There’s No Escape, There’s Only Realization – Section 4

AVATARA ADI DA: So I had to come inside the church and
drop the egg here, too. And that’s
what this tenth year anniversary is about. You see? So that
Event ten years ago was Raymond Darling in the church
dropping the egg. Yet the thing itself was written
twenty-five, going on twenty-six, years ago. And it was
actually worked on for many years previous to that. And yet
you can see the corresponding Event, as I just Indicated to
you, as a spontaneous Event in My own Play, My own Work with
you, My own Sign among you. And a most profound one, from
inside the church, trapped inside the church, like Raymond
Darling, in this ritual confinement, la-de-da repetitiveness
and self-indulgence. Its mummery, its mockery of the
profundity of religion, wherein I am exploited and abused.
That’s My history among you.

So what you celebrate from ten years ago is the
culminating Event in that situation. But even so, ten years
later, you’ve still been working
Me over, especially up until a couple of few weeks ago, and
I’m still Instructing you in
some very basic matters that have to do with the beginning
process and I’m still looking
for people to advance.

 So I’m still in the
church. I didn’t leave, but
I’m just Radiant here, waiting
for you to find Me out, for real, and get on with this
practice. You do your work and I Do Mine. And rightly you
should keep it amusing for Me. That’s
how you keep Me involved in it. [long pause]

[to Devotee] Did you finish what you wanted to
say?

DEVOTEE: Well, I was just, for me it was just an
extraordinary Communication of Who You Are altogether. And I
was just completely grateful for that.

AVATARA ADI DA: Good old Who I Am. Yes, go on. Anything
else?

DEVOTEE: No, I think that’s
it.

AVATARA ADI DA: Anybody else? Are we still having a
consideration?

DEVOTEE: We are.

DEVOTEE: Beloved, I was considering something relative to
The Mummery in a whole new light this evening. Which is that
before having fully heard You and then seen You,
there’s this identification with
egoic self. And I felt like the places where Meridian Smith
appears in The Mummery I assume to be places where Raymond
is identified with egoic self in some way.

AVATARA ADI DA: Mm-hm.

DEVOTEE: He’s always slapping
him and waking him back up to reality.

AVATARA ADI DA: Moving him on. Mm-hm.

DEVOTEE: But then, about half way through The Mummery ,
there’s a point where Meridian
Smith walks off into the woods, and that’s
it. And then it seems that he moves more into the Witness,
and just having that simple knot which is then totally
exemplified with the death of his beloved Quandra, observing
her in the casket.

AVATARA ADI DA: And what is that a reference to? This is
something else profound to understand. That’s
why I’ve added a quote at the
beginning of The Mummery .

DEVOTEE: “This Maya is such . . .”

AVATARA ADI DA: Yes. That this, in so many words, this
great Shakti Manifesting as the world reveals the Truth by
dying, or by being sacrificed to the Divine Source-Condition
– the Vedanta Temple Event. But that quote, not only is that
a forward or reference to the ultimate Vedanta Temple Event,
but it is also a clue to the meaning of the dead Quandra. It
is the Radiance, the Shakti-Force, turning in on Itself,
dying so to speak, turning back in on Its Source instead of
being just oriented toward the production of
modifications.

That’s the dead Quandra. But
then there are visions and such that follow, staring in the
door, into the egg. So this death relinquishes the body, but
the mind also, and there are subtle dimensions to the
purification. But ultimately the egg is dropped. The ego is
relinquished. The knot is smashed, the knot is broken.

So its the secret of the Vedanta Temple, the Submission
of the Divine Power into the Source-Position, Outshining all
illusion, all mere objectivity.

You know?

So it is the end of the adventure, the Perfect
Realization of the “Bright”, the Perfect Manifestation of
the “Bright”. No more adventure, no more Meridian Smith,
nothing more to Realize. No more separation from That Which
was Guiding. Perfect Identification with It. That’s
what The Mummery is about. That’s
what the Vedanta Temple is about. But then there’s
all kinds of other aspects of My Work, as I just Described
to you, about ten years, that are also inside The Mummery
.

So the end of The Mummery is the Vedanta Temple Event,
yes, that’s true-theres all
kinds of things about it that are true. But the various
other aspects of what was inside before then have been
unfolded also in various moments of My Sign among you. So
ultimately, then, the dropping of the egg is Divine
Translation.

So you’re here to Realize Me,
but you’re also here to keep Me
in the church. So you don’t want
to be working Me over. You want to transcend the mummery,
keep Me among you, and practice truly. Then its not a
mummery anymore. Until then, The Mummery is a mockery of
you, in some sense, you see. But, instead, it should be
something you could truly laugh at and be clowns in because
you’ve transcended it.

What else? [pause]

You don’t know what
you’re going to think or what
you’re going to say. Because
where do thinking and speaking come from?

You don’t think in order to
have a thought. So how do you get to think?

Why doesn’t just babble
happen? [Laughter.] Because you cant think your
thoughts before you think them. So what do you do to get
them to happen? What do you actually do to think or to
speak? Which is very often just coincident with thinking.
How do you get it to happen?

What do you do to make them happen, because you
don’t think them until you think
them. But what do you do to get yourself to think them?

DEVOTEE: Feel.

AVATARA ADI DA: You also seem to think of yourself as
mind. But actually you’re in a
position that precedes your thinking, and cant really
account for it. When you step back from your thoughts, you
cant altogether grasp how you get to think. Because you cant
think before you think. So how do you make it happen?

you’re in that position. But
you identify with your mind, your thoughts, all the time,
and talk yourself into identifying with the body and so
forth, too. But you’re in the
position before all this!

What are you exerting, then, to generate the next
thought, or the next word, if you speak, or the next gesture
you make bodily? What kind of an operation are you going
through to make that happen?

So what would you like to consider, then?

