There’s No Escape, There’s Only Realization – Section 3

DEVOTEE: Beloved, you mentioned that if a person was serious it shouldn’t take them more than six months.

AVATARA ADI DA: I talked about if someone is truly serious, to spend six months as a student-novice, six months as a student-beginner, and then six months for 1.1 and 1.2 to hearing. That’s a reasonable course. It could even be the basically common one if people were really serious. And what about that then?

DEVOTEE: No, I was just considering it.

AVATARA ADI DA: Sure. So in particular, we talked about the transition from mature student beginner to 1.3, and I Said if you really consented to fully adapt to all the foundation practice, no vacations, you see, and actually establish that, then if you’re really serious, to hear Me in six months is perfectly reasonable. But some people carry a lot more baggage than others, and it might take somewhat longer, even though they are serious. But six months is a fairly reasonable general idea.

And how long have you taken so far?

DEVOTEE: About fourteen years.

AVATARA ADI DA: So much the worse for you, Carl. [Laughter.] But we already covered that, though, the why of that. If it takes a long time, its because you are taking a vacation. So its easy to know what to do about it then.

So what else do you want to talk about then? [long silent pause]

Shall we adjourn?

DEVOTEES: No, no, no.

AVATARA ADI DA: No what?

DEVOTEE: I have a question.

AVATARA ADI DA: Tcha.

DEVOTEE: This intensive period of hearing, six months period culminating in hearing, in a somewhat summary and all inclusive event …

AVATARA ADI DA: Even a better way of putting it, it is a most fundamental event, not just a whole lot of things coming together. Its getting at the root.

DEVOTEE: And at that summary point of the crisis of hearing which is severe is the way that we don’t prolong its course, through the process of seeing?

AVATARA ADI DA: Through intensive practice. Intensive practice altogether. Most intensive practice, one-pointed practice.

DEVOTEE: That process doesn’t come together at that point, hearing, in the sense of seeing immediately.

AVATARA ADI DA: Not seeing immediately, no. What follows is a period, which in general wouldn’t be very long, of preparing for the Yoga of seeing. So seeing doesn’t arise coincident with hearing, certainly not in any fullest sense. But it is because of hearing that you become truly Spiritually sensitized to Me.

Devotees, even without hearing Me, have Spiritual experiences of Me in the body-mind, one way or another. But that’s not seeing. Hearing must be active in order to see Me. There must be the capability of feeling beyond the self-contraction and making that the basis for your practice of Ishta-Guru-Bhakti Yoga.

So when there is true hearing of Me, a sensitivity develops and is cultivated through that 1.3 period of sadhana so that you can make use of My Spiritual Transmission directly and “Locate” Me directly, rather than just have My Spiritual Force wash over you and generate experiences in the body-mind for their own sake. So hearing is cultivated in the 1.3 stage such that you become capable of this Spiritual submission to Me. The 1.3 stage is sometimes thought of by devotees as a period to test whether you have heard Me or not. Truly that is not what it should be. It should simply be so, that you’ve heard Me. Its most fundamentally a period of preparation for seeing Me, of organizing the practice based on hearing in a focused way in order to be sensitized to Me Spiritually. And then there is the level 2 practice, which is the direct approach to Me Spiritually. So the true process of seeing, not just Spiritual experiencing of Me but real seeing of Me, becomes the Yoga for you at level 3. Again, some think that seeing is about some Spiritual reception of Me in the body-mind, that kriyas and visions and so forth are supposed to be what happens. Such things may happen, but they are not the Yoga. The Yoga is to feel beyond all effects and “Locate” Me directly so that you can be drawn into the position of the “Perfect Practice”.

So it is a special kind of Spiritual preparation that is based on hearing. Its a process that you enter into as soon as you’ve heard Me. But its first stage, we call it preparation for fully entering into Spiritual Communion with Me. Whereas I Said, even before then, you may have had Spiritual experiences of Me, but they are not the point in the Spiritual stages of this Way. But what about all that?

DEVOTEE: Thank you, Beloved. I have another question.

AVATARA ADI DA: Tcha.

DEVOTEE: In the 1.3 period, which is, as you were Saying, an aspect of the seeing practice …

AVATARA ADI DA: Its preparation for it.

DEVOTEE: … its not fully entering into Your Spiritual Presence but it is preparation for that, in that stage-and I apologize if this question is so backwards in terms of my understanding of it in the Teaching.

AVATARA ADI DA: Well, the bench accepts your motion. [Laughter.]

DEVOTEE: In that 1.3 period, your life becomes organized around putting yourself in the position of preparing to see You, or cultivating that understanding, or that development, into full seeing by, You were Saying, organizing your life in a certain way. And I just wanted to clarify that.

