The Brightening Way Talk Series – Adi Da Samraj – There’s No Escape, There’s Only Realization

DEVOTEE: Beloved, you mentioned that if a person was
serious it shouldn’t take them
more than six months.

AVATARA ADI DA: I talked about if someone is truly
serious, to spend six months as a student-novice, six months
as a student-beginner, and then six months for 1.1 and 1.2
to hearing. That’s a reasonable
course. It could even be the basically common one if people
were really serious. And what about that then?

DEVOTEE: No, I was just considering it.

AVATARA ADI DA: Sure. So in particular, we talked about
the transition from mature student beginner to 1.3, and I
Said if you really consented to fully adapt to all the
foundation practice, no vacations, you see, and actually
establish that, then if you’re
really serious, to hear Me in six months is perfectly
reasonable. But some people carry a lot more baggage than
others, and it might take somewhat longer, even though they
are serious. But six months is a fairly reasonable general
idea.

And how long have you taken so far?

DEVOTEE: About fourteen years.

AVATARA ADI DA: So much the worse for you, Carl.
[Laughter.] But we already covered that, though, the
why of that. If it takes a long time, its because you are
taking a vacation. So its easy to know what to do about it
then.

So what else do you want to talk about then? [long
silent pause]

Shall we adjourn?

DEVOTEES: No, no, no.

AVATARA ADI DA: No what?

DEVOTEE: I have a question.

AVATARA ADI DA: Tcha.

DEVOTEE: This intensive period of hearing, six months
period culminating in hearing, in a somewhat summary and all
inclusive event …

AVATARA ADI DA: Even a better way of putting it, it is a
most fundamental event, not just a whole lot of things
coming together. Its getting at the root.

DEVOTEE: And at that summary point of the crisis of
hearing which is severe is the way that we don’t prolong its
course, through the process of seeing?

AVATARA ADI DA: Through intensive practice. Intensive
practice altogether. Most intensive practice, one-pointed
practice.

DEVOTEE: That process doesn’t
come together at that point, hearing, in the sense of seeing
immediately.

AVATARA ADI DA: Not seeing immediately, no. What follows
is a period, which in general wouldn’t
be very long, of preparing for the Yoga of seeing. So seeing
doesn’t arise coincident with
hearing, certainly not in any fullest sense. But it is
because of hearing that you become truly Spiritually
sensitized to Me.

Devotees, even without hearing Me, have Spiritual
experiences of Me in the body-mind, one way or another. But
that’s not seeing. Hearing must
be active in order to see Me. There must be the capability
of feeling beyond the self-contraction and making that the
basis for your practice of Ishta-Guru-Bhakti Yoga.

So when there is true hearing of Me, a sensitivity
develops and is cultivated through that 1.3 period of
sadhana so that you can make use of My Spiritual
Transmission directly and “Locate” Me directly, rather than
just have My Spiritual Force wash over you and generate
experiences in the body-mind for their own sake. So hearing
is cultivated in the 1.3 stage such that you become capable
of this Spiritual submission to Me. The 1.3 stage is
sometimes thought of by devotees as a period to test whether
you have heard Me or not. Truly that is not what it should
be. It should simply be so, that you’ve
heard Me. Its most fundamentally a period of preparation for
seeing Me, of organizing the practice based on hearing in a
focused way in order to be sensitized to Me Spiritually. And
then there is the level 2 practice, which is the direct
approach to Me Spiritually. So the true process of seeing,
not just Spiritual experiencing of Me but real seeing of Me,
becomes the Yoga for you at level 3. Again, some think that
seeing is about some Spiritual reception of Me in the
body-mind, that kriyas and visions and so forth are supposed
to be what happens. Such things may happen, but they are not
the Yoga. The Yoga is to feel beyond all effects and
“Locate” Me directly so that you can be drawn into the
position of the “Perfect Practice”.

So it is a special kind of Spiritual preparation that is
based on hearing. Its a process that you enter into as soon
as you’ve heard Me. But its
first stage, we call it preparation for fully entering into
Spiritual Communion with Me. Whereas I Said, even before
then, you may have had Spiritual experiences of Me, but they
are not the point in the Spiritual stages of this Way. But
what about all that?

DEVOTEE: Thank you, Beloved. I have another question.

AVATARA ADI DA: Tcha.

DEVOTEE: In the 1.3 period, which is, as you were Saying,
an aspect of the seeing practice …

AVATARA ADI DA: Its preparation for it.

DEVOTEE: … its not fully entering into Your Spiritual
Presence but it is preparation for that, in that stage-and I
apologize if this question is so backwards in terms of my
understanding of it in the Teaching.

AVATARA ADI DA: Well, the bench accepts your motion.
[Laughter.]

DEVOTEE: In that 1.3 period, your life becomes organized
around putting yourself in the position of preparing to see
You, or cultivating that understanding, or that development,
into full seeing by, You were Saying, organizing your life
in a certain way. And I just wanted to clarify that.

