Devotee: “Should I meditate on the right chest in order to meditate
on the Heart?”
Bhagavan: “The
Heart is not physical. Meditation should not be on the right
or the left. It should be on the Self. Everyone knows “I
am”. It is neight within nor without, neither on the right
nor the left: “I am” – that is all”. The Life of Understanding, Week 1 In Sahaj Samadhi there is a great
and transcendental yoga that is not described in the
traditional texts. It is the yoga of Amrita Nadi, in which
everything arising is recognized to be only modification of
, the prior Condition of your apparent condition. Everything
arising is without force, unnecessary. If you persist in
that meditation or realization in every moment, the limiting
or binding force of existence at every level is lost, and
you are brought into a transcendental meditation that is the
Radiance of the infinite being itself. This meditation is
projected infinitely, absolutely, far beyond what is seen
and heard subtly, far beyond all that is felt. Thus, there
is a kind of ascent native to Sahaj Samadhi, because all
phenomena, gross, subtle, and causal, are unnecessary, not
because they do not arise – they appear in the conventional
way – but because they have no necessity. They do not
impinge upon you. They do not have any implication or logic
that binds you to being an anything, a soul, a person, a
consciousness, a separate phenomenon or being. In that
Realization there is only the absolute projection or
Radiance of the Heart felt relative to this gross body as
the projected line of conscious Light that moves out of the
Heart, far beyond the crown, far beyond subtle
phenomena. By persisting in this Samadhi, or
Realization, we are lifted out of this gross dimension. And
if our meditation is most profound, we are lifted out of all
dimensions. We do not have to be reborn in this condition,
nor do we have to be reborn in any subtle condition. We
certainly do not have to be born in any condition lower than
this. We are not reborn in any condition. We move into Bhava
Samadhi or the Divine Domain, which is not describable,
which is like that absolute formlessness that we recognize
to be our very Condition. It is Bliss. It is, in this
certain sense, form, but it is without description, without
analogies, without archetypes. There is no vision to
describe it. All visions that arise are re-cognized in Sahaj
Samadhi. Even visions have no force of
implication. Thus, the line of Amrita Nadi
penetrates far beyond even the highest realm. Ultimately it
is not even a line, you see. It is read relative to the body
as the line passing out of the Heart toward the place
infinitely beyond the crown, but truly it is simply the
expanse of Radiance of the infinite being, In Bhava Samadhi
there is the complete forgetfulness of the limited
born-being – gross, subtle, or causal – in any dimension and
in all dimensions. All are forgotten, and there is simply
translation or perfect ascent or absolute expansion into the
Divine Condition itself. You are identical to the physics of
things in your manifestation, and that is why you are
immortal – not because you are inside the body, but because
you are identical to the body. In the physics of things,
repetition and continuation are the law of energy. Thus, you
cannot die. You can only be changed, and you are changed,
constantly. You are constantly put into another condition,
and, whatever it is, you must comprehend it; you must
realize that you are the prior Condition of that appearance.
When you rest as that Condition, then there is no force
whatsoever to existence. It is an illusion, an
hallucination. Not that you think it is so–the Realization
is not philosophical in the conventional sense – but it is
obviously so. When I look into the room, the
Condition of all this is perfectly obvious, all these
bodies, all these “me’s, “this whole room. Everything in the
room is just a pattern of energy. It has no ultimate
necessity. It can pass – in fact, it will pass! While it
continues, it is God. There is a beauty and a fullness to
it, in my right relationship to it. On the other hand, it is
exactly like a dream. This apparent concretion here has no
limiting force whatsoever from my point of view. If I close
my eyes and stop talking and remove myself from your
attention, I can see the space of the room with my eyes
closed. I can pass into subtle places. I can pass into these
bodies here. All of that is, happily, an ordinary experience
for me. If there were no one to witness to
you, as I do, you would have no way to continue your
practice. Because God-Realization is simply true for me,
then if you will give me your attention, if you will commune
with me, this same disposition will be yours through a
process that is much easier than your hearing a
philosophical premise and trying to attain it through
self-manipulation. You do not have to try to attain it. If
you will simply enter into Communion with the Spiritual
Master, who is already in the Condition of God-Realization,
that Condition will be duplicated in your case. The Realization communicated in the
form of the Spiritual Master is the supreme instrument. But
people in their egoity do not want to make use of it, They
do not want to submit to the Samadhi, or Intuition, that is
instantly available to them in Communion with the Spiritual
Master. They are self-possessed, committed to experience.
