The Brightening Way Talk Series – Adi Da Samraj – CONSENT TO BE THAT WHICH YOU ARE

CONSENT TO BE THAT WHICH YOU ARE

A Gathering “Consideration” with Beloved Bhagavan Adi Da, in the Manner of Flowers, on January 6, 1996.

 

SECTION II

 

DEVOTEE: My question, Beloved, was, it’s to do with the self-contraction. And last evening You took us through locating the core of the self-contraction, doing the practice of feeling to You, and, you know, also at the same time not trying to get away from or recoil from the self-contraction at its core.

AVATARA ADI DA: Mm. I feel a Commentary coming on. [laughter] Your way of stating that, you see, illustrates the difference between listening, or not yet hearing, and hearing. You were talking about it as if in effect you were relaxing the self-contraction, almost like its a knot in your solar plexus or something, in Communion with Me. that’s how you were using the exercise. And that’s how it would be done from the point of view of non-hearing.

The point of view of hearing is at the point of the self-contraction, the point of the act of self-contraction, and in Communion with Me passes beyond directly, is flowering truly, not efforting against the self-contraction as if its somewhere else or someone else or a mechanism apart from you, just a sensation you’re experiencing. It’s not merely a sensation you’re experiencing. It is an act you are performing. You are doing the self-contraction. It is not merely happening to you.

I’ve used the illustration since the earliest days of a man pinching himself-you all know that one, right? And He’s uncomfortable and so forth, and tries to shake it off-whatever he does-and then eventually discovers He’s been pinching himself all the while and he takes his hand away and all his problem disappears.

Well, I’ve used that little bit to try to describe to you what hearing is about. Its not a matter of your dealing with a something that’s objective to you in the context of your human existence. It’s not objective to you. It may seem to be so, in some sense, until you hear Me. And that’s the fundamental description of the difference between non-hearing and hearing. In the case of the non-hearer, you don’t yet, at the place itself, understand most fundamentally that your search, your dis-ease, your struggle, and so on, your pain of existence, is something that you are doing.

So that’s hearing. From that point, you can, in Communion with Me, pass directly from the self-contraction, the act itself. And you can do this, then, under all circumstances, in every context of experience, no matter how the stages evolve from then. The same hearing gesture is your capability and your responsibility, and immediately, or very quickly, prepares you to do the Yoga of seeing Me, such that the hearing process is taking place in the full dimension of Spiritual existence. Then the purification is more profound and final.

So what was I responding to you about?

You were indicating to me that the way I was talking was an indication of the listening process.

AVATARA ADI DA: Yes, the non-hearing disposition. You were referring to the self-contraction as a something you would not avoid. You were referring to it in objective terms as a something rather than as your own action. you’re not speaking from being in the position of the self-contraction, but you’re referring to the self-contraction. You’re having some experience of it. But as if you are outside it somehow, somewhere, and don’t quite have the key, then, to get rid of it. So you examine each piece of your life, and you see how you do it there in some behavioral or other terms or what not, and you work on that some, discipline it and so forth, and that gets better. But there’s still this disturbance, this stress, this pursuit, and so on.

Your examination of all that becomes summary. You become established in the knowledge of the act in the place of the act itself, such that it is entirely, immediately, always available to your relinquishment of it, because you are it, you’re being it, you’re doing it as an action, you’re in that very place and you know all about it, just like you know how to open your hand instead of pinching yourself, or open your hand instead of making a fist.

So at least by your brief description, then, what you did last night was the listeners version of that exercise. Unless youd like to retract your statement now?

DEVOTEE: No, no.

AVATARA ADI DA: But it is useful for Me to point out how you are using language, because it says something about your disposition, perhaps. Sometimes it may say something about your miscommunication or not fully “considering” your words, but otherwise its a reflection of your meanings, your disposition. So that is what you said suggested.

DEVOTEE: It was also part of my question, as well, which is how to always return to the core of the self-contraction rather than just being, you know – which is what I’m normally in-the superficial, more superficial area.

