There’s No Escape, There’s Only Realization – Section 1

The Yajna Discourses of Santosha Adi Da (1995-1996)

There’s No Escape, There’s Only Realization

A Gathering “Consideration” with Beloved Bhagavan Adi Da In The Manner of Flowers On January 5, 1995

 

SECTION I

AVATARA ADI DA: So what didn’t we come to any conclusion about in these twenty-three years?

DEVOTEE: Whoa! that’s the first question You release into our “consideration”?

AVATARA ADI DA: Is there anything? [pause] Do you all know what anything is yet? [DEVOTEES: No.]

DEVOTEE: that’s one conclusion we’ve come to.

AVATARA ADI DA: But did you find out that you can Realize What everything is? [silence]

Is anybody Realizing It now?

[long pause]

DEVOTEE: That was it.

MICHAEL WOOD: I think we should keep considering that .

AVATARA ADI DA: Okay.

DEVOTEE:: It feels as though, Beloved, that when you relax the conceptual mind, the perceptual mind is felt at heart.

AVATARA ADI DA: Mm? And that’s a perception.

DEVOTEE: But it also shows you the deepest place to relax into.

AVATARA ADI DA: Yes, well, what if you do that?

What if you relax that perception, too? In other words, where there is no contraction whatsoever.

If there’s no contraction, then you’re not merely experiencing but in some inherent sense Realizing What Is , because you’re not adding anything. There’s no “you” in the active sense affecting What Is. So you’re not experiencing What Is through any kind of medium of thought or sensation.

it’s just It.

If you feel It utterly, then the perceptual mind that is even aware of your own physical form relaxes and there are no boundaries. And no separate self. [pause]

There are levels of emotion in it that follow, rather formless-positive emotions, negative emotions. That’s just another modification of Energy.

Feel through each of those.

Add absolutely nothing to What Is. [pause]

There’s a kind of anxiety at the root of it. That’s the ego knot. Feel through it.

[very long pause, several minutes]

Now do you see how much further you’d have to go to allow it completely? [Devotees answer that they do.]

So you have to do the sadhana, you see. [long pause]

DEVOTEE: Beloved, that was a very extraordinary experience, because I felt like it began with the conceptual mind relaxing to begin with, as we have talked about.

AVATARA ADI DA: Mm-hm.

DEVOTEE: And now all kinds of perceptions when we were just silent there. And then even those perceptions kind of all being just eliminated down to what felt like was the contraction at the core here. And at the same time I was seeing You, just Witnessing You. It was like I could simply see Who You Are. And I felt like there were moments when I would just evaporate into That in some sense, that this knot was forgotten for a split second, but then it was right there.

AVATARA ADI DA: Mm-hm.

DEVOTEE: It was so strongly there. And I felt, apart from conceptions and perceptions and so on, that that was simply going to be there until completely purified by sadhana. There was no way of thinking it through or perceiving it through. It was simply there. And I felt what needed to be surrendered in order for that to be transcended.

AVATARA ADI DA: Yes, if you really feel that knot, you don’t want to feel it. Hm? But it is the ground of your ordinary life. You try to distract yourself from it constantly, through seeking and self-indulgence and whatnot. But if you really find out about yourself, find this knot, find what your real experience is, then you won’t want to put up with that. It will oblige you to do sadhana, to feel constantly more and more beyond it.

DEVOTEE: Beloved, I feel this. I feel this need to go beyond that, what this illusion is, very strongly now. it’s something that You Gave me this year.

AVATARA ADI DA: Tcha.

DEVOTEE: I feel that it’s such a profound vision to see life as an illusion. The Beauty of What is other than that, you know, is just Shining more and more to me.

AVATARA ADI DA: Mm-hm.

But to Realize It you must utterly relinquish your self-position. So that doesn’t make life a negative. That just means that that’s what life is about. Life is inherently, by Law, sadhana, God-wardness, going beyond separate self.

Generally, people don’t seem to know anything about that. So by Grace you may become aware of it, and no longer be willing to be distracted by your cover-up, to keep yourself somehow or other unaware of it and becoming very, then, superficial, peripheral, in your mind, your body, your feelings. But all the time you’re motivated by it. You re always seeking something or other. You even forget what the hell you’re seeking. Or in one moment or other it’s this, that, or the other particular thing, but always avoiding the knowledge, the discovery, of your own action that is producing all of that.

