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“End Notes” From Drifted in the Deeper Land
Author(s):
DRIFTED IN THE DEEPER LAND
Chapter 11
The Problem About Life Is Death
At the beginning of the gathering of December 8, after a
few opening remarks by devotees, Avatar Adi Da abruptly
announces the topic of the evenings “consideration” with a
memorable one-liner:
SECTION I
(1.1) AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: The problem about life is
death. [laughter]
(1.2) DANIEL BOUWMEESTER: Its a big problem! [Beloved
Adi Da laughs with everyone.]
(1.3) AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: I dont care what you propose.
The problem about life is death. The problem about anything
you propose about living is that you cant continue it.
(1.4) So, you can either forget about it and just sort of
live a pattern of whatever is going on, or you have to deal
with death. If it were just a matter of living, and you just
went through changes, and that went on with no
endwell, that would be one thing. Then all these
impulses and inclinations, relationships, accumulations, and
everything that happens to all of that, and so forth, would
mean one thing. But to have it be such that any time (not
just after some time, but any time) it could be that thats
that, thats the end of thatwell, thats a real problem
with anything youre going to propose about anything at all!
[laughter] That makes the whole thing immediately a
major problem!
(1.5) ANIELLO PANICO: Absolutely!
(1.6) AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: What is the difference
between you noticing that, at the moment, and what a
chameleon or a lion notices? What makes you think its any
different? Just because you use a particular way of
expressing it as a felt pattern, whats the difference
between that and something felt by any non-human?
(1.7) There are a lot more non-humans than humans, by the
way. Many, many more. But what do they do about it, then?
What solutions do you see them coming to? You seem to think
that your solutions have to come about as a result of, and
even in the domain of, thinking.
(1.8) DEVOTEES: Yes.
(1.9) AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: Thinking as you think you are
thinking. And thats about all it is that you think you are
doing that. [Beloved Adi Da laughs.]
(1.10) JONATHAN CONDIT: Thats all there is to it.
(1.11) AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: Thats all there is to
it.
(1.12) JONATHAN: [laughing] Oh, no! [Beloved
Adi Da laughs.]
(1.13) AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: Its just a pattern, its just
a shape, you see. Shaping, patterning.
(1.14) So, fundamentally, any form, any
some-sense-of-itself in time, is confronted with the same
dilemma. This was the immediate observation in this
Body.
(1.15) [in an amused voice] As soon as the
Conjunction with this Body occurred, this first thing was
noticed, this flaw was noticed. So I decided to have some
very important conversations with some people about it, to
see whats going on with this. And didnt get any satisfactory
response, not from My point of view.
(1.16) JAMES STEINBERG: At what age was this,
Beloved?
(1.17) AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: Immediately! [Beloved
Adi Da and devotees laugh heartily.]
(1.18) JAMES: When were the conversations?
(1.19) AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: Oh, well, age two or so.
From then on.
(1.20) It is the fundamental flaw. You could say, “Well,
you have to have faith.” Well, [Adi Da starts to break
up with laughter] faith in what exactly? [Devotees
and Beloved Adi Da laugh uproariously.] Not only in
whom, and so forthbut why? And relative to what?
Relative to the anticipation of something or other? Or what?
You know?
(1.21) Theres nothing to be cynical about relative to
faith, its just that its an interesting “consideration”. And
its not just off-hand something. Faith profoundly entered
into is a form of ego-transcendence. Its not a kind of
cleverness with something invisible that somehow gets you
your goods, or some hopefulness that youll get goods, or
some absolute certainty that you will get your goods.
(1.22) Faith is not about that. Its about a heart-cure.
Its about the heart getting cured of its contraction, its
faithlessness. So its not about the goods and whether, if
you have faith, you get better results and so forth. Well,
theres an association with things becoming positive (if
patterns conjoin, and so forth), something better. But its
still klik-klak. Its still endlessly changing, but never
eternity.
(1.23) Because there is only change, you might say that
that goes on forever. But thats not “eternal”, because its
never anything forever. Eternity is just Reality. It never
changes. It is What It is, unchangingly, and Always Already.
What else could be Reality?
(1.24) What can what-is-changing resort to?
(1.25) What kind of resort can there be in the midst of
only-changes?
(1.26) What is the Source of only-changes?
(1.27) Changes are no-finality, no-Fullness, never most
profound, never Perfect, never (in any case) continuing.
Always changing, diminishing, transforming, eventually
becoming not at all (it seems) like it was, or less and less
and less, such that it is hardly possible to make a
connection between the present and the past.
