The Sign of My “Brightness” – Adi Da Samraj – excerpt

ADI DA SAMRAJ: Surrender is required. The Catholic
Christian tradition makes reference to the “dark night of
the soul”. It is the same kind of thing—no control over
it, no ability even to find a place of Grace in the moment
of greatest purification.

Somehow you must find the resource of your devotion to Me
without a great deal of information and Blessed visions. You
must find the resource of your devotion to Me that will
allow you to go through that dark passage when you have no
other resource, no information, no guarantees, apart from
the devotion to Me itself.

It is purification, it is a great wash, it is a burning.
It seems as if you have no advantages, but there is just
that naked advantage that is your devotion to Me itself.
Even that may seem to be in doubt somehow, but you
persist.

And so, in the case of My devotees every day, all the
problems that must be endured and passed through and burned
up every day, it is fundamentally the same kind of thing.
You must be willing to endure it. That is what the Way of
the Heart requires, that burning up, that surrender to Me,
that persistence in devotion to Me and real work and
maintaining a basic characteristic of sanity and devotion to
Me in your daily life, even though you are going through
this profound ordeal. That is it.

DEVOTEE: This is very interesting, because You are
talking about rock-bottom self here!

ADI DA SAMRAJ: Rock-bottom self is what it is really
all about. All the rest is superficial.

DEVOTEE: And where you have nothing, no reserve in
yourself other than what you would have at death.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: And death is what is
required—ego-death. Just surrender to Me, allowing the
One Who is Great to be the Governor of the process even
though you do not know anything about it. All you have left
is just that string of devotion to Me itself, no guarantees,
no thoughts, no visions, no Blessedness. You suffer the
purification. This is a characteristic of the daily life of
all My devotees, frequently occurring, and that is what it
takes—a continuous submission to Me, no dramatization,
no aberrated life. Endure it, persist, discipline yourself
relative to the darkness of the necessary
purification—that is what is required. That is how the
great transitions occur. That is how the real process
develops. Not by your knowing this and that, your egoic
self-possession and self-“giving”—not that. Just by
devotion given to Me, surrender to Me, trust in Me, even
when you do not have a leg to stand on.

Everyone wants to have different life with Me—not
the real dose of surrender to Me, the strain of tapas, the
difficulties to be overcome, but some sort of a glad,
smiling, idealistic ride. But that is not the real process.
The real process is a profound ordeal, and you are obliged,
by your devotion to Me, to live sanely, remain as My
devotee, go through the process, endure purification. That
is it. Never cease to be My devotee simply because there are
difficulties to be endured. Do not cop out. Persist! That is
the test, and that is what the Way of the Heart is really
all about. And that is how the great purifications, the
great transitions, occur.

All must be burned up—Prapatti, just give it up.
Have nothing but trust, nothing but devotion to Me.
Everything must be done, given up, surrendered to Me, passed
through. Such is the disposition of My devotee, just that.
This is no cultic ride, no mere amusement. It is religious
realism, the real process embraced, accepted, endured. And
there are plenty of Blessed days, too. But it is not only
those Blessed days that are the Way of the Heart. The Way of
the Heart for the most part is a profound purification. Its
transformations require utter surrender, without a leg to
stand on—black!

But you tend to seek again, to find some way to feel
good, to console yourself—a little sex, a little
amusement, a little reading, a little conversation, a little
socializing, and you let yourself off the hook. All your
reactivity, all your nonsensical seeking, comes into play
again, and that is how you bypass transformation and bypass
the true purifying process of the Way of the Heart. The more
the heart-motive comes to the front, the more willing you
are to endure this life without a leg to stand on and go
through real transformation. The rest is silliness. And,
talk, as much as anything else, is how you avoid the
ordeal.

I presume you have all felt such surrender, and I also
presume that you have all felt some mechanism in yourself
that seeks to avoid it. That strategy is what makes you
mediocre. Whenever you choose not to avoid the ordeal and
your endure it, a purification occurs. Some shit is
released, and the purification does not have to be done
again—not in quite the same way anyway.

You must stop taking vacations. You must realize that
real sadhana is done without a leg to stand on. This does
not mean that you should dramatize. Dramatization is how you
bypass it.

DEVOTEE: It seems that the typical form of surrender to
You still stays within the egos frame of reference.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: The mediocre sign definitely does.
That is what I mean. You introduce your reactivity, your
desiring, your motives of consolation, your blab-blab,
talkity-talkity-talkity, socializing, sexing, a little
stuffing the bucket with food, whatever. You use all kinds
of means to desensitize yourself to the darkness of the
ordeal of real surrender. And this is how you prolong your
beginners life. You always introduce a leg to stand on.

