 THERE IS NOTHING LEFT BUT THE ASH A TALK BY HEART-MASTER DA Part 1 – Part 2 – Part 3
HEART-MASTER DA: Earlier I was talking about the deeper personality and how you may become sensitized to it. Becoming sensitive to it generally is associated with the advanced form of the fourth stage of life and the fifth stage of life. There may be some signs even earlier. As soon as you begin to become sensitive to the deeper personality, or you start incorporating the mind of the deeper personality into the play of your life, then you start identifying with that, becoming limited by that. urged by that. You get more mind, in other words. This is why I call you to the Perfect Practice. I do not even recommend that you go to practicing stage four or practicing stage five. If you must, of course, I have indicated to you what that process is about and what it requires. But I am calling you to enter into a relationship with me directly such that those stages of practice may become unnecessary. Among other aspects of sadhana that are uniquely given to you if you enter into right relationship to me, this is one of the real possibilities, that you will be able to move to the Perfect Practice at the point of maturity at practicing stage three, and not have to enter into the glamour of the deeper personality. You see, in the conventional traditions of esotericism, the realm of the deeper personality is considered to be the realm of Enlightenment, or the realm to be attained. It is the domain within which you discover the subtler or the higher realms of existence within the cosmic domain. The conventions of religious esotericism consider a goal of practice, or the goal of practice, to enter into that domain and then ascend higher and higher within it, or perhaps to realize Nirvikalpa Samadhi, conditionally. But as I just indicated to you, all you gain by developing this subtler sensitivity to the range of mind outside the brain is more mind, whereas the process of sadhana is a process of the transcendence of mind, or conditionainty. There is no advantage in getting more mind. There is no advantage in going through the process of purification, or release of mind, in all the stages up to practicing stage three, if you only go to practicing stage four and get more mind. It is just that some people have such strong inclinations, such karma, in the deeper personality, that as soon as it begins to become uncovered, all those urges appear, and they must do the sadhana in that context. Even such individuals who by birth are karmically, at the level of the deeper personality, disposed to this more ascended experience, or subtler dimension of life, may be relieved of that destiny without having to go on to practicing stage four or practicing stage five of this Way, if they will enter into this relationship rightly and fully, and truly do the sadhana as I have given it. Then the process works to purify you without your having to go outside the brain-mind and become attached to the deeper aspects of mind. The gross physical dimension of your appearance now is the context of your most effective sadhana – not the subtle, but the gross. You are naturally concentrated in it by your immediate association with the physical. The deeper personality is the background of all of that, so whatever sadhana you do in the body, you are doing effectively in the realm of the deeper personality as well. You are effectively purifying it in your sadhana. You need not necessarily enter into the sphere of mind outside the brain and start wandering in it, you see. You can do sadhana in the context of the body, heart-sadhana in my Company, through practicing stage three and have that be sufficient basis for taking up the Perfect Practice. You need not unlock the “ajna door”, you see. You need not unlock the door to the subtle planes. If there is a strong inclination in that direction and exceptional signs of the ascending type, then that sadhana becomes necessary and appropriate. But even if the individual enters into practicing stage four, it is not necessary to go the whole course, all the way through practicing stage four, all the way through practicing stage five, before you take up the Perfect Practice. The transition to practicing stage six could occur at any time after maturity at practicing stage three. I am calling you to this Perfect Practice, the sadhana in the domain of Consciousness, prior to the body-mind, gross, subtle, and causal. But you cannot enter into that form of sadhana as an act of will just because you like the idea, having thought about it, you see. You must qualify for such sadhana. You must bear all the signs of one who can do the sadhana of the Perfect Practice. So I have made it clear to you what that sadhana is, and if you will fulfill it through practicing stage three, it is eminently possible you could make the transition to practicing stage six from there. But you will not do this simply because you indulge in conventional motivations associated with your stage of practice. You will not make the transition to the Perfect Practice or practicing stage six of this Way simply by indulging in any qualities in the first four stages of life. It is not by fulfilling the stages but by transcending them that you can make this great transition. Now, the Way of the Heart is about transcending the stages, not merely fulfilling them one by one. The Way of the Heart is a process, a form of activity. It is a relationship, which, if you enter into it, inherently transcends the stages of life. This relationship is itself the process. This contemplation, which is your relationship to me, is the process most fundamentally, you see. It is meditation on That which is Prior to karma, That which is without limitation, the One without limitation. It is by entering into the sadhana of this relationship, then, and fulfilling all aspects of the discipline such that you can bring the body-mind to the point where it longer presents an obstacle is native assumption of the Witness-Position. So at this point of mature practicing stage three, basically all aspects of the ordinary incarnate being have become submitted. It is at that point that it ceases to be obstacle and the inherent Stand in the Witness-Position becomes obvious. Another aspect of this relationship that is fundamental to the sadhana is that you must consider radical Teaching from the day you begin. Do not just dwell on aspects of the Wisdom-Teaching that relate to your present stage of practice and limitation, but consider ultimate forms of the Teaching-Revelation from the beginning. In addition, consider your present stage of practice, yes, but do dwell on it as a limitation. Build your practice presently as a response to me and to the radical Teaching. Be