Shakti is there in it’s unqualified Fullness in the Well. it’s only in the body-mind that It moves and takes on all the forms of appearance made of dualities, bewildering altogether when entered into in itself. But it’s nature is utterly clear in the Ultimate Awakening.

So it’s not the Shakti effects, or the Shakti in the body-mind, but the Hridaya-Shakti in the Well of Being that is the True Shakti, and the True Source of Shaktipat, then, in it’s Perfect Form. So My Blessing to devotees is the one that brings them to Me, brings them into the Heart-Domain, prior to the body-mind, the Domain of Perfect Shakti, Divine Shakti, the “Bright”.

So My Transmission does not work to produce the evolutionary effects, but Shines from the right side and attracts energy and attention to be focused at that point of Origin. The effects may be felt in the body and so forth, and in the subtle mind and whatnot, sometimes. But I work Spiritually to bring the devotee to My Self, to the Divine Domain, and therefore to the “Perfect Practice”. So this is how My Transmission works. The other possibilities within the Cosmic Play itself are not the work of My Spiritual Transmission.

So My Blessing is not merely to energize you but to bring you to Me, to bring you to the Origin of psycho-physical distractedness, you see, the root of it and beyond it. So in this Way we don’t cultivate the phenomena of the spinal line or the frontal line, either. We deal with the impediment, the egoic impediment-you do in your sadhana, so that you can be attracted fully to Me without withholding, without fixity in the knots.

Its not only by My Word, but by My Very Person, and by My Blessing, by My Own Presence Spiritually, that I move you to My own Domain, so that you can do that Yoga. So you cant merely pick up the traditional literature and see what the Way of the Heart is supposed to be like.

The traditional literature is filled with descriptions of this or that experience that is on the way, or is thought to be the goal. So if you read about Yogic matters in the books, you might think, well, this is what’s supposed to happen if you practice the Way of the Heart, and somehow cultivating it or putting yourself in a position to have such experiences is what the Way is about.

But it is not. it’s about the same thing in the Spiritual stages. it’s about the same thing that the listening and hearing process was about. Except when you enter the Spiritual stages, you’re supposed to be equipped with hearing. No form of the self-contraction, no form of experience, therefore, is it. So you have expectations about how Yoga is supposed to work, how Spiritual things are supposed to work. And so you become seekers of them and check yourself out as you have experiences in My Company and get into them as if for Yogas sake and so forth.

What I describe as the Yoga of this Way in the context of the fifth stage of life is very different from how it’s structured in the traditions for their purposes. But fundamentally, generally speaking, I’m Calling devotees to bypass the ascending Yoga, and the pursuit of the phenomena of the dream state, or the subtle. And also, I Call you to bypass the mere sleep meditation of relaxing objects, and enter into the Deep. It is like sleep. it’s just attention resting there. You must go through it, yes, but bypass it as a purpose, a strategy, as something you want to enlarge upon or indulge in or declare to be Enlightenment, or enough for you.

So the Yoga of My Transmission does not require certain of the things that are found in the traditions, because there’s a different point of view there entirely. Therefore, you needn’t presume that to practice this Way, even in Spiritual terms, you have to exhibit, or would even want to indulge in, the full display of possible Yogic signs, frontal or spinal. Whatever has to occur by way of purification or releasing the knot or the focus of attention in all of that will occur inevitably, even if you don’t do the ascending Yoga formally. That occurs, yes, but it’s all about releasing attention, relaxing attention beyond it’s fitful association with objects, so that you can come to the point of passing through and beyond objectlessness, or sleep, or death.

If you were sleeping when you died, you wouldn’t care what happened next. [laughter] But your entire fear of death is about fearing to lose objects. That’s a waking state anxiety about death. That’s not an in-depth understanding of death, or a participation in depth in the realities of your own condition. it’s a superficial presumption about death that’s based on ordinary bodily fear. it’s a kind of-not particularly human-animal, you could say, reflex. Death is an in-depth process.

As I said, if you were asleep when you died, you wouldn’t care where you go next. But from the waking point of view, you’re fitfully struggling and wondering about it-what’s going to be the condition, the form, what’s going to come before your eye, so to speak, and so on. You’re concerned about it. Whereas if you were asleep, or in depth, not fitfully clinging to the body-mind, you wouldn’t be asking about it. You wouldn’t be wondering about it. Sleep requires no objects. So your disturbance about death is a waking state problem.

The process itself is not what you fear it to be when you’re superficial. But if you are deep, and, even beyond that, come to a Stand beyond the body-mind, then you are not existing as that which is threatened by death, or bewildered and bound by life, or any phenomenon.

You’re That Which is Inherently Free.

It is the only Free Position, and it is the Native Position.

Its not something you achieve. It is Always Already the Case.