AVATARA ADI DA: Yes, that’s another example of what I was just saying, “how to return to the core of the self-contraction”, when you are always right there doing it! Its amazing, you see! Its like the man pinching himself. Its just as mysterious. I mean, how stupid-a guy sitting there pinching himself! Its a really very apt example of what you’re all doing. Its just as silly as that. Just as mysterious-why would you be doing this?

So you’re right there doing it, its the core of all of your doings, your thinkings, your feelings, and so on, and you’re doing it right at its root, all the time, and yet you act like its totally mysterious to you. Even though I point this out to you, it seems totally mysterious to you.

You’re used to experiencing your self-contraction as an experience rather than as your own action. So you have some feeling about what I’m talking about when I’m talking about the self-contraction, because its that knot in the pit of your stomach or that feeling of anxiety. You don’t realize its you pinching yourself, you doing that feeling of anxiety, you contracting. You may, in the course of the listening sadhana, get a little better at it all, you know, understand it a little better. But, ultimately, to understand most fundamentally and to be free of all the wanderings and vacations and so forth and the effects of self-contraction-to notice, to feel, and be in the position of the act itself -it coincides with the feeling of relatedness itself, they are coincidental, and the arising of attention.

The feeling of relatedness, or the self-knot, can be felt all over the body. But if you feel it at its point of origin, its on the right side of the heart. The right side of the heart is not simply the domain of Divine Self-Realization. Its the root of egoity. Its a knot that must be opened. You have to get back to that Door, by releasing energy and attention to do so.

But in general you all experience it as a knot in the pit of your stomach or a feeling of anxiety, a stressful feeling of being separate or dissociative and so on. Well, its like any other symptom, then, in the body-mind, like a sore foot or a headache or something. Its a symptom in the body-mind. You observe it objectively, and you decide You’ll do this, that, or the other thing about it. You try to relax and breathe deeply, be more straightforward-whatever you have to do to become more functional about it, but on the other hand it doesnt go away.

AVATARA ADI DA: [Beloved chuckles.] So you must enter into this profound practice I’ve given you, which includes this “reality consideration”-perpetual for the individual, sometimes you act together in groups. You must use that sadhana for real, to get to this point of fundamental understanding.

So initially you clear with all of the thiss and that’s in your life, and you confess them and you discipline them, and so forth. Its very complex. Then you start zeroing in on particular things-you know, emotional-sexual this, whatever-bring some more discipline to those, you see. Its covering all the bases, all the bits and pieces of your life, applying all the disciplines I’ve given you. The same purpose as the “reality consideration”. And you just become more and more sensitive to something about all of that that’s got a root or that’s the same. Its some basic thing. The matter of understanding the self-contraction becomes deepened, less of a superficial “consideration”. It becomes a deeper “consideration”. You begin to get a feeling for this something that you’re always doing. You get closer and closer to feeling it rather than feeling its effects merely.

Then, mysteriously-it can’t be pointed out in terms of a particular chapter in a particular educational course or something, its not a particular moment that can be foretold exactly, or predetermined, even-but somehow, in all of that listening and observation, disciplining, you suddenly understand it. You understand it because you’re in the position of it, not just peripheral to it, examining it kind of like a symptom. You somehow, you suddenly feel the thing, the position itself, and realize that this is what you’re doing, this contraction, and its unI’versal to your life. It affects everything. All you’ve been looking at is all the symptoms of it. But its just this one thing. Its there directly in your view, it can never be lost again.

But with that knowledge, because you’re standing in that place, you get the knowledge, the capability, to directly feel beyond it into Communion with Me, not through relaxing this and that or working on this and that, but in place. that’s where you have the capability, as well as the knot. And that’s when sadhana is made profound, you see. When you have that hearing capability, you can enter into this Samadhi of Communion with Me directly, constantly.