DEVOTEE: Well, there’s just
something about the Ignorance consideration that is Shining
real “Bright” right now. [Laughter.]

AVATARA ADI DA: Mm-hm. Not what it is . You’ll
blithely presume that you know the room. What is it?

DEVOTEE: It looks pretty Radiant right now, Beloved.

AVATARA ADI DA: Tcha. So to be in the state of Ignorance
doesn’t simply mean you
don’t know. It means that
knowing is not how you’re
Realizing it.

Well, you all entered into the state of Ignorance. Which
means you don’t know what
anything is, but knowing is not how you’re
Realizing it. [Laughter.]

You see, your mind disappeared . Where is it anyway? You
seem to be able to call upon it in any moment and seem to
have a kind of a reflex that makes it happen anyway.
you’re in the position of making
that happen. At least you think that’s
the position you’re in.

The mind appears because the mind is something
you’re identified with. Its
signs then appear rather automatically. So to Realize the
Witness is not to simply stand around watching the thoughts
and so on. Its Prior to them. Its about the process, then,
of turning back on the other side, entering into the Sphere
that is otherwise appearing as the Witness, the in-depth
Domain of Consciousness Itself, without a thought, without a
sensation. Yet Communing with Me in this “Bright” Fullness,
without “difference”, utter Immersion in Me, “Atma-Murti”,
without “difference”.

So you can struggle all you like with the peripheral
knots and so forth, but then you’re
always on the other side of It, on the other side of the
Source. So the time comes when you’re
not inclined toward that further. You want to enter into the
Source-Domain. [pause]

So its not itself a process of opening some knot. Its
deeper than that, more profound than that, Prior to
that-simply Standing in the Position rather than working
toward it. That’s this unique
turnabout of Realizing the Witness-Position. You cant strain
yourself to Realize It. It’ll
just occur in the midst of the right practice.

DEVOTEE: And is that a permanent Realization,
Beloved?

AVATARA ADI DA: Yes, because you’re
It and you’re not on the other
side of It. You don’t do
anything to keep It in place. It is inherently the case. But
to Realize It you must have gone through that process of
purification and turnabout that makes It Obvious. Really
Obvious, As It really Is. And when that’s
the case, it cant be lost now, it cant, doesn’t
disappear. Unless you do.

But you do not. Consciousness cannot disappear. The
things that Consciousness appears to attach Itself to can
disappear. So there are all kinds of changes that can be
Witnessed. But Consciousness Itself never changes, never
disappears. It is not merely awareness. Its just the
Infinite Well of Being, Self-Existent but also Self-Radiant,
without limit, “Bright”. [pause]

But you are the Witness now, are you not? [Devotees
agree.] If you make an utterance now, you will observe
Where you Are. Say something, anything. I mean actual
language that you’re otherwise
familiar with. Go ahead! Say it, vocally-out with it.
[Devotees speak quietly to themselves.] See,
you’re not in the position of
thinking those thoughts. you’re
noticing these thoughts, but there doesn’t
seem to be that direct connection. You’re
not in the position of the thinker. And yet the Position
you’re in doesn’t
exactly have anything to do with the thoughts, either.
There’s nothing like thought in
It. Your just simply a Presence,
Consciousness. That’s your
actual Position. The thoughts or perceptions, whatever, are
somehow apparent in That.

But you’re not the body,
you’re not the emotions,
you’re not the thoughts, not the
perceptions. You don’t do any of
those things. They’re somehow
happening, mysteriously, but you don’t
do any of them. What are you ? What is your actual
Condition?

To Realize It truly, you must go beyond knots and so on,
presumptions. But at the very least, even before great
Realization, or great sadhana, you can experience, feel, and
know, right as you are now, that you are Standing in a
Position Prior to thought, Prior to the body-mind. To fully
enter into It is disorienting. In other words, you have to
be re-oriented to get into It. Otherwise, you’ll
always be just moving out of that Position, presuming
yourself to be just the separate self, intending this and
that, and combining with thoughts and all the rest of it,
such that you forget the Position you’re
in.

Are you all having some feeling for this? [Devotees
say yes.]

If you allow It to be the case, even the entire body-mind
relaxes. Because the body-mind is ordinarily under stress,
the stress of self-contraction. When you feel into your
Condition Prior to it, the Condition Prior to it, then the
body-mind follows, relaxes. Whereas if you try to make the
body-mind relax, you cause stress of one kind or another.
But it happens automatically if you allow the
Witness-Position to be the case. And not try to struggle
back into so-called ordinary awareness, identified with the
body-mind.

There is simply fundamental feeling awareness. But not a
blank awareness. It is full of energy.

You see?

That’s your actual Condition.
Everything else passes. Everything else is just a moment.
[Beloved Adi Da snaps His fingers several times, to
indicate the passing moments.] Hung up for a moment on
this or that perception or thought or idea or action or
whatever. But if you allow the Witness-Position to be your
Position, then all that groveling for effects relaxes. And
you begin to become Transfigured by It. [Devotees make
ecstatic sounds of swooning.]

So you feel that It is inherently a Radiant Force,
Expansive, Flowering, not contracted. And it would move the
entire body-mind in that manner. This is how the Samadhi of
“the Thumbs” appears. Essentially by allowing the body-mind
to be Transfigured by My Crashing-Down Presence.

At some point, in the midst of “the Thumbs” or something
like it, that Communion with Me, instead of just going back
into body consciousness, falling out of “the Thumbs”,
there’s the discovery of this
root on the right. And the Awakening to the surety of the
Witness-Position. It goes on quite spontaneously from that
point. There’s movement in to
the Depth of That Which is appearing to be Witnessing. And
even if there is peripheral body consciousness, the Current
can be felt in the right side. You may feel it also moving
down from inside the head, into the chest, into the right
side of the heart.

