Talks and Essays on the Art and Science of Equanimity and
the Self-Transcending Process of Radical Understanding – Da
Free John (Adi Da Samraj) – 1981
The Natural Vision
Practice to Keep the Balance of the Body-Mind
Our practice must be one that maintains balance and the
self-transcending wisdom of understanding (via the conscious
process). We should relax into the Life-Current. We should
not resist its changes, but we should not be fascinated with
them or trapped by them. Work to keep physically,
emotionally, and mentally relaxed and balanced. Don’t
intentionally let the abdomen get cold or the head hot.
(These symptoms may arise, but practice to keep the balance.
Don’t add to them by failing to support vital health or
tensing the head with worried concentration.)
Open and Release the Feeling Heart
The heart is the central seat of the central current.
Thus, it is not merely in the frontal line, nor is it absent
from the spinal line. It is the feeling-attitude of constant
Radiance, constantly transcending contraction and the limits
on Radiance. It is Love-Bliss. Therefore, practice
conductivity on the basis of the free feeling attitude of
the heart (constantly Awakened in the conscious process).
Surrender as the total body-mind into the All-Pervading Life
Current via the Radiant feeling-attitude of the heart. On
inhalation, open the entire body-mind with the feeling heart
and so receive the Radiant descending Life and Love-Bliss.
On exhalation, release the feeling heart in blissful
love-aspiration, thus channeling the rising Life-Current of
Love-Bliss to its highest place. Do this breath after
breath.
Be the Heart
Pleasure, well-being, self-transcendence, and ultimate
intuition are found or expressed in balance, or equanimity.
Imbalance is pain, disturbance, self-bondage, and fixity in
the limitations of conventional experience and knowledge (or
the absence of these). Yet, by tendency we seek or attain
imbalance, because of bondage to self-contraction.
Therefore, we must observe, understand, and transcend the
self-contraction and all of the patterns of imbalance (or
the tendencies toward excessive or exclusive exploitation of
either right-sided or left-sided possibilities of the
body-mind). The truly “natural” state is one of free
feeling-attention, rather than fixed or exaggerated states
of experience, perception, thought, knowledge, and so forth.
It is to inhere in the Radiant Transcendental Being prior to
self-contraction, self-meditation, and self-concern. It is
to be the Heart, prior to body and mind.
Keep the Total Picture in Mind
Keeping the total picture in mind (remembering the
painful and the pleasurable, the undesirable and the
desirable) at all times produces natural dispassion (or
natural transcendence of desire itself). Desire always has
two sides (relative to the potentials in any object or
condition or function) – desire for (or to embrace) and
desire to avoid (or escape). Only one tends to be kept in
mind in any given situation of desire. Remember both, and
desire is naturally transcended. Such desirelessness is
fundamental freedom.
Other forms of natural transcendence of desire (or desire
rituals)
1. Whatever arises, simply be and remain fully aware of
it. Thus, a reaction, for or against, cannot arise.
2. Keep mind and body together (or as one). Do this by
keeping attention (naturally and relaxed) at the vital
center below the navel, or in the Circle of conductivity
(with every breath). Thus, mind forms (as desires, ideas,
reactions, etc.) cannot arise.
Such processes are natural to us. They are not
problematic strategies. They simply express our truly
natural or native disposition, which is
desire-transcending.
Abiding in this native disposition is a good base or
asana for the conscious process and conductivity. It is not
a matter of desiring to dissociate from phenomena. It is a
matter of right or free association with phenomena and
non-strategic transcendence. Thus, it permits appropriate
action as well as ultimate freedom and Realization.
These attitudes are, therefore, appropriate expressions
of practice based on understanding. Even so, the conscious’
process itself, and conductivity as well, are themselves the
essence of this same disposition expressed as a moment to
moment practice.
Maintain the Attitude of Indifference
The things that disturb us do so because we are
interested in them. We become peaceful if we maintain the
attitude of indifference (or passionless, and thus
angerless, non-interest) toward whatever may possibly
disturb us-even disturbance itself. Such indifference is
ultimately perfected in utter transcendence of the body-mind
and all its possible relations. Such is evident in the
seventh stage disposition, or radical inherence in That
which is eternally prior to all disturbances, conditions,
and illusions. Until that stage is Realized, understanding
and right discipline’, (rather than irresponsible
indulgence) of the body-mind serve to establish the manifest
being in equanimity, in which position radical intuition of
Radiant Transcendental Being is ultimately Realized.