Those who have had enough of experience, however, who are
humbled by their own sweat, can make use of Grace in
whatever form it appears. Who knows why it has appeared at
all! The appearance of Grace in this life is crazy! It is a
paradox! But it is true, and you can see for yourself that
it is true if you will engage it. All I can say is, this is the way it
is for me. I am already all-pervading, without a form, and
therefore I enter into ordinary relations as an impulse. In
Truth I am manifesting as all bodies. I am absolutely
certain of it. And I am conversant with all bodies. By a
simple act of attention I can be you, be identical to you,
and have a perfect reading of your disposition so that I can
be of service to you, while at the same time also having the
sense of being this body. It is crazy. It is a paradox,. It
is all silly, paradoxical, ultimately unexplainable. It is a
mysterious conjunction and it is contradiction. In the early months after the
incident in the Vedanta Temple,1 I realized in
meditation that I was no longer meditating this body. All
its limitations were already obvious, not binding any
longer. In meditation I experienced many, many, many people.
And I could meditate them. I could be completely identical
to them. I could meditate them if they were in Communion
with me. I could be their meditation. I could awaken the
God-Realizing process in them because I did not have to
presume the limited point of view that they were. They
simply had to be in direct Communion with me so that I could
be them, and then I could do the practice, and in that case
it could be brief. The trouble is that people do not enter
into that Communion. They are reluctant. They remain
self-possessed. Therefore, I cannot enter into that process
with them as directly as would be ultimately
useful. – Chapter 11 – I Will Do Everything – The Way That I Teach, Bubba Free John, 1978. The following excerpts are from various writings and talks by Adi Da Samraj on the topic of ‘Amrita Nadi’. When enquiry has settled in the heart, awareness develops as
what Ramana, Ramana Maharshi, calls the ‘Amrita Nadi . I
call it the ‘Form of Reality.’ It is the circuit of current
from the heart to the head. As a child I knew it as the
‘bright’. In the unqualified state all identification,
differentiation and desire have ended. There is only
unqualified relationship realized in enquiry to be already
the case. This realization is simply consciousness as the
Amrita Nadi, the form of Reality, and it is experienced as
the ‘bright’, the unconditional bliss of presence, of
perfect knowledge, whose source is the heart, reality
itself. Therefore, the bright is the form of that reality
which is consciousness. It is a true and real, the
birthright of all existence.
Amrita Nadi is eternal. Amrita Nadi the Heart, the absolute Formless existence,
is of course the quality of Amrita Nadi. But so is also its
Infinite, perfect generation. So there is an eternal God world that transcends the
appearance and disappearance of the Cosmos, of the
conditional worlds. The God world does not come and go. The
God world does not appear and then collapse for a period of
time and then reappear. The form of God is eternal. Amrita Nadi is perfect.
Amrita Nadi is the form of consciousness. Amrita Nadi is the
perfect realization.
The Form of Reality is not a a special creation or
condition but the native form Itself. In other words, Amrita
Nadi is not just something temporary while the world exists
and then it disappears. The Heart is then the true foundation, the exclusive
Heart is the true foundation of both manifestation and no
manifestation. The Amrita Nadi is never collapsed. Amrita Nadi is always
perfect. One’s own inner functions are subtle functions relative
to the intuition of Amrita Nadi, the intuition of the Form
of God through Amrita Nadi. These functions may manifest
differently in time, their qualities may change. And any
function that arises in consciousness as a quality of mind
or as a quality of experience, any such things may in
themselves come and go. So in no sense is this life as
Amrita Nadi some form of holding on to phenomena.
The Heart is the Guru. The Amrita Nadi is his Form. The
bliss of unqualified enjoyment is his teaching. The
Knowledge of all this is liberation and freedom. The
enjoyment of all this is Reality. The existence of all this
is Truth. The activity of all this Is understanding. And
understanding is real life. The highest Form of this life. The highest form of
Sadhana, the life of a devotee, In whom Amrita Nadi is the
constant intuition, the constant enjoyment. But for such a
one the human Guru is also Amrita Nadi, alive and literally.
