Torque of Attention – Adi Da Samraj

Part V – Torque of Attention

——————————–

What else then? [silence]

Hm? [another silence]

Are you there? [laughter]

So, what?

DEVOTEE: Beloved, You gave me the unique demonstration of the Yoga You were talking about before, when we were talking about fitful, emotional breathing.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: Mm-hm.

DEVOTEE: Years ago, when we were in Hawaii I’m not sure I told this story to very many people we were out swimming in a relatively deep area, just the two of us. And You said, “Lets go down to the bottom.” And the bottom was about feet, feet. And I said, “I don’t think I can go that far.” And I couldn’t hold my breath long enough.

So we dove down a couple of times, and I came up after a couple of feet. And then You would come back up and say, “What’s the problem?” And I said, “I cant take a breath deep enough.” And You said, “That’s not the point.” And then we dove down again, and I came back up and I said, “I cant hold my breath long enough.” And You said, “That’s not the point.” And I dove down the third time, and You kept going all the way to the bottom. You were swimming around for what must have been a couple minutes, and then You came back to the surface. And You said, “If you didn’t have this fear here, you could do it. But because of this fear you cant make the dive.”

ADI DA SAMRAJ: Mm-hm.

DEVOTEE: And You were demonstrating how You have transfigured Your body-mind, and You are not sustained only in the ordinary sense.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: Mm-hm. So you must yield the habit of stress and seeking. Even in your bodily functioning.

[silence]

I’ve got an idea, virtual reality is coming in how about “virtual reality meditation”? [laughter]

DEVOTEE: I love it! Oh yeah, that’ll sell.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: You yourself do nothing meditative whatsoever. [laughter] You just put this thing on your head and plug into the machine sort of thing.

DEVOTEE: Where can I get one? [laughter]

ADI DA SAMRAJ: And the machine projects a meditative figure. And you enjoy the virtual reality experience of being that figure. [laughter]

That’s kind of what’s happening here. Except instead of putting a machine on and doing that silly routine, I’m telling you to sit down and meditate. But you give Me your attention for the sake of that. You’re Communing with somebody in Samadhi, so that’s where that Communion leads. You become what you meditate on. There’s a little something virtual reality-ish about it. [laughter]

Of course, so is your present experience. I mean, you sit here, relaxed, gazing into the room, perceiving this and that, and you feel because of identification with the body that you’re in that space. You make all kinds of sense out of it visually, perceptually, all together.

Well, the reason you’re having this perception is it seems to be all sort of regulated relative to your body. Because, apart from whatever it is more subtly and so forth a perception, a structure made by a complex machine here that gives you this visualization altogether I mean, where are you? Where are you seeing it anyway? This is all the mechanism in there that’s making this perception . . . to whom? You get the perception, feeling that you’re this body located in space, all the things you see there, but you’re viewing that.

DEVOTEE: Is that Witnessing, my Lord?

ADI DA SAMRAJ: Could be. Ultimately, certainly.

I mean, where are you viewing this? I mean, you’re not the eyeballs, because the eyeballs don’t see anyway. Those impressions go zinging around and so forth. So after it goes through all that machine, gives you impressions and so forth, then you see it. Of course the image is, as it comes through the eyes, bodily positioned, presuming itself to be in space, but where are you? Where are you looking at it?

Well, whatever you can feel about it, it’s very curious, you see? For one thing it is said that this binocular two-eyed vision goes back and twists back and forth, and then registers these impressions electronically, upside-down in reference to the face.

But you see it after that point. [Devotees exclaim in amazement.] In there, you see? The reason you feel like you’re the body regulated in space is because that’s the vision projected through these eyes, but that’s not where “you” are. You see it as your eyes see it. But that’s not where you are. [laughter and sounds of wonderment] That’s what the picture shows.

But where are you?

And how do you figure out this upside-down picture, and relate it to the bodily orientation?