So it is a Grace to find it out. But it is not in itself Graceful. In other words, it’s not a mere pleasure to find this knot, you see, if, having found It out, you must do sadhana. Otherwise, well, maybe you’ll forget a little bit again by getting very superficial, but you’ll give up the opportunity to deal with it.

DEVOTEE: Beloved, I feel that everything in the world is about that. That is all it’s about, is avoiding that.

AVATARA ADI DA: Avoiding this knowledge of this knot. The whole worlds avoiding this knowledge of the knot.

DEVOTEE: Everything that I’ve done, even in Your Company and the practice that You’ve Given us, I’ve had to come to see that everything I do, everything I do, everything I do, …

AVATARA ADI DA: Mm.

DEVOTEE: … is intentionally keeping me from feeling that and going beyond that.

AVATARA ADI DA: Well, truly, you’re only willing to feel that knot that motivates you when you simultaneously, Gracefully, discover What Transcends it and are Given a Wisdom that communicates itself to you so that you know how to go beyond it. In other words, individuals will automatically dissociate from this depth unless they can somehow come to terms with it through the Graceful discovery of What Transcends it and the finding of Wisdom to deal with it.

So when all those things coincide, and all of a sudden you find you’re able to feel this thing that motivates you, this knot, this disturbance, because you know that there’s something you can do about it, then there is the What to Realize that’s beyond it.

But still the sadhana is a matter of actually dealing with this dis-ease. In other words, the religious life, this Way in particular, is not about consolation merely and distraction and so forth, in the conventional sense, or ego-supporting sense. The process, moment to moment, goes beyond the self-contraction, particularly as hearing awakens. that’s when there is most profound understanding, knowing of this self-contraction, and that it is your own activity. But even the sadhana from the beginning is about going beyond this knot and not avoiding it through conventional-mindedness and consolation and such.

So the actual process is to stay in place, in this place of separate self, surrendering to Me, to the point of self-forgetting Communion with Me, true going beyond it. Its that from the beginning, not merely after hearing. Even from the beginning it is so. But you have to understand that that’s what the sadhana is about, or you will miss the point and think the religious life is about consolation or mere behavior and so forth.

You are to stand in that position of that knot, feeling your own dis-ease, motivation.

DEVOTEE:: it’s so painful just to feel that, though.

AVATARA ADI DA: But it’s there anyway. [DEVOTEE: Yeah.] So you must embrace this Way and actually go beyond it.

But that means you have to endure it over the period of your sadhana. There’s not only the fundamental knot itself. There are all of it’s reflections in the body-mind, tendencies of one kind or another, and so on. You have to endure the purification of these things by standing in the knot-position, sensitive to all the limitations of your disposition, and surrender to Me to the point of forgetting it, relinquishing it, keeping the faculties all focused in Me, in this Communion Only then do you make this knot obsolete.

You initially go through a process of purification where the resultant knots, the different kinds of behaviors, attitudes, and so forth, that bind you appear. These must be purified through the initial stages of sadhana, even up to the “Perfect Practice”. So the initial sadhana is purifying, and it’s necessarily, then, a matter of being in touch with this knot in life-difficulties and so on, all tendencies that would make life difficult. Instead of dramatizing them, maintain the discipline of this Way and practice this Communion every moment.

In this manner you will be purified by this Communion with Me in all those areas that are relaxed, forgotten, disciplined. So that more and more the practice becomes extraordinarily concentrated, not in peripheral matters of experiencing and so on but in the root itself. And then the “Perfect Practice” can begin. So, once sufficient purification has occurred, that there is this extraordinary concentration, then suddenly My Instruction about the Witness becomes inherently Obvious and is thereafter not something that can be forgotten.

it’s not a something that can be forgotten. it’s not merely a thought. it’s a noticing that you never forget. Its a noticing even beyond the mind.

Now, you can notice it, of course, for a moment, if I Call you to.

[Beloved Adi Das Voice becomes quiet.] I mean, isn’t it true, right now? No matter what is arising, you are the Witness of it? [Quiet assent from devotees.]

But to Stand in the Witness-Position Itself, truly, requires purification of attention, and therefore of the bondage signs in the body-mind altogether, and in life, experience.