So he lives in relationship to the Guru as a perfect
devotee, while the perfection of his own conscious enjoyment
in more internal ways is also perfected.
The Inner Guru, which is the very Heart and the Form of
Reality, Amrita Nadi, is the same as the human Guru. The
human Guru is that alive and functioning relative to you.
That’s why the life of sadhana relative to the Siddha Guru
is the highest form of spiritual activity, because all of
the virtues of the Truth are already present. They are
already present in the activity that is understanding
because it is the understanding of the heart, and of real
consciousness, but they are also present in the condition of
sadhana itself, in the condition of Satsang, in the very
condition with which you begin your sadhana, you exist in
relationship to this fullness in the Form of the Guru. So
the perfect devotee of the Guru experiences the perfect
communication of the quality of the Guru.
But as in every other case where something arises and
enquiry is generated in the midst of it, such a one in this
case, may find himself falling into the Heart, the root of
the mind. And then he will know only Amrita Nadi, which here
is described as the spire of Sound and Light that stands
forever in the Heart. But Sound and Light capitalized, meant
in perfect terms, not sound and light as simply the lesser
phenomena that you can turn on by yogic concentration but
the perfect Sound and perfect root of Sound, and the perfect
Light and perfect root of all Lights.
S-curve of the Amrita Nadi, the open channel of light
between the Heart and the point at the top of the head at
which the Divine Light is intuited.
The conventional Way of Sages is the Way of exclusive
descent into the Heart, or ego death through descent in
Amrita Nadi (the secret pathway between the sahasrar and the
heart region). The Way of Divine Ignorance, or Radical
Understanding, is the Way of non-strategic dissolution of
the ego-soul in the Heart and simultaneous regeneration, or
expansion and ascent, in, as, and through Amrita Nadi, whose
upper terminal is not truly the sahasrar (subtle crown of
the gross body) but the Unspeakable Condition and Radiance
of the Highest, wherein all worlds arise and fall. (The
Expansion of the Heart is without qualification, Radiant in
all directions to Infinity, losing its center by including
all objects, and losing its boundaries by penetration of all
contraction. The Fullness of this Process is also
experientially communicated in the upper, or subtle, and
lower, or gross, dimensions of the whole body – first to the
subtlest, and descending simultaneously to the lowest.)
What I’ve called Amrita Nadi is realized only in the form
of understanding, in the most radically intense, intuitive
life. Then the true nature of what I’m describing begins to
become obvious, and how it is really deathless,
beginningless, endless and perfect begins to become obvious
Amrita Nadi, in the sense that it is somehow related to
one’s own subtlest function between the Heart and the
sahasrar, in that sense is limited. In that sense Amrita
Nadi is a form, the subtlest form of our own existence, our
individual existence and through it we intuit the Very Form
or God Form. This Amrita Nadi then, is the duplicate or
likeness of God described in the Old Testament. And it looks
like this. The Amrita Nadi is the perfect reflection of the
Perfect Form.
Chapter 1 – The Knee of
Listening Week 1
– The Life of Understanding The Study of The Knee of
Listening – Table
of Contents
S.S.
Cohen – Reflections on Talks with Ramana
Maharshi
he first night we came
together here I quoted that (that verse from) particular
verse from the Bagavad Gita, in which it says the life force
should be resolved in the sahasrar and the mind resolved in
the Heart. The epitome of the conscious activity, the
ultimate event of the conscious activity is the resolution
of the consciousness in the Heart, prior to thought, prior
to the reflections in the mind, prior to experience, the
very Self. This is the source or reality of consciousness.
But the force, the manifest force, the Shakti of this Siva
is generated above. So the form of reality, the form of
realization is this Amrita Nadi that is generated between
the true Heart, not just the heart chakra, but the living
Heart of the very Self and its perfect place above, its
perfect extension, above, which purely for convenience, in
order to relate the whole affair to ordinary perception, we
say is in the head, or we relate it to our sense of the
head. But actually it has nothing to do with one’s physical
head, other than the fact that there is certain phenomena
associated with this process that go on relative to one’s
physical head, but the upper terminal of Amrita Nadi is
nowhere in time or space, anymore than its lower terminal,
the very Heart, is in time or space.
–
Drawing by Adi Da Samraj, 1970
***