So it becomes My Crashing Down into the right side of the
heart.

And relaxing into the Immensity of Self-Radiant
Consciousness.

And with your eyes open, you can see that It is So.

There is perception, but it is a field of Energy, the
Energy of Transcendental Self, of Consciousness Itself. If
you focus on It without moving your eyes, you can see and
feel that It is all in motion, energetic.

Everything that appears is just a vibratory modification
of That Which you are Always Already Realizing.

You need not depart from It.

There is simply the Self-Existing Force of Being.

And all the perceptions with your eyes open are
transparently That.

Don’t look to the right or
left.

Allow the eyes to relax open.

Regard that simple perception rather than moving the eyes
about and trying to perceive something else.

Allow It to be What It Is.

Your only experience ever is This. This is your only
experience. Ever. It is utterly without familiarity,
don’t you see? It is absolutely
Transparent, Transfigured, not an interruption in the Force
of Being. Its not merely your own interior being. Its One,
All-Inclusive.

All are That Same One. In this Disposition, the apparent
perceptions could come and go. They could change, they could
disappear. This Disposition is not at all threatened by any
such changes. And therefore in Itself has no motive to
create them, to seek them.

When this Realization becomes perpetual, most profound,
then there is no life-business. There is no business in any
realm. The body-mind is simply a left-over. Its only an
appearance.

But to Awaken in the seventh stage is to Realize This
Most Profoundly, to experience This, as now, most profoundly
and perpetually.

There’s no need to do
anything within or without in order to Realize.

So all the doing, the apparent doings, of the body-mind
simply become expressions of That.

Do you have a sense of a sphere?

DEVOTEE: Yes.

AVATARA ADI DA: Do many of you have that sense?
[DEVOTEES: Yes.] If you sit in a natural asana,
stable, like I suggested to you a moment before, and focus
your eyes rather than move them about, the purpose of right
asana, then, is to focus the body likewise. And then
spontaneous right “conductivity” will be felt by you in this
moment.

And as you’relax into It, feel this Force, do you feel
something of a sphere about It? [DEVOTEES: Yes.]

You must thoroughly relax your body into It.

Its “the Thumbs”, if you allow Me to Crash Down in there,
and relax.

Put all attention in Communion with Me, forgetting
everything.

Now keep your eyes open.

Keep your eyes open and focused, relaxed into a simple
focus without moving about.

Feel the room and everyone and everything in it.

Allow yourself to see it without moving your eyes
about.

Do you see it, the shape of it? Actually feel the shape
of it.

Now Realize you are simply Witnessing it.

Feel the Forceful downward Energy in the frontal line all
over it, Pressing you to the base.

Do you feel and perceive the Radiance in the room?

And something of the shape of it?

Its all arising in Consciousness Itself. It is
Consciousness Itself.

The more profoundly you’recognize it, the greater its
Shine, and ultimately its Outshined.

Feel the space through and beyond the walls.

Don’t be confined to the
room.

Don’t be confined!

Sense the Reality of space. Space and Light and
Consciousness are identical.

So in this Contemplation you’re
not meditating on the pain of self-contraction.

But maybe you’ll remember it
now.

DEVOTEES: [exclamations of all kinds]

AVATARA ADI DA: So you see this Yoga covers everything.
It Realizes everything. Ultimately Realizing the Primal Room
of Infinite Space, All Love-Bliss, Absolute, Uncaused and
Unchanging. There’s nothing
interior about Divine Translation, somehow by going within
and dissociating. Its a matter of Standing in the Divine
Self-Condition, As That. So the seventh stage Yoga is
perpetual Radiation, Unbounded, such that everything It
contacts It Recognizes and Expands Infinitely, in Its
Demonstration. And that ultimately, then, is Divine
Translation.

Now, its interesting to make this extraordinary and
incomparable Demonstration in the company of people who seem
to know nothing about it. [quiet comments] Have you
got twenty-three years?

But that’s how the Way got
fully Communicated, this interaction with you all in your
limitations, good qualities, everything. I had the
opportunity to address all kinds of things, ultimately
everything. So if it weren’t for
that interaction, under all the circumstances in which it
occurred, the fullest Revelation wouldn’t
have been possible.

Even the unfortunate sufferings of lack of response that,
as you know, I’ve had to endure,
remarkably its all part of a Revelation-Which is now
Complete, by the way-so I needn’t
do that anymore. So now, as I Said, the time has come when
there’s nothing more for Me to
Say or Do to Instruct you. You have to do the sadhana. And
you have to choose it profoundly in the manner we’ve
been considering.

I don’t regard interaction
with devotees to be a necessity any longer. Maybe every now
and then spontaneously, as tonight, for instance, but not
generally. You have to do the sadhana. Its your answer time.
And a great number of you here, in fact, have had a lot of
those twenty-three years of consideration with Me. Even face
to face on many occasions.

[paraphrasing a line from the movie The Godfather
] Are you’ready to pay Me the favor you owe Me?
[Chuckles.]

DEVOTEE: Yes, Lord.

AVATARA ADI DA: Well, that’s
the sadhana. I Do what I Do to Reveal it to you, and now you
have to choose it and not play games with Me anymore.

Anybody want to talk about anything else?

DEVOTEE: Master, I think of that great story in the Ribhu
Gita , where Ribhu, I guess, there are two sets of
footprints in the sand and all of a sudden there was one set
of footprints. And Nidhaga said, “Master, why have you
deserted me? You know how difficult it is. Why have you
deserted me?” And Ribhu says, “That one set of footprints
you saw in the sand. It wasn’t
me deserting you. It was me carrying you on my
shoulders.”

AVATARA ADI DA: Tcha. [Chuckles.] Yes,
that’s what its about. There are
many ways to put it.