So sadhana is tapas. You must be in the place of the knot, sensitive to the limitations in your own disposition, but in every moment-instead of dramatizing that-disciplining it, surrendering it to Me, entering into Communion with Me by forgetting the content that is simply the garbage result of not living in Truth in the past. So it has to be made obsolete. All the modifications of the fundamental Reality must be purified and transcended. What there is to Realize is the Unconditional Reality, the Reality that is Always Already the case, even now.

Now you are preoccupied with the modifications of that Reality, that Divine Reality, distracted by them and dissociated from the fundamental Reality by this very knot. You must enter into depth, no superficiality, as you did in the first part of this consideration. Ordinarily you are not doing so in the fullest or stable sense, you see. And so as soon as you relax into your just fundamental feeling, you feel a knot there. You don’t simply feel the inherent Love-Bliss of Reality-but you do feel It, Flowing through it, but you’re experiencing this knot in the midst of It. To Realize the Divine Self-Condition, you have to go beyond that knot.

So it’s not really a matter of thinking, accumulating experience, and so on. it’s a matter of being established in that place, surrendering to Me to the point of self-forgetting. And this allows a course of purification and development that becomes the “Perfect Practice” and ultimately the seventh stage Demonstration. It is truly an inevitable process, able to go by it’s appropriate stages and so forth, unless you step outside the process itself and become superficial again. But if you stay with the process itself, as I have Given it to you altogether, then the development is inevitable.

So if your development in this Way is slow, its because you’re stepping outside the process. it’s not that the process itself is retarded.

This is why the hearing matter is so profound and fundamental to this Way. it’s the foundation of the process that must develop, because it’s about finding the self-knot, the self-contraction, finding it as your own activity, feeling it’s disturbed, ill-at-ease characteristic but also even in every moment of such sensitivity enjoying the capability to feel beyond it in this Communion with Me.

So hearing is the first great step beyond the initiation of Ishta-Guru-Bhakti Yoga. In other words, the first dimension of the process is concentrated in the awakening of hearing, because you must enjoy and suffer this capability to stand in the egoic position and feel beyond it. If you don’t do that, then if you faked your way on to level 2 and then beyond and so forth, you’d simply be involved in a kind of evolutionary or developmental ego-game. Whereas the Way of the Heart is about the transcendence of egoity.

DEVOTEE: I saw that, Beloved, when I was Contemplating You. I was feeling this knot of self-contraction and the Bliss of Your Beautiful Form at the same time. I felt Your Current of Energy, and It threw me back into the sense of the descending Current and something like “the Thumbs”. But when that happened, I lost sight of the self-contraction and I also lost sight of the Bliss of Your Form. So there was something about the …

AVATARA ADI DA: You lost sight of that, too?

DEVOTEE: [Laughs.] When that happened, I just noticed that I got absorbed in myself rather than in You.

AVATARA ADI DA: Tcha.

DEVOTEE: That was an example of the fact that I’m not hearing. Just even that moment of distraction, I could feel it as such.

AVATARA ADI DA: Mm-hm. Because you’re experiencing it as an event happening to You. Whereas hearing is about that unique understanding in which the self-contraction is not something happening to you. it’s something that you do. Only when that is discovered have you discovered the capability itself, so that you can continue doing it. it’s a unique discovery, most profound discovery. And it’s the basis for the rest of the Way of the Heart. it’s what allows it to be a truly ego-transcending process and not merely a developmental or ego-evolving process.

DEVOTEE: There’s never been anything like it, Beloved.

AVATARA ADI DA: Tcha.

it’s also for this reason that in the general case the transition from maturity at level 3, the transition can be made at that point to the “Perfect Practice”, in the general case. Because the Way is not an evolutionary process, but it’s about ego-transcendence, and that’s the fundamental understanding associated with true hearing. So in general what follows from there is simply the fundamental process of seeing Me, not merely having Spiritual experiences in My Company but “Locating” Me, and then the next step is the “Perfect Practice”.

So hearing is what allows that unique process. It has some features to it for which you can find analogies in the Great Tradition, but fundamentally it is utterly unique.

DEVOTEE: So Beloved, when someone is seeing, that person never loses sight of Your Form.