AVATARA ADI DA: Yes, through that focus of the hearing
exercise. Not just working on peripheral behaviors or
checking out what’s going on
with you in emotional-sexual terms and so forth-not really
that-but this direct exercise, moment to moment, of feeling
beyond the self-contraction. And maybe it wouldn’t
involve so many outward changes in your life. But it is a
matter of realizing your life in this focus of hearing, in
this exercise of hearing. And during that period, another
thing that makes it a period of preparation is that the
whole matter of seeing Me is studied and the Yoga you must
practice once you have entered into the seeing process, what
all of its responsibilities are and so forth. So it is
preparation in the educational sense as well.

Also, the “conscious process” in one who has heard Me has
a mental-verbal aspect to it. Like the Enquiry, “Avoiding
relationship?”, or Mantra-Japa and so forth. One who has
heard Me will in that moment still be practicing in that
fashion, but the exercise of hearing has such power that it
becomes a tacit process more and more rather than a verbal
process. There is always the occasion of the Enquiry and so
on, but fundamentally it becomes simply this exercising the
flower, this constant pressing beyond all forms of
contraction. [Beloved opens His hand at the level of the
heart on the right side.] That means all forms of
thought, all forms of perception, everything. So to realize
your life in those terms is a profound matter. That’s
what hearing initiates, and that’s
what the 1.3 period is really all about. Its a period of
study and preparation for the specifics of the Yoga of
seeing. Its not expected to be a very long period.

DEVOTEE: Thank you, Beloved.

AVATARA ADI DA: Tcha.

What else? You got anything else, Stanley?

DEVOTEE: Beloved, I thought it was interesting that
awhile back You brought up this example of all perceptions
of the room. And most strongly in the beginning of this
consideration this evening, when we all took that moment to
drop deeply in that space, the very sensation that I had at
that time was that of feeling the self-contraction when You
Spoke of noticing the anxiety but then also seeing You and
feeling You as “Bright” Energy, all Energy and Light-that I
was phasing between these two, of actually feeling that
sensation. And there wasn’t even
any one to be sensing it.

AVATARA ADI DA: Yes, but don’t misunderstand Me. The
course need not take long to get out of this lock. Its not
that sadhana has to go on for years, once you’ve
heard Me, of painful meditation on the stress in your
abdomen, or something. Yes, hearing is association with the
pain of the self-contraction, but it is in the context of
the capability for Communion with Me. So in any moment where
you have lapsed from Communion with Me, you’ve
got to re-initiate it, and you must function from the point
of the self-contraction then. But as you mature, if you are
practicing with intensity, you get to the point where you
don’t lapse so much. You don’t have to re-initiate it all
the time by going back into the sensation of the knot of
self-contraction, you see, because you’re
always moved beyond it-at least to some sufficient
degree-and, rarely, expand even further.

So its not that the lapsing to the point where
you’ve got to re-initiate it
totally stops quickly, but it shouldn’t
take very long before you are beyond that relapse a lot of
the time. So you would not have the painful self-meditation
persist. But you are not there to meditate on the pain of
the self-contraction, and you are there with the capability
to feel beyond it into Communion with Me. And having that
taste, then you don’t want to relapse.

So the exercise becomes more and more purifying, more and
more steady, and the fall from blissful Communion with Me,
or even the diminishment of it, becomes less and less
frequent because you would not have it be otherwise. You
would not waste your time having to constantly start from
the position of pain and be somewhat bewildered but press
through and then you’re on the
outside of it again. You don’t
want to do that too much. Once a philosopher, twice a
pervert.

So having entered into Communion with Me, you stay there
if you are smart. And you don’t lapse. If the tendencies
draw you back again, well, you know what to do and you get
out of it quickly. So that’s
what it means to have the arms of hearing or to exercise
those arms.

So it isn’t, then, if you do
effective sadhana, a matter of having to be constantly
feeling this stress of self-contraction, the pain of
dissociation from the Radiant Condition. You can move beyond
it by Grace and in this right sadhana, and do so readily if
you are smart, if you heard Me. Read My Words and come
quickly and see Me, and then that’s
the end of that. If you are smart, you don’t lapse from
Communion with Me. You don’t have to. And if you are drawn
back, you know what to do-but you don’t like having to do
that so much. So you consent to be in Samadhi. You consent
to be Happy instead.

And that’s true renunciation,
you see. The outward details of a life of renunciation can
look different from person to person, but its this abiding
in Samadhi, in Blissful Communion, ultimately in Inherent
Realization of Me, that is right life, is true renunciation.
And it will show itself as true renunciation in whatever is
your particular manner. You may be sexually active in
intimacy or a celibate renunciate, whatever. But it will be
utterly conformed. Your life will be utterly conformed to
that Blissful Communion. And you wont lapse from it so that
you get busied with doing other things to satisfy the broken
impulses of egoity.

So you don’t have to persist in feeling the self-knot,
having discovered it and become responsible for it. You
simply move from there into Communion with Me. Do so
steadily. Manage the discipline of your life accordingly,
altogether. And that is simply a matter of always being in a
Radiant Condition, in body, in feeling, in the whole face of
attention, in every breath. There is no self-knot, effective
anyway. You are making it ineffective, and more and more
profoundly so.