AVATARA ADI DA: Yes, through that focus of the hearing exercise. Not just working on peripheral behaviors or checking out what’s going on with you in emotional-sexual terms and so forth-not really that-but this direct exercise, moment to moment, of feeling beyond the self-contraction. And maybe it wouldn’t involve so many outward changes in your life. But it is a matter of realizing your life in this focus of hearing, in this exercise of hearing. And during that period, another thing that makes it a period of preparation is that the whole matter of seeing Me is studied and the Yoga you must practice once you have entered into the seeing process, what all of its responsibilities are and so forth. So it is preparation in the educational sense as well.

Also, the “conscious process” in one who has heard Me has a mental-verbal aspect to it. Like the Enquiry, “Avoiding relationship?”, or Mantra-Japa and so forth. One who has heard Me will in that moment still be practicing in that fashion, but the exercise of hearing has such power that it becomes a tacit process more and more rather than a verbal process. There is always the occasion of the Enquiry and so on, but fundamentally it becomes simply this exercising the flower, this constant pressing beyond all forms of contraction. [Beloved opens His hand at the level of the heart on the right side.] That means all forms of thought, all forms of perception, everything. So to realize your life in those terms is a profound matter. That’s what hearing initiates, and that’s what the 1.3 period is really all about. Its a period of study and preparation for the specifics of the Yoga of seeing. Its not expected to be a very long period.

DEVOTEE: Thank you, Beloved.

AVATARA ADI DA: Tcha.

What else? You got anything else, Stanley?

DEVOTEE: Beloved, I thought it was interesting that awhile back You brought up this example of all perceptions of the room. And most strongly in the beginning of this consideration this evening, when we all took that moment to drop deeply in that space, the very sensation that I had at that time was that of feeling the self-contraction when You Spoke of noticing the anxiety but then also seeing You and feeling You as “Bright” Energy, all Energy and Light-that I was phasing between these two, of actually feeling that sensation. And there wasn’t even any one to be sensing it.

AVATARA ADI DA: Yes, but don’t misunderstand Me. The course need not take long to get out of this lock. Its not that sadhana has to go on for years, once you’ve heard Me, of painful meditation on the stress in your abdomen, or something. Yes, hearing is association with the pain of the self-contraction, but it is in the context of the capability for Communion with Me. So in any moment where you have lapsed from Communion with Me, you’ve got to re-initiate it, and you must function from the point of the self-contraction then. But as you mature, if you are practicing with intensity, you get to the point where you don’t lapse so much. You don’t have to re-initiate it all the time by going back into the sensation of the knot of self-contraction, you see, because you’re always moved beyond it-at least to some sufficient degree-and, rarely, expand even further.

So its not that the lapsing to the point where you’ve got to re-initiate it totally stops quickly, but it shouldn’t take very long before you are beyond that relapse a lot of the time. So you would not have the painful self-meditation persist. But you are not there to meditate on the pain of the self-contraction, and you are there with the capability to feel beyond it into Communion with Me. And having that taste, then you don’t want to relapse.

So the exercise becomes more and more purifying, more and more steady, and the fall from blissful Communion with Me, or even the diminishment of it, becomes less and less frequent because you would not have it be otherwise. You would not waste your time having to constantly start from the position of pain and be somewhat bewildered but press through and then you’re on the outside of it again. You don’t want to do that too much. Once a philosopher, twice a pervert.

So having entered into Communion with Me, you stay there if you are smart. And you don’t lapse. If the tendencies draw you back again, well, you know what to do and you get out of it quickly. So that’s what it means to have the arms of hearing or to exercise those arms.

So it isn’t, then, if you do effective sadhana, a matter of having to be constantly feeling this stress of self-contraction, the pain of dissociation from the Radiant Condition. You can move beyond it by Grace and in this right sadhana, and do so readily if you are smart, if you heard Me. Read My Words and come quickly and see Me, and then that’s the end of that. If you are smart, you don’t lapse from Communion with Me. You don’t have to. And if you are drawn back, you know what to do-but you don’t like having to do that so much. So you consent to be in Samadhi. You consent to be Happy instead.

And that’s true renunciation, you see. The outward details of a life of renunciation can look different from person to person, but its this abiding in Samadhi, in Blissful Communion, ultimately in Inherent Realization of Me, that is right life, is true renunciation. And it will show itself as true renunciation in whatever is your particular manner. You may be sexually active in intimacy or a celibate renunciate, whatever. But it will be utterly conformed. Your life will be utterly conformed to that Blissful Communion. And you wont lapse from it so that you get busied with doing other things to satisfy the broken impulses of egoity.

So you don’t have to persist in feeling the self-knot, having discovered it and become responsible for it. You simply move from there into Communion with Me. Do so steadily. Manage the discipline of your life accordingly, altogether. And that is simply a matter of always being in a Radiant Condition, in body, in feeling, in the whole face of attention, in every breath. There is no self-knot, effective anyway. You are making it ineffective, and more and more profoundly so.