AVATARA ADI DA: Yes. you’re entered into My Form, not merely having experiences in your own apparent form, or body-mind, you see, but felt beyond that into My Spiritual Person. Then the Force of My Spiritual Attraction will draw you into the heart place on the right, and the “Perfect Practice” can begin.

DEVOTEE: Beloved, I remember one time when I was driving up to the Mountain Of Attention here when I was living in Marin. I was a single person at the time. And I believe it was during the time of the Love of the God-Man Celebration. I had never seen You before. I was relatively new. Anyway, for a moment as I was driving my car, I happened to look across at these two people driving alongside me. They were an older couple. But it was like You Said, for a moment I was in the Witness-Position, just for-I don’t know how long it was. But it just became very clear that it was the state that I’m never in, or very, very, rarely.

AVATARA ADI DA: it’s not uncommon for people to report something like this, though, having either occasional or frequent experiences of that kind.

DEVOTEE: I did recognize that it was through Your Grace that I was allowed to Witness this.

AVATARA ADI DA: I’ve told you all about My experience with Sue Ellen Beckman [when Avatara Adi Da was a teenager], when Id be standing on her doorstep? that’s similar to what you’re suggesting, Carl. It happened to Me many times, and it generally would always be in the same place, too. Id be saying goodnight to her at her house, shed be about a step above Me, Id be looking at her, and suddenly there was no familiarity whatsoever. No thinking about anything, no being a body, no recognizing names, faces, or what a face is and not only being the Witness as attention might be, observing, but more than that, such that there was a direct awareness of the infinite Field that is the True Domain of the Witness.

So this sense that Carl described and that I have Described is not an uncommon experience. Spontaneously it happens to people. Maybe sometimes people don’t really make much of it or notice very much about it. They just forget about it. But of course phenomena such as these are cultivated in this Way. They are a potential, by Grace, in My Company, all kinds of experiences. So devotees commonly report experiences, even as beginners, that are in the domain of the advanced stages of life and the Witness-Position, and so on. These experiences should inspire you and give you a sense of what this Way is all about and so forth.

DEVOTEE: Yes.

AVATARA ADI DA: But you still have to do the sadhana. The sadhana is staying in touch with your own very action in this moment and going beyond it, forgetting it in Communion with Me. If you just look for experiences-so-called Spiritual experiences, psychic experiences, or blisses in the body, whatever-you’re becoming superficial again. Those experiences may come or go, but to look for them, to avoid the sadhana of staying in place where that knot is and feeling beyond it is to waste the opportunity of this Way.

So experiences may come and go. Devotees have experiences, certainly, and basically they serve to inspire you. that’s about it. The sadhana is just the same thing every moment. it’s not boring. it’s the fundamental living event. But you must persist, moment by moment by moment. To be renounced in this Way is to be in the disposition of going beyond the self-contraction. But it’s also to be in the disposition of renouncing attachment to or search for conditional experiences. In other words, you persist in the fundamental sadhana rather than pursue such things.

DEVOTEE: Then doesn’t that occur quite naturally as a result?

AVATARA ADI DA: Which? The experiences?

DEVOTEE: Mm-hm.

AVATARA ADI DA: Yes, the experiences, as I Say, come about spontaneously, but They’re not themselves the sadhana and They’re not something to cling to or to pursue or try to repeat and so on. So you must persist in the sadhana. Of course, that means you have to know what this sadhana is. We’ve been talking about it for a while before you two [indicating Rod and Julia] arrived. But the others of you know what we talked about.

And the conversations we had at Sugar Bowl and the conversation I had with the Kanyas the other night that was recorded are other considerations I’ve put to you recently to serve devotees generally, but also in particular to serve this Lay Renunciate Order matter. Even up to today, it hasn’t gone very far. I’m having to remind everybody what this most profound sadhana is really all about and Call you all who are considering this LRO matter to consider all that very seriously.

So it’s no small matter to hear Me.

DEVOTEE: it’s not for fools.

AVATARA ADI DA: No. So for individuals to be accepted, relative to this LRO matter, for level 1.3 or level 2, there must be the signs of all this profundity. People think it’s such a big deal to discipline themselves, that they want to be patted on the back for a little bit of straightening themselves out. Sometimes that’s enough for some people to start thinking grandiose things about themselves-hearing, seeing, advancement, all the rest. Whereas it’s not enough. it’s just basic practice. The real process goes on from there.