And such it is when you enter into the “Perfect Practice”
and pass on to the Awakening to the seventh stage. Its not
that then Samadhi begins. It is then the Samadhi is
Perfected. Samadhi must be the life before then. And you
must get to the point where you can persist in It. There are
variations in the mode of this Samadhi, but the fundamental
Samadhi that I am talking about is the Samadhi of being
beyond the self-contraction and Communing with Me. It is a
different state of Consciousness and of Being than the
personality that is registering the self-knot, or otherwise
dramatizing it.

So I am talking about the Samadhi of Radiance, of
no-contraction. It is just that. It does not have any other
characteristics. There are the Samadhis that pertain to each
of the stages, but they are just another expression of this
fundamental Samadhi, this Bhava. So then, having become that
much proficient, having seen Me, you do right Yoga of
Communion with Me, and the body feels Radiant. The heart,
the feeling, feels Radiant instead of becoming complicated
by contracting emotions. If the mind becomes clear, it
relaxes and becomes usable by intention instead of just
being a babble of garbage that you feel is out of your
control. So it is a Spiritual life, a life in utter
Communion with Me according to the characteristics of that
stage. And it is a life in Samadhi rather than the ego. So
it is a Radiant Condition, a “Bright” Condition that is the
basis for devotees moving on to the “Perfect Practice”.

To see Me is to have your Spiritual sadhana be simply
this one of self-forgetting Communion with Me rather than
relaxing the body-mind in order to have an energy
experience. So that’s the
difference between seeing and just being there to have
experiences in the body-mind. So the transition from level 2
to level 3 requires that sign, not rigidity and not merely a
person exaggeratedly motivated towards psycho-physical
experiences of the Spiritual kind, but this Samadhi, this
“Locating” of Me beyond the self-knot and being able to
“Locate” Me thus Spiritually so that you become Radiant in
Communion with Me.

So that’s what there is to
look for when somebody says that they’ve
seen Me. That confession and also that observable sign is
visible in various ways that you almost immediately become
sensitive to.

So I am trying to impress you all and everyone who will
read this and so on what the process of listening, hearing,
and seeing is really all about. Not to turn you away from it
but to welcome you to it, to inspire you to it, because it
is within the capability of every single one of you if you
will accept the life I have Given you with all of its
details and the practice I have Given to you in all its
profundity. How could you come into My Company and be
inclined toward anything else? It always seems remarkable to
Me. But when this seeing process truly develops founded on
true hearing, which is the capability to go beyond the
self-knot, then you are in the Sphere of My “Brightness” in
a very profound sense and are constantly absorbed in Me.
Even the body-mind starts flowering in various ways, you
might notice, indicating Spiritual signs. But they are not
the thing itself. They are not the sadhana, they’re
not the import of the process.

Its when you’ve allowed,
then, the body-mind to be thoroughly Irradiated in the third
practicing stage by showing signs like the Samadhi of “the
Thumbs” and so on at times, but altogether given yourself up
in Communion with Me Spiritually and altogether beyond the
self-knot, then various purifying signs are noticed in
various ways in the body-mind that are really just about the
circuitry of the body-mind adapting to accommodate My
Spiritual Force. So there are things to notice, things to
breathe through, all of that, you know, things to exercise
beyond. And the third practicing stage ought to be
sufficient. It should be a purification based on the sadhana
I have just Described to you such that you are drawn into
the Root-Place of My Presence. The changes in the body-mind
are just signs of purification leading to this foundation
for the “Perfect Practice”.

So that’s what the level 3
practice is about. It is about a process that is sufficient
in itself for the transition to the “Perfect Practice”. So
it is not a preliminary to ascending Yoga and so forth. It
is not about developmental Yoga at all. It is about the Yoga
of ego-transcendence in Communion with Me. All of this is
very direct, and I’ve made
everything clear to you in all the details of what it is all
about.

So that’s why I have
Described this time from now on as the Santosha Epoch,
because I have thoroughly Communicated everything to You.
And I could repeat My Self and elaborate on it if I feel
like talking to devotees sometimes, but I’ve
made My Communication to you all and you have to live it in
relation to Me and prove yourself as a serious devotee of
Mine so that I can Work with you. But perhaps some of the
Words in this discussion and discussions in recent days
could be added to the Adi Da Upanishad if you find some of
this language serving your understanding, to add something
to the other forms of My Consideration.

Is there anything else you’d
like to talk about? [pause]

The seventh stage Realizer doesn’t
like the life anymore than a six stage Realizer does. Its
just that the seventh stage Realizer doesn’t
do anything to prevent it or to dissociate from it. The
seventh stage Realization is not about having an inclination
to cling to conditions. It is utterly renounced, in other
words, and not a return to the world or another version of
egoity. The Disposition is absolutely Radiant, and so It is
the Disposition that would Outshine conditional existence,
not perpetuate it. It simply, as I Said, does nothing to
prevent it. On the other hand, the process of Divine
Recognition goes on inevitably, moment to moment. So
association with conditional existence will not be
infinitely prolonged, if there is that force of Recognition
Divine.