You can be apparently distracted from It, but you cant Be anything else.

Its impossible to Be anything else than That.

All your trouble is invention, then. The Native Position is not attached to the body-mind or bound by it. It is Utterly Free and Blissful, not bound, not driven, not distracted, not concerned, therefore.

In any association with apparent arising, however, the attitude is not that of “I don’t give a shit”. Because it is the Free Heart-Disposition. So it is Radiant. It is Love, Love-Bliss, Compassion, altogether positive, you see? it’s just that that’s not It. it’s just a sign in the domain of conditions. The Realization is Prior to it and Inherently Utterly Free. Attention is not, mind is not, and body is not-those are not Free. Those are concerned, separate, contracted, seeking.

Anybody who wants to be the body-mind is a fool. All the non-humans know this. [laughter] Why would the Infinite, Inherently Love-Blissful, All-Sufficient Being want to be a body-mind, or anything limited?

It doesn’t. [laughter] Attention in it’s associations gets such notions, but can be turned about. How does all that occur? You tell Me. You can see it right now. How does attention arise in the Witness?

[pause]

And everything follows from that, you see. it’s the principle of two. There’s a tension in it. The feeling of relatedness is associated with the feeling of separateness. To be related you have to be separate. All yang and yin, all duality, arises from the inherent torque of attention. It is the root of all forms, not just the root of your own body-mind. That’s how it happens. And reactions within it, causes and effects, actions, reactions, all associations happen from that fundamental duality. it’s just the Divine Self-Condition, however. [laughter] But in that cause and effect, action-reaction, all of that appears to be Reality-to attention. But simultaneously one stands Prior to attention.

It would be one thing if the Prior Condition wasn’t Always Already the Case. [laughter] That would suggest a different kind of Reality, perhaps-any number of kinds of Reality. One of them would be that Man is utterly apart, separate from the Divine. If there’s any kind of direct association with the Divine, or more or less direct association with the Divine, you have to turn all of this apparatus toward the Divine. And then there may be some sort of a breakthrough at the end of that, but it’s just not true that you are Always Already the Divine.

DEVOTEE: The Great Path of Return.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: Mm-hm. But of course, it is Always Already true that you are the Divine, so that is the clue to sadhana, to Realization, to everything, to the right understanding of Reality. If it weren’t inherently true, you wouldn’t know what to seek, you see? You wouldn’t know what to do-you still don’t, even though you’ve noticed it-without the Realizer, you see, to Realize.

But it is the case, no matter what condition you are in as a human being, you can still be reminded of This and locate It. So it is the Reality. It is your Condition. Your entanglement is due to obliviousness, persistence in self-contraction, then, not understanding it and losing the Way, losing the Divine Condition, but also losing the Way of it’s Realization.

But if something is Always Already the Case, you see, you’re never going to Realize anything better than That. Because nothing else is Always Already the Case. [laughter] So it’s the best thing to be Realized. There’s nothing greater. And you can know that it is so, that it is immediate, even before Realization is fully established. You can, because of that, know what your endeavor should be. it’s not just trying out the body-mind, see where it goes, and maybe you’ll get out of here. it’s about Realizing what’s Always Already the Case. Reality. The Divine. Only the Divine can be Always Already the Case. That’s what the Divine Is. The One Thing, so to speak, you see, that Exists, Always Already. No matter what appears, or what changes, or whatever else passes away, It does not. You do not.

But look at what an ordeal you’ve made of it, by insisting that your freedom be given up, in order to be mired in a seemingly endless adventure of bondage and seeking. There is no end phenomenon possible for that which is Greater than That Which is in the Witness. Because it will be the Case even then, and will be the Reality then.

The entire adventure of Cosmic or psycho-physical existence is unnecessary. It has nothing ultimate to achieve. The Ultimate is Always Already the Case. It is a play upon it, and you can be bound, or established in Truth. it’s binding because it’s made of duality. it’s not just God-Made Paradise, you see. Everything is there. All the opposites generate one another, based on this simple duality. Even right then, Consciousness goes one way, Energy goes another. Consciousness becomes the root of the Subjective side. Energy, Light, is the root of the objective side, and they’re not known to be the same. Not even Realized, in themselves.

So it’s all this subject/object, and all the varieties in the object. it’s the whole circumstance. it’s nothing but the feeling of relatedness-ultimately that’s all it is-and therefore of separateness, dis-ease, separation from the Free Condition.

See, ultimately, the Divine Person is not merely the Witness. There is yet the seventh stage Awakening. There is only the Divine. All of this is That now. So this is also, then, why it’s possible for there to be Most Perfect Divine Self-Realization and yet also an apparent life. I’m Appearing here because this is Where I Am. This is in Me. it’s not just an alien domain, you see. It is the Substance of My Very Person.