I told you about going to Upasani Babas Ashram. Some of
his devotees were there, and one of them’s
been trying to capsulize Upasani Babas Teaching. He said, he
was quoting Upasani Baba about it, Upasani Baba was saying,
“I’m a letter, and you’re
the stamp.”

You’ve got to attach yourself
to Me, get into the mail. That’s
just another way of putting it, or “catch the Horses Tail”.
And so on.

So you must use the Advantage I’ve
Given you. You must use My Company, let Me Do what I Do. And
as I Said, I cant Do what I Do if you wont do what I Say
.

What else?

Want to have some fruit? For a little blood sugar?

DEVOTEES: Sounds good. [A few ladies leave the room
to serve a fruit meal to Beloved Adi Da and a fruit snack to
devotees.]

AVATARA ADI DA: As the guy said in A Christmas Carol ,
“But touch my arm and you will be upheld in more than
this.”

DEVOTEE: Its one of our favorite movies.

AVATARA ADI DA: Mm-hm. Its going to be on The Basket of
Tolerance . I guess that means you can indulge yourselves in
watching it as much as you like.

DEVOTEE: The Basket of Tolerance is so wonderful, Master.
Its perfect discrimination relative to everything.

AVATARA ADI DA: Tcha.

DEVOTEE: Beloved, do you’remember the most disgusting
movie You Said You ever watched?

AVATARA ADI DA: You mean Pink Flamingos ? That’s
soon to be on The Basket of Tolerance also. A kind of
example of tricksterism in the modern world. Tricksters are
identified in various traditional cultures. They’re
called various names and so forth, but in traditional
cultures they looked for people to play this role of the
trickster. They’d virtually be
appointed, chosen, or certain signs would be noticed and the
person encouraged. Or sometimes an individual would just do
it spontaneously, and people would just use it somehow.

DEVOTEE: That’s very evident
in Fiji, Beloved, in that culture, also.

AVATARA ADI DA: People being tricksterish with one
another all the time is a Fijian characteristic. There may
be individuals in certain villages or groups or whatever who
very overtly do it in a special way. Part of what its about
is that certain people are given permission or license by
the community or whatever to offend or even violate
conventional behavior and conventional attitudes and so
forth.

Look at things like this movie-comedians commonly play
this role. They’re supposed to
be as exaggeratedly offensive and creative about it as they
can possibly get, you see. Some people think at some point
it starts getting tasteless and then its not liked. Well,
very often that’s when its doing
its work. It shocks you out of the rigidity of a life that
should be a play, a sacred play. When the clown or the
trickster makes you notice that you’re
sort of grim and uptight about being this good person,
he’s not saying not to be a good
person. He’s saying don’t
be uptight. Its supposed to be a play, you know. Be really
good, not puritanical and nasty.

So you’ve got to be shown all
this and so forth by comedians and tricksters of all kinds,
so you can get playful about it again. Don’t
get lunch-righteous. Practice the diet, but don’t
get lunch righteous. You should be playful. Its just right
life, right discipline, totally coincides with your point of
view of what you’re supposed to
be doing altogether. So its nothing to be righteous
about.

But in living the conventional life day to day, with all
the expectations presumably, people do get rather grim and
dried up about it. So this is understood in traditional
societies, and therefore they always had tricksters. But,
come to think of it, so do people in the modern day. They
hire comedians, pay for them in night clubs. You pay people
to mock you. You select certain people to do this.
You’ve employed Me to Do it.

DEVOTEE: They have traditional roasts for individuals.
Its a very common thing that they do.

AVATARA ADI DA: [Chuckles.] Yes, people have
always valued, under the right conditions, people mocking
everyone. It has a real and right function, as I just
Described it to you.

So in My Play with you all, I’ve
had to be all kinds of exaggerated, a shape-shifter, and
everything altogether, Crazy-Wise, in order to break you out
of your self-conscious rigidity and wake you up to the
profundity of this Way.

[Devotees talk quietly as Beloveds meal is served.
Beloved Adi Da continues to Speak as He eats.]

Hasn’t it ever occurred to
you all to be rather strange, all these things appearing
that go together and yet they have no perception or
capability that would have made it to begin with? Ordinary
evolution theories suggest all the happenings go on at the
exterior, you know, in the material exchanges and reactions.
But that doesn’t explain it. It
explains some adaptations of form here and there, rather
peripheral adaptations. Why all this simultaneity, unity? If
plants had to somehow insist, or will themselves, or from
some sort of natural exchange develop themselves, into
flowers that produced nectar and so forth so that the bee
over there could get satisfied, by then, the bee and the
plant would all be dead, because they wouldn’t
have had any interaction in the meantime!

DEVOTEE: Now, who’s in charge
of that beautiful process?

AVATARA ADI DA: In charge? What makes you think there is
such a thing?

DEVOTEE: Well, the fact that its, uh-I can see my
conventional mind kicks in because the fact that its, it
suggests beauty, you know, love, that relationship between
the flower and the bee.

AVATARA ADI DA: Mm-hm. [Laughter.] But also what
I was suggesting – yes, that’s
true. But what I was just talking about is how they get to
develop into that form where they can interact in the way
that they now depend. In other words, its not just exterior
adaptations and reactions that is what all this great
process of appearance here is about. There is something at
the level of Unity, prior to the outward appearances, that
is the primary Source even of the changes. And it governs
the changes in a mass of appearances simultaneously, and its
not just about cause and effect, long time, over time, this
and that. It enforces or manifests certain signs
spontaneously, because it is an immense structure, itself so
complex and all-containing that it doesn’t
need an operator.

It is simply focused in that which is its Source, but it
doesn’t need an operator.

DEVOTEE: Then wouldn’t the
operator and the Source be one and the same?

AVATARA ADI DA: Mm-hm. There’s
no operator outside. The process itself is the process
itself. Do you know what I mean?