Well it seems like you don’t. You’re not in a position in space like that. The picture is still sitting there it’s the body looking out. It doesn’t make any difference for you whether the picture is reflected in the brain upside-down with reference to the face or not. It probably makes no difference whatsoever. Because you just still see the same picture no matter what position you’re in back there. The picture is of the body sitting upright looking out here. So no matter what angle you look at it from, it’s still going to be right side up to you, because that’s the picture.

So, where do you see this? Where are you?

DEVOTEE: Seem to be in time and space . . .

ADI DA SAMRAJ: The picture.

DEVOTEE: The picture, right.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: No, you.

DEVOTEE: Me . . . [laughs]

ADI DA SAMRAJ: The one who’s receiving the picture. Or noticing it. Where are you? Where do you see from? Apparently it doesn’t make any difference either. Because you’re still going to see the same picture right side up. You’re still going to see the same picture, no matter where you look at it from.

So the picture is just the picture. You don’t seem to have anything to do with it, except the noticing. You’re not in it’s position. You have nothing to do with it. You’re seeing it’s picture. You’re not seeing “you”. [silence]

If I was just the eyes, that would be all right. I would have clear sight. But I have to see through the eyes in this ordinary respect of perception, you see?

So you’re indulging in this perception from a different position than the picture suggests.

So you have nothing to do with any of the mechanics at all except you are the Witness of it.

Just because the eyes see doesn’t mean you’re in your head.

I mean, why wouldn’t you be in your foot, when your foot aches?

You can be anywhere, so to speak, associated with any aspect of the body-mind, because it is wholly, entirely, always already available to you.

You’re not some place within it. You’re That within Which all of it is arising.

Merely the Witness.

[pause]

So if you believe the eyes, you’re believing in a picture made from the body point of view. But the eyes and the vision, all of it, is objective to you. it’s not you. You are always standing merely as the Witness. Not sitting there as the body. That’s the picture.

[silence]

Isn’t that obvious? [Devotees murmur agreement.] So youve got to be wiser than just some dingbat viewing these pictures and believing them. Because it’s not your position. That’s the picture associated with that mechanism there.

[pause]

Its all the body-mind had to do, so that you could see with it. You weren’t there doing it, were you? And yet youve been here all the while it’s been happening. Your whole body just did it. You were born, did the whole trick.

You think that because your eyes see that you yourself are somehow located in your head. Then why don’t you believe when you get a sore foot or whatever, that you’re in your foot and not in your head? And that that’s where you ought to meditate? [laughter]

So you coincide with all the perceptions. The entire mechanism. And yet you have the same relation, so to speak, to all of it, every part. it’s not a relation it’s the Witness. That is the nature of your apparent association there. You are not involved in it, combined with it. You always stand merely as the Witness of whatever it is

Where is that?

Being rather riotously combined with the body-mind, you cant quite get it at the moment because you’re registering it at many points. You can only be noticing all of this where you are.

So, the root of all this noticing is in the right side of the heart, the bare association between attention and all psycho-physical signs. it’s the root of the body-mind, the root of attention. And that is the root that must be transcended, then. So all of that primal business, all of it, is associated with the right side of the heart, with reference to the body.

But if you enter into it, you realize that it is not located at all in it’s own sphere. it’s not related, it’s not connected. it’s not associated. So it has nothing to do with the right side of the heart, or the body, and so on, in itself. So in the second stage of the “Perfect Practice”, you move into that depth beyond the body reference. Beyond all psycho-physical reference. And you don’t do it by moving attention, but by standing in That Which is Prior to attention. So it’s not a willful act.

DEVOTEE: Beloved, when we first began these “considerations”, I felt that I went right to that place of frustration with the knot of self, and started banging on it, you know?

ADI DA SAMRAJ: Mm-hm.

DEVOTEE: And then I started “considering” Your language about location, and the “Where” of the Witness. And tonight earlier in the “consideration” when You were describing, I think in the first conversation with devotee, about the various organs in the body, when You began to “consider” Amrita Nadi, and the organ associated with the Witness, then I became totally interested again. And it was very interesting. Whereas the other things had not been interesting.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: Mm-hm. Tcha.