Transcend all of your separateness, your identity conditionally, and you are Me. I am You. Not a “me” separate from you, although you may have some sense or feel it that way, because of your identification with the body. From the point of view of the body you are My servant. From the point of view of the mind, you are striving toward Oneness with Me. it’s only from the “Point of View” of the Self that you Are Me. So you are related to Me as devotee to Guru, as living being to the Divine Person. Because you are in apparent relation to Me, having identified with the body-mind. You stand outside the Witness Domain, in which ultimately everything is arising.

So you’re just on the world side, and you don’t know the Reality of it. You don’t Recognize the world. You don’t know Where it’s arising. You think it’s arising in front of you.

It is you, but only when you enter into the Native Position, non-separate from Me, and grow into Most Perfect Realization of Me.

So I can be here because this is not other than Me. Of course, for the sake of such an Appearance as this there has to be a unique Conjunction between a conditional vehicle and My Very Person. That having been worked, then the body-mind, this apparent body-mind is just Me. Not Vivekananda and so on, but Me. The vehicle has surrendered so profoundly, it is no longer any identity separate from Me.

So-called Vivekananda, Vivekananda and all that he was or has been, is a structure, utterly conformed to Me. And yet it’s also a structure that gives Me particular characteristics humanly and so on. Franklin Jones, Ramakrishna, Vivekananda, all of that in the past, beyond it, is a structure there submitted to Me, but it’s also an operating structure. Yes, submitted to Me, but which has certain characteristics that you associate with Me, therefore. But ultimately in your Contemplation of Me, you see, you go beyond this body into Communion with Me Spiritually and utterly, enter into My Domain. So it’s in that direct, non-separate finding of Me that you notice My Characteristics, Prior to the vehicle.

This body passes, that’s the end of that vehicle. So you’re not going to find Me Franklin-and-Vivekananda-ing in the sky. You see? But I will be here, as now. So it’s good, then, for you to be able to identify Me as such, even while This Body lives so that you’ll be able to continue your life with Me after This Body passes. And it wont be a matter of looking for Me in the domain of psycho-physical experience to appear there somehow and continue and not go to My Domain. No, you’ll find Me Directly by entering into the “Perfect Practice”.

Of course, there will be effects in the body-mind. People may have visions, all kinds of things, because of what is already set in motion by the Siddhis of My Lifetime. But you find Me Directly, by entering into the Domain of the Witness. That’s where you notice My Eternal Characteristics and will be able to Recognize them even after this body passes, therefore.

It will be useful, as I’ve said or what I will make use of is Murti-Gurus and devotees who are Instrumental, especially in the seventh stage, to provide you, My devotees at that time, with the mechanism of, as in the case of This Body during this lifetime, serving the Contemplation and inspiration of devotees. Even serving as the human link, a bodily means for My Transmission. So in that sense Ill Appear in human form. In the case of such individuals whose body-minds are fully conformed to Me, like this one is.

Its not by somebody claiming to be Me, in that sense, as if I’m well, you know how people might be thinking when they make such a claim. it’s not that. it’s true in the Ultimate sense, yes.

DEVOTEE: Transparency.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: They are only Me. But it’s by virtue of their submission to Me, their gone-beyond, that they are vehicles of Mine, and not by them stopping short in the body-mind and fancifully imagining that they’re somehow Me independently, you see? So such individuals are true devotees, utterly submitted, profoundly involved in Me. And so by virtue of that devotion, rather than some self-affirmation in the body-mind, they become vehicles of Mine, showing all the signs of right practice and so forth in the body, and able bodily to serve as a Conductor of My Transmission.

So they’ll serve some function similar to Mine, but as Me, not as themselves, because of their conformity to Me. They wont be successors. They’ll be vehicles of Mine. So it’s not that they claim to be Me. You will feel Me in their company, and you’ll know it is Me. And ultimately, as in their case, all the devotees then are being called to the “Perfect Practice” and beyond the body references.

So the Murti-Guru is just a sign to you, then, of That. That’s what that one enjoys and demonstrates and is there to serve you doing likewise or anyone who is there at such a time.

So I don’t need any psycho-physical vehicle of My own, so to speak, after the passing of This Body, by perpetuating something internal, or a subtle nature in continuing to reincarnate or be, through a specific personal subtle mechanism, active. it’s not necessary. I’ve Revealed My Self to you. That’s the Way, and not Me assuming for now a conditional mode of existence.

I’m not assuming a conditional mode of existence now.

And neither are you.

[pause]

The Cosmic Force chirps like crickets, so why do you think the crickets chirp?