DEVOTEE: This is a silly statement, but I wonder how I
could even function in that surrender.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: You are always capable of
functioning, always. You do not have to become a stupid fool
just because you are enduring a purifying process, not at
all. You are fully capable of functioning, serving, being
rational and human with others. That is in fact your
obligation. You must maintain the discipline. That is how
you keep the purifying process in place, not by looking for
a way out of it. “I am having a difficult day—I may as
well get laid”, that kind of thing. A difficult day is no
time to get laid or indulge in any consolation. That is a
time to endure it. When things brighten up, when some
congeniality, some energy, is manifested, then you can do
some more ordinary things maybe, but still Yogically,
rightly.

To live rightly is an art, and it requires true
seriousness. This is just how it is. I cannot relieve you of
this obligation. That is the practice of the Way of the
Heart. Everything passing—that is the place you are in
here. It is all just that. If you are sensitive at all, that
is how it is—everything passing, all wounds, everything
ending. Surrender to Me is your obligation. That is the
place you are in here. But you are indulging yourself here
in this place to console yourself and to de-sensitize
yourself to your real situation and the work you have to do.
That is the game My devotees are playing one by one, and
that is what they must overcome.

DEVOTEE: Sri Gurudev, last year You spoke of the “free
fall” in You. In these moments of most tapas where we do not
have a leg to stand on and we are free falling …

ADI DA SAMRAJ: And looking in all directions for a
leg—some distraction, some consolation, some dimension
of your search to desensitize you to this free fall. That is
what you all do. It is a tendency even in the advanced and
the ultimate stages of life. It is dealt with at a more
profound level in those stages, but it persists. The
self-contraction is at the root of it always.

The real process is an in-depth process of surrender
without a leg to stand on. It is real tapas. And the right
practice when tapas is closing in on you is not to react and
seek and console yourself but to endure it, to maintain a
discipline, to practice devotion to Me, to be straight in
daily life. Do not dramatize. If you rightly do it, apart
from your confession in your intimate groups with your
friends nobody will even notice that you are going through
such difficulty.

But you think that as soon as it is difficult, it is time
to dramatize, time to lay it onto your friends, time to
console yourself, time to indulge yourself, time to
desensitize yourself. That is the technique you use as an
ego-based worldling, and that has no relevance to the
process you must endure. It just puts it off. That is how
you prolong the beginnings, and that is what you must
outgrow. It is a sign of maturing in the Way of the Heart
that you do not indulge in such consoling efforts and do not
dramatize. That is maturity.

By such maturity you keep straight in the midst of the
tapas. You are having a bad day, feeling rather fragile, so
you want to take a vacation? No! Maintain the discipline of
surrender to Me, maintain the discipline of service to Me,
do not change a jot of your behavior, do not dramatize with
others, do not seek to indulge yourself. Be without a leg to
stand on. Endure it. That is how you will grow. Abandoning
that position, bypassing it through consolation and all the
rest of it, you desensitize yourself and fail to grow, and
you prolong the beginning.

There is nothing I can do about it. I cannot lay down
some absolute law to prevent all dramatization. I can just
tell you how it is and what is really required. You will
take as long to grow as you are pleased to do. It is your
business. Bypass the transforming purifying event and you
are building time into your beginning practice, building
time into your practice altogether. It is entirely up to
you.

It is not about trusting Me to let you off the hook! It
is trusting Me in the midst of enduring the real process,
with no gestures to let yourself off the hook. Such sadhana
goes deep. It makes profound purification, and that is what
is necessary, instead of your abiding in this superficial
orientation, dramatizing, seeking, consoling yourself. That
is not it. That is being mediocre, insensitive, and a
beginner forever.

The Way of the Heart is one crisis after the next. If you
abandon the practice, what you will get is one crisis after
the next!—but there will be no fruitfulness to such
crisis. Suffering is inevitable in any case, difficulty is
inevitable in any case, so why abandon the arms and the
context of practice? Suffering is not a loophole. You only
get the suffering without the advantage.

People everywhere in the world are merely suffering. My
devotees are still suffering but with great Advantage, and
making conditional existence a real process that serves.
That is the only difference. It is not that people in the
world are suffering and My devotees are not. If you think
you are not suffering, you are a cultist in My Company. If
you do not want to suffer, if you do not want to endure the
ordeal, then you are being a superficial fool, and you are
still a worldling. To avoid suffering is the technique of
the world.

Therefore, do not play it fast and loose with your
personal practice of the Way of the Heart, and do not play
it fast and loose with the institution, the culture, the
community, and the mission of My devotees. See your
dramatization, and see that it just bothers everyone and
undermines the work you must do and forestalls the day of
your significant maturity.

Full Talk

Sign
of My Brightness