So at the level of the Source, there is no action. At the
level of the appearances, its all action. So you must be
free of involvement in the sphere of actions, to find the
Source. Because the more you involve yourself in the
conditional domain itself, the longer you’re
going to be there. You just become further and further
embedded in it. So the Way of the Heart is the direct
process of going beyond the entire affair.

Do you all have a snack there yet? What kind of
restaurant is this?

What time is it?

DEVOTEE: Three twenty.

AVATARA ADI DA: Does that sound late?

DEVOTEE: Its just amazing where the time went.

AVATARA ADI DA: Hm.

DEVOTEE: There is no time in Your Company, Beloved.

AVATARA ADI DA: Tcha. So now that they’ve
served you all, you’re all quiet
again. [Beloved Adi Da gives the dish of watermelon from
His tray to a devotee.]

DEVOTEE: You’re getting on
your nocturnal schedule again, Beloved.

AVATARA ADI DA: Yeah, I know.

DEVOTEE: Something about the quiet of this time
you’really enjoy.

AVATARA ADI DA: Tcha. All night meditations are the
best.

DEVOTEE: Yes, You’ve always
Said this. There’s a beautiful
corona around the moon tonight.

AVATARA ADI DA: You could see it outside?

DEVOTEE: Well, when we came, which was hours ago.

DEVOTEE: There’s a full
moon.

AVATARA ADI DA: Tcha.

DEVOTEE: A very large corona, very pretty.

DEVOTEE: Another thing You did today, Beloved, was You
talked a lot about the difference between the householder
and renunciate sadhana. I found that really clarifying.

AVATARA ADI DA: Tcha. Well, we talked about that
thoroughly at the time, so you already have the notes.
Unless you want to talk about something in particular about
it.

DEVOTEE: Just the fact of the renunciate choice being one
of no compromise with the body-mind.

AVATARA ADI DA: Its a one-pointed vow. [pause]
What else?

DEVOTEE: Beloved, I was feeling the difference in energy
now that everyone’s eaten.

AVATARA ADI DA: Mm. Takes a while to circulate.
[Chuckles.] That’s why
in Europe there’s the tradition
of a sleep-time, a rest-time, after the main meal of the
day. Hm? Because it tends to put everybody down and sort of
sleepy.

I was watching an antiques program last night, learned a
couple of things about dining. One is that the older
European, certainly British, tradition is that you
don’t put the silverware on the
table. Like you all do, you put it all out there. But they
bring in the utensils with each dish or whatever. And then
another thing they pointed out is that traditionally, and it
seemed to the interviewer more practically, when people had
fish they would use two forks. Instead of a knife and fork
and so on. So when they served the fish course, they would
serve two forks and not a knife and fork.

DEVOTEE: It makes more sense.

AVATARA ADI DA: But I do like the idea of when meals are
served fully, like we do at table and so on, that since the
meals are being served to the table anyway, that the
silverware be brought out with each dish instead of having
it all lined up around your elbows.

If we ever do have fish, I’m
going to try two forks.

DEVOTEE: Did they place one on either side of the
plate?

AVATARA ADI DA: They didn’t
actually demonstrate it. Oh, in terms of the placement, I
believe so, yes.

DEVOTEE:: Is it to do deboning?

AVATARA ADI DA: Yes, you may still have to clear the
bones and such, and you can get it onto one fork from
another fork more readily, I guess, in some cases.

DEVOTEE: You’ll have to have
a fish meal just to try it out.

AVATARA ADI DA: [Chuckles.] Supposed to be having
a smorgasbord on Sunday.

DEVOTEES: Smorgasbord. Swedish smorgasbord?

AVATARA ADI DA: Smorgasbord, right?

DEVOTEE: What’s on a
smorgasbord?

AVATARA ADI DA: Its a meal of many dishes. Its usually,
the times I’ve had it, many
years ago, kind of in a buffet area but, you know, fifty or
a hundred dishes, whatever, all around on it and decorated
and so forth. So people would keep going up and having some
other tastes. So there were many, many dishes, like Swedish
meatballs, well, that’s a kind
of smorgasbord thing, for one thing.

DEVOTEE: So the poor mans version is pot luck?

AVATARA ADI DA: If you’re
lucky! Its many, many courses, in other words.

DEVOTEE: Is it served at a particular celebration?

AVATARA ADI DA: No, its a common food tradition, I
gather, although I haven’t had
it in Sweden. Just another cuisine.

DEVOTEE: There was a funny incident when I was growing
up. I just remembered it. I worked at this place called
Fjord Smorgette, or something like that. I was probably
about eighteen . .

AVATARA ADI DA: Smorgette?

DEVOTEE: I cant remember exactly, but something around
eighteen, and the funniest incident happened to me. One day
somebody had dropped something on the floor, and my job was
to always put the hot dishes into the hot thing, you know
the whole long table with all the stuff on it. So anyway,
somebody had dropped something slippery on the floor, and I
had this basket of fried chicken with crumbs all over it. I
hit this thing, and I flew up and I landed flat on my back
with the pan on my stomach, and thousands of crumbs all over
the floor.

AVATARA ADI DA: [Laughter] That reminds me of a
story I’ve told, I don’t
know if you’ve all heard it, so
Ill tell it again. There used to be this program on very
early television, around 1950, called the Stork Club. It
actually took place live in the club called the Stork Club
in New York. Sherman Billingsley, I guess, was the owner,
and he was the host of this program. The Stork Club was
considered the posh super club, dinner club, for the early
evening and so on, and so to have a television program there
and see the stars and so forth, this was a big new thing on
television. This guy would, Sherman Billingsley, would
interview movie stars, whatever, people of one or another
kind of prominence.