So the Disposition even in the total body-mind is to
Glow, to be Radiant to the point of no-noticing. No-noticing
of conditions, no modifications, the Divine Condition
without any further association with conditional
limitations. Just as I was Saying to you earlier, in the
event of hearing the process goes on. You would not have it
be prolonged as a process of being aware of the
self-contraction. You enter into Samadhi more and more
continuously.

Well, so in the seventh stage Disposition. It is not a
lapse into conditions. It is a Demonstration of the Divine
Recognition of conditions. There is no dissociation, no
contraction, but Recognition. All this is nothing but an
apparent, non-binding modification of the Divine
Self-Condition. It is Realized to be Self-Radiant,
Self-Existing Consciousness, Love-Bliss-Being, already the
case, and so it Recognizes everything as just That. And
that’s the seventh stage
Demonstration. So it is not an intention to prolong
association with conditional existence at all, but it is not
an effort to dissociate from it.

You see the difference?

Now, some may move rather readily into the Divine
Translation Demonstration. Others may, on the basis of the
same Samadhi of Most Perfect Realization, remain in the
Transfiguration, Transformation Sign, and they reappear in
this world or reappear in some other plane, continually a
Demonstration of this Way that serves until the process of
Divine Recognition moves beyond that, into Divine
Translation. But the Disposition is not about lingering. It
is about “Brightening”. So I tell the Kanyas, one of their
unique functions or conditions of sadhana is to keep Me from
Outshining this place too quickly, to keep Me associated
with it in some pleasurable way, as devotees altogether
should do. You should be here to perpetuate My Incarnation,
not to cause My Indifference too soon, My total
Indifference.

So it can serve you. So no more making Me sarvadhikari
and so on. I am not here to do any of that. You are here to
preserve Me and do the sadhana. Give Me the means to Work by
bringing Me devotees, yourselves and many others. But to
have time to do so, I must be pleasurized, odalisqued
somehow into an association with you all, pleasurably,
though, because the seventh stage Sign, Disposition, is
simply Radiant. It doesn’t
prolong associations unless it is somehow coaxed, moved to
exercise that Bhava in place somehow for some time. You get
the God to stay by feeding it milk and sweets. Otherwise the
temple dies, and they sell energies left over from that
Puja.

So you should keep the God Alive in This Body, you see.
You have to coax Me into a less Indifferent disposition.
Otherwise the flower magnifies beyond interest.

But the ultimate fulfillment of the Way, then, is not
evolutionary and visionary and so forth in all that
conditional sense. The ultimate Demonstration of this Way is
the absolute Outshining of conditional existence without a
jot left behind. So that’s what
it is to be My devotee. It is to be moved, to flower to
infinity and not hold on to conditional existence. You use
the circumstances by transforming it into sadhana, into
Yoga, but you don’t bind yourself to it.

DEVOTEE: Beloved, this is why I love Your Description of
the clay pigs.

AVATARA ADI DA: Tcha. [Indicating a small clay pig on
a table.] I have a little example over here. I used that
simile for a while last year when we were in Suva. I guess
when I first arrived there, the devotees there gave Me a
whole bunch of these little clay pigs. It turns out its an
apt metaphor in the situation in Fiji, because they have a
long history of the use of the pig sacredly. And so in
making this little image, its something they sell in a
museum or to tourists or whatever, but it is also an example
of something more or less like they would have done in their
ritual life and so forth. So I have actual clay pigs I can
get all the time. I have suggested that these be made for
devotees. I don’t think that was ever done, was it?

We should sell them on the island, for instance. We sell
all kinds of other things. Its a reminder of this aspect of
My Teaching.

DEVOTEE: You have them all over Your rooms.

AVATARA ADI DA: Every time I get another one, I put them
around someplace in the environment.

But I am not talking about an ordinary little clay-baking
machine.

DEVOTEE: No, You are talking about a Maha-furnace.

AVATARA ADI DA: A smelting furnace in some sense. But I
like the metaphor of the clay pig because if you look at a
clay object in an oven, initially it is cold and so forth.
As it heats, the clay reddens but the surrounding space also
glows more and more. And after a time you cant distinguish
the pig from the space. The pig is Outshined. There is only
the Space Itself, the Condition Itself in Which that
apparent modification is arising. So this Way is about
realizing the Source, the Source-Condition, and not about
perpetuating conditional existence for its own sake or
looking for some kind of tour of the cosmic domain.

See, there are Yogas and traditions that are about doing
just all of that, taking a tour of the worlds and so forth
through developmental stages. Swami Muktananda had a lot of
this orientation. So there are developmental Yogas, and
teachers who serve that and so forth, but it is not about
the Truth Itself. It is not about Divine Self-Realization
Itself. It is about egoic life perpetuated for the sake of
achieving some glorious condition, immortal and in an
extraordinary play-land of some kind.

DEVOTEE: Right to the heart of it, Lord.

AVATARA ADI DA: Mm. So if you are looking to perpetuate
that, and you are afraid of being without a world, then you
wont do the “radical” sadhana, which cuts it to the quick,
goes to the Source direct, by transcending egoity itself
rather than engaging in an egoic adventure.