[pause]

The Cosmically modified Force has all of the characteristics now shown or otherwise hidden in all forms. So that is the source of manifestation, of forms and things and changes and such. And the changes are not merely the result of the interactions of forms once they’ve already been manifested. There are some changes at that level, but the source of it is the subtle Cosmically modified Energy, the Cosmic Shakti. So that’s why bees and flowers appear together, all these things happen, you see? There’s some process, exchanges and so forth, more exterior, or more grossly or whatever. They have their effects. But the principal source of it is prior to materiality, mere materiality, you see, or gross form. it’s underneath appearance, whatever the appearance is.

Where is the DNA spiraling but there? That pattern is already there subtly.

And is boring. [laughter]

This immense chuckling multiplication of forms is terrible.

That’s why you introduce time because it’s changes are at the roots of time and they’re all simultaneous and constant.

There’s not a moment allowed, sufficient for the eye to work, to capture the form discretely.

And this chuckling changing of appearance modifying the Light is not itself a delight.

Ease it up by introducing time, then you get to look at flowers and fruits and bees, for a little while.

But it’s not timed for vast time. So it’s just a scrap of the whole.

The force of the core is a machine of inevitability, of change, vanishing and blending confusedly. Seeming to become discrete only in time, but never made forever. Neither at the gross level of vibration nor at the subtlest.

And there is a Wheel behind it, gross and subtle, that is all force and only revolves, never stops.

And at the root of it is attention more than personal, in the limited individual sense.

But when you find attention in the space of Consciousness, you are tacitly locating that bindu as the root of the machine of appearances, resulting from attention and just after attention.

So the world is this Wheel of chaotic blending and changing. Time is experienced so it shows discrete forms temporarily, but it is a whirl, a machine, that never stops.

So when you’re looking at this world through ordinary eyes, you are not aware of the immense machine and torque at the core of all appearances, such that they are all changing, they’re all becoming chaotic. it’s just that time, slowing it, allows you to see the parts briefly, for a longer period and so on. But the nature of the world is merciless change. it’s not concerned for any of it’s forms ultimately. They are garbage, stuff, plastic. it’s simply that they have to go through changes. It never stops, cannot be stopped. There’s nothing in the entire conditional domain that can be held on to. There is no attained happiness, because everything changes. Everything is limited that is arising. The ego is an illusion, separateness, and trouble.

People like to walk in the natural world and look at the flowers, but they don’t want to stay long enough to see them die. They want the pleasure message. They don’t want to see how the cycle works. They don’t want to accept certain elements of it, like death and so on. And truly it is not wantable if you examine the nature of conditional existence, really feel it. It is not wantable, it is not choosable. If your indifference becomes profound in that noticing, you see, you Stand in the Witness-Position already.

That’s what happened with Ramana Maharshi. He tacitly observed that conditional existence is a horror. But he saw that he Stood Prior to it. The recoil was so profound that he Stood Prior to it. He didn’t just freeze up the body-mind. He was afraid of the body-mind. So he didn’t just react with fear in the body-mind. His fear was to the root. It was a matter of utter revulsion such that he could see that all of that which he was concerned with is not him, that he was Standing fully as Consciousness Prior to it. So that’s how he became initiated into the “Perfect Practice”. [pause] And did it’s first two stages very well.

But until there is the seventh stage Awakening, the limitation of that “Perfect Practice” is that it is still like sleep. [quiet laughter] You’re still holding off the objects. Full Awakeness is to Realize the Divine Person as the One and Only Reality conditional existence utterly Recognized so that it is not even for a moment, ever, a source of bondage or separation from the Divine Condition. Even in the apparent place of objects there is no bondage. There’s only the Divine Self-Condition. But it’s not that that is a prescription for eternal life in human form, because it is established in Samadhi, merely Recognizing the world.

So it feeds on itself, so to speak. It is a glow that, by the power of Recognition, grows to Outshine what is arising. So there is no permanence to the seventh stage Demonstration. It keeps on going until Divine Translation, and does not become a clinging to the world or deciding, “Well, this is nice and Divine now.” You see? “The world is not an impediment. I’m here apparently bodily arising. So this is perfectly coincident with the Divine it must go on forever!” [laughter] But you see that’s not the position. The Position is Oneness with the Divine Self-Condition, Recognizing this.

DEVOTEES: Mm-hm.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: It is the Divine Self-Condition that is Realized, not merely that objects are in the Divine. They are constantly Recognized, not clung to. And the process of Divine Translation is as inexorable as that Wheel of Cosmic attention. Realize the Divine Self-Condition and you Translate. It is inevitable. So the form that may be apparent when there is such Awakening does not remain.

So Divine Self-Realization, seventh stage Realization, is not about an immortal existence in any form at all. it’s Shining so profoundly that nothing is held on to, and everything becomes “Bright”, One “Brightness”, of Infinite, Eternal, Divine Self-Consciousness, All.