A Discourse Given by Sri Da Avabhasa (Adi Da Samraj) on February 4, 1993
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SRI DA AVABAASA: Which room are you in tonight? Are you in My Room or your room?
DEVOTEE: The confession of all Your devotees is that we are willing to surrender our rooms so that we can be in Your Room.
SRI DA AVABHASA: Surrendering your room is one thing. Being in the Room Where I Am is another. Most of you do not know what room you are in. You are imagining yourself, to be in a construct of existence made by your own contraction. You have never comprehended or experienced the space you are actually living in. You have only been living in that rather hallucinated enclosure made by your own egoic act and its consequences.
When there is no contraction, then What there is obvious. When the self contraction is arising, you are unaware of What is, or of Where you are. Thus, your questions to Me propose an answer. They are already a structure of expectation. It is possible for questions to be wrong, all wrong, in some fundamental sense, just as the answers that follow questions can be wrong in some fundamental sense. Every question designs a particular kind of answer, constructs an answer, proposes an answer, for its satisfaction. You puzzle until you acquire the answer and relieve yourself of the question, and then you ask another. And all the while that you are asking, seeking, you are presuming yourself to exist in un-Reality, or a version of existence that, although perceptually like what others claim to be the space where they are, is not real, not true, not Divine.
The presumption of separateness creates a comprehension of perception that is untrue. As long as, that contraction exists, you do not perceive the Space you are in. You go on and on asking and answering – seeking – and all the while struggling within this construct of your own making, until there is Most Perfect Understanding and Realization of What is always already the case.
I think then, that you are not in the same Room that I am in. Maybe you are in this apparent, perceived building here, as I am, in some sense but we are not in the same Space, the same Reality. If you ask Me a question, therefore, I am not going to address you through your question because you are already proposing an answer and I do not think the answer will necessarily change anything fundamentally for you. My “Consideration” with you is not merely My relating to your questions and coming up with the answer that you are already proposing. My “Consideration” with you is My way of breaking through the limitation that is your question, or your proposal, this limit in you.
Real “consideration” is about just such undoing of egoic limitation. What you may otherwise call “consideration” is just a social diversion. Real “consideration”‘ is a kind of play. It is a paradox, the undoing of the game of your own proposition. Therefore, in real “consideration” with you I am not merely straightforward. My “Consideration” with you is ‘Crazy”, artful theater of breaking through the presumption that is your own illusion.
The “consideration” has to begin somewhere tonight, so I guess your questions are as good a place to begin as any. We could just as well begin with the answers! It is all the same.
DEVOTEE: My Lord, this is especially clarifying about our, questions. They do not release the separate being but just keep confirming it.
SRI DA AVABHASA: The questioner basically wants to be consoled. The question wants an answer. But the expected answer is not Realization. You have been asking questions all year long. You have even received all kinds of answers. But your questioning has not become Realization yet.
Mark Twain once said that he knew a man who knew more than any other man he had ever met. The problem was that most of what he knew was not true! You are in that same position in your questioning. Your question is the expression of the self-contraction. The answer is not exactly what you require. Nor am I here to address your apparent, question. I am here to Address you. The question simply provides the circumstance. That being the case, what are the, questions? [to the man who has been speaking] Go on:
DEVOTEE: In our conversations and “considerations” – with You, my Lord, the final so-called answer to all the questions that we ask is surrender to You.
SRI DA AVABHASA: And you cannot altogether do that surrender, either. You, must be Attracted beyond your own knot. So, do you have a question, or is someone else going to ask Me?
Spirit-Baptism
DEVOTEE: You actually addressed my question when I spoke on the phone earlier today about different signs of Your Spirit-Baptism.
SRI DA AVABHASA: You wanted to talk about Spirit-Baptism, and I told you to practice the discipline I have Given you. Still you wanted to go on to talk about Spirit Baptism. I have noticed in general about this gathering that you all do not want to take seriously the listening-hearing process. You want to become involved in what you might think is Spiritual practice and Spiritual phenomena, and you want to bypass the fundamental asana of the Way of the Heart, which is true hearing, Without, that foundation, all the stages that follow the beginning are simply developmental stages of the ego. You can practice the Advanced disciplines of the fourth stage, the fifth stage, or the sixth stage of life in the Way of the Heart, but without the foundation of true hearing all you are doing is developing; experience and developing the potential of each of those stages of life.
That is not the Way of the Heart. The Way of the Heart is to, be first equipped with most fundamental self-understanding so that you can likewise transcend the egoic limits in the advanced and the ultimate stages, as they may arise. But I have observed in you over all these years a lack of seriousness about the fundamental process of listening and hearing. I have observed in, you the inclination’ to be rather soft about all that, slow about it all, neglectful about it, wanting to console, yourself with Spiritual experiences, so-called, or experiences of one kind or another that distract you, comfort you, and console you in the midst of the self-contraction. That is why you want them. That is why you like them when they arise. That is why you want; to repeat them. That is why you seek them.
Without most fundamental self-understanding, your motive for experiences in the advanced and the ultimate stages of life is exactly, the same motive that possesses you in your pursuit of things in the first three stages of life the stress of self contraction. The self-contraction must be observed, understood, transcended, and it must become a matter of your responsibility. All the potential experiences in the constructed body-mind are transcendable–they can be transcended. Only when the totality of self contraction is transcended do you become aware of the Room you are in, the Place of Existence Itself, the Divine Self-Domain.
Until then, you are aware of the construct of your own contraction, your own separateness. Without most fundamental self-understanding, even the profound, experiences that may be awakened in the advanced and the ultimate stages’ of life are without consequences of a great kind.
This is the difference between the Way of the Heart and the traditional paths, which in general pursue developmental ends, experiences to console the contracted disposition. In the Way of the Heart, there is no great significance to the investigation of the phenomena of the advanced and the ultimate, stages of life in and of themselves. You are to deal with what is already arising, the motivations that are already in you, the tendencies that are already in you. There are plenty of them already. Practicing rightly in that circumstance, then, you come to understand the fundamental error and become have a clear opportunity to transcend your fundamental dilemma, or disease. Our discussion, then, must relate to the more ordinary things that are arising and that are impediments to your moving on.
If I were entering into this “consideration” with a gathering that is practicing the Way of the Heart in the context of the fifth stage of life, well, then, we could discuss the phenomena characteristic of that stage. It is not the case, however., You are all in the beginnings of this Way of life. In general, you are entering into the beginnings of the fourth stage of life, but the experiential context of your bondage is the first three stages of life. Fundamentally, it is so. Whatever other random experiences you may also have, or have had, at this point in your practice of the Way of the Heart, the first three stages of life are the root-circumstance of, your seeking and dis-ease.
In Truth, this moment is already the Divine Self-Domain, yet you think this moment is this perceived room where you sit separately in your stress. Therefore, you cannot see the Room that is the Divine- Reality, cannot ‘experience It, enjoy It, acknowledge’ It. This disability is what we must address. I am here to enable you to transcend it to the point of most fundamental self-understanding, or true hearing, and to make the passage experientially on that basis into greater advancement.
Source:
“HEAR ME HEART-DEEP” A Guide to the Listening-Hearing Process in the Way of the Heart as Revealed by the Divine World-Teacher and True Heart-Master, Da Avabhasa (The “Bright”). Only edition: 1994.