Beezone





 

 

Witness, Attention and the Sense of
Relatedness

Adi Da Samraj – 1992


DEVOTEE: ..You Call us to be aware of, where attention is
fixed.

DEVOTEE: Yes, that’s the question. There’s a sense of
attention, the feeling of relatedness, and I guess the
question then is how the quality of that sense is different.
You said that there is a “radical” change in the Position of
the Witness altogether relative to sensitivity to attention
and the feeling of relatedness, Prior to Realizing the
Witness Position.

AVATAR ADI DA: Yes, it’s just that, the Witness
Disposition Itself, That’s the difference, otherwise,
attention is exactly the same as it ever was. It’s just
that! Just as your hands look the same from the
Witness-Position as from the point of view of attention, But
there’s a profoundly different quality in the Disposition of
the Witness, you see, than there is in merely being
attention, or noticing attention from the point of view of
the body-mind complex, you see. But it’s a change of
disposition, of position altogether, and everything that
that contains, rather than a change in the phenomenal
condition itself.

DEVOTEE: There’s more freedom relative to…..

AVATAR ADI DA: There’s absolute Freedom. Whereas, in the
body mind, noticing its own mechanism of attention, there
isn’t profound Freedom, There is no Freedom!

But even so, still you can notice attention, Not only
attention, all the mechanisms of the body-mind. You can
observe them right now, without standing in the
Witness-Position, or knowing you are. Of course, you always
already are in that Position, but you don’t know it’s so.
You are moment to moment identifying with the body-mind, and
not realizing that you Stand Prior to it, you don’t realize
that your own consciousness right now stands Prior to the
body-mind. In your disposition, identified with the
body-mind, you feel your consciousness, your awareness, is
just part of being the body-mind. You don’t discriminate. To
stand in the Witness Position,, a profound discrimination
must have occurred, a tacit discrimination must have
occurred, in which you realize you stand Prior to the
body-mind, including attention, which is simply the leading
faculty of the body-mind.

DEVOTEE: So attention does still tend to become fixed,
but you Stand Free of that and are always aware of that
Freedom,

AVATARA ADI DA: Attention is always fixed and it’s always
on something.

DEVOTEE: Because that’s the nature of it.

AVATARA ADI DA: It’s the feeling of relatedness. It goes
to something, something physically tangible, or a concept,
or a vision, or a feeling, a sense of some kind, you see.
It’s always on something — abstract, concrete, whatever,
It’s always on something, and it’s essential feeling is the
feeling of relatedness, Hm? And the feeling of relatedness
is self-contraction, because simultaneous with the feeling
of relatedness is the feeling of separateness feeling
oneself over against that to which one is apparently
related, Hm? In other words, the self-contraction is there.
And the self-contraction is not only feeling separate. It is
actively separative, because it is self-contraction, you
see. So all these things are there in attention itself,
Hm?

DEVOTEE: And we become firmly established in that feeling
of relatedness in this fourth stage disposition, but You
always Call us beyond by sacrifice to release it and that’s
what can allow the transition to the sixth stage practice
from the fourth [stage] practice.

AVATARA ADI DA: Yes, ultimately, through this constant
process of sadhana, going beyond the self contraction, the
ultimate, original form of the self contraction is noticed,
And it is the feeling of relatedness itself, or attention
itself, Hm? It’s the root of self-contraction.

And it’s your own doing, Hm? You do separation. It’s not
merely a fact that you are separate. You may think it’s a
fact because, through this naive perception, you notice you
are bodily existing and other bodies over against it, you
know, you notice somebody and you know right away there’s
somebody else, you see. So, naively, your sense of
separateness seems to be justified, because you’re not aware
of all the subtleties of this scheme of Unity, Hm? You are
grossly identified, or making a gross identification in your
self contraction, what ultimately you must Realize, or will
Realize, or do Realize, ultimately most perfectly, is that
there is no separation whatsoever, at any time., There is
never separation. It has always been your own act. Always.
There is no separation Even what you regard to he the
apparent separation between bodies is a presumption based on
your own self contraction. And when the self-contraction is
utterly absent, paradoxically still walk around the room and
talk to individuals and bang into their bodies with My own,
you see – but, paradoxically, when there is utter Freedom
from self-contraction, or from this act of separateness that
informs your entire disposition and even all of your
perceptions, but ultimately there is the Realization of
utter, Absolute Non-Separation, And, paradoxically, it’s
totally compatible with still here in this apparent human
form…and the ability as you see Me Demonstrating all the
time the natural ability to walk about being an apparent
individual in the bodily sense, you see,

DEVOTEE: I was noticing today in meditation that more and
more it’s a matter of stopping, sitting down long enough to
realize Your Siddhi has been active, that It’s already
occurred, just from the relationship with You, and that
there’s no, the old style of meditation, somehow having to
contact You in some way and reach toward You, is not it,
that you’ve already done that and that process already
occurred.

AVATARA ADI DA: Every moment you practice
Ishta-Guru-Bhakti yoga you leap back into the Kiln, you see,
That’s every moment, Then there’s moments when you sit down
for meditation and so forth, you see, whenever you practice
this devotion you have leapt back into My Kiln of
Brightness, you see. And to the degree you submit yourself
to the Radiance of this Communion with Me, the Brighter you
get, You are participating in My Siddhi of Recognition, you
see, And you are doing sadhana, all of the intentional
practices, the counter-egoic practices. But also you are
investing yourself in Me, being moved by the Power of My
Samadhi, being Transformed by the Power of My Recognition of
the entire cosmic mandala.