DEVOTEE: But then I had this sudden feeling of profound Subjectivity. I don’t know what else to say about it except it was a totally amazing momentary revelation of a profound Subjectivity that was completely Happy it was Happiness and “Bright”.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: Yes.

DEVOTEE: It had this quality of being Subjective beyond anything I could imagine.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: Mm-hmmmm. [quietly] That’s where It is. Beyond imagining.

[silence]

Well, that’s Me.

DEVOTEE: Beloved, I have a question about kumbhak. When I allow myself to enter into meditation with You to the point of feeling that, there comes a point in the feeling of it that I cant differentiate between inhalation and exhalation.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: Mm-hm. What do you notice about it? Is there movement, breath movement? Physically?

DEVOTEE: it’s slowed down to a great degree.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: Mm-hm.

DEVOTEE: And the breath takes on a quality of feeling more like food.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: Mm-hm.

DEVOTEE: And then I can feel Your description of why the body would take on the asana of resting at the bodily base, fullness in the bodily base.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: Mm-hm.

[silence]

[to Hellie] Were all meditating on the fullness of your bodily base. [laughter] You want to move on? Were with you so far. [laughter] And?

DEVOTEE: Well, I’ve just been feeling how this “consideration” with You has intensified my practice.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: Oh good. Your overall life.

DEVOTEE: Including my diet.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: Now were in your stomach. [laughter] Go on. [Beloved laughs loudly.] Yes, youve told us this quite a number of times, actually. And were all glad to hear it, except it’s only been a couple of days. So everybody will be keeping their eye on you. [laughter]

Conventional weight-loss programs are entirely about losing weight not about right diet and great aspirations. But people have to go through a routine like that in order to get to feeling that they’re obliged to do it, maybe. In other words, they cant just tell themselves to do right diet. But they’ve got to be somehow constantly told by somebody, in a constantly inspiring fashion, step by step, patting on the back constantly, that a certain ritual relative to eating is going to have the effect of making you lose weight. And of course you lose weight if you stick to it.

But why did there have to be that? I don’t mean somebody instructing you, giving you knowledge and so forth. But why would someone have to have this mechanism, this ceremony, to have the effect that they want to have, without somehow actually doing it, or not intending to do it altogether themselves? This sort of a person has to be coaxed in it or something. Not quite responsible for it. So that suggests that the eating pattern that made them gain weight was not voluntary either. There’s some kind of an emotional problem there about intending, choosing, exercising the will understand something, do it. There’s an emotional problem underneath it that makes the exercise of the intelligent will feel incompetent. Why do people complain that they cant do it? You know, “Just cant lose weight, just cant change my diet.” Why cant they do it?

DEVOTEE: Well, they don’t understand for one thing.

DEVOTEE: It seems like the whole process of eating would be a way out of feeling the pain of self-contraction. So to economize diet, it wouldn’t be connecting with the principle that would make that more satisfying, the principle of serving Communion.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: Yes. In this case, were talking about somebody who doesn’t feel capable of initiating it. There has to be some kind of a ceremony of permission, a kind of parental association to replace your will. It suggests that the individual hasn’t assumed adult responsibility, in general, but is still a parented character, a character that lives in the domain of the parent controlling, inspiring, saying “Do this, do that.” And you never got to the point where you did that. So youve always got to duplicate somehow or other, in your experience, your feeling, whatever, the sense of being parented.

So someone going through that ceremony relative to eating is using a kind of parent, pseudo-parent relationship, ceremonially, to get them to do something. They really want to do it. But they have to go through this “being parented” ritual that’s basically about being parented and being weak-willed. Because as a child you depend on the will of the parent to guide you. And if you don’t allow that to become internal guidance, then you remain rather infantile and childish, as human beings do.

