Beezone Study *** “The individual separate self,
sense or ego is a reflection…which is mind or the
differentiating power, realized by experience…” *** “Realization is the
realization of that which is already prior to
thinking” *** “The Self or Real Consciousness
does not think. The thinker, the thoughts and all objects of
reference are utterly apart from the causal action of the
Real, the Heart” unpublished notes,
Franklin Jones (Adi Da Samraj) 1971 The Error Inherent in
Mind There is a natural feeling that
there is a thread in one’s life connecting time with some
identity call “I” or me. This “I” or me, which is given a
name at birth is associated with a body and later on more
identified with mind, an interior identity. I recently asked an 82 year old
woman how old she felt. She responded by saying, “I feel
25!” Now, obviously she was not talking about her body, but
about her mind. When someone examines this identity of “I”
one realizes quickly it is not the body they they are
referring to because the body changes. In other words, the
sense of a continuous “I”, this sense of a personal identity
is not based on the body being something that continued
through time. Nor does the remembered “Me”, of the mind
remain the same. The mind changes like the body as the
personality signs change. But yet, there is still this sense
of sameness, a continuing ‘somebody’ traveling through time.
Is this the soul? The only “you”, “I” or “me” that is
constant, constant in all the states is the “I” that is
trying to have a sense of identity. This sense of “I”
looking for a continuousness or fixed person in the
memories, concepts, photographs; this whole history,
apparent history, that keeps examining – in this changing
history, this thing, this body-mind that keeps changing. We
affirm this sense of sameness while all the time being
unable to ‘locate’ or ‘identify’ it. You appear to be thinking – but that
thinking is not actually being done by you (as you Really
Are). You
are not the thinking mind.
Rather, you are simply the formless and actionless mere
Witness of whatever is arising. The Witness-Consciousness
does not-and, indeed, cannot-think. That Which Is the mere
Witness cannot make a thought. “There is no mind. Mind is a
myth. There is language-which is programmed by brains, and
which, in turn, programs brains. However, there is no
tangible existence to “mind” itself-absolutely none.
Nevertheless, human beings identify with the “mind” as
“self”, and (thereby) invent destiny for themselves, and
even project that “self”-imagined destiny into an idea of
time and space beyond the present physical
lifetime. Mind is an interior projection of
a language-program that, in its imaginative elaboration of
itself, conceives of purposes and ideas (in the realm of
illusion) for which there are no corresponding physical
data. Human beings are all living in a “virtual world” of
mind. Human beings are, characteristically, egoically
“self”-identified with a “robot”, an artificial
intelligence. Real Intelligence is tacit (or
intrinsically wordless) living existence. Where there is
such tacit living existence, a Realizer (of Reality) can be
recognized, and you are immediately able to devote yourself
to a Realizer as Master-because such a relationship does
not, fundamentally, require any words.” Aletheon, Adi Da Samraj
– The Ancient Walk-About Way Where is it then, this thread?
When we investigate our identity
further we see we are not associated with a something at all
– not in the case of your own so-called body, your “own”
mind, or anything else or anyone else. What you observe is a
constantly shifting pattern, that is very complex, very
paradoxical, in terms of how it all fits altogether into a
constant, independent identity. If
we could see with at least some spaciousness a view beyond
our local body position, the presumed body-mind
identification, we would observe a lot of patterns and these
patterns ultimately have the pattern of a grid. This grid is
the mechanism of mind, a fracturing of light, which is the
mechanism for the perception of conditional existence. This
is the inherent nature of mind. “The truth-treasure whose
principle is the self-nature of Mind, has no selfhood
(nairatmyam), stands above all reasoning, and is free from
impurities; it points to the knowledge attained in one’s
inmost self; Lord, show me here the way leading to the
Truth.” (Lankavatara
Sutra) “…by Grace, with all Help Given
to you, your intelligence exercised, then you can break the
spell, you can move up from the pond. It is just your
reflection, you see. You open up and feel beyond, without
the self-contracted forms of mind, emotion, and body. All
that is felt beyond”. (Adi
Da Samraj). Mind is pattern moving and shifting,
always changing. Mind appears filled with characteristic of
replication, reproduction, repetition. And yet not
repetition in the sense that its sameness forever, but a
paradoxical, complexly self-replicating process of
patterning in which sameness is paradoxically never
achieved. Mind is change not sameness, or put another way;