Of course, that’s, then, the primal readiness for seeing Me. And it must be true. Or all you get is Spiritual effects. And you won’t see Me. [silence]

Now, some of you have been around Me for a long time and have liked doing the basics, just some of the basics of sadhana, with a little picking and choosing, but doing this sadhana in the context of the first three stages of life, with a little bit of the fourth thrown in when you smile at Me or offer Me a gift. [Sounds of discomfort from devotees.] So you’ve been conventional religionists and cleaned up your act a little bit in ordinary human terms, and all become boring middle-class people now. Its a step higher than you were [laughter] two growling decades ago. But that can’t be the end of it.

That means you have to intensify the sadhana and do it for real and not pick and choose, but do as I Say if you want Me to Do what I Do. Handle your life business, fine, but keep it as simple as possible, and be occupied with Me in real practice.

I mean, to tell Me it takes two decades or more to hear Me is just total bull. Do you know what I mean, Craig? It doesnt take that long, unless you oblige it to take that long because you vacation from most of the sadhana. And you can make it last forever. And you can make the beginners culture the only Way of the Heart there is. EffectI’vely, that’s whats been happening in this gathering. you’ve substituted the Way itself in its Fullness, you’ve substituted for that a beginners religious culture with nothing beyond it. But still, it became a thing in itself and started transforming the Way itself in the process. And people were mainly preoccupied with matters associated with the first three stages of life, as I Said.

Hearing is to stand in that position, as I’ve Said so many times. And if you stand in that position, you also know what to do about it and that you can do it. Its only when you’re outside it, like the guy pinching himself and doesnt know He’s doing it, that you can’t do anything directly about it. No matter how you relax or treat it or pleasurize yourself, its still there. Its only when you take your hand away, when you stop doing the act that’s the root of all that. But you have to be in the position of that act to know it is your act and know how you’re doing it. Then its as simple as opening your hand.

Its not merely a matter of working on the self-contraction from that point. Its that now you have greater arms to Commune with Me, directly. Hm? The Communion with Me is what the process is really all about, but you have to deal with the impediment. that’s your responsibility.

So as I was Saying to you last night, if you’re really serious about not liking to be afraid, then you have to get really serious about sadhana. I know Craig doesnt like to be afraid. [laughter]

AVATARA ADI DA: He’s a major non-fan of fear. He is the president of the anti-fear club. So I know he doesnt like it, and that’s what we were talking about last night, you know. If you get in touch with your basic sense of resistance in association with the body, you feel the fear of it. It’s a steady anxiety. And you really don’t want to be in certain kinds of circumstances. The fear, somehow suppressed into the form of anxiety, just motivates your entire life.

But what is your life really all about? You don’t want to be afraid, you want to be happy. Hm? But you’re exercising the body-mind in order to somehow immunize yourself against this fear, and you’re not dealing with the thing itself. And its inevitable that circumstances will arise that will be frightening. There’s just no way to avoid it, unless you just go out like a light bulb all of a sudden.

There’s all kinds of things to suffer, you see? They’re inevitable. So I’ve given you the Way truly beyond it. But you have to practice it as I’ve given it. And you can’t merely be occupied with lesser or more peripheral aspects of it. You have to get that act together very directly. Do whatever your right service requires, and so forth, but be serious about this practice. Make it profound. If you really don’t like fear, why would you make any other choice?

It’s good to not like fear. Ramana Maharshi, for instance, hated it. He hated it so much he only let it happen one time. [laughter]

DEVOTEE: And that was sufficient!

AVATARA ADI DA: [laughing] Its true! He was a kind of sleepy-headed kid and sort of dull and all that and sort of not emotionally involved in some basic way. And so He never really was afraid. Then He was in His teens, and He was hanging out in His room, whatever the hell He was doing. [laughter] [Beloved Adi Da laughs.] And He certainly had what could be called an anxiety attack. A fear attack. And it was so profound, so sudden, He couldn’t do anything about it. So He had to let it happen.

All this happened rather spontaneously, as He said. In other words, it was an event that happened suddenly, spontaneously. It wasn’t that He was making mental calculations and decisions. It just happened. He became totally afraid. And it was the fear of being the body-mind, the fear inherent in that.