DEVOTEE: This is very common.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: it’s generally the case. The parent-child dependency lives in people long beyond their childhood. And it’s enacted in various ways. It has all the “Oedipal” content too. So you have to be somehow parented all the while to motivate you to do something. To give you the capacity to do what you cant will to do.

But My Instruction to you is supposed to move you to exercise your faculties and capability altogether so that you can generate this practice, and do so in right relationship to Me, not in the parent-child relationship, where I’m just sort of enforcing ordinary life details and such. That’s an utter abuse of Me. So to outgrow that way of relating to Me, you have to outgrow your childish condition and become responsible for all of your faculties.

Some people choose to live with their parents. it’s a nice, responsible thing to do. But perhaps also, if you’re not self-aware, you also remain childish. And in any case, your experience in general suggests that you should be parented all of your life by something or another, all kinds of things. A lot of the civilizing motive is associated with working so that everyone feels parented, well taken care of, well provided for. So the state, in all kinds of propaganda, this, that, and the other thing, becomes a ritual to replace your own discrimination and clear will. Not having a will of your own, and therefore not exercising enough discriminative intelligence, you can be moved through that parent-child ritual, moved by what’s outside you, to the point of extreme bondage. Understanding nothing.

The exercises that we’ve done here in this “consideration” are so fundamental, so obvious and yet you have to be instructed in it, you see? And seem to have this and that limitation associated with all of it.

You must be able to exercise the deeper faculties. The mere physical energy, the etheric force, the emotional being, the mind and so on these are all relatively mechanical. Their doings are subject to your intention. But they themselves are rather mechanical, will do anything. So the higher, deeper aspect of human personalities, the senior, is about discrimination, discriminative intelligence measuring, understanding, observing, and directing the faculties below it according to that disposition, according to that understanding. But see how difficult it is for you all to get to the point where you’re willing to live based on understanding, rather than based on what the body-mind wants to do at the moment?

Its such a simple matter, so obvious. You’re not exercising the faculties at your central position, the faculties that are closest to you as the conscious person here. Those are closest to you, so to speak, so it would seem that these would be the faculties you would most readily use.

But your signals from birth are so primitive, basically from the physical on in, that by the time you get to the point of development where you could exercise will and discriminative intelligence, you’re so bound up in what is lesser than it, the places of your experience such complex entanglements and patterns directed from without that the discriminative intelligence and the will is weak. You cant just observe, understand, change your act. That’s the way it ought to be. Why go to a weight-loss program, you see? You can be served in your understanding, and observation, and so forth, but when it comes down to it, it’s a straightforward matter. Youve discriminated, “considered” this discriminatively, and come to a conclusion about it, and now you intend to do such and such and such.

See the higher faculty then, the higher faculties exercised determine right action. But you all keep looking for the active part, the body, the energies in it, the emotions, the thought patterns you keep looking for these things to tell you what to do. Or youve consented to allow them to be in charge. Like someone going to a weight-loss program basically finding a pseudo-parent.

So it seems somehow the core faculties the last to develop somehow. You know the infant who is born gets lots of physical sensation but no discriminative intelligence yet, you see? All the signals come from the flesh in. So it’s not that you perfected your faculties of will and discriminative intelligence first, and then got involved with everything. No. You got involved with everything first, and now you want to exercise discriminative intelligence and will, and the machine is just not set up that way. it’s set up to make all kinds of demands, it’s confused, full of desires and constrained rituals. It didn’t get that way from the exercise of discriminative intelligence with the will. It developed without that exercise, or at least without it being profound. And so it’s an accumulation of rather robotic events.

In this Way, then, I Call you to examine this matter of discriminative intelligence and will and develop it. That’s finishing the business of the first three stages of life. “Consider” your “Oedipal”, this and that, all the ins and outs, and do what you have to do to grow up. And I’ve told you exactly how to do that. So your vow to Me must be exercised based on discriminative intelligence and done with a will, embraced absolutely, never put up for a vote to the body-mind again. “Consider” it, realize what’s right, take the vow, and then never argue with yourself again. Persist in the upholding of the vow.