And such it is when you enter into the “Perfect Practice” and pass on to the Awakening to the seventh stage. Its not that then Samadhi begins. It is then the Samadhi is Perfected. Samadhi must be the life before then. And you must get to the point where you can persist in It. There are variations in the mode of this Samadhi, but the fundamental Samadhi that I am talking about is the Samadhi of being beyond the self-contraction and Communing with Me. It is a different state of Consciousness and of Being than the personality that is registering the self-knot, or otherwise dramatizing it.

So I am talking about the Samadhi of Radiance, of no-contraction. It is just that. It does not have any other characteristics. There are the Samadhis that pertain to each of the stages, but they are just another expression of this fundamental Samadhi, this Bhava. So then, having become that much proficient, having seen Me, you do right Yoga of Communion with Me, and the body feels Radiant. The heart, the feeling, feels Radiant instead of becoming complicated by contracting emotions. If the mind becomes clear, it relaxes and becomes usable by intention instead of just being a babble of garbage that you feel is out of your control. So it is a Spiritual life, a life in utter Communion with Me according to the characteristics of that stage. And it is a life in Samadhi rather than the ego. So it is a Radiant Condition, a “Bright” Condition that is the basis for devotees moving on to the “Perfect Practice”.

To see Me is to have your Spiritual sadhana be simply this one of self-forgetting Communion with Me rather than relaxing the body-mind in order to have an energy experience. So that’s the difference between seeing and just being there to have experiences in the body-mind. So the transition from level 2 to level 3 requires that sign, not rigidity and not merely a person exaggeratedly motivated towards psycho-physical experiences of the Spiritual kind, but this Samadhi, this “Locating” of Me beyond the self-knot and being able to “Locate” Me thus Spiritually so that you become Radiant in Communion with Me.

So that’s what there is to look for when somebody says that they’ve seen Me. That confession and also that observable sign is visible in various ways that you almost immediately become sensitive to.

So I am trying to impress you all and everyone who will read this and so on what the process of listening, hearing, and seeing is really all about. Not to turn you away from it but to welcome you to it, to inspire you to it, because it is within the capability of every single one of you if you will accept the life I have Given you with all of its details and the practice I have Given to you in all its profundity. How could you come into My Company and be inclined toward anything else? It always seems remarkable to Me. But when this seeing process truly develops founded on true hearing, which is the capability to go beyond the self-knot, then you are in the Sphere of My “Brightness” in a very profound sense and are constantly absorbed in Me. Even the body-mind starts flowering in various ways, you might notice, indicating Spiritual signs. But they are not the thing itself. They are not the sadhana, they’re not the import of the process.

Its when you’ve allowed, then, the body-mind to be thoroughly Irradiated in the third practicing stage by showing signs like the Samadhi of “the Thumbs” and so on at times, but altogether given yourself up in Communion with Me Spiritually and altogether beyond the self-knot, then various purifying signs are noticed in various ways in the body-mind that are really just about the circuitry of the body-mind adapting to accommodate My Spiritual Force. So there are things to notice, things to breathe through, all of that, you know, things to exercise beyond. And the third practicing stage ought to be sufficient. It should be a purification based on the sadhana I have just Described to you such that you are drawn into the Root-Place of My Presence. The changes in the body-mind are just signs of purification leading to this foundation for the “Perfect Practice”.

So that’s what the level 3 practice is about. It is about a process that is sufficient in itself for the transition to the “Perfect Practice”. So it is not a preliminary to ascending Yoga and so forth. It is not about developmental Yoga at all. It is about the Yoga of ego-transcendence in Communion with Me. All of this is very direct, and I’ve made everything clear to you in all the details of what it is all about.

So that’s why I have Described this time from now on as the Santosha Epoch, because I have thoroughly Communicated everything to You. And I could repeat My Self and elaborate on it if I feel like talking to devotees sometimes, but I’ve made My Communication to you all and you have to live it in relation to Me and prove yourself as a serious devotee of Mine so that I can Work with you. But perhaps some of the Words in this discussion and discussions in recent days could be added to the Adi Da Upanishad if you find some of this language serving your understanding, to add something to the other forms of My Consideration.

Is there anything else you’d like to talk about? [pause]

The seventh stage Realizer doesn’t like the life anymore than a six stage Realizer does. Its just that the seventh stage Realizer doesn’t do anything to prevent it or to dissociate from it. The seventh stage Realization is not about having an inclination to cling to conditions. It is utterly renounced, in other words, and not a return to the world or another version of egoity. The Disposition is absolutely Radiant, and so It is the Disposition that would Outshine conditional existence, not perpetuate it. It simply, as I Said, does nothing to prevent it. On the other hand, the process of Divine Recognition goes on inevitably, moment to moment. So association with conditional existence will not be infinitely prolonged, if there is that force of Recognition Divine.