So, in that very same instant, then, He felt how He, Himself, was not the body-mind. And He wasn’t the fear, therefore. He was, like Daniel was saying earlier, thoughtless feeling, the Self, meaning in His case the Transcendental Self, the apparently Boundless – but nonetheless, in some basic sense, individuated also – Being, in that perception, in that sixth-stage perception.

Of course, He had some intuitions beyond that, moving in the direction of the seventh stage of life. So He’s a unique Sage. But in His Case, everything fundamental about it occurred spontaneously, in a flash, because He got more terrified than He ever cared to be again. And so He – and He knew that that fear was inherent in psycho-physical existence and identification with the body – so He found the Source right then and there. And why? Because He hated fear. He didn’t ever want to be afraid again. His sensitivity to it was so profound, He allowed it to be so profound, that He became utterly unwilling to live on the basis of being anything that could be afraid.

Well, that was profoundly serious for anyone, not just a teenager. But it was an uncompromising unwillingness to be afraid. It epitomizes all, epitomized all suffering to Him. It epitomized to Him what life is. No matter how you jiggle it to pleasurize yourself or be amused or be a good citizen or whatever you do, no matter what you do with the body-mind, it is still grounded in this fear, this anxiety, because it is mortal, its limited. I mean, you feed yourself listening to the news a lot, I guess, and watching TV – and even beyond your own experience – you get more and more impressions about how bad it can be. You’re loading yourself up with these impressions with all your so-called entertainments and even manner of living in the ordinary form.

DEVOTEE: Its all a meditation on that.

AVATARA ADI DA: So you try to jiggle yourselves into being consoled even though you’re afraid – reduce your anxiety, but its a foundation stress that informs the entire body-mind, makes a whole life. It’s inherently afraid. You can learn techniques to relax yourself beyond it and relax into the way things happen, and so forth – good, that’s better than nothing. But its possible to be utterly Free, One with the Very Divine, Happy without qualification, without cause. No separation whatsoever.

So if you’re serious about your reactions, then you can get serious about sadhana. But you all also try to cool down your reactions. you’re trying to be immune – without becoming bizarre, hopefully – to the very thing that you have to become sensitive to in order to get serious about the whole matter of being free of the thing you hate: Godlessness, separation, fear, struggle, seeking. You don’t like any of that. You propagandize yourselves into somehow accepting it or liking it, or somehow seem to stay amused or amuse one another as best you can.

But to be identified with this mortality is not amusing. You try to make it amusing. You delude yourselves, but it is not amusing. If you were sensitive to the fundamental non-amusingness of it, then you would become serious about practice. You just think you’ve got all kinds of ways out, things to do, or things you’re supposed to do, or, you know, social directives, or who knows, whatever. you’re occupied with all of that, using it always to relieve stress somehow, make the body feel good to be.

You can get a moment here and there of that, but even in any state of pleasure, you must do this Yoga. And you will notice, then, that even in the most extraordinary states of pleasure, the same disease remains. You want to use the pleasure to avoid this sensitivity, but if you do this sadhana, you won’t. You will discover it, discover the inherent root-stress, suffering, pain, anxiety, and unsatisfactoriness of existence as you’re presuming it. Then you get serious about finding this act, being in its position, sensitive to it, not avoiding it, discovering what is the root of your entire senseless life of suffering and struggle and fundamental anxiety and fear!

It is your own action, from the beginning, at the root. Everything that follows is not merely karma happening to you. You see? Its the result of insisting upon the ego-position. Transcend that, then the so-called karmas have no force.

Getting serious is not just about getting earnest in some willful mental sense. Its about allowing yourself to be sensitive to your real existence, as you experience it, what its all about. And as Daniel was saying earlier, and you’ve all said to Me one time or another, you came to Me for some great reason, presumably not wanting to suffer further and be bewildered and wanting really to become involved in a process of going beyond all of the suffering and seeking and stress as you experience life. you’ve all said that that’s why you came to Me.

But then, having come into My Company, you start vacationing or becoming ordinary or still milling around with the base rather ordinary business of life and making it last forever to get it straight. And yet you still suggest to Me that you have some great purpose for being in My Company.