moved by that. And, moved that, assume the appropriate sadhana that belongs to your current stage of practice. For instance, I have asked you study what is now called The Lion Sutra as well as The Liberator (Eleutherios) and so forth. Make use of the recitations associated with the radical Teaching from the beginning. Consider these matters together from the beginning. From the very beginning the practice of this Way is on your response to me and to my radical Word or Calling. So responding, you relate realistically to what your apparent condition is at the time, and you assume the appropriate sadhana. But if you that step by step, since the practice is contemplation of the Form and State Sat-Guru, you are contemplating the Who is Inherently Free. The Sat-Guru, then, becomes Murti, is realized as Atma-Murti, when the gross incarnate body-mind and its background of subtlety, through sadhana, has ceased to become an obstacle to the Perfect Practice. In general this is how the sadhana should work out. At maturity in stage three, you take up the Perfect Practice. In general that should be the case, and there should be only a relative few must go on to practicing stage four or practicing stage five. To do so is not prohibited, you must understand. It is just that if the sadhana is done as it truly is, and done in my Company as it truly is, the Gift is this capability, demonstrated at maturity in practicing stage three, in general. But of course, it seems that most people to date are interested in being beginners, not even devotees in the advanced stages of practice yet. They are moved to be beginners for a very long time. You all used to think, until a few months ago perhaps, that the beginning stages were just play-it as-you-will, do-whatever-you-like sort of stuff, you see. And so you could imagine, then, that there wasn’t very much involved in making the transition to the advanced stages of practice. But now I hope you understand how much is required even to be a student beginner. So when I am talking about the transition to the Perfect Practice, I am talking about something that has nothing directly to do with you presently except that it is a Calling to you. If you truly embraced this sadhana as it is, fully, directly, the sign of the capability for the Perfect Practice would be in general the Gift at maturity in practicing stage three. In the course of your sadhana you must appreciate the fact that the deeper domain of the personality and of the cosmic play is karmic. It is the realm of egoity expanded: For some reason I am reminded of something Shirdi Sai Baba apparently said to somebody one time, cautioning him against indulging in certain kinds of psychic intensity and admonishing him to be very careful in “waking up the snakes”. In other words, it has by no means been universally recommended that one get into this kundalini business and ascending Yoga and psychism and subtle experiences and so forth. It is even a kind of fad that has developed in the Western world, with its limited experience of esoteric matters. And in the Western world particularly, it has developed quite recently. You have seen my own demonstration relative to all of that. Fine. But on the other hand, what has my Teaching been to you from the very beginning? What sign did you observe in my own life? “This is not it. This is not it.” A greater force or disposition cut through that, went beyond it. Having done that in the course of my own sadhana, and come to you to Teach, what was I telling you all the time? “This is not it.” All these subtle experiences. Remember, “Garbage and the Goddess” took place in this very environment here. All such kinds of experiences people were having, and rd say, “This is not it. Don’t you see? This is not it. You are having the experience right now. Is this Enlightenment? Is this Happiness? Is this Freedom? Is this permanent? These subtle signs of the deeper personality, are not most fundamental to me, nor to you. I am calling you to a sadhana and a Realization that is beyond all of that, Prior to all of that. The fundamental content or aspect of my Sign, then, is Prior to all that fifth stage Yogic demonstration. Nonetheless, there are such signs in my life, although in my case they have been rather seventh stage Demonstrations, even in the earlier part of my life. You have to account for such matters so that you will see these things in right perspective. This means you must have a right understanding, a right response to me altogether, that will enable you to make the submission of all your limitations. You must not come to me merely to surrender some portion of it, but everything. If it is necessary for you to have subtle experiences, then you had better be prepared to surrender them, relinquish them. If your Guru is the One who Stands Prior to the fifth stage of life, then you submit the fifth stage of life to that One. Your acknowledgment of the Realizer, your acknowledgment of the Guru, indicates to you what you must surrender, what you must transcend. If your Guru has transcended everything, all the stages of life, all the egoic stages, then that is what you must surrender to relate to that One. You can not not just say, “I will surrender this and that ordinary stuff in my life, and yet maintain the glamour of my self possession inwardly.” If your Guru has transcended all of that, then that is what you surrender, and in fact that is how you transcend it. Don !t you understand? You don’t transcend these deeper parts by entering into them. You transcend them by surrendering them. You surrender them at the Feet of your Guru, and then you do not have to enter into them. You follow the course your Guru gives you. This is one of the functions of the Guru, to be there to tell you when you are doing it wrong. [Laughter.] So if you decide to visit subtle worlds, I am here to direct you properly beyond all of that, touch you on the head if necessary to wake you up, divert you perhaps, Instruct you somehow or other, or just to Stand there Firm, Prior to it, expecting you to come and make your submission as you are supposed to do every day as my devotee. And then you will not be bothered by these things. Likewise, relative to the gross personality, or the earlier stages of practice, you transcend them not by entering into them and indulging yourself. You transcend them by surrendering them. And you surrender them not by struggling with yourself and trying to get rid of them. You surrender them by finding your Guru, surrendering to your Guru, contemplating your Guru instead. What is the best cure for any moment of tendency? Remember me. See how simple it is. That is the sadhana, then. If you truly contemplate my Sign, my State, you see, it is not fifth stage states, it