So that’s an example of how to live by exercising discriminative intelligence and will. And the Way is going to require that adulthood of you or you will be weak in devotion, weak in Contemplation, weak in discipline and on and on.

I’m not here to parent you so that eventually somehow you’ll do what’s right with Me. I’m there where the doing right happens. So that means you must “consider” this Way, receive My Instruction, and do it. it’s plainly obvious why it’s right and what it’s all about. Youve “considered” that, and that’s that. And don’t be childish anymore, give Me all your apologies and excuses and all of that business. That’s being childish, childlike. Needing a parental slap on the wrist or a raised voice or something just straighten out a little bit, but always curiously unavailable.

So to grow up means you accept as your responsibility the faculties your parents exercised for you previously. See, you didn’t need the will and discriminative intelligence when you were an infant, or youngish. So you depended on them for that. And they did so, and you didn’t have to exercise it. All kinds of effects developed, life developed, and along the line it becomes necessary to exercise the will and discriminative intelligence. Your parents aren’t going to treat you like infants forever. So then at some point you’re in a situation where you have to do all of that unparented. And to really grow up means you have to be equipped to do that.

So it would seem then that part of right education involves the exercise of will and discriminative intelligence the actual exercising of that and examining things clearly, and “considering” this Teaching, as the way of embracing it. Then when they get of the age where the parents aren’t going to replace their discriminative intelligence and will, they’ll know what to do. They’ll be equipped to do so. They wont be in the self-indulgent, childish habit just waiting for the parent to leave so you can indulge yourself, or whenever you have any difficulty at all, especially will required of you, you want to be parented, dependent and independent at the same time. Sort of adolescent, then, until you embrace responsibility for discriminative intelligence and will.

This is what keeps you focused seriously, this capacity. it’s not a matter of just riding on the body-mind and it’s adaptations. Discriminative intelligence and the will are in charge. So don’t play the child with Me. I’m not your parent. This is what it takes.

There are all the forms physical, subtle, mental, emotional but, to locate this discriminative intelligence, all of those forms are before it. But it’s not the Witness. Discriminative intelligence is that observation, examination of all those contents. You’re making judgments and decisions using the force of will, the fundamental energy of the central personality to function on that basis. It should be perfectly natural for the human being to function based on that leading faculty. But the adaptations are in the reverse, as I’ve said, then you wind up weak-willed, and all of a sudden you’re out of your parents house and you’re supposed to be a man or a woman. Whereas you didn’t get enough education at replacing what they did all of that time. And, therefore, you remain rather childish all of your life, in need of the ritual of being parented somehow. And you also tend to use Me that way, therefore. it’s a ritual you use to feel parented, and yet still be rather adolescent. it’s a false relationship to Me.

In the Great Tradition, the Master replaces your parents. He’s not someone on whom you project your parent-child inclinations. He’s a different figure altogether. You don’t relate to this One as your parent. He’s not one of the scheme of conventional relations.

So your parent-child ritual doesn’t belong in My face and your claims of irresponsibility, signs of weak-willedness, lack of discrimination. You did all of that when you were a child with your parents. You don’t do that with your Master.

The ground testing of devotees or practitioners in the traditional setting largely has to do with this business: Does the individual show the sign of really being able to live on the basis of discriminative intelligence and will, with clarity, so he or she can receive the instruction and apply it?

Youve heard the traditional stories where somebody begins in a Masters sphere by being a menial servant, gets no instructions and all that. They think they’re just being good while they’re waiting for the instructions, you see. There’s many things happening there, but one of them is the Master testing them. Not merely relative to conventional behaviors, but relative to this exercise of discriminative intelligence and will. And of course, the greater heart-disposition, certainly. But you must be able to function that way no matter what the circumstance is, most menial or whatever, in order to be seriously involved in this Communion with Me and address the limitations on it, discriminatively and directly, with a will.