Which is your greater impulse? To serve that great purpose, devote yourself utterly to it? Or to have an ordinary life, with its pursuits and satisfactions and dissatisfactions and sufferings? You don’t really want much to do with that, so you’re hoping for just a lot of pleasurable life. But its a different choice than the one your confession to Me suggests. You tell Me you have this great purpose, and I give you My every Word about everything about it, and then still you choose a mediocrity, a mediocre revision of the Way. And find all kinds of reasons why you don’t have to be really serious about that core sadhana that’s the real work.

Because if you were, as I was suggesting to you last evening, it shouldn’t take all that much time. But you have to eliminate all the arbitraries and vacations and picking and choosing, live by My Instruction directly, and get seriously involved in this matter of the listening sadhana, first of all, which winds up locating the self-contraction as your own action. But its a complex self-study, so to speak. You have to observe and look at yourself, examine yourself, be examined and reflected to by others, for some period, because all that helps you locate this thing, sensitizes you to it.

Up until now you’ve been trying all kinds of ways to be desensitized to it, however, whereas the sadhana, the listening sadhana, is about becoming directly sensitized to it, to the point where you realize it is your own action and are always in the position of going beyond it. Because its not apart from you. Its always you, so you always can do it. So that’s the hearing sadhana, then, from then.

Now, there arent many doing the hearing sadhana, even after so many years. Maybe some of those will do some of it soon, but it does not suggest to Me that there’s a lot of them that are even possibly up to that. So most of you here are not on that utterly believable list. Even though you’ve been around Me for a long time. So what you’re all suggesting by your sign to Me is that we talk about some very ordinary matters here tonight. [Beloved laughs.]

you’ve Said that in our best moments and in our worst moments we are always Narcissus. And I was wondering if that was a description of the fact that were not identified with the seventh stage disposition.

AVATARA ADI DA: Yes, Narcissus, yes. In other words, the self-contraction is the basis of your every moment.

Because prior to the seventh stage Disposition, you’re always contracted. you’re always identified with that which is not inherently Recognizable in the seventh stage Disposition. Is that what that is a description of? I’ve always interpreted it as kind of a moralistic thing. I overlaid a moralistic connotation on “in your best moments and in your worst moments you’re always Narcissus”.

AVATARA ADI DA: You were thinking of that in moralistic terms?

DEVOTEE: Mostly.

AVATARA ADI DA: Being good versus being bad and that kind of thing? Well, that’s one way of looking at it. But there’s also the good moments of, you know, great pleasure and sudden wealth, whatever, and then the medium moments, and then the really dark moments, and so forth. So its, the description covers all aspects of your experience. “Good moments and bad moments” covers every possibility.

And, what about that?

DEVOTEE: Well, it seems to me that its kind of an inherent description of what you’ve been talking about tonight, that one is Narcissus in your best moments . . .

AVATARA ADI DA: Right. Whatever we may mean by “best” and “worst”. And so?

DEVOTEE: Is that a description of the fact that previous to seventh stage Enlightenment, you’re never free of the position of being in the fear, being afraid, being identified with an individuated body-mind, and so on?

AVATARA ADI DA: Yes. Separated body-mind, then.

DEVOTEE: Separated body-mind.

AVATARA ADI DA: dissociative, therefore.

DEVOTEE: So it doesnt matter any time . . .

AVATARA ADI DA: Its not just that you feel separate. you’re doing the act of being separate, so it coincides with the separatI’ve disposition also, altogether, a dissociative disposition. So the form of verbal Enquiry I’ve given you that’s the equivalent of that gesture, you see, is “Avoiding relationship?” If that’s what it amounts to, its not just that you feel tacitly separate, individuated. Your life is about self-contraction, the avoidance of relationship, dissociative intentions. you’re always breaking out of unity into the crush of separatI’veness, and it can have very dark qualities to it ultimately.

Do you understand?

DEVOTEE: Yes, Beloved. Thank You.

AVATARA ADI DA: And the second question?

