Adi Da Samraj The Yajna Discourses of Santosha Adi
Da A
Gathering “Consideration” with Beloved Adi Da Samraj
in the
Manner of Flowers on January 13, 1996 Part
I – Part
II – Part
III – Part
IV – Part
V – Part
VI – Part
VII
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!
from
The
Brightening Way Talk Series