DEVOTEE: Beloved, it seems the more profound the sadhana, the less grandiose peoples presumptions are about themselves.

AVATARA ADI DA: Mm-hm. Truly, there’s no one to have any presumptions about.

Another thing I was talking to the Kanyas about the other night, which was in that recording, I guess some of you heard it, is some matters particular to the seventh stage of life. I was talking about the fundamental Nature of Reality, that simply What Is, is What there Is when everything else is eliminated. Well, broken down into it’s parts and going deeper and deeper, you see, when you get to the place you cant reduce to anything further, that’s What Is. Hm? that’s Reality.

Every schoolboy, schoolgirl, knows, from a little bit of science class, that all there is is light. Everything’s light, energy. it’s part of the common presumption of the present day. With all of it’s other limitations, this is one of it’s presumptions. it’s remarkable that it hasn’t produced any cultural changes yet. [Laughter.] Everything just seems fleshier and fleshier and more and more stupid and technified, whereas what is really profound about all of that is not all this invention you can do, preoccupation you can create, but this fundamental communication about reality, that it’s light.

All of this is Light! it’s just one Buzz, Shakti, Hm? The Divine Radiance. You can look at a form, get into it’s parts, you know-the human body, lets say. There’s that fleshiness, and then there’s the chemical and molecular levels, and atomic levels, and so forth. Eventually you get to Light, or Energy Itself. And It cant be reduced to anything else. You cant break It down into any parts. It doesn’t have any parts, you see. it’s fundamental Reality.

There’s one other irreducible Reality for you to discover, likewise, and that is Consciousness. There are conceptions, perceptions, blah-blah-blah-blah-blah-blah-blah, hm? At the root of it all is Consciousness Itself, and It cant be reduced to anything else. it’s like Light. You cant break It into parts, and there’s nothing on the other side of It but Itself. Light and Consciousness are the same Thing. Generally Consciousness is what you call the Subjective Part of It, and Light is the Objective Part of It. But in reality They are One.

Reality Itself, just simply What Is, cant be reduced to anything.

It is Self-Existing.

it’s Inherent Nature is Radiance.

And it’s Quality is Love-Bliss, the Very Divine Person.

I am Speaking to you now.

It is so!

But you are apparently dissociated from Me, from this Very Condition. The self-knot, the self-contraction, is how you’re doing that. You are doing it. This is what you must discover, and this is what hearing is about. By entering into Communion with Me from that position, moment to moment, going beyond that knot, you enter into the real process of the Way of the Heart, Which is about Realizing the Condition that everybody already knows is True-Light Itself, Love-Bliss Itself, Consciousness Itself, the One Infinitely Conscious Buzz that you are experiencing right now!

But, of course, in the midst of It, you are dissociating from It also, so you feel this knot of contraction. But you also feel this Pervasive Presence when you feel the Depth also, in any moment that you are truly sensitive, anyway.

So the process is about Realizing the Condition That Is, Realizing My Very Person, by going beyond the self-knot, utterly. And at first there is a lot of sequence of purification, as I Said, going beyond distraction by mere modifications. And then there’s entering into the profound Depth of the Self-Radiant Consciousness in the “Perfect Practice”.

Of course, through that process of purification and Spiritual Awakening, there are many changes that occur in the personality of the body-mind and so forth that one could call Spiritualizing. But it’s only with the seventh stage Awakening in Which there is Inherent and Most Perfect Identification with the Divine Self-Condition, the Demonstration of That, through the process of Divine Recognition, is the actual Incarnating of the Divine, the actual Manifesting of the Divine.

So the seventh stage Demonstration is one of progressively absolute Radiance, or “Brightening”. So there are stages to that Demonstration, ultimately to the point of No-Noticing, Divine Translation.

DEVOTEE: And must that process be fulfilled once it’s begun, Beloved? In other words, once the seventh stage process is begun it will be fulfilled?

AVATARA ADI DA: Inevitably, yes. But it is a matter of Indifference when it occurs.

it’s not that it has yet to happen, either. The Realization is already the case. The Samadhi is already the case.

DEVOTEE: it’s just a Revelation.

AVATARA ADI DA: But it’s Demonstration is in the context of conditional existence.

DEVOTEE: Transfiguration, Transformation …

AVATARA ADI DA: Yes, Indifference, and ultimately Unqualified “Brightness”, Divine Translation.