DEVOTEE: It was about Your Description earlier this evening of the sixth stage practice, the second stage of the “Perfect Practice”, and You Described that Witness-Position in a way that I’ve never heard described before, or don’t recall, or wasn’t penetrated by Your Description of before-about how you’re still, its, its a combining yourself with the seventh stage Disposition or moving in and out of That. And it sounded to me that when You were Describing it You were talking about that sixth stage practice, about that being in a meditatI’ve circumstance. You Said you don’t . . .

AVATARA ADI DA: Well, that’s the most intensI’ve form of the exercise, because you step apart from psycho-physical obligations.

DEVOTEE: But I also, I guess that there’s something about that that is curious to me, because of Your Presence here. The fact that that Contemplation of You when you’re walking around and working and doing anything . . .

AVATARA ADI DA: Mm-hm.

DEVOTEE: . . . is so-I guess I don’t perceive of a difference between doing that sadhana in the sixth stage practice and doing the one that’s in the meditatI’ve circumstance where you’re going deeper into. . . I don’t understand . . .

AVATARA ADI DA: While a sixth stage practitioner is doing that? Or earlier?

DEVOTEE: Well, I was specifically talking about as a sixth stage practitioner.

AVATARA ADI DA: And what happens? [laughter] [Beloved laughs.]

DEVOTEE: I think what my client is trying to say . . .

AVATARA ADI DA: Yes.

DEVOTEE: . . . is that she can’t understand how in the sixth stage of practice there would be a difference in meditation between the Contemplation of You and the practice outside of meditation.

AVATARA ADI DA: Well, it neednt be entirely different, of course, but in the meditatI’ve exercise of the “Perfect Practice”, you step apart from all psycho-physical obligations towards the most profound exercise of the disposition of the “Perfect Practice”. It is not about doing this and that with the body-mind and its relations. Its Standing Prior to it and entering into the depth of That. Well, that exercise moves you out of the realm of attention into the domain of Being Itself. And then after the meditation you become reassociated with so-called ordinary conditions again.

In that circumstance, you’re just as much My devotee as before, I mean you still do all the devotional practices and so forth-its not that now, you know, an hour ago when you were in meditation you were in the Divine Self-State and now all of a sudden you’re an ignorant fool, you see-no, its just that you become reassociated, as My devotee you become reassociated with conditions with all their usual implications, and so forth. And you’re not in the Well. You tend to recede from the Well.

Well, of course as the sixth stage process becomes more and more profound, there isnt that movement out of the Well so readily. And there is still a persistent residence in It, even in daily life. So it becomes more and more profound. And that’s how it ultimately becomes the seventh stage Awakening, by becoming profound, because at last there is this sensitivity to the presumption of “difference” between the Divine Self-Condition and objects, conditions. Hm? And that you had to go into the Depth somehow or recede from all of that somehow, in order to be Established in the Divine Condition, or the Free Condition-its just the last noticing of the gesture of self-contraction, of separation, and the human drama of separatI’veness, egoic “self-possession”.

And its then that the Oneness of conditional appearance and the Divine Self-Condition becomes inherently Obvious. And that’s how everything becomes Recognizable, as it truly Is .

But how did that relate to your question?

DEVOTEE: Thank You, Beloved. You answered my question.

 

---

DEVOTEE: Beloved, its amazing, how we spoke last night and then again earlier this evening about language. And how it really happens spontaneously. There isnt time to think.

AVATARA ADI DA: And by the way, everything does just exactly the same. Speech is, you normally presume, a very voluntary, specifically intended something. And you tend to think of a lot of other aspects of yourself as being less voluntary, maybe. So just noticing the fact that in order to think you don’t think first, somehow, you magically somehow conjure it, it seems, without making even the slightest gesture. So that’s true of thinking and of speaking, which is associated with thinking. But its true relative to absolutely everything that arises. If you would simply inspect it.