What else?

DEVOTEE: Beloved, You said today that we have to have an
utterly surrendered body-mind to practice in the level 2 of
practice in relationship to You and the Yogic process.

AVATARA ADI DA: Yes. Earlier in the year, so that others
know the background of it, there were some individuals who
were supposedly prepared for the level 2 sadhana, and I sat
with them every couple of days or so for a period of time.
Some obviously disqualified themselves for various reasons
of even ordinary matters in their practice that weren’t
handled, but at the end there, there were maybe half a dozen
or so. And among the things I had to criticize them about
was the unavailability of their body-minds.

Some would sit there. I would look about. And some of
them were sitting there as if they were practicing some sort
of a technique, just sort of doing something with
themselves, not profoundly entered into Communion with Me.
Some others would maintain some regard of Me, but they were
minimally moved obviously. And then some others would even
show some signs of some kriyas, spontaneous vocalizations,
and so on, but no greater depth than that. So we stopped
those groups at one time finally and then just considered
lots of matters that I had observed about it all as well as
other things that we were discussing.

But if hearing is true, and the approach to Me for the
sake of seeing Me is engaged as I have Given it, if all the
requirements of practice are truly there, the one who enters
into this seeing approach to Me is completely available to
Me, thoroughly given over to Me, thoroughly entered into
Communion with Me, is not practicing some self-meditative
technique but is thoroughly given over to Me, whole bodily
surrendered, self-forgetting.

Then the body-mind is allowed to be a mechanism of
“conductivity”, of Yoga, in Communion with Me. And all
aspects of the body-mind then become thoroughly oriented to
Me in the level 3 practice so that the root is discovered
and the “Perfect Practice” can be done.

DEVOTEE: Is this why the level 2 period is relatively
brief?

AVATARA ADI DA: It should be, but, as I Said, seeing is
not true unless there is this Yoga I have Described to you
about the pursuing of experiences, about this Samadhi of
constantly being beyond the self-contraction in Spiritual
Communion with Me. That shouldn’t
take a long time if somebody has truly heard Me, but it does
require the entire body-mind, the entire person, to be in
this disposition of surrendered Communion with Me. Now, if
somebody has truly heard Me, then that will be so. But I
have to see that sign.

[Leaning back and speaking to Kanya Tripura] Is
this the Ivy League bus? What is this group?
[Laughter] Is anyone else considering anything here
but Me? Am I the only one considering something and
you’re all just eating, or
what’s happening?

DEVOTEES: No. No, were not eating Beloved.

AVATARA ADI DA: There’s
coughing. [Everyone has had the flu.] don’t do it
too much or you’ll make Me start
coughing. I’m thinking of
indulging in a cough right now, but I know it will go on for
awhile if I get into it. [Beloved coughs quickly.]
Ill just give it brief satisfaction.

DEVOTEE: We could call this tape, “It sounds good to me,
Lord.”

AVATARA ADI DA: We could.

DEVOTEE: From your Point of View, Lord.

AVATARA ADI DA: Well, its an amusing enough comment that
did summarize something about our consideration-maybe.

But is there anything more about this? Have we exhausted
it or what?

DEVOTEE: I just felt earlier on in the guided meditation,
Beloved, that in the moment in which You were Drawing us
deeply into perceiving You, I actually saw You as the Divine
Person, as Spiritual Presence, and it was just a remarkable
Gift. And it reminded me that the level 2 process is about
“Locating” You Spiritually, finding You Present in that
Form.

AVATARA ADI DA: And it is even “Locating” Me whole
bodily. It is not you just sort of having a generalized
sense of your body and feeling like I am here or feeling Me
here in your heart somewhere. Of course there are sensations
like that, but that’s not the It
of it. Its whole bodily participation in Me, everything
about the body-mind given over. Its the point of being
Spiritually immersed in Me, “Brightened”. And then, the
Force of that “Brightness” Invading the body-mind
altogether, I Attract You to the Source Point. So
that’s the unique Spiritual Yoga
in this Way, rather than a tour of the chakras and planes of
perceptions and so forth. Although these things may occur
spontaneously, they are not the It of it, they are not the
Yoga, they are not the intention. And ultimately they are
nothing more than a distraction anyway, in themselves.

There is one-pointed Communion with Me, just that
Samadhi, beyond the self-contraction. That’s
the real process. Everything else is at least potentially a
distraction from it, whether it is subtle experiences or
gross ones. So you don’t go seeking for anything. And
what’s already there, what
arises on its own, you deal with it as a Yogi in this Way,
transcending the ego itself directly, always.

Until this purification enables the whole body-mind to
conduct Me and be drawn to the heart on the right, until
that occurs, there are the symptoms of all of that happening
and you must persist in the Yoga I have Given you. But then
it comes to a point, and it would naturally be associated
with all of the other signs of being mature at level 3,
where there is no interference in “conductivity” at all and
it becomes immediately and tacitly obvious that you Stand in
the Witness-Position and don’t have to think yourself into
or go through an argument to “Locate” It. It is a tacit and
direct state of awareness.