Indifference may sound like a dull thud in the midst of that. [Laughter.]

DEVOTEE: Not the way You Show it, Beloved.

AVATARA ADI DA: You just sort of go comatose or blank or something. No, it is beyond the Transfiguring and Transforming processes. It is immensely Full in the body-mind. The body-mind is simply Radiant. And that Radiance is magnified in the Divine Indifference stage to the point of Divine Translation.

But this “Brightness”, this Realization of the “Bright”, is the seventh stage Awakening.

So the “Brightness” is what I have Brought to you. that’s What I Am. that’s Who I Am.

DEVOTEE: So, Beloved, when you’re Divinely Indifferent, you’re just Residing in Your Love-Bliss and Giving it to everyone? Is that it?

AVATARA ADI DA: Mm-hm. that’s it.

The inherent Nature of Light, or the Divine Conscious Bliss, is Radiance. I was discussing this with the Kanyas the other evening, as a way of Helping everyone to understand something more fundamental of what the sadhana is about. It is the sadhana of the “Bright”.

The ordinary human disposition is attached to two-sidedness. On the one hand there is pleasure and pursued pleasurable states. On the other hand there is negativity and a kind of lightlessness, or darkness. And you’re attached to a body-mind that is mortal, and that makes it more negative in the balance than positive.

And so you’re always, by tendency, literally un-en-lightened, not lighted, not “Bright”, not Radiant. you’re contracted, not Radiant. Radiance, however, is the inherent Nature of Reality. So the sadhana is-I’ve used many metaphors, like “living in My Kiln”-through Communion with Me, self-forgetting Communion with Me, to Reside in My Self-Radiant Position. It is to be Radiant, rather than self-contracted. Every moment of Communion with Me is this. And then with hearing it becomes more profound, and seeing, and so on. But it is a “Bright” course of identifying with My inherently Radiant Condition, and thereby being Radiant, becoming Radiant, being Radiant yourself rather than contracted. All of the dark, negative, egoic “self-possessed”, mortal, and so forth lightlessness in you must become Radiant instead. The Way is literally the Way of becoming En-Lightened, becoming Perfectly Identified with “Brightness”. Me.

So it is a matter of constantly becoming Radiant instead of contracted. On Melrose Avenue when I first began to Instruct devotees, I would often use this gesture of closing the fist and then opening the fist. [Beloved Adi Da makes the Gesture with His right hand held at the center of His chest.] Everybody intuitively felt what that meant. They knew it’s got something to do with energy and all that, too, you know. They felt all that in My Company.

But what does that mean? You can either be contracted and therefore dark and dissociated from the Divine Self-Condition, or you can be Radiant, not only open but Radiating. Hm? And the more you do this sadhana, the more obvious the Disposition of Radiance becomes. Even the “conscious process” becomes a non-verbal feeling beyond contraction. You can do it in every moment relative to everything. Instead of being darkened by the tendencies, you can feel beyond the self-contraction and all the tendencies.

So those who do this sadhana seriously, for real, become “Brighter” and “Brighter”, literally. It is Light. It can even be seen. By some it can be felt. So through this process of purification, you don’t just get thinner and thinner and more and more ascetical. You get Fuller and Fuller, “Brighter” and “Brighter”. Hm? This is how devotees should understand it. They always think in terms of getting disciplined and dried up, so they always want to use something or other to feel good. But, no, this Way is a “Brightening” Way. It is not about self-contraction. It is quite the opposite. it’s not about pleasurelessness, but it is about Happiness Itself, Which is greater than ordinary pleasure but allows for it also.

DEVOTEE: There’s an Irish saying, Beloved, describing a very happy person, he was so happy he was like a cat milking the sun.

AVATARA ADI DA: Milking the sun? Ah, Tcha. that’s good.

So when making these observations, as I Said, trying to assist people in this LRO consideration, and as I was telling people today, My observation-and obviously I’ve been telling people for a long time-My observation of devotees in general, including those who apply for this LRO matter, suggests to Me that They’re struggling with, or otherwise demonstrating, limitations in the real moment to moment practice of Ishta-Guru-Bhakti Yoga. And, along with that, They’re struggling with or otherwise neglecting the various disciplines.