Not only speech or thought, but everything arising, you’re associated with all of it in exactly the same way. So the sixth stage process is about entering into that Depth, Prior to psycho-physical association, Prior to acts of attention, because you’re always Prior to attention, Prior to speech, Prior to thought. These things sort of magically collect in some interesting state of awareness. But everybody knows its all Light. If you break everything down to parts, you finally get to just Light, Energy Itself, you can’t reduce It further. there’s no more parts.

Do the same thing subjectively, get through all of your self-presumptions, thoughts, all the rest, there’s simply Consciousness Itself, and It cannot be reduced further, can’t be broken into parts.

So the Inherent Reality is not something totally alien to you. You know things about It, you presume things about It. But you forget about It. If your attention is directed to such “consideration”, then all of a sudden it seems very important to you. But otherwise you’re all over the place being ordinary and egoically “self-possessed”.

Stanley, what were you saying?

DEVOTEE: Beloved, I was saying that, like You Said, Beloved, ultimately everything is Light, and I’ve observed a couple of times this evening, and its happened many times in the past. Sometimes, Beloved, You’ll ask, “What did I just Say?” or “Did that cover it?” And since speech comes from not a thinking spot in space or anything, when You Speak, Beloved, its always that Light, its always Perfect Truth. You don’t recall anything that you’ve Said sometimes before. But always Perfectly its exactly and utterly what should be, What Is. And its the same in Your Bodily Sign when You Say that things are constantly going on, the same as speech, but everything that Your Bodily Sign is, Beloved, is of total Transcendence of it all and Perfection of it all.

AVATARA ADI DA: But not by dissociation, you see? I had to do the sadhana with the body. Of the body, and all the rest. It had to be purified and conformed to Me. So its not merely a leftover, having been pushed further and further away to the point where its like a piece of garbage. It had to be invested in the sadhana altogether. Every aspect of the body-mind or the psycho-physical personality must be submitted. And it is Transformed sufficient for your Realization in the process.

Well, what else would be interesting to talk about?

DEVOTEE: It seems the things that are most interesting to talk about, Beloved, is enjoying what we spoke about both last night and this evening, without getting into anything that you’ve already Elaborated on so many times in the emotional-sexual and other dimensions. Instead, talking about Consciousness.

AVATARA ADI DA: Yes, I Said when we were back in Purnashram, I don’t talk about that stuff anymore. I’ve Said everything that needed to be said about it and many times more, everything that could be said about it. And we have all our agreements, and that “consideration” is done and now its got to be preserved and everybody study it and adapt to it. So there shouldn’t be any need to spend time with Me talking about such matters.

That’s another reason why I’ve become even more urgent about having practitioners at level 2 and on, because there are new things, further things that I need to address, and certainly have, in summary, addressed everything, but there are also more things to be said in a circumstance with people who are practicing at an advanced level. Its a higher level of “consideration”, which I’ve entered into, but not so much in dialogue, because there werent people truly practicing in that disposition.

So some of that dialogue will be useful to have. But its just that I don’t have any Work of the kind I was Doing before, enough to Do to Occupy Me. I’m still here, for all devotees from the beginning of their practice, and theyll continue to come into My Company, as weve agreed. But I don’t have a lot of interaction with them to do, in the sense of before. So I don’t want to just be waiting around My House for people to get serious with Me. Its not enough to have the daily Darshan occasion for half an hour with the staff and people on retreat.

That serves, and it will continue, but its not enough for Me to be Doing.

So I thought it would be useful here to have some “considerations” about this matter in greater depth than I’ve heard anybody talking to Me about it.

DEVOTEE: Beloved, I feel like, in doing so you’ve also been making something extraordinary available to all of us, even in our beginnerness. Because last evening You Gracefully allowed us particular Realizations in that moment . . .

AVATARA ADI DA: Mm-hm.

DEVOTEE: . . . which were far beyond what my and other peoples practice are up to altogether.

AVATARA ADI DA: Mm-hm.

DEVOTEE: And, uh . . .

AVATARA ADI DA: Well, its like the Garbage and the Goddess time . [Devotees murmur agreement.] It wasn’t that everybody was, by virtue of the experiences they were having, suddenly capable of advanced practice and so forth. It wasn’t the intention, either. The intention was to serve the argument which Id been proposing constantly from the time I began formally to Teach.