So the Disposition even in the total body-mind is to Glow, to be Radiant to the point of no-noticing. No-noticing of conditions, no modifications, the Divine Condition without any further association with conditional limitations. Just as I was Saying to you earlier, in the event of hearing the process goes on. You would not have it be prolonged as a process of being aware of the self-contraction. You enter into Samadhi more and more continuously.

Well, so in the seventh stage Disposition. It is not a lapse into conditions. It is a Demonstration of the Divine Recognition of conditions. There is no dissociation, no contraction, but Recognition. All this is nothing but an apparent, non-binding modification of the Divine Self-Condition. It is Realized to be Self-Radiant, Self-Existing Consciousness, Love-Bliss-Being, already the case, and so it Recognizes everything as just That. And that’s the seventh stage Demonstration. So it is not an intention to prolong association with conditional existence at all, but it is not an effort to dissociate from it.

You see the difference?

Now, some may move rather readily into the Divine Translation Demonstration. Others may, on the basis of the same Samadhi of Most Perfect Realization, remain in the Transfiguration, Transformation Sign, and they reappear in this world or reappear in some other plane, continually a Demonstration of this Way that serves until the process of Divine Recognition moves beyond that, into Divine Translation. But the Disposition is not about lingering. It is about “Brightening”. So I tell the Kanyas, one of their unique functions or conditions of sadhana is to keep Me from Outshining this place too quickly, to keep Me associated with it in some pleasurable way, as devotees altogether should do. You should be here to perpetuate My Incarnation, not to cause My Indifference too soon, My total Indifference.

So it can serve you. So no more making Me sarvadhikari and so on. I am not here to do any of that. You are here to preserve Me and do the sadhana. Give Me the means to Work by bringing Me devotees, yourselves and many others. But to have time to do so, I must be pleasurized, odalisqued somehow into an association with you all, pleasurably, though, because the seventh stage Sign, Disposition, is simply Radiant. It doesn’t prolong associations unless it is somehow coaxed, moved to exercise that Bhava in place somehow for some time. You get the God to stay by feeding it milk and sweets. Otherwise the temple dies, and they sell energies left over from that Puja.

So you should keep the God Alive in This Body, you see. You have to coax Me into a less Indifferent disposition. Otherwise the flower magnifies beyond interest.

But the ultimate fulfillment of the Way, then, is not evolutionary and visionary and so forth in all that conditional sense. The ultimate Demonstration of this Way is the absolute Outshining of conditional existence without a jot left behind. So that’s what it is to be My devotee. It is to be moved, to flower to infinity and not hold on to conditional existence. You use the circumstances by transforming it into sadhana, into Yoga, but you don’t bind yourself to it.

DEVOTEE: Beloved, this is why I love Your Description of the clay pigs.

AVATARA ADI DA: Tcha. [Indicating a small clay pig on a table.] I have a little example over here. I used that simile for a while last year when we were in Suva. I guess when I first arrived there, the devotees there gave Me a whole bunch of these little clay pigs. It turns out its an apt metaphor in the situation in Fiji, because they have a long history of the use of the pig sacredly. And so in making this little image, its something they sell in a museum or to tourists or whatever, but it is also an example of something more or less like they would have done in their ritual life and so forth. So I have actual clay pigs I can get all the time. I have suggested that these be made for devotees. I don’t think that was ever done, was it?

We should sell them on the island, for instance. We sell all kinds of other things. Its a reminder of this aspect of My Teaching.

DEVOTEE: You have them all over Your rooms.

AVATARA ADI DA: Every time I get another one, I put them around someplace in the environment.

But I am not talking about an ordinary little clay-baking machine.

DEVOTEE: No, You are talking about a Maha-furnace.

AVATARA ADI DA: A smelting furnace in some sense. But I like the metaphor of the clay pig because if you look at a clay object in an oven, initially it is cold and so forth. As it heats, the clay reddens but the surrounding space also glows more and more. And after a time you cant distinguish the pig from the space. The pig is Outshined. There is only the Space Itself, the Condition Itself in Which that apparent modification is arising. So this Way is about realizing the Source, the Source-Condition, and not about perpetuating conditional existence for its own sake or looking for some kind of tour of the cosmic domain.

See, there are Yogas and traditions that are about doing just all of that, taking a tour of the worlds and so forth through developmental stages. Swami Muktananda had a lot of this orientation. So there are developmental Yogas, and teachers who serve that and so forth, but it is not about the Truth Itself. It is not about Divine Self-Realization Itself. It is about egoic life perpetuated for the sake of achieving some glorious condition, immortal and in an extraordinary play-land of some kind.

DEVOTEE: Right to the heart of it, Lord.

AVATARA ADI DA: Mm. So if you are looking to perpetuate that, and you are afraid of being without a world, then you wont do the “radical” sadhana, which cuts it to the quick, goes to the Source direct, by transcending egoity itself rather than engaging in an egoic adventure.