So this whole student-novice, student-beginner process is supposed to be the growing up stage. You shouldn’t come out of there without all kinds of signs, including this sign, this central faculty. It is the “Adam and Eve” that’s empowered to be in charge of all the non-humans, in the Biblical story. it’s discriminative intelligence and will, the central faculty. it’s supposed to be in charge of all of the rest. The observer is the female, the “considerer” is the male.

This must be exercised every moment relative to everything lower than that. You exercise it by your Communion with Me, beyond and Prior to that. Communing with Me thus, My “Brightness” passes into your principal faculties as you enter into the domain of the body-mind.

[silence]

So are we “considering” anything, or was that the end of that one?

DEVOTEE: Beloved, we were “considering” discriminative intelligence, and I just never had heard quite so clearly Your description of the effect of Your Transmission, and the essential component of discriminative intelligence.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: Mm-hm. If I Crash down through the top of your head, I’m going to get there first, you see? [laughter] So how can you receive Me in this frontal Yoga without the awakening of discriminative intelligence and a will that can function on the basis of it?

DEVOTEE HAMMERSCHMIDT: I was reading one of Your Essays, Beloved, and You were saying that one of the signs of true hearing is the capacity for free functional attention.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: Yes. Because it’s not bound in the rituals of self-contraction, you see? Attention is freed by this conscious process. Instead of being caught up in the mechanics of the body-mind.

The development of discriminative intelligence, and the will that functions on the basis of it, is the business of the third stage of life. In other words, the third stage of life is the stage of moving out of the parented state. To do so, you have to replace the faculties previously assumed by the parents and everything, then. And those specific faculties are the ones of discriminative intelligence and will. All the others up to that point have been adapted to provide the basis for human functioning. And then the mother and father step aside and your head is vacant. [laughter] No discriminative intelligence followed with the will, you see? Just a sort of soupy, self-indulgent adolescent who’s noticing that he or she’s not being looked at so much by the mother and father, so then they get into an indiscriminate life of self-indulgence, sometimes.

So it’s just a sign that the faculties of discriminative intelligence and will have not yet been sufficiently established, functioning, in the life.

So that’s the time when children leave home, so to speak, go out of the parented state into the adult state. Still related to the blood parents, but not being parented any longer, in that childish sense. And therefore you will not view anyone as a parent, or take anything as a parent-force merely influencing you without the exercise of discriminative intelligence and will on your own part.

This is how you find out you’re not the victim. it’s the one whose discriminative intelligence and will is weak who feels he or she is victimized by whatever. There may be an unfortunate circumstance, but nonetheless the victimization is your own doing. You can exercise discriminative intelligence and will, all kinds of right life, right practice, and deal with that. Even grow on the basis of it, like Yeshe Tsogyal who, in a situation of being apparently victimized, used it as sadhana. It doesn’t mean the circumstance wasn’t unfortunate, but her involvement was such that she passed beyond it’s limitations and used it for more profound development.

So that’s an individual who has the capability to exercise discriminative intelligence, choose, and then engage it with a will in spite of what arises. Until then, you are the victim of conditions. All conditions. That’s how you feel it. That’s what you say. But it’s just a childish habit. it’s a childish sulk.

So you must bring this capability of discriminative intelligence able to use it, use it with a will, function through it with a will to the front in your practice. That’s not to say the practice itself, the sadhana of Communion with Me, is about standing in that position. No, it’s to give up all positions in Communion with Me. But in terms of the regulation of your life, in response to Me, the fulfillment of My Instruction and so on, you must exercise discriminative intelligence and will. And simply, straightforwardly do it. If you don’t, you’re being childish. You’re looking to be parented. You’re looking to be not noticed by your parents so you can indulge yourself. All that kind of stuff. it’s what you all do.

Anything more about that?

My “considerations” with you are very straightforward, very intelligent, I presume.