Mind is time. Organisms use memory for survival
purposes that serve the ever flowing pattern of changes and
the participation in the those changes. But we think
memories are about us in some “me-ness” sense that is
perpetual and ongoing through time we fall into the
illusion, believing what we ‘sense’ is ‘real’. The nature of
the the mind, the body or of the world, all of ‘this’ is
continually changing – shift, shift, shift, replicating,
continuing, changing in an ever cascading flood of
experience. So where is this ever changing flow
of experience is the presumption of continuity, this thread
of sameness, then? It is Consciousness, Awareness. It is the
witness, the free witness of attention. Feeling-Awareness
and Consciousness have no relation to time. Consciousness
neither begins nor ends. It is prior to phenomenon and is
constant. It has no content, it has no “itself”, no object,
no center, no bounds. It is not in the context or the
content of the body-mind, or of objects. It is coincident
and at the same time prior to all that arises. Consciousness has no patterns. But
you, as mind, as the thinker, the feeler has a sense that
there is a constant “I” identified, experiencing these
changes. This sense of “I” is not any different at the time
of birth or at ten years old than it is now. You believe and
act as if there there is a ‘I’ that is a “you” doing life,
identifying with an ever constant sense of body-mind, world
and life. This
sense of “I” or self is a reflective mechanism of the mind
itself. Added to this is attention or the focus of mind,
‘the laser beam of attention’. There is this mechanism of
attention which lies as if it were in a grid. It never moves
and becomes the center of ‘the world’. It can appear at any
point in the grid, but it cannot go from place to place. It
is the point of association with the grid. It is a
reflection of mind. The reflection is “Narcissus”
or the illusion of self. Through the gaze of attention, “I”
or identity of mind, superimposes its own characteristic on
reflective nature of existence. The reflection becomes
interesting, threatening, desirable. But you don’t realize
that it is your own mind reflected back, you don’t know that
it is you, you think it’s an other. You don’t know or notice
that the pattern – which you are regarding to be full of
desirability, being, and so forth-is just changing illusion,
patterns of mind. And you are superimposing a feeling of
your own nature on it. “All that arises within it arises
as experience, as an interpreted reflection and limitation
of the whole. All of its impressions and memories serve it
only in functional and conventional terms. If you try to
read the Nature and Condition of things through that
experiential point of view, you will be misled. Experience
is always a form of exclusion and limitation”. The
separate “self” does not exist – except in mind and is only
a mental illusion. The illusion of mind as separate “self”
has no Reality-characteristics. Therefore, separate “self”
is a lie and a negatively-destined pattern of
life. Realization of Truth or Reality
is an intrinsically egoless matter. It is the realization of
the state that is the Divine not realization of a superior,
developed, or “evolved” mind-state. Realization of Truth of
Reality has nothing to do with “self”-identity, or ego-“I”
or anything that can be “accumulated” or “achieved” in the
states of waking, dreaming, and sleeping. The ego-“I” mind reflexively
refers everything back to itself and transforms everything
into the ego’s own pattern. The ego-“I” mind is a
pattern-driven machine of illusion and bondage – in the
midst of the Intrinsically egoless Domain of Reality
Itself. ” But if you observe, examine,
the body, the body-mind, all conditions, you find no such
fixed identity, fixed anything, fixed person in the form of
anything psycho-physical-never. It is nowhere. There is
never any “object” so-called, any complex of objects, any
pattern in time and space. You find no permanence, just
“klik-klak”, just shift-replication and shift-and many
different kinds of apparent timings and so forth. How it
appears, how you judge it and so forth, depends on point of
view, or how it seems from some point of
view.”
The human mind is a facsimile
machine. This “machine” merely replicates language-forms in
the illusion of mind. The “machine” feeds language into the
computer of the illusion of mind with which people identify
themselves. That illusion is who they mean when they refer
to themselves-the body-mind-complex, the mortal bio-form
associated with the “artificial intelligence” of talk, of
space-and-time “point of view”, of ego-“I” constructs, of
language, of language-based brain, and (altogether) of
ego-based and brain-based psycho-physical ideas and
perceptual memories. You do not “have” all of your words
in mind right now. Where are they? The only words of which
you are aware at any moment are the words you are thinking
or speaking at that moment. Where are the rest of your
words? You never think or speak all of your words at once.