But then you must exercise the Yoga further on that
basis. So you don’t just sit around Witnessing. That
Disposition is simply acknowledged, but it is activated very
directly, rather immediately-the second form of the “Perfect
Practice”, which is to enter into My Sphere without
“Difference”, on the Source side of attention, Prior to
attention and being Drawn to Jnana Samadhi. But even in that
Drawing, in that very process and the coming back from it,
the sadhana goes on, to locate and pass beyond the last
knot. The gesture that has you moving deeper, the gesture
that has you moving away from conditions, is found to be the
last contraction, or the source contraction.

So then the condition of Open Eyes, or the seventh stage
Awakening, occurs. And, in effect, Jnana Samadhi is
perpetual but without dissociation. So it is a state of
Samadhi beyond description, but It doesn’t
dissociate from conditions. It Recognizes them. So It is an
ever “Brightening” Force of Realization that expands through
and beyond conditions. It can show Itself in various
remarkable ways in the Transfiguration, Transformation
stages, perhaps, because the Force of Divine Recognition
stimulates, “Brightens”, every organism, every mechanism.
But it need not be very elaborate in those terms. And then
it becomes a very simple matter of this Force of
Recognition, this sublime Samadhi, simply “Brightening”. And
that’s the initiation in the
Indifference Demonstration, but it has no time-frame. It can
be prolonged.

You managed to be indifferent to Me in the egoic sense,
and that does not make for right sadhana. It doesn’t
allow you to use My Blessing. It doesn’t
allow you to Realize anything, and it doesn’t
incline Me to persist. I have no karma. The body-mind is a
karmic entity itself, but it is being Outshined by Me. So at
this stage it is not My business or inclination to be
prolonging any conditional association. So you have to take
hold of Me. This is what is done in the traditions with
Realizers of any degree. At some point their existence is
perpetuated only by devotees. And then if it is not there,
if it lapses or whatever, they go on.

So you are all in the best possible position any human
being can be in with the Revelation and the obligation to
respond to it for real. Both of these. So not only the
Kanyas and My children and their intimates and so forth are
Given this special Calling to move Me into association with
you all, but all devotees have this obligation. Those who do
it around Me in My immediate physical sphere every day are
supposed to just be a sign to you all of how to do it. This
is what its all about. Do this. don’t ask us what to do-do
what we do.

So you must let the immediate physical circle around Me
live this life of ecstatic devotion and Realization, not
make them into managers and so. And then that’s
the function of these immediate circles around Me, to make
that sign to everyone. Without it, how would everyone know
what to do? They just have to see devotees do it. So
that’s the special Calling and
Gift to some, because there can only be some numbers of
that. But they must understand it as a real obligation.
That’s their function, and
everyone must see that that’s
what they must do and do it in their fashion and in their
relative proximity to Me or whatever or relative distance
apparently. So that’s why I keep
Saying, “don’t come to Me empty-handed anymore. Lets see
your gifts. Where is the good news about institution,
culture, community, and mission? And where’s
My true Hermitage? Where are the devotees moving on in
practice? Where is the Lay Renunciate Order?” It is not
amusing.

In one weeks time you are going to be celebrating the
tenth anniversary of the initiation of My Divine Emergence
here, which is supposed to be the turning point in the
orientation of devotees so that they would make their
relationship to Me right, and make the sadhana right. And we
are about to celebrate the tenth anniversary of your not
doing this yet. Obviously the Event should be celebrated,
but it should be celebrated by this gift of right practice
and right signs altogether. Otherwise, you are not even
noticing Who I Am. So that’s
what it means to celebrate the celebrations I have Given
you.

Every one of the celebrations is a celebration in the
sadhana sense, not really in the social sense. Every one of
the celebrations is about the same thing, this celebration
of Me, this Communion with Me. But each celebration also has
some special focus of one kind or another. But you celebrate
Me by doing sadhana and magnifying your sadhana, having
special events where you get together collectively to do the
same, serve one another by doing that.

But you can turn them into social celebrations or
cultural celebrations in the ordinary sense, you see. So its
all about lectures and meals and socializing, and
that’s that. I mean, its fine to
have a meal and talk to your friends and hear some good
considerations, but it cant be just that alone. Its got to
be the actual sadhana of Communion with Me, individually and
collectively, not ignoring My Divine Emergence, but really
celebrating Me and making use of My Revelation.

The way you do that is not merely by making it a bigger
and bigger apparent celebration outwardly, but really
practicing the Way in that and every other circumstance. Use
the celebratory means to magnify your Communion with Me
rather than merely to socialize with one another and have a
cultural day, so to speak.

So you know what January the 10th here, January the 11th
in Fiji, is about-My Divine Emergence here. If you’re
My devotee, then you celebrate it by doing the sadhana of
it. So you completely abandon this wrong way of relating to
Me and this vacation-land relative to your sadhana, and you
straighten out. Otherwise, what is the point of going and
throwing little pieces of paper in the fire and getting a
nice new colorful piece of orange stuff to put around your
neck. Its nothing more than that if you don’t really embrace
the sadhana.