DEVOTEES: Yes. Yes, Beloved.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: And really, if you are humanly basically mature, you would listen to My “consideration”, examine what is being brought to you, and come to a fully intelligent conclusion, and then do it! It should be just as straightforward as that, you see? If you’re not parented, but a free individual, here, to Realize Me, then it is that straightforward. If you’re not playing the child game with Me or anyone else.

Well, it’s important, then, to go through the process for real of going beyond being parented. it’s not enough just to leave your immediate family situation or whatever at times. You can still carry the child mode, the weak intelligence and will, with you. So to be free of it in yourself, youve got to relinquish the being-parented disposition. Not to become merely an independent ego, but to become one who can exercise all the faculties for the purpose of the sadhana.

So notice how you permit yourself to be parented, then, even by your blood parents or whatever you use. And root it out. Abandon the disposition. Accept responsibility for what that was replacing in you.

As I’ve Said, if you want Me to do what I do, you have to do what I say. But I don’t mean just I say blah-blah, you do it mechanically. All of My Instruction to you, Transmission to you, is “consideration”. As I was Saying earlier, it’s a process of Initiation, of integrating you with it, because you’re the one who has to be responsible for that sadhana not Me.

So you cant practice this Way of the Heart on the basis of belief or faithfulness or goodheartedness merely. Youve got to grow up. Youve got to become a man or woman, which means you have to take for yourself the responsibility you previously relinquished or never exercised when a child.

The control-from-without game is no good after a certain age, because it doesn’t allow you to develop these faculties necessary for your own responsibility as My devotee. You are Mastered by Me, not parented by Me. You shouldn’t require Me to parent you. That means you have to give up being a child, one whose discriminative intelligence and will are elsewhere replaced by someone else. You must exercise these capabilities, and when we enter into “considerations” such as this, I’m Calling you to do so.

And you even appear to like doing so when it’s a matter of “considering” hearing, or the Witness and so forth. But then when I talk about right dietary practice as your obligation and various other practical things, you know the sounds you make and so forth. Like all of a sudden, that’s too much! [soft laughter]

All of a sudden you’re children again, childishly related to Me. You’re willing to exercise these faculties to have this Contemplative experience, but you’re not willing to exercise the body so that your whole life can be about Contemplative experience. So all of a sudden you want to play the child when I’m talking to you, Instructing you about responsibility for the body, the functional, practical, relational, and cultural details of this Way altogether. When I “consider” such matters with you, you are all of a sudden “Johnny Carson” now, children now. People show through all kinds of mannerisms and whatnot that you’re rather childish, want to be parented a little bit like Huey, Dewey, and Louie Duck. They’re unpredictable also.

No. I expect the same straightforwardness and clarity relative to your fulfillment of that Instruction just as I do if we “consider” the Witness together. It exercises the same faculties. So then if we talk about something somewhat more mundane and so on, what’s the difference? You examine it, “consider” it, come to conclusions, make decisions, agreements, then you do it! And you don’t need to have a lot of pseudo-parents around to keep pattin’ you on the back and tell you what a really swell sadhak you are, you know? [laughter]

So you stop making a childish or rather adolescent culture out of the community always conforming to the weak-willedness, lack of discrimination, tendency games of the gathering. it’s a “culture of inspiration and expectation”. You’re obliged to fulfill the rule of the community. it’s not a bargaining matter.

You’re obliged because you volunteered to be obliged, by the way remember? Took the vow. So that’s what it takes, then. And youve no right to run to another Guru, you see. The little-ji? The body-mind there, you know? “Little-ji, what do you think about this dietary stuff?” “Aw, forget it! It sucks! All right, be a little moderate sometimes. That’s it. Leave me alone. By the way, lets have a pizza!” [laughter]

So that’s the kind of games you get into when you resort to little-ji you know, the old “inner guru”? Whenever somebody talks about resorting to the “inner guru”, I know damn well they’re talking about not having so much to do with their outer Guru. [laughter] They want to be parented, but they don’t want to be Guru-ed.

[silence]

So that’s straight, though, right?

DEVOTEES: Yes, Lord. Yes. Mm-hm.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: Good!