But Realization is neither a search for nor an attainment of any kind of an object or conditional state. I refer to it as garbage, and so forth, using the metaphor of Rudi always handing Me a bag of garbage behind his back as he hugged Nina. So this was My Instruction to you.

Well, the gathering as it was then only represented a certain range of experience, not particularly great, rather of the normal kind, ordinary kind. So in order to advance that “consideration”, elaborate on it, and give everyone the basis for getting the point I was trying to make, I entered into a Disposition by which devotees started having all kinds of experiences.

But I always addressed them in their report to Me. “I experience such and such,” we’d go through the argument and ask about the self-contraction, and so on-remember? [laughter] “And you’re still doing that even so.” So that was the purpose it was intended to serve. Well, as you point out, in our “consideration” last evening, you all having various experiences along the lines of My “consideration” with you as you sat here quietly – its an example of the same thing. You actually, by Grace, entered into the States I was discussing, suddenly had an intelligence and an experience that enabled you to feel It exactly. Right through into the seventh stage “consideration”.

But, of course, you’re not prepared to do the sadhana of those advancements yet, generally speaking. But its useful for you to grasp what this is all about by becoming most intimate to My “consideration”, to feel it most profoundly. You don’t necessarily have to come and sit in a small gathering here with Me to do it. Some do that sometimes, and its recorded, so-in other words I intend it to be of use for all devotees. I expect them all to be just as serious and to enter into these “considerations” profoundly, on the basis of having all the practices intact and for real. My devotee.

And taking Me seriously and really practicing in the midst of studying My Word, there can be some coincidences in feeling or experience that correspond to very profound things. And you have experiences even as beginners in My Company, Spiritual experiences of one kind or another, and so on.

So these things are not given to you in order to somehow suggest to you you are now capable of advanced or ultimate stage practice. They are given you to inspire you. They represent breakthroughs or purifications also. But they also support and intensify your intelligence, your discrimination, your understanding, your observations.

So its always the case-any devotees who participate with Me profoundly, address My Word through profound “consideration”, Contemplate Me truly moment to moment-that this kind of a process occurs. It should be characteristic of My devotees. But the process of the “consideration” of My Word involves, in the midst of their practice-perhaps right then in the study “consideration” or in the Hall, whatever-it involves the awakening of depths in you, Gracefully, that can understand My Communication profoundly. So it gives you a further basis for knowing how to make use of My Word, in the circumstance of your correct sadhana at the moment.

Your experiences sometimes are about things far advanced from your present stage of practice. That doesnt mean you go and do those practices. You do your present practice. Let those experiences serve you, even as a test. You can have some really grade-A meditation some day, you know? Blisses and visions and Yogic all this and that, and you can get full of yourself about it, but start craving it and somehow governing your meditation time psycho-physically to orient yourself to having that kind of experience again rather than doing the direct sadhana I’ve given you to do.

So people, then, get into these repetitI’ve games of making their bodies mechanical, or do something internally and so forth, that are not about really doing that self-transcending sadhana, that self-forgetting, utterly self-surrendering sadhana, but They’re about still being locked into an egoically “self-possessed” mechanism, rehearsing the pursuit of some kind of a state or other they may have tasted a bit about.

So, it is as I was Saying even from the beginning, this is all garbage. Any kind of clinging attachment to kinds of experience, whether They’re brilliant or ordinary for you, modifies the force of existence, limits it, defines it. And then becomes a distraction from sadhana and makes your sadhana just wheel-spinning or time-passing, until you break through it again and change your ordinary course of so-called sadhana into the real practice of the Way of the Heart, this “radical” or most direct practice of going beyond the knot of egoity itself rather than basing life on the knot of egoity and making an adventure of life, making an adventure of life on that basis, including constantly seeking that which you know not .

You make a whole life of that knot.

Haven’t we talked about that about fifty times tonight? Anybody got a different kind of a question?