What else?

DEVOTEE: Beloved, You said today that we have to have an utterly surrendered body-mind to practice in the level 2 of practice in relationship to You and the Yogic process.

AVATARA ADI DA: Yes. Earlier in the year, so that others know the background of it, there were some individuals who were supposedly prepared for the level 2 sadhana, and I sat with them every couple of days or so for a period of time. Some obviously disqualified themselves for various reasons of even ordinary matters in their practice that weren’t handled, but at the end there, there were maybe half a dozen or so. And among the things I had to criticize them about was the unavailability of their body-minds.

Some would sit there. I would look about. And some of them were sitting there as if they were practicing some sort of a technique, just sort of doing something with themselves, not profoundly entered into Communion with Me. Some others would maintain some regard of Me, but they were minimally moved obviously. And then some others would even show some signs of some kriyas, spontaneous vocalizations, and so on, but no greater depth than that. So we stopped those groups at one time finally and then just considered lots of matters that I had observed about it all as well as other things that we were discussing.

But if hearing is true, and the approach to Me for the sake of seeing Me is engaged as I have Given it, if all the requirements of practice are truly there, the one who enters into this seeing approach to Me is completely available to Me, thoroughly given over to Me, thoroughly entered into Communion with Me, is not practicing some self-meditative technique but is thoroughly given over to Me, whole bodily surrendered, self-forgetting.

Then the body-mind is allowed to be a mechanism of “conductivity”, of Yoga, in Communion with Me. And all aspects of the body-mind then become thoroughly oriented to Me in the level 3 practice so that the root is discovered and the “Perfect Practice” can be done.

DEVOTEE: Is this why the level 2 period is relatively brief?

AVATARA ADI DA: It should be, but, as I Said, seeing is not true unless there is this Yoga I have Described to you about the pursuing of experiences, about this Samadhi of constantly being beyond the self-contraction in Spiritual Communion with Me. That shouldn’t take a long time if somebody has truly heard Me, but it does require the entire body-mind, the entire person, to be in this disposition of surrendered Communion with Me. Now, if somebody has truly heard Me, then that will be so. But I have to see that sign.

[Leaning back and speaking to Kanya Tripura] Is this the Ivy League bus? What is this group? [Laughter] Is anyone else considering anything here but Me? Am I the only one considering something and you’re all just eating, or what’s happening?

DEVOTEES: No. No, were not eating Beloved.

AVATARA ADI DA: There’s coughing. [Everyone has had the flu.] don’t do it too much or you’ll make Me start coughing. I’m thinking of indulging in a cough right now, but I know it will go on for awhile if I get into it. [Beloved coughs quickly.] Ill just give it brief satisfaction.

DEVOTEE: We could call this tape, “It sounds good to me, Lord.”

AVATARA ADI DA: We could.

DEVOTEE: From your Point of View, Lord.

AVATARA ADI DA: Well, its an amusing enough comment that did summarize something about our consideration-maybe.

But is there anything more about this? Have we exhausted it or what?

DEVOTEE: I just felt earlier on in the guided meditation, Beloved, that in the moment in which You were Drawing us deeply into perceiving You, I actually saw You as the Divine Person, as Spiritual Presence, and it was just a remarkable Gift. And it reminded me that the level 2 process is about “Locating” You Spiritually, finding You Present in that Form.

AVATARA ADI DA: And it is even “Locating” Me whole bodily. It is not you just sort of having a generalized sense of your body and feeling like I am here or feeling Me here in your heart somewhere. Of course there are sensations like that, but that’s not the It of it. Its whole bodily participation in Me, everything about the body-mind given over. Its the point of being Spiritually immersed in Me, “Brightened”. And then, the Force of that “Brightness” Invading the body-mind altogether, I Attract You to the Source Point. So that’s the unique Spiritual Yoga in this Way, rather than a tour of the chakras and planes of perceptions and so forth. Although these things may occur spontaneously, they are not the It of it, they are not the Yoga, they are not the intention. And ultimately they are nothing more than a distraction anyway, in themselves.

There is one-pointed Communion with Me, just that Samadhi, beyond the self-contraction. That’s the real process. Everything else is at least potentially a distraction from it, whether it is subtle experiences or gross ones. So you don’t go seeking for anything. And what’s already there, what arises on its own, you deal with it as a Yogi in this Way, transcending the ego itself directly, always.

Until this purification enables the whole body-mind to conduct Me and be drawn to the heart on the right, until that occurs, there are the symptoms of all of that happening and you must persist in the Yoga I have Given you. But then it comes to a point, and it would naturally be associated with all of the other signs of being mature at level 3, where there is no interference in “conductivity” at all and it becomes immediately and tacitly obvious that you Stand in the Witness-Position and don’t have to think yourself into or go through an argument to “Locate” It. It is a tacit and direct state of awareness.