And on one occasion he had a special friend on, George
McManus, who did the Maggie and Jiggs cartoons and such. He
was a special friend of his. And he knew the cuisine usually
served in this club wasn’t
exactly his favorite kind of thing, so he wanted to do a
special thing for him. So he had a corned beef and cabbage
meal made for him. And so in the middle of their
conversation, where they usually would be served some sort
of Stork Club French whatever it was, Sherman Billingsley
dramatically waves his hand toward a waiter offstage, and
says something like, “George, I have a surprise for you.”
You know, “Your favorite cuisine and
blah-blah-blah-blah-blah.”

And then the camera pans on the waiter, very
ostentatiously carrying this huge tray with all these things
on it. Then he had to rotate around, the camera followed
him, and he must have tripped on the cord for the TV camera.
So the last shot you see is Sherman Billingsley and George
McManus looking up into the camera with this astonished look
on their faces as the corned beef and cabbage landed all
over them. [Laughter.]

That was the kind of thing you got on early television
when it was live. I remember watching the Johnny Carson Show
one time, and usually that was taped years later, I guess,
but this was a live broadcast, because they wouldn’t
have done it again unedited. He was sitting at his desk kind
of place, and there was a man and woman sitting next to him
talking about fashion or something, they were fashion
designers or something or other, and the woman a model as
well as a designer. She was wearing this very slim gown with
little tiny straps over her shoulders to hold it up. And at
one moment Johnny Carson happened to look over at her, and
accidentally the shoulder strap fell
over and her breast was completely exposed!
[Laughter.]

And she, you know, within a second or so, reached down
and flipped it back up. It was almost as if the whole thing
occurred with the blink of an eye. But Johnny Carson
happened to turn to her just as this thing happened, and he
saw her breast exposed and he saw her pull the strap up, all
of this happened just like that [snaps His fingers].
Its impossible to imitate the expression on his face. One of
those [makes a face to imitate Johnny Carsons
amazement] takes afterwards. [Laughs.]

DEVOTEE: Beloved, I saw a funny one the other day. These
old commercials from the 50s. Remember the Amana, the Amana
refrigerator, and-I cant remember her name. But she walks
out, and she’s talking about the
Amana . . .

AVATARA ADI DA: Well, it was supposed to be Betty
Furness.

DEVOTEE: That was it, Betty Furness.

AVATARA ADI DA: But it turns out it was a stand-in for
her.

DEVOTEE:: It was? I never heard that.

DEVOTEE: Oh, you’re
kidding!

AVATARA ADI DA: Yes, I saw it on some resume of TV
commercial history or something recently. And everybody
thinks that this is Betty Furness, and so they stopped it, I
guess, or panned in on it, whatever, and showed that it was
another woman. And it turned out that, I don’t
know, far some reason or other she was a replacement on the
live commercial that night. And it clearly wasn’t
Betty Furness. You could see when they drew your attention
to it.

DEVOTEE: That’s an historic
commercial.

AVATARA ADI DA: Yes, when she couldn’t
get the refrigerator open.

DEVOTEE: Couldn’t get her
refrigerator door open.

DEVOTEE: So it doesn’t mean
that for all of her life somebody else played her part on
TV. It just happened to be that one night, Beloved?

AVATARA ADI DA: Yeah. But she was otherwise known as the
woman on the program, so it was attributed to her.

I love a bit I saw on the Ernie Kovacs Show. He used to
do a thing called Percy Dovetonsils. And, hed have this
little cup of tea, you know, sip it, and it was sort of a
grotesque Liberace kind of thing. And he had this long bit,
it was a routine he would do regularly. Hed say,
“Blah-blah-blah,” and hed take a sip, “Blah-blah-blah,” and
take a sip. It was an expected routine. Where he had to be
constantly sipping some tea and pouring some more for
himself and so on.

And this was live, but it happened to be kinescoped so
that’s how it happened to get
preserved. So it comes time in the midst of his little skit
where he’s supposed to take his
first full cup of tea, and he realizes in the middle of the
sip that the people on the set have played a joke on him and
filled his cup and his teapot with whiskey. And so you could
see he knew he had a long skit he was going to have to do,
and he had to drink all of this stuff in the meantime, and
he was thinking of the condition he was going to be in by
the time he got through. The look on his face.
[Laughs.]

DEVOTEE: Beloved, do you’remember that video I sent You
of the guy falling down this huge hill, he was a skier?

AVATARA ADI DA: Yeah I guess I remember something like
that.

DEVOTEE: Oh it was the most unbelievable fall ever
filmed. And he just suffered a few minor-a cut on the head
and a broken leg. But he could have been really seriously
injured and he wasn’t.

DEVOTEE: Did he keep bouncing or was it a free fall?

DEVOTEE: He just, he started from the top of this hill,
he was a racer. And I guess the idea was the time to get
down and he started down and he hit a, like a bump, I guess
it was a bump…

AVATARA ADI DA: Something.

DEVOTEE: Rocks. And he just kept tumbling and tumbling
and tumbling. And you could see his body flailing all over.
But at the end he just lay there and everyone was just
mortified. And when the guy walked over to him he could see
that he was conscious. And the thing that had saved his life
was he hit some rocks or something, and in fact the way it
tumbled him saved his life. That was amazing.

AVATARA ADI DA: But what about the Condition you were in
when we were having our discussion about an hour ago? And
how is It different from the condition you are in
presently?

DEVOTEE: Well Beloved you drew us into the depths of that
Condition through Your Words.

AVATARA ADI DA: But you see how you get out of It
too.

DEVOTEES: Right. Yes.

AVATARA ADI DA: Even though in the meantime you are also
being amused and so forth so, you weren’t
in an unpleasant condition. But even that throws you out of
the fundamental sadhana. So you have to practice the sadhana
moment to moment. Then there is more and more of this
profound absorptive Samadhi, and ultimately the “Perfect
Practice”. But Samadhi it is, moved beyond the
self-contraction in Communion with Me.