So the purpose of the celebrations is to enhance
everyone’s involvement in the
real sadhana. Even every weeks Guruvara is about that. So
really all celebration days in this Way are retreat days.
That doesn’t mean there’s
no outwardness to the celebration, but its still everyone
thoroughly concentrated in Communion with Me and being
served relative to that by everything they do all the day or
in that event.

Do you all have any idea what I’m
talking about?

DEVOTEES: Yes, Beloved. [All talk at once.]

DEVOTEE: One of the most profound Gifts I felt in the
Celebration circumstance was actually last year at the Da
Ashvamedha Celebration. We were watching the production of
The Mummery .

AVATARA ADI DA: Live here?

DEVOTEE: Yeah, last year, and …

AVATARA ADI DA: It was only a partial production, I hear,
but go on-well get into that later.

DEVOTEE: And I had heard The Mummery and seen it enacted
a number of times, but what was really the most wonderful
Gift for me was at the end, just right at the very end of
the production. I could feel it was such a direct
communication of You, Who You Are altogether. It felt like
every way I had of sensing You was addressed through that
whole Mummery , and touched. So at the very end of the
production, I just felt this-

AVATARA ADI DA: If you say that word one more time,
…

DEVOTEE: Oh.

AVATARA ADI DA: … I’m going
to have to comment on it. [Laughter.]

DEVOTEE: Okay. At the end of The Mummery …

AVATARA ADI DA: I guess I am going to have to comment on
it. [Laughter.]

The Mummery is not just some book I Wrote a long time ago
and you like to do some theatre with it every year. It is a
liturgical script to be done in the context of a great puja.
Thats how its to be used by devotees. I’ve
explained this thoroughly, and that’s
what they’re supposed to do with
it. And-but I do hear language like “the production” and so
forth-you just used it-and I do have a sense that The
Mummery is not being fully used yet in this truly liturgical
sense, so that to refer to it as theatre or a production
wouldn’t make sense to you.

And when people go to the Catholic mass for instance,
they don’t talk about it like its a theatrical production.
Maybe it is, but they don’t think of it as a theatrical
production. In other words, they don’t use the references of
theatre when talking about going to the Catholic mass,
because its a sacred, real event of Divine participation for
those who take it seriously.

So it is with The Mummery . It is part of a cycle of
pujas and sacred Communion enhanced by every act. So its a
portion of that liturgy.

DEVOTEE: That’s what I felt
occurred to me, for some reason right at the end, was the
Communication of You was so potent. For the first time I
felt it in a certain kind of way. It was a true puja in that
sense, where You just-the deepening, just Force of Your
Presence was so strong altogether.

AVATARA ADI DA: But the Puja of the Ashvamedha Sacrifice
follows it, you see. Its part of it. That’s
how devotees should understand this. Yes, I dropped
everything in the temple. But then there is everything more,
everything that means, everything that My Work is about,
everything I’ve had to Do since
then. That Sacrifice had to be made, altogether, that
Ashvamedha Sacrifice. So the liturgy of The Mummery is done,
and then the puja of the Horse Sacrifice is repeated, and
all of it, is about Me, but all of it altogether.

After I had Written The Mummery , for some years
afterwards, I kept considering another book. It was just a
kind of entertainment I would amuse My Self with in some
sense, because it was appearing simultaneous with all the
developments in My own Manifestation and Re-Awakening and
Work and so on. But as a reflection of that, not of a novel
or mere artistic invention. It was a reflection of what was
going on in My own case, and what My own Work was becoming
and was always.

I continued to play with this book idea that would follow
The Mummery , and I named him Da Blueso, again as an
expression again of My own Name. But I never wrote that
book. I Lived that Life, you see. But there is a follow-up
to the final event in The Mummery . It was Realization time,
the Life that followed that. So that is commemorated,
celebrated in a puja sense, by devotees every year by doing
The Mummery and then the Ashvamedha Sacrifice.

My own Life, and therefore you could also say the
Ashvamedha Sacrifice that you all perform, is that second
hook, the Da Blueso book, the Adi Da book. So you cannot
really understand The Mummery without understanding the
Ashvamedha. Its the meaning of the dropping of the egg and
is what comes from it.

But, again, as I Said, I don’t feel that you all-I mean,
you do these things, you do this process every year, but not
yet profoundly. You’re not
converted by it.

The purpose of all these celebrations is to convert
everyone to right practice and move them to greater
practice, reorient everyone rightly. If you understood The
Mummery and the Ashvamedha that follows it truly in terms of
your real practice in relation to Me, truly profoundly did
that, then that would be fulfilling the purpose of going
through that puja.

Like today, I heard last year when The Mummery was done
here, it wasn’t done complete.
There has been selective dramatization, so called, of The
Mummery , before people were supposed to have come to the
point of understanding what its for and what its about, how
its to be used. But that seems still to be continuing. My
Instruction to devotees is they do the entire Mummery at
that time every year, the entire thing. And some of it can
be dramatized, some of it can be recited,
whatever, but the entire thing
is to be done. You must participate in it fully. I
didn’t Write an edited version
of it. I didn’t Write a shorter
version or an alternate version. There is only one version.
And every part of, not just your favorites or whatever,
every part of it is necessary.