We Need to Relax the Body-Mind
Desire and sex-activity are rajasic or yang (heating,
expanding from a point of contraction). They may be applied
in a useful and balancing manner, where energization is
required.
But peace (desirelessness), relaxation, ease (and no sex)
are tamasic or yin (cooling, opening toward the center).
In general we are too yang (or we do not preserve yang
energy but throw it away) and need to relax the body-mind
(via understanding and self-control). Thus, we need to apply
ourselves more to yin habits in order to realize equanimity.
But we must do so in a Life-positive manner, thus making
more vital force available for conductivity.
Summary Essays on Conductivity
The following essays by Adi Da that summarize his basic
instructions on the technical responsibility of conductivity
as:
a non-problematic practice
a disposition that transcends contraction (rather than
achieves expansion)
a way of balancing, quieting, and relaxing the
body-mind (the base for the conscious process)
a way of freeing energy and attention
a form of Blessing, or universal worship
Transcend All Illusions
Conductivity in itself or for its own sake is the ideal
of fifth stage yogis. It contains only illusions, or
appearances that come and go. We must embrace conductivity
in the spirit of self transcendence, not of clinging even to
high phenomena. Thus, in our Way (founded on the Wisdom of
the seventh stage of life), we practice it as a disposition
that transcends contraction, and not merely as a method to
achieve expansion. We practice the conscious process in
every moment of conductivity (or surrender into the Shakti
or Radiant Spirit-Power) and thus transcend all experience
and knowledge, or all the illusions of selfhood. In the
seventh stage itself, only the Nirvanic, or Transcendental
Being, Self-Radiant, prior to all conditions, is
Realized.
How to Live – Basic Practical Advice
Constantly cultivate those conditions of existence that
permit or tend to be associated with the native state of
human being. The native state of human being is equanimity,
or the naturally Radiant psycho-physical condition that is
prior to any form of self-contraction.
Such practice is, ultimately, quite complex and even
technical in its details, but it may also be summarized in
the form of basic practical advice:
Conserve diet.
Conserve sex.
React less.
Think less.
Talk less.
Surrender more.
Relax more.
Trust more.
Love more.
Serve more.
Meditate more and really.
Create, choose, and value those environmental, social,
and intimate circumstances that are compatible with the
native state of human being.
Make the practical basics of the Way your life-practice,
and thereby develop more and more free energy and
attention-free of obsessive, unbalanced, and overstimulated
involvement with the conventional, superficial, and
apparently problematic conditions of existence. Thus, by
cultivation over time, you will Awaken more and more into
the Radiant Life-Power of Transcendental Being. And that
Power of Being is the Circumstance in which we move into and
through the higher stages of life to-the Realization that
characterizes the seventh stage of life.
Surrender Is Universal Worship
Each of us is responsible to bless all others. Therefore,
bless everyone and everything with every action, every
thought, and every breath.
It is not possible to bless another by presuming a
position of superiority for yourself or inferiority on the
part of another. To bless another one must worship and
acknowledge that one in his or her True Form, inhering in
the Divine, Present as an expressive manifestation of the
Radiant Transcendental Being.
Therefore, whatever your stage of life, bless all others,
worship every being as the Divine Presence, acknowledge
every being and condition in God, address everyone and
everything by the Name Da or in the same Spirit in which the
Giver is always acknowledged. Only in this manner are you
free in God, invoking and Realizing God in, as, and through
every being and condition.
Be in God. See all in God. In this manner, worship and
love and Realize only God, by worshipping God in, as, and
through everyone and everything. Never be too proud to do
this worship.
Only this is surrender. Only this expresses true
Realization.
Talks and Essays on the Art and Science of Equanimity and
the Self-Transcending Process of Radical Understanding – Da
Free John (Adi Da Samraj) – 1981