But then you must exercise the Yoga further on that basis. So you don’t just sit around Witnessing. That Disposition is simply acknowledged, but it is activated very directly, rather immediately-the second form of the “Perfect Practice”, which is to enter into My Sphere without “Difference”, on the Source side of attention, Prior to attention and being Drawn to Jnana Samadhi. But even in that Drawing, in that very process and the coming back from it, the sadhana goes on, to locate and pass beyond the last knot. The gesture that has you moving deeper, the gesture that has you moving away from conditions, is found to be the last contraction, or the source contraction.

So then the condition of Open Eyes, or the seventh stage Awakening, occurs. And, in effect, Jnana Samadhi is perpetual but without dissociation. So it is a state of Samadhi beyond description, but It doesn’t dissociate from conditions. It Recognizes them. So It is an ever “Brightening” Force of Realization that expands through and beyond conditions. It can show Itself in various remarkable ways in the Transfiguration, Transformation stages, perhaps, because the Force of Divine Recognition stimulates, “Brightens”, every organism, every mechanism. But it need not be very elaborate in those terms. And then it becomes a very simple matter of this Force of Recognition, this sublime Samadhi, simply “Brightening”. And that’s the initiation in the Indifference Demonstration, but it has no time-frame. It can be prolonged.

You managed to be indifferent to Me in the egoic sense, and that does not make for right sadhana. It doesn’t allow you to use My Blessing. It doesn’t allow you to Realize anything, and it doesn’t incline Me to persist. I have no karma. The body-mind is a karmic entity itself, but it is being Outshined by Me. So at this stage it is not My business or inclination to be prolonging any conditional association. So you have to take hold of Me. This is what is done in the traditions with Realizers of any degree. At some point their existence is perpetuated only by devotees. And then if it is not there, if it lapses or whatever, they go on.

So you are all in the best possible position any human being can be in with the Revelation and the obligation to respond to it for real. Both of these. So not only the Kanyas and My children and their intimates and so forth are Given this special Calling to move Me into association with you all, but all devotees have this obligation. Those who do it around Me in My immediate physical sphere every day are supposed to just be a sign to you all of how to do it. This is what its all about. Do this. don’t ask us what to do-do what we do.

So you must let the immediate physical circle around Me live this life of ecstatic devotion and Realization, not make them into managers and so. And then that’s the function of these immediate circles around Me, to make that sign to everyone. Without it, how would everyone know what to do? They just have to see devotees do it. So that’s the special Calling and Gift to some, because there can only be some numbers of that. But they must understand it as a real obligation. That’s their function, and everyone must see that that’s what they must do and do it in their fashion and in their relative proximity to Me or whatever or relative distance apparently. So that’s why I keep Saying, “don’t come to Me empty-handed anymore. Lets see your gifts. Where is the good news about institution, culture, community, and mission? And where’s My true Hermitage? Where are the devotees moving on in practice? Where is the Lay Renunciate Order?” It is not amusing.

In one weeks time you are going to be celebrating the tenth anniversary of the initiation of My Divine Emergence here, which is supposed to be the turning point in the orientation of devotees so that they would make their relationship to Me right, and make the sadhana right. And we are about to celebrate the tenth anniversary of your not doing this yet. Obviously the Event should be celebrated, but it should be celebrated by this gift of right practice and right signs altogether. Otherwise, you are not even noticing Who I Am. So that’s what it means to celebrate the celebrations I have Given you.

Every one of the celebrations is a celebration in the sadhana sense, not really in the social sense. Every one of the celebrations is about the same thing, this celebration of Me, this Communion with Me. But each celebration also has some special focus of one kind or another. But you celebrate Me by doing sadhana and magnifying your sadhana, having special events where you get together collectively to do the same, serve one another by doing that.

But you can turn them into social celebrations or cultural celebrations in the ordinary sense, you see. So its all about lectures and meals and socializing, and that’s that. I mean, its fine to have a meal and talk to your friends and hear some good considerations, but it cant be just that alone. Its got to be the actual sadhana of Communion with Me, individually and collectively, not ignoring My Divine Emergence, but really celebrating Me and making use of My Revelation.

The way you do that is not merely by making it a bigger and bigger apparent celebration outwardly, but really practicing the Way in that and every other circumstance. Use the celebratory means to magnify your Communion with Me rather than merely to socialize with one another and have a cultural day, so to speak.

So you know what January the 10th here, January the 11th in Fiji, is about-My Divine Emergence here. If you’re My devotee, then you celebrate it by doing the sadhana of it. So you completely abandon this wrong way of relating to Me and this vacation-land relative to your sadhana, and you straighten out. Otherwise, what is the point of going and throwing little pieces of paper in the fire and getting a nice new colorful piece of orange stuff to put around your neck. Its nothing more than that if you don’t really embrace the sadhana.