is not psychic states, it is not Yogic states, and so forth. It is the Very Self. Remember me? Contemplate my Sign, my State. You are surrendering by that contemplation, surrendering everything less. So if you truly find me and enter into this contemplation, you immediately, directly transcend all the egoic stages of life, all the limitations, and very directly, then, move through the course. This is how the sadhana becomes purifying to the degree that you could at maturity at practicing stage three move on to the Perfect Practice. How do you think these two ladies [pointing to the two Kanyas in practicing stage six] got to do that? Because of some superhuman effort on their part? No! Because of some superhuman effort on m part. [Laughter.] It is by their association with me, their contemplation of me, their Remembrance of me, their acceptance of their relationship to me as the principle of their lives. That is how they got to make that transition, you see. That is the secret of sadhana. That is what makes it a Gift. This sadhana is a relationship, as I have been telling you over and over again since the first day you came into my Company. Since the first day I began to Teach, I have made this clear. This sadhana is a relationship, not merely techniques for you to come to take away and do on your own. The sadhana is always this relationship, whether you are in my immediate physical Company or not. It is this relationship, this contemplation, and this contemplation is always surrender of yourself. It is surrender of what you would otherwise be up to in that moment. It is redirection of attention. In some moment, in this moment, your attention is going toward something or other you would do with the gross or subtle personality. Instead, submit via the same mechanism of attention to this contemplation. Do this over and over again, more and more consistently and profoundly, and you see how purifying it would be. And by it you make room for my Transmission. The process is multiplied profoundly by that Transmission. Then it becomes a truly Spiritual process. It gets magnified profoundly. The purification, in other words, becomes more profound, but the submission must be great first. You must be heart-related to me first. Sadhana is not some fantasy or some option that maybe is true or maybe not, or maybe you should do it and maybe some people like doing it and others do not. It is a much more profound matter than that. It is the profound matter. It is what existence is about. The world propagandizes itself, diverts everyone through the mechanism of attention, guides everyone in the direction of self-fulfillment, as if the purpose of existence were to become attached to the conditions that are appearing. The purpose of existence is not in its action. The purpose of existence is inherent. Its purpose is to be submitted to What Is inherently. The purpose of existence, then, is to transcend conditions, or modifications of What Is inherently. If you do not live this surrender, this process of self-transcendence, you are binding yourself in this lifetime and beyond it. And being limited basically to the consciousness of a gross personality, you do not understand what you are doing. You do not understand the consequences of your own actions. You have lost the thread of tradition and the ancient experience. You do not know what your are creating for yourself a a result of your actions in this lifetime. You are frittering your lives away with Western karmas, and you do not understand the results of doing that, in this life and after it. You spend your life puzzling away whether there is God or whether there is any survival of death – and so forth. And all the while there is God and there is survival of death, you see. But there is more than God and survival of death. There are laws in all of that. There are all different kinds of ways to get up in the morning, too, all different kinds of experiences that follow getting up in the morning. So with death. What determines the experience? What determines the experience is what you have inherited in the deeper unconscious being as a result of your action when you had the capability of action. I remember saying to you many years ago that while you are alive, you make the mind, and when you die, the mind makes you. By your action all the while, now, you are putting things, so to speak, in this unconscious, this deeper personality, which is outside the brain. You are enforcing and reinforcing patterns. You are patterning it. You are in some sense indulging in what is there in the unconscious, but you are also adding to it. And all your life in most cases the unconscious is just that, unconscious. That is why you wonder whether you survive death, because you are not aware of the greater part. Then, when you die, the conscious falls off, the physical falls – off, and that which was unconscious before, which is outside the brain, is now who you are. And, where you are. It is a place, you see. It is the mind-realm. This is what follows life. Death is by no means simply a doorway to heaven. What is on your mind now when you lose physical attention? What kinds of thoughts do you have, what kinds of dreams do you have, what kinds of fears do you have? That makes your experience after death. While you are alive, you have physical concentration and a brain that locks you away from the so-called unconscious. You have an opportunity while alive to purify yourself. But instead, all that stuff isn’t there now. It is outside the brain. You think it does not even exist, so you just indulge yourself in physical life as if the physical exists for its own sake. It is not there for its own sake. It is there to help you purify the deeper being, the deeper personality, to the point where you can Realize What transcends even the deeper personality. Manifest existence is an opportunity for Realization. But most people do not understand that this is so. The body-based mind, the gross personality, is ruling the world, creating world-culture, creating everyone’s destiny. What I have fully Realized and am offering to you as an opportunity, or to everyone in general, may not make sense to most people. They have lost the tradition, lost the experience. Nonetheless, many people might be somehow attracted to this offering because things do not go all that well, you see. Devotion to one’s gross existence does not produce Happiness, so people become dissatisfied with the whole range of things and become heart-sensitized to some degree. Many may therefore be capable of responding to this offering, and through consideration may develop the appreciation of the opportunity. Go to next – Part 3
A TALK BY HEART-MASTER DA
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