And the struggling with the disciplines produces drama and lack of results in the gathering. The absence of true and moment to moment Ishta-Guru-Bhakti Yoga just shows itself as mediocre practice altogether.

So these are My observations of the gathering in general. And I’ve Called for all kinds of positive changes to be made in all of that, but when I receive a list of people applying for the Lay Renunciate Order telling Me that They’re 1.3 or even actually level 2-uh, well lets put it this way, I generally don’t find the list convincing. [Laughter.]

DEVOTEE: Delicately put, Lord.

AVATARA ADI DA: And so in conversations such as this one and similar ones recently, including at Sugar Bowl, I’ve been trying to get everybody to understand what a profound process this is, and what it is as a process. There have to be the signs, the history of right and serious practice, and there has to be the “Brightening”. And if you’re just struggling with even what is Ishta-Guru-Bhakti Yoga and how to do it and only remembering it sometimes and likewise arguing about the diet or whatever else, and throwing yourself into, you know, blithely into the bondage or “bonding”, then how much even of listening is there? How much of real sadhana?

The profound incident of what you could call hearing in My case was insanity . I mean, all these people who are declaring themselves to have heard Me-when was that day? [Laughs.] It is an extraordinary Realization. I have no doubt that devotees generally even have some sense of this understanding, because they have My Instruction about it and They’re doing sadhana with some degree of energy and attention. And so they do see things getting clearer in various aspects of their lives, you know. You can say this about devotees in general. They feel less aberrated about this, that, and the other thing over a period of time and so forth, so that, in other words, They’re being purified of some aspects of their ego-routine and seeing that the Wisdom works, the Way works. And because they can even explain that much change in their lives in the language of understanding, then they imagine they’ve heard Me, because they could describe it as understanding and self-contraction and avoidance of relationship and “I don’t do it now anymore with my girlfriend”, or whatever it is, “or at least not so much”. And so they may think that itself is hearing, because they can describe it in the language of self-understanding.

it’s the little bit of the Law that casts out so much fear you feel good about yourself, you see. But you have to get the whole Law to hear Me. Hm? And not just the little bit.

DEVOTEE: Beloved, that’s what I felt after that feeling-Contemplation that we did of You earlier.

AVATARA ADI DA: Mm. This evening.

DEVOTEE: Mm-hm. That there was such a profound difference between, you could describe what You were Initiating us into at that time in the same language …

AVATARA ADI DA: Mm-hm.

DEVOTEE: … that we read all the time in Your Instruction.

AVATARA ADI DA: Mm-hm.

DEVOTEE: But the difference in the understanding of it between the exoteric understanding of it …

AVATARA ADI DA: Mm-hm.

DEVOTEE: … at the level that You were just Describing and the esoteric understanding of it that You Gave all of us earlier tonight is so profound. it’s just an amazingly profound initiation.

AVATARA ADI DA: Tcha.

DEVOTEE: Night and day. Night and day.

DEVOTEE: Beloved, I felt there was a tacit moment of recognition and a change in what You just Said, where we tend to feel good about ourselves and maybe have a good feeling and so then imagine that’s hearing.

AVATARA ADI DA: Mm-hm.

DEVOTEE: And then when You asked us to feel our anxiety, to feel the anxiety there …

AVATARA ADI DA: Mm.

DEVOTEE: And right then it snapped into something entirely different, which was just no bullshit.

AVATARA ADI DA: Mm.

DEVOTEE: And it’s not this, you know, ideal that’s going on but this actual total recognition, conscious recognition, of the contraction and of Your total Radiance and the Energy that You Are. And I could feel that when I recognized that, that it was just a matter of always surrendering into that. Whenever this is felt …

AVATARA ADI DA: Mm.

DEVOTEE: … surrendering into that, and then it more and more becomes that.

AVATARA ADI DA: And not surrendering merely superficially.

DEVOTEE: it’s not superficial at all.

AVATARA ADI DA: Surrendering from that very place of the knot. And that’s the unique hearing capability. Hm?

Now, before that capability truly awakens, as I Said, you can make use of self-understanding as I’ve Communicated it to you and various aspects of the sadhana, and be purified of some aspects of the behavioral and emotional and mental aspects of your life, and feel good about that-and should, of course. it’s positive. But it’s not hearing. it’s not itself the sign of hearing. Hearing is this fundamental responsibility. You see?