So the purpose of the celebrations is to enhance everyone’s involvement in the real sadhana. Even every weeks Guruvara is about that. So really all celebration days in this Way are retreat days. That doesn’t mean there’s no outwardness to the celebration, but its still everyone thoroughly concentrated in Communion with Me and being served relative to that by everything they do all the day or in that event.

Do you all have any idea what I’m talking about?

DEVOTEES: Yes, Beloved. [All talk at once.]

DEVOTEE: One of the most profound Gifts I felt in the Celebration circumstance was actually last year at the Da Ashvamedha Celebration. We were watching the production of The Mummery .

AVATARA ADI DA: Live here?

DEVOTEE: Yeah, last year, and …

AVATARA ADI DA: It was only a partial production, I hear, but go on-well get into that later.

DEVOTEE: And I had heard The Mummery and seen it enacted a number of times, but what was really the most wonderful Gift for me was at the end, just right at the very end of the production. I could feel it was such a direct communication of You, Who You Are altogether. It felt like every way I had of sensing You was addressed through that whole Mummery , and touched. So at the very end of the production, I just felt this-

AVATARA ADI DA: If you say that word one more time, …

DEVOTEE: Oh.

AVATARA ADI DA: … I’m going to have to comment on it. [Laughter.]

DEVOTEE: Okay. At the end of The Mummery …

AVATARA ADI DA: I guess I am going to have to comment on it. [Laughter.]

The Mummery is not just some book I Wrote a long time ago and you like to do some theatre with it every year. It is a liturgical script to be done in the context of a great puja. Thats how its to be used by devotees. I’ve explained this thoroughly, and that’s what they’re supposed to do with it. And-but I do hear language like “the production” and so forth-you just used it-and I do have a sense that The Mummery is not being fully used yet in this truly liturgical sense, so that to refer to it as theatre or a production wouldn’t make sense to you.

And when people go to the Catholic mass for instance, they don’t talk about it like its a theatrical production. Maybe it is, but they don’t think of it as a theatrical production. In other words, they don’t use the references of theatre when talking about going to the Catholic mass, because its a sacred, real event of Divine participation for those who take it seriously.

So it is with The Mummery . It is part of a cycle of pujas and sacred Communion enhanced by every act. So its a portion of that liturgy.

DEVOTEE: That’s what I felt occurred to me, for some reason right at the end, was the Communication of You was so potent. For the first time I felt it in a certain kind of way. It was a true puja in that sense, where You just-the deepening, just Force of Your Presence was so strong altogether.

AVATARA ADI DA: But the Puja of the Ashvamedha Sacrifice follows it, you see. Its part of it. That’s how devotees should understand this. Yes, I dropped everything in the temple. But then there is everything more, everything that means, everything that My Work is about, everything I’ve had to Do since then. That Sacrifice had to be made, altogether, that Ashvamedha Sacrifice. So the liturgy of The Mummery is done, and then the puja of the Horse Sacrifice is repeated, and all of it, is about Me, but all of it altogether.

After I had Written The Mummery , for some years afterwards, I kept considering another book. It was just a kind of entertainment I would amuse My Self with in some sense, because it was appearing simultaneous with all the developments in My own Manifestation and Re-Awakening and Work and so on. But as a reflection of that, not of a novel or mere artistic invention. It was a reflection of what was going on in My own case, and what My own Work was becoming and was always.

I continued to play with this book idea that would follow The Mummery , and I named him Da Blueso, again as an expression again of My own Name. But I never wrote that book. I Lived that Life, you see. But there is a follow-up to the final event in The Mummery . It was Realization time, the Life that followed that. So that is commemorated, celebrated in a puja sense, by devotees every year by doing The Mummery and then the Ashvamedha Sacrifice.

My own Life, and therefore you could also say the Ashvamedha Sacrifice that you all perform, is that second hook, the Da Blueso book, the Adi Da book. So you cannot really understand The Mummery without understanding the Ashvamedha. Its the meaning of the dropping of the egg and is what comes from it.

But, again, as I Said, I don’t feel that you all-I mean, you do these things, you do this process every year, but not yet profoundly. You’re not converted by it.

The purpose of all these celebrations is to convert everyone to right practice and move them to greater practice, reorient everyone rightly. If you understood The Mummery and the Ashvamedha that follows it truly in terms of your real practice in relation to Me, truly profoundly did that, then that would be fulfilling the purpose of going through that puja.

Like today, I heard last year when The Mummery was done here, it wasn’t done complete. There has been selective dramatization, so called, of The Mummery , before people were supposed to have come to the point of understanding what its for and what its about, how its to be used. But that seems still to be continuing. My Instruction to devotees is they do the entire Mummery at that time every year, the entire thing. And some of it can be dramatized, some of it can be recited, whatever, but the entire thing is to be done. You must participate in it fully. I didn’t Write an edited version of it. I didn’t Write a shorter version or an alternate version. There is only one version. And every part of, not just your favorites or whatever, every part of it is necessary.