Now the Free Renunciate Order is supposed to be, must be,
a permanent retreat order. Up until very recently it has
been appended to management. So among the other things that
must change in My Circumstance ix that the Free Renunciate
Order gets to do the practice I’ve
Given it to do, and the Lay Renunciate Order, and so on. I
My Self, and also Tripura and Navaneeta, all this time have
had to function in that sarvadhikari role. So they
couldn’t live the form
I’ve Given them. They practice
under the circumstances, but they didn’t
live the form I Gave them to live, which is supposed to be
the circumstance of their practice. For reasons that have
everything to do with the expansion of My Work beyond that
Circle.

So everyone in the Free Renunciate Order must be able to
live a retreat life, not necessarily absolutely secluded in
solitude, all the time anyway, but in a circumstance in
which they could totally live the form of retreat
twenty-four hours a day, and principally associate with
others who do likewise. Its a different kind of service such
people must do. They have a role of communication and so on,
and guidance within the culture. But fundamentally they live
the one-pointed life of most direct and “radical” practice.
They have to be free to put real time into that, and not be
obliged to put on the social personality suit.

You shouldn’t oblige Me to do
it. You shouldn’t oblige the
Free Renunciate Order to do that, either. It is a sannyasin
order, so it is set apart from the world, free of those
kinds of obligations. So you must relate to those in the
Free Renunciate Order as sannyasins and not oblige them to
become social personalities but allow them to demonstrate
their practice completely outside that kind of circumstance,
show you their sign in that mode, that disposition, in
relation to Me, as a sign to all devotees. The Free
Renunciate Order has this unique function of principal
Instrumentality.

Of course it is especially the case with those in the
seventh stage of life.

Of all the places I’ve ever
been to, in traditional settings, this gathering treats its
sannyasins the most miserably of all. [Chuckles.]
you’require the Free Renunciates to become organization
people so that you can dream of religion. At least
that’s the way its been up to
now. Devotees must take on all these responsibilities and
truly fulfill them and let the Free Renunciate Order do what
its supposed to do. And by the way, I could use some more
members of the Free Renunciate Order, and I’m
not going to get any till I get a Lay Renunciate Order
first, obviously.

I’ve talked about the hive
principle. Looking at it from various points of view.
Traditional sacred society, large or small, has had a kind
of hierarchical way of organizing itself. And something of
that can be considered in the context of this Way. The
general congregation in the hive is the kind of worker bee
zone, keeps going in and out of the hive and serving the
hive in various ways through all of that. And then
there’s a core of others who are
interior to the hive but busy interfacing with those who go
in and out and yet directed toward serving something at the
center. And then-we could say that’s
the Lay Renunciate Order.

And then at the center of it is the Free Renunciate Order
and My Self, of course, which has no function whatsoever,
except to be there, basically, to Shine from the center. The
Lay Renunciate Order should, by virtue of its function, its
general function, be rather interior to the hive. Its
supposed to serve a cultural role. And the general
congregation is supposed to fully participate in this Way,
but it should basically be that dimension of the entire
gathering that is involved in the work in the communities
and doing a lot of the work for the institution and so on,
in order to allow there to be these other functions as well,
not everybody doing the same thing.

I mean, what there is of the potential for a Lay
Renunciate Order now had to be composed largely of people
who are not fulltime serving a cultural role but always have
this or that other thing they have to do, or jobs to keep,
or whatever. So they’re being
required, in other words, to function in the general
congregation manner. Whereas the Lay Renunciate Order should
essentially be people who do fulltime cultural service, and
they should be supported by the gathering to do so. And the
Free Renunciate Order is supposed to be in Hermitage.

So in Hermitage it must be, now, that the Free Renunciate
Order is free to live in perpetual retreat, rightly
understood what that means. But there must be a Lay
Renunciate Order there, a true one, also. And it
shouldn’t have to be made up of
people who have to do the management work and the what could
be called-outer temple kind of occupations. They should be
doing cultural work fulltime and not have to do those other
kinds of things. Of course, there are just so many-perhaps
at some point you get such a huge group you cant have them
all just doing cultural work. Unless it was a very much
larger community that exists there presently. If it
continued to grow, then, fine. But at a certain point it
wont grow, and then there’ll be
maybe eventually only members of the Free Renunciate Order
there.

And then who’s going to do
anything? [Laughter.] You see, there wont be any
room for any more residents, because we will have had as
many people as can fit on the island. And if they all became
members of the Free Renunciate Order, we couldn’t
bring in anybody else to run the facility and do all the
thises and that’s. The Free
Renunciate Order would just be sitting around in Bliss. So
that’d be the end. Everybodyd
just sit there until they’d
Translate. Right? [Laughter.] No, you didn’t
understand Me.

The point I want to make is its ridiculous to propose
that would be the situation. The members of the Free
Renunciate Order, if the gatheringd be fortunate enough to
have that Island inhabited just by such people, can do the
necessities of maintaining the place. And there would always
be retreatants coming there as well, so they would be
working culturally with people. But nonetheless you can
understand that kind of hive structure I was just telling
you about and how the gathering has to allow for an LRO that
just does cultural work and has to allow a true Free
Renunciate Order that lives the retreat life. All these are
necessary.

If it ever got to the point where everybody in the entire
Communion was in the Free Renunciate Order, fine-youd still
do all the things necessary. But there’ll
always be more new devotees. So you can never get too many
members of the Free Renunciate Order or, in fact,
that’s everybody. You cant get
into the seventh stage of life without being a member of the
Free Renunciate Order, more or less, anyway.

So it seemed remarkable to Me that human beings can be
feeling so uncomfortable fundamentally in their depth, so
uncomfortable about being physically alive that they are so
willing to devote themselves entirely to just being an
organism, knowing its mortality, its limitations, and all
the rest. Its remarkable. It must be being heavily
propagandized by something or other that you would make that
choice given an option, given the eternal option. But if
you’re deprived of the knowledge
of it, the knowledge of this Revelation and this practice,
you wont know any better.