You never have them in mind all at once. You are not the
mind. Where is the mind? The mind has no substantial
existence. The mind is simply stored as language-bits (or
patterns of language and remembered perceptions) in the
brain. When a particular brain dies, other replicating
machines carry on the language-mind-continuing it from one
generation to the next. Where is the “God” in that? Where is
the Divine in that? Where is the Truth in that? Where is the
Reality in that? Where is the Realization in that? The Great
Process is not in any such artificial, conditional, and
insubstantial replicating cycle. When people are “thinking”
or “talking” about “religion”, they think that “religion” is
about some kind of survival of mind, or even some kind of
survival of body-mind-“self” somewhere. Such a notion is
merely a mind-based illusion. It is a “self”-idea, a mere
and insubstantial “self”-reflection, the illusion of a
substantial and separately existing “ego”, reflected in the
Mirror That Is Reality Itself. Because of a facsimile made
of words-only some of which, in any moment, arise from the
brain and enter the field of conditional awareness-there is
the ego-presumption, or the separate-“I”-presumption, of an
infinitely self-replicating, eternal “self”-mind. There is no such thing as eternal
mind. That notion is an absolute illusion. The mind is as
mortal as the hardware, as mortal as the bodily machine.
When the machine stops working, the mind likewise stops
working. The only mind that exists afterward is the mind
carried by the other replicating machines.1 So what is there
after death? The same thing as there is before birth-Reality
Itself, the Divine Self-Nature, Self-Condition, and
Self-State only. After death-as, also, during the physical
lifetime-anything and everything of mind persists only
non-personally, as pattern patterning, without intrinsic
“self”-consciousness. If you were truly aware of mind, you
would not want it to go on. It is a terrible, horrific
source of bondage. It is a dreadful trap. Human beings are
not only trapped in the mortality of their physical bodies,
they are trapped in the absurdity of mind. More…. The
Ancient Walk-About Way
Transcendence of the Mind Is
Enlightenment of the Whole Body The mind is not out of control. The
problem is that thought, which is a superficial reflection
of the body-mind as a whole, appears to be independent of
the body. We think that thought is the mind. But the mind is
actually beyond conception. The mind is simply motives, or
unspoken desires, produced by past associations. The mind is
directly manifested only as the body itself. Therefore, the
body is the past. The past cannot be controlled. The mind
cannot ultimately or finally be controlled. The mind
survives while trying to control itself, functioning through
thought, as if independent of the body, and as if
independent of the Radiant Transcendental Consciousness.
Therefore, the independent mind must be constantly
transcended, or else there is no Realization beyond desire
and the results of desire, or bodily existence as mind. But
if the mind is transcended, then the Living Consciousness is
Revealed, and all conditions of existence, high and low, are
transparent in that Consciousness, while they are also
clearly and presently perceived, prior to thought (which is
present and chronic differentiation from the
Absolute). The mind, or desire, seems to cause
physical or bodily action. But in fact the body is not other
than the mind. Action is not caused by mind. Action is
itself mind. It is only thought that seems to be separate
from the body and to cause action. But thought is only a
superficially differentiated part of mind, or the body-mind
as a whole. Because of the relentless
continuation of thought and desire, the constant repetition
of similar experiences and the chronic conflict between
desires seem to be eternally caused, or necessary forever.
Therefore, blaming the independent mind, we seek to control
it. But this effort fails to dissolve the mind, since the
body remains. Therefore, we seek to control the actions of
the body. But the motives of the mind remain hidden behind
all our self-control. Truly, body and mind are
simultaneous with one another, and equally coincident with
the Radiant Transcendental Consciousness. The body is only
mind, and the mind is not other than the body. To play one
against the other is frustrating, and fruitless, and an
illusion founded in thinking, or disembodied mind.