So you cant pick and choose because the Mummery guild likes a particular scene and so on. You have to do the whole thing. Optimally, the whole thing should be dramatized using all kinds of media. You can at least walk it out. You can do something with it, even if you’re just reciting it. But the whole thing must be gone through in a way that impresses the devotees present, involves them profoundly, and prepares them for the Ashvamedha Puja. Its to be the culmination of attending the event of The Mummery . That’s what its all about. So its not just a bit of theatre before you do the puja the next day.

And therefore it rightly should be entered into in a kind of retreat circumstance, everyone preparing for it so that they can participate most profoundly in this total puja that takes probably a couple of days, certainly one very full day. People would prepare for it, be totally focused in it. They wouldn’t just be an audience for it. They could respond and all that, that’s fine, but they should be intensively involved in it, and not merely socializing with one another during it.

The men should sit apart from the women as in any of the puja circumstances for the same reason-so everyone is focused, not being part of a unit, so to speak, all that.

So that’s how to do and attend puja. It requires profound participation. Therefore, it requires some preparation, not only on the part of those who may be performing the liturgy and so on but on the part of everyone who’s attending.

So it should be a celebration characterized by great seriousness and true involvement in My Divine Emergence. All the celebrations should be used that way, not merely socially, or in the churchy sense merely, you see. If you use it just in that churchy and social sense, then its Presbyterian or whatever, local church, local synagogue, you know, just your ordinary sort of religious people, slightly consoled, slightly doubting everything, getting together a little bit reluctantly, some hugs, handshakes, maybe hardly even a glance to some.

DEVOTEE: In the tabernacle with Evelyn Disk.

AVATARA ADI DA: You go through these ritual routines, and every now and then the kids do a little theatrical something dramatizing some myth or whatever. Its conventional religiosity, the main purpose of which is to control your behavior. Right behavior is positive enough, but that’s about all there is to it, when it gets down to that ordinary level of religiosity. So you can easily transform everything in this Way likewise, and have been doing so in fact.

DEVOTEE: Right.

AVATARA ADI DA: Do the puja.

DEVOTEE: It seems that was the point of Evelyn Disk in The Mummery , Beloved.

AVATARA ADI DA: What about it?

DEVOTEE: Well, I was just thinking that this whole matter of conventional religiosity is exemplified in what he’s trying to do in inviting Raymond Darling to regular religious life and not going beyond that.

AVATARA ADI DA: Mm-hm. And even Raymonds life in some sense was a ritual, a liturgy, a sacred enactment. There’s a continuity in The Mummery , but its also all shattered and moves through all kinds of dimensions of time and space and psyche and so on. Its not quite linear, and yet it is at the same time.

And so his life is ritualized. Even what he seeks at the end is all part of a ritual created in some sense from without, but just a condition to be borne or suffered, searched through, until he came to the ultimate moment of that open-hearted consideration. And he didn’t choose to return. He didn’t choose anything in limitation, and didn’t choose illusion. He dropped the egg.

DEVOTEE: He saw it all.

AVATARA ADI DA: Mm-hm. He understood perfectly. So he even went through the conventional religiosity tour, or had to suffer being the central subject of such a church.

don’t you know?

So you’re all in The Mummery . That’s part of the profound participation that you must understand. Its not just the story of My Life in the past, somehow poeticized and so forth. It is a living liturgy, a present-time reality on many levels, always will be experienced differently by different individuals or differently at different times in the community altogether. It must constantly be re-enacted, but it must also in its re-enactment be participated in with greater and greater focus and greater and greater understanding, so that you go through The Mummery , you go through the passage, not merely in that ritual event, but in your practice altogether

DEVOTEE: It seems, then, there is no real way to-one way to interpret The Mummery

AVATARA ADI DA: No.

DEVOTEE: In all the times I’ve read it, always something else reveals itself. Its an eternal book.

AVATARA ADI DA: I’ve said the same thing of The Dawn Horse Testament .

DEVOTEE: Eternal conversation.

AVATARA ADI DA: Yes, eternal conversation, eternal liturgy, eternal Communion. And so its always new. You’re always in a somewhat different disposition, different moment in practice, and so your reading always coincides with your understanding or the particular moment. So there’s always more and more to understand from it.

So The Mummery is not just a nice book-if you like it anyway-to be read and put down, and that’s another book you read, and maybe you remember it every now and then. It is like the Catholic mass, or like the other pujas you do all throughout the year. Its a liturgical obligation as part of your meditation, part of your study of My Revelation, part of your participation in My Revelation.

And this is what moved people in the religious traditions previously. They had things that had great meaning to them, and they elaborated it using all the arts, including architecture and everything in the church. This is how they made their traditions great.