So the Revelation had to be made. But that’s
been done, and now you have to do the practice. And the
practice is not at all about being content or driven to be
merely fulfill the body. Its about ego-transcendence, and
therefore its about transcendence of everything. Being aware
of the real nature of the body is like being aware of the
self-contraction, which we discussed earlier. Its itself a
terrible knot, in itself an horrific condition. That’s
why people find all kinds of ways to desensitize themselves
to it, forget about it, or be relieved of some kind of
stress all the time-because you do know the nature of the
body, and you’re afraid of it.
You feel trapped in it. You don’t
know that there is a way to be free.

But having found out about that from Me, you have to
practice and actually Realize what there is to be Realized.
Otherwise, you’re always
consenting to be the organism, consenting to be its fate,
its possibilities in every moment, not a lot different from
poor little beings in the forest, whatever, who are prey to
a lot of others. The machine is so vulnerable, and
ultimately mortal, how can one be content with it? How can
one be willing to live an ordinary life?

Well, of course you all made those choices, but it was
not even a remote possibility for Me. I’ve
always been, My Self, in this conjunction. I had to endure
the conjunction in order to conform it to My Self. So My
Disposition has never been one to come and fulfill karma, to
fulfill the motivation to be the body. To Me that is in
itself horrific. So confined that way, I couldn’t
live an ordinary life. I had to persist in that most
profound consideration of the “Bright” in this
conjunction.

Now you all chose, generally speaking, the ordinary
course, instead of living impulsed to Realize Me, go beyond
this knot, this mortality. But you needn’t
make that choice anymore. You can reverse the course
entirely. And then your life becomes all about transcending
this condition you’re attached
to but which you’re afraid of,
for good reason. You don’t have
to live on that basis. You have My Revelation, even in your
experience, not merely in concepts. Knowing that and knowing
that Way, how could you be content with the pursuit of mere
organism? Your disposition should be in the direction of
Samadhi, not indulging in the body.

Why would you want to persist in being identified with
something that dies? Especially knowing the option and
knowing that its not necessary, and that it can be
transcended. So even though you functioned in the body from
that point, you would transform your life altogether,
unwilling to be merely mortal and afraid, unwilling to be
committed to un-Happiness, non-Happiness.

Its not a matter of leaving the body. Its a matter of
transcending the body, reorienting the body altogether, the
body-mind altogether. [pause]

The Native State is to be Perfectly Radiant and not
afraid. You know? Even getting a taste of it, why would you
choose otherwise? But there is a lot of propaganda in the
world that would tell you to do otherwise, so you have to
exercise your discrimination and really consider these
matters. Then when you get
be-merely-the-productive-social-personality signals and
nothing else, you’ll have the
strength to transcend it and the humor also to relate to it.
And you’ll change your own life,
so you’re not merely a social
personality, by living profoundly.

However, much is made in the universal pop religion about
the “love thy neighbor” messages in the traditions. And in
the Christian tradition, which you may know of, the
declaration is made to “love the Lord thy God with all thy
heart and all thy soul and all thy mind and all thy
strength, and thy neighbor as thyself”. In other words, the
principal communication there, and the same communication is
found in other traditions, is to “love the Lord thy God with
all thy heart and soul and mind and strength”-in other
words, to be focused in the Divine, and in the whole process
of God-Realization. And if you do this in your relations,
you will be benign, you will not do to another what is
hateful to you.

But to make the second principle the dominant one is to
forget the Divine life and be reduced to a drone in a hive
without a core-no honey, no queen, no Lord, just you reduced
to the social personality game, living the organism life,
you know, downtown, suburbs, up in the country, wherever you
are, just cranking out the social interactions and the meals
and the amusements, and the blah-blah-blah-blah-blah.
That’s what I mean. Its to be
reduced to that and to forget the sadhana. So then
you’re being the organism again,
magnifying identification with the very thing you fear. So
you throw in a few consolation messages so you desensitize
yourselves to it. That’s not the
Way I’ve Given you.

The Way I’ve Given you is
this profound listening, hearing, and seeing concentration,
ultimately to the degree of Most Perfect Realization.

But you see how busy, generally speaking, you’ve
all been with human ordinariness. And there’s
a kind of universal pop religion message everywhere. So it
suggests that’s what
you’re supposed to do.
You’re not supposed to be too
profound about it all. You’re
basically just supposed to be an as-much-as-you-can benign
human personality and be very functional about it. And
that’s that.

So use your discrimination and experience in My Company.
Decide whether that’s the way to
do it. Is that really the direction with which you want to
be identified and the results that you want to be identified
with, living out an organism life and trying to smile your
way out of it? Or do you’really want to transcend the
bondage and the suffering and the separation from the Divine
Condition? [pause]

You must consent to be identified with the Condition of
Radiance.

And you must consent with every particle of the body-mind
and your being altogether.

And then all contraction ceases, is overcome, replaced
with Non-Dual Radiance,

or Love-Bliss Itself,

Being Itself,

Consciousness Itself,

Light Itself,

Energy Itself,

Reality Itself.

Reality Itself is the only God there is.

There is no escape.

There’s only Realization.

You know what I mean?

So to be turned into Light again, you’re
going to have to be cooked real good.

You have to go up in Light. What else is there to talk
about? You all going to get serious?

DEVOTEE: Yes, Lord.

AVATARA ADI DA: Anybody not planning to get serious?

DEVOTEE: Nobody.

AVATARA ADI DA: So what else do you want to talk about,
then? Lets talk about something else.

DEVOTEE: There is nothing else to talk about.

AVATARA ADI DA: I mean something else than “Are you all
going to get serious?” Well just presume that and talk about
something else.