DEVOTEE: Beloved, this is the most unique difference between Your Teaching and all traditional teachings of all time.

AVATARA ADI DA: Tcha.

DEVOTEE: In that those traditions generally are about our always experiencing this not feeling good.

AVATARA ADI DA: The traditions are based on the self-contraction. They’re based on a search generated by that.

DEVOTEE: The great path of return.

AVATARA ADI DA: Yes. So it’s a progress of stages, not to the seventh, but of developmental stages, ego-motivated, and producing states that are ultimately egoic because they depend on conditions. But the Way of the Heart is not that. And I’ve been making this point over and over again since the day I began to Instruct in 1972, and even before then. The experiences are not it!

And then I didn’t just Say that that’s so. There was the Garbage and the Goddess time, and all kinds of other times, for that matter, in which people experienced spontaneously all kinds of phenomena associated with all those developmental stages of life. And then I would constantly point out, “that’s not it. But what are you doing?” Re-sensitizing them to themselves , to their own action that’s producing the search for those experiences or wanting to cling to them or wanting to repeat them or make the Way into a process for achieving such things. it’s not at all that.

I’ve Communicated to you the uniqueness of this Way from the very beginning, but your grasping of it is slow. All experiencing, and all thinking for that matter, all conditionality, is a development of the self-contraction. it’s a development from a place of anxious dissociativeness, the ego, wanting to expand it’s sphere to feel better and better. And ultimately what will it discover in it’s own utter dissolution? The Divine Condition is to be discovered. But It is simply Reality from the beginning.

So the Way of the Heart is not about that developmental course but about the direct process, in every moment, of Realizing the Divine Self-Condition, going beyond egoity and Realizing That. that’s what this Communion with Me is about from the beginning, then-the direct gesture of going beyond the ego-knot rather than just surrendering with and as the body-mind, founded on the ego, to have experiences.

I see still even many devotees showing the sign, even as beginners coming for My Darshan, that what They’re supposed to be there doing is some kind of working on themselves to gain some experience for themselves. Whatever that might be. Often it is obviously shown even in their bodies as wanting to experience energy, Spiritual signs in the body-mind and so on. it’s not that such experiences do not and will not arise in the Way, but they are not the point. They are not it. They are not Realization. Therefore, the process of the Way is not a matter of seeking such things. The process is always the one of directly transcending the ego-knot, moving out of the position of self-contraction into Radiance, My Condition.

that’s the Way of the Heart from the beginning. Do you see clearly the difference? [Devotees confirm that they do.] And hearing is simply the establishment, on the basis of all the foundation practice, the establishment of this capability, most direct, with fullest comprehension, fullest responsibility, so that you can do that sadhana, of going beyond the self-knot, under all the circumstances that may arise in the developing stages of life. They will not then become ego-reinforcing. They will not be deluding. They will simply be purified, like all other tendencies, and you’ll move on to the “Perfect Practice”.

So I’m always trying to find more ways to put it to you. And so you have this Literature now that is very full, and I hope it is fully Communicative. [Devotees praise Beloveds Source-Texts.] Additionally, conversations still continue from time to time.

DEVOTEE: Like tonight.

AVATARA ADI DA: Like tonight, yes. I’m always Working, and therefore always Working to have this point become clear, and have this understanding become clear, have the sadhana become clear to you so that you can do the sadhana better and know the difference between the signs that must be there for real transitions and notions that you all may develop otherwise somehow, that are less than that.

So I’m happy to entertain this possibility of a Lay Renunciate Order, but these matters I’ve been putting to you all during this last week in particular are the measure you must make of yourselves.

Are you doing this sadhana itself that I am Describing to you, that I have Given you? Are you really practicing Ishta-Guru-Bhakti Yoga moment to moment? Do you, if you’re claiming to have heard Me, stand in the position of the self-knot and right there-that’s your action, you see?-feel beyond it in Communion with Me through self-surrendering, self-forgetting practice? Are you doing that, or not? And you must really examine yourselves and see if it’s so. And if it’s not so, well, it’s not 1.3 yet, but hopefully you know better than before what the sadhana requires and are more serious about it.

I’m not looking to not get a Lay Renunciate Order out of this “consideration”. I’m looking to actually get one, but I have to have the goods.