So you cant pick and choose because the Mummery guild
likes a particular scene and so on. You have to do the whole
thing. Optimally, the whole thing should be dramatized using
all kinds of media. You can at least walk it out. You can do
something with it, even if you’re
just reciting it. But the whole thing must be gone through
in a way that impresses the devotees present, involves them
profoundly, and prepares them for the Ashvamedha Puja. Its
to be the culmination of attending
the event of The Mummery . That’s
what its all about. So its not just a bit of theatre before
you do the puja the next day.

And therefore it rightly should be entered into in a kind
of retreat circumstance, everyone preparing for it so that
they can participate most profoundly in this total puja that
takes probably a couple of days, certainly one very full
day. People would prepare for it, be totally focused in it.
They wouldn’t just be an
audience for it. They could respond and all that,
that’s fine, but they should be
intensively involved in it, and not merely socializing with
one another during it.

The men should sit apart from the women as in any of the
puja circumstances for the same reason-so everyone is
focused, not being part of a unit, so to speak, all
that.

So that’s how to do and
attend puja. It requires profound participation. Therefore,
it requires some preparation, not only on the part of those
who may be performing the liturgy and so on but on the part
of everyone who’s attending.

So it should be a celebration characterized by great
seriousness and true involvement in My Divine Emergence. All
the celebrations should be used that way, not merely
socially, or in the churchy sense merely, you see. If you
use it just in that churchy and social sense, then its
Presbyterian or whatever, local church, local synagogue, you
know, just your ordinary sort of religious people, slightly
consoled, slightly doubting everything, getting together a
little bit reluctantly, some hugs, handshakes, maybe hardly
even a glance to some.

DEVOTEE: In the tabernacle with Evelyn Disk.

AVATARA ADI DA: You go through these ritual routines, and
every now and then the kids do a little theatrical something
dramatizing some myth or whatever. Its conventional
religiosity, the main purpose of which is to control your
behavior. Right behavior is positive enough, but
that’s about all there is to it,
when it gets down to that ordinary level of religiosity. So
you can easily transform everything in this Way likewise,
and have been doing so in fact.

DEVOTEE: Right.

AVATARA ADI DA: Do the puja.

DEVOTEE: It seems that was the point of Evelyn Disk in
The Mummery , Beloved.

AVATARA ADI DA: What about it?

DEVOTEE: Well, I was just thinking that this whole matter
of conventional religiosity is exemplified in what
he’s trying to do in inviting
Raymond Darling to regular religious life and not going
beyond that.

AVATARA ADI DA: Mm-hm. And even Raymonds life in some
sense was a ritual, a liturgy, a sacred enactment.
There’s a continuity in The
Mummery , but its also all shattered and moves through all
kinds of dimensions of time and space and psyche and so on.
Its not quite linear, and yet it is at the same time.

And so his life is ritualized. Even what he seeks at the
end is all part of a ritual created in some sense from
without, but just a condition to be borne or suffered,
searched through, until he came to the ultimate moment of
that open-hearted consideration. And he didn’t
choose to return. He didn’t
choose anything in limitation, and didn’t
choose illusion. He dropped the egg.

DEVOTEE: He saw it all.

AVATARA ADI DA: Mm-hm. He understood perfectly. So he
even went through the conventional religiosity tour, or had
to suffer being the central subject of such a church.

don’t you know?

So you’re all in The Mummery
. That’s part of the profound
participation that you must understand. Its not just the
story of My Life in the past, somehow poeticized and so
forth. It is a living liturgy, a present-time reality on
many levels, always will be experienced differently by
different individuals or differently at different times in
the community altogether. It must constantly be re-enacted,
but it must also in its re-enactment be participated in with
greater and greater focus and greater and greater
understanding, so that you go through The Mummery , you go
through the passage, not merely in that ritual event, but in
your practice altogether

DEVOTEE: It seems, then, there is no real way to-one way
to interpret The Mummery

AVATARA ADI DA: No.

DEVOTEE: In all the times I’ve
read it, always something else reveals itself. Its an
eternal book.

AVATARA ADI DA: I’ve said the
same thing of The Dawn Horse Testament .

DEVOTEE: Eternal conversation.

AVATARA ADI DA: Yes, eternal conversation, eternal
liturgy, eternal Communion. And so its always new.
You’re always in a somewhat
different disposition, different moment in practice, and so
your reading always coincides with your understanding or the
particular moment. So there’s
always more and more to understand from it.

So The Mummery is not just a nice book-if you like it
anyway-to be read and put down, and that’s
another book you read, and maybe you remember it every now
and then. It is like the Catholic mass, or like the other
pujas you do all throughout the year. Its a liturgical
obligation as part of your meditation, part of your study of
My Revelation, part of your participation in My
Revelation.

And this is what moved people in the religious traditions
previously. They had things that had great meaning to them,
and they elaborated it using all the arts, including
architecture and everything in the church. This is how they
made their traditions great.