Therefore, at last, it becomes clear that the Way is not
self-control any more than it is self-indulgence. Such
efforts are forever founded in the conflict or separation
between body and mind. The Way is total self-transcendence,
or the Present and Ecstatic Surrender of the whole and
entire body-mind into the Condition in which all of it is
arising. The self is not transcended in the
control of body or mind. The self is transcended only in
intuitive surrender of the body-mind as a whole into the
Radiance of the Transcendental Divine. The self, or
body-mind, is transcended only in Ecstasy, wherein the
entire body-mind is entered into God-Communion. The
body-mind must be constantly yielded into present
God-Communion, wherein body and mind are simultaneously
surrendered into Transcendental Consciousness and Radiant
Life, or Love. The body-mind as a whole must be surrendered
into Radiant Consciousness, or the All-Pervading life, which
is the Condition of Love. If this is done moment to moment,
via every function of the body-mind, in all relations, under
all circumstances, and through every action, then the self
is constantly transcended, the mind is constantly
transcended, the body and all its conditions are constantly
transcended. Then the strategy of self-indulgence and the
strategy of self-control are both equally dissolved in a
natural economy of existence, and mere existence is always
transcended in Ecstasy, prior to thought, prior to desire,
and prior to the body. If thought and desire are stilled,
the mind appears to have been transcended. But such is the
illusion of mystics and yogis. The mind is transcended only
if the body is made transparent in Consciousness. Therefore,
if the true mind Dissolves in Radiance, even the body is
Enlightened. And true Enlightenment is bodily
Enlightenment. When mind is transcended in
Transcendental Consciousness, the past is Dissolved in
Bliss. In that instant, the body is mindless, free of the
past. Indeed, when the body is free of mind, the body is not
created. Therefore, the body also Realizes the Radiance that
is prior to self-definition and self-division, or the
differentiation of the mind, wherein thought, inwardness, or
subjectivity stands over against the body. The body becomes
Transfigured in that Ecstasy. And then the body, in the same
instant in which the last trace of self-differentiating mind
is transcended in Consciousness, also Dissolves in the
Radiant Bliss or Love wherein desire and thought and mind
and self first
appeared. The body is first and
last. Enlightenment of the Whole
Body – Adi Da Samraj – 1977
“The Conscious Light of Being Itself
is not “doing” anything whatsoever. The body-mind-complex is
a “play” on Reality Itself, a “seeming” that is full of
self-“caused” characteristics. That Which Is the Mere
Witness-Consciousness does not have a body, and is not a
body-mind-“self’. In Truth, there are no forms or
modifications or limitations. You-or the mind of
“self’-illusion-only presume them. The forms, modifications,
and limitations you presume are, in and of themselves,
non-existent-although they seem to exist. In Reality, they
are nothing but transparent (or merely apparent), and
non-necessary, and intrinsically non-binding modifications
of the Divine Self-Nature, Self-Condition, and
Self-State-Reality Itself, Which Is Always Already The Case.
When you are Established in That, by That, As That-by virtue
of My Transcendental Spiritual Divine Blessing-Invasion,
That Turns you about and “inside” out and “outside” in, and
Vanishes ego-“I” in My Sight-then you Awaken from your false
presumptions. You are simply misinterpreting what you are
seeing in the Mirror That Is Reality Itself. You do not know
what you are looking at, “Narcissus”. You think it is an
“other”-but the “other” is only you” . Aletheon
– Adi Da Samraj
PERFECT KNOWLEDGE IS PERFECT
FREEDOM FROM ALL ILLUSIONS OF MIND In general, people do not understand
that they are (literally) living in an egoic illusion of
mind. In the ancient setting, people were
involved in the illusory mind of the dream-state. They were
not involved in anything extraordinary relative to verbal
sophistication and conceptual mind. They lived in a very
straightforward sensory context, from day to day, in the
waking state—but the dream-mind was the form of mind in
which they were principally (or most deeply) involved, and
to which they reached for help, and consolation, and wisdom.
If you examine the most ancient (and, even now, traditional)
literature, you will see that it is the literature of people
who took the dream-mind to be the senior reality—the
reality that (in their understanding) indicated their real,
true, and ultimate destiny. And that dream-mind, or
dream-“world”, was populated with the
“deities”, archetypes, symbols, and whole systems
of myth that became the resource of ancient (and, even now,
traditional) “religion”. In modern civilization and
societies, the mind that is binding people is the
waking-state mind—the complex perceptual-conceptual
thinking and remembering mind that originates in the waking
state. In the modern era, there is, generally speaking, no
longer a great deal of depth-sensitivity to the dream-state,
and little postulating of a separate metaphysical existence
for the dream-“world” and the
dream-“self”. Characteristically, people of the
modern (and rather secularized, or de-sacralized) era
presume there is no reality to “other
worlds”—because people of the modern era no longer
think of the dream-mind as an alternative (or
metaphysically, separately, and independently existing)
reality. During their waking hours, people of
the modern era typically presume they are “in” the
only “real world”—which, to them, means the
physical “world”. In actuality, however, such
people are merely in the waking-state mind—not in the
Real (or non-mental) “world”, not in the
“world” As “it” Is (Prior to mind), and,
indeed, not “in” any thing at all that is not
merely the perceptual-conceptual mind itself. Therefore,
being “in” and of mind-only, they do not recognize
the apparent perceptual-conceptual “world” As
“it” Is. In the modern era, people have a
weak dream-mind but a strong perceptual-conceptual (or
waking-state) mind. The waking-state mind is the illusory
mind of the modern human being. The waking-state
mind—rather than the dream-mind—is the mind in
which the modern human being is trapped. However, the
waking-state mind is, itself, a kind of
dream-mind—because, like any form of mind, the
waking-state mind is a perceptual-conceptual structure,
patterned by the brain, and “experienced” entirely
and exclusively within the limits and confines of its own
patterns and states. Even every moment of perception is
memory-only. The psycho-physical (and
“point-of-view”-bound) apparatus of perception
naturally introduces a time-lapse (or
registering-and-recording interlude), to enable the brain
and nervous system to “capture” the any moment of
physical (or total psycho-physical) perception. Every moment of conceptual activity
(or conventional human “knowing”) is subordinate
to all memory-based perceptual activity—because all
conceptual activity is subsequent to inherently
“late” perceptions, and always only as an exercise
of the totally memory-based brain-body (or generalized
psycho-physical) formulations of pre-recorded
“experience” (or even imagination and
illusion). Adi Da Samraj –
Aletheon
Why isn’t that which is prior to
thinking always already obvious? “Anything in the mind or of the mind
is not true. So all of your pursuit of answers or states of
mind or content for your thinking is fruitless, but what are
you going to do about it? Well, first of all you don’t
believe this. That’s why you continue in the search that is
moment-to-moment thinking without end. You don’t even
necessarily notice that your thinking IS a matter of
seeking. You think there’s SOME kinds of thinking that may
be said to be motivated by a search, but you don’t think
that thinking is seeking and yet it is ALWAYS seeking. It is
itself seeking, so if the Way is not seeking nor can the
Truth be realized by seeking, then thinking has nothing to
do with it and you should just forget about thinking from
now on, but you can’t do that, can you? You’re already
thinking even though I just told you that. Don’t be thinking
anymore. [laughter]. You see, you’re already
thinking. Just to be told that you think, you have to think
to get the words I just uttered. So the receiver of those
words is the thinking and it’s not going to stop because it
hears the words. But in fact it is true that it has
nothing to do with thinking and thinking cannot achieve it.
All thinking is seeking, all thinking is self-contraction,
realization is not about quieting the mind or the effort of
doing that. It’s not about stopping thinking. It’s not about
the fact of no thinking. Realization is the realization of
that which is already prior to thinking. Already there is no
thinking. Thinking comes after the already which isn’t a
something that happens and so what does talking have to do
with it? How can it possibly illuminate the process? So it
is given, yes served by words as I must, but it is given
wordlessly except that you can’t accept the conveyance of
the wordless means. You have to keep being explained
to. Why isn’t that which is prior to
thinking always already obvious? Why is some procedure
necessary, some explanation? Why isn’t it just Self-Evident?
It IS. You just don’t think it’s so. And it’s not merely
that you just don’t think it’s so, your thinking is why it
isn’t so. So there IS something about all this thinking and
breathing and walking and sensing and reacting and emoting
and all this body-mind business which is what you refer to
BY reference and it’s an activity in terms of all of that
body-mind that IS what the “I” is, what the ego-“I” is, the
contraction of the body-mind such that tacitly there is the
perpetual sense of separateness and of difference, a sense
of relatedness. Where there’s a sense of separateness or
difference. There is inherently a sense of relatedness or
that from which there is separation. You have both
dimensions. They are the tacit foundation of all egoity, all
thinking, but it’s not sufficient to just say this and
explain it or point it out. It must be realized to be
so. Hearing is a profound necessary
dimension of the process of this Way. The process is
devotional and spiritual in nature, not philosophically
determined, not caused by thoughts, not caused by words of
instruction or explanation, so My Words to you are guidance
which you must embrace based on your tacit recognition of
Me, of My State of Person, but that’s the means, that
turning to Me, recognized, that turns the faculties from the
contracted inwardness or egoic self-reference and person in
the egoic sense and this becomes surrender in communion with
Me such that you are able to receive My direct Spiritual
Transmission of this Very State and it’s not that you are to
become philosophically convinced of the argument and that
that philosophical conviction becomes the method or the
realization. So these discourses have use.” Adi Da Samraj – October
2004
More:
Adapted and edited from various talks and writings of Adi Da
Samraj
Atma Nadi
Shakti Yoga
Invisible Man –
Adi Da Samraj 1975
Adi Da Samraj –
2004
Adi
Da Samraj,
1995
Enlightenment of the
Whole Body
Svetasvatara
Upanishad
Garbage and The
Goddess
(edited and adapted
from Atma
Nadi Shakti Yoga)
Where is the
Mind?
MORE