(1.28) Conscious awareness is like thismeaning in
the play of patterns, awareness of patterns. The constant
changing, the experiencing of changing and so
forththis is not news to you. This has been your only
experience. And I gather from you that youve noticed that it
doesnt feel good enough. Because if you look at all of your
motives, your desires, your inclinations, and so forth, and
how they are dealt with in the play of experiencing, and how
it all diminishes and flows away and out and
elsewhereeventually thats the end of that washing
machine!
(1.29) DEVOTEES: Ohh. [Beloved Adi Da laughs, and
devotees join in His laughter.]
(1.30) AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: The end of that animated
whatever-it-was. Its not animating any longer.
(1.31) But where are they?all those washing
machines.
(1.32) Or is that all they were?
(1.33) And if thats all they were, then what are you?
(1.34) And if thats all you are, then that doesnt feel
good enough.
(1.35) Nothing feels good enough. Does anybody ever go
tell presidents or anybody like that? [Devotees erupt in
laughter.] Everybodys happy to be serious about
political and social matters. Of course, thats a matter of
rightness and responsibility. But dont hype everybody into
the game that thats it, that your life has to become nothing
but thatfocused exclusively on that, on these
social-political concerns and so forth. Everybody has to
pursue HappinessHappiness Itself. There is a larger
gesture in life that has to be accommodated. Somehow or
another, every generation has to be creative to accommodate
it, to keep the sacred alive, to keep what is holy set
apart.
(1.36) That means to function, to live, to be always in
the depth process moment to moment. Thats the holy place,
ultimately. The coincidence between that depth place and any
place set apart and empoweredthat conjunction is a
great Pleasure Dome. Thats the temple of your devotion, of
your use of mind, then, of your use ofnot mere
outwardnessthe depth level of your existence. Youre
using it in this fashion. Its a sadhanathe process of
going beyond, going beyond self-contraction, going beyond
limitation, entering into the Source Domain, the Domain of
What is Prior or Always Already the Case, the Divine Domain.
In the heart-depth, you are always in this temple domain.
You can always exercise this Yoga wherever you are.
(1.37) Reality is What is Always Already the Case. If
Reality is whatever this perception is right now, then in
order for there to be Reality, this perception has to be
forever. But it isnt. All of that is always changing. So
thats not Reality in the sense of the Fundamental. The
Fundamental is Always Already the Case.
(1.38) Its nothing about what appears that is Always
Already the Case. No psycho-physical experiencing is Always
Already the Case. What is Always Already the Case is What is
Prior to your own contraction, your own experiencing, the
“you” of existence.
(1.39) In the depth, there is no separateness,
ultimately. When that Process has become Most Profound, it
has become Realization Itself, Samadhi.
(1.40) In the apparent play of daily life, of course, its
all opposites. Its all klik-klak. Its twos.
Replicate-shift-change. Its modifications in different
speeds, it seemsvarious patterns, shapes. And then, in
the exchanges between people, theres all this . . . what is
it? Role-playing of what you look like! Youre talking as and
about what you look like. And names are put on that, and
descriptions (and so forth), and various other entanglements
get associated with that persona. Its a drama. Its like a TV
show or something. Every one of you could be as interesting
a subject of some TV drama as anybody else.
SECTION II
(2.1) AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: When you say “I”, do you
speak from the inside out, or are you on the outside and the
inside is “in”? If you are not merely the outside, then how
come you have to go within, turn within, when it comes to
doing or being anything but the outside?
(2.2) Of course, theres all this “inside yourself” and
such references. But all of that communication back and
forth suggests that you are the outside, youre what you look
likewhatever that persona is, or whatever youre trying
to tell everyone it is by how you show yourself or
communicate or whatever.
(2.3) On the other hand, if you examine your experience
seriouslyas you do here with Me on occasion, and as
you are supposed to be doing, in fact, in your practice
moment to moment”you” (its clear when you inspect your
actual experiencing) are not the outside. Youre certainly
observing itanything that you would call “outsider.
You, in every moment, have your attention on it. You observe
it, you make judgements about it and so forth. But then even
that “you”, the one thats being addressed by everybody whos
calling himself or herself “I” and so forth, is not just
whats observing, and so forth. Somehow a shape-change, a
somehow-indescribable shifting, makes notions, ideas,
actions.
(2.4) No matter what arises, you are as the mere
Witness.21 And theres no description for “you” from that
point. You just arent any of the rest of that.
(2.5) Just something about that seems clear at the
moment, doesnt it?
(2.6) DEVOTEES: Yes.
(2.7) AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: Well, but then who suggests
this shape, this outer-looking persona? That “I”, who looks
a certain way, clothes a certain way, is using the body with
certain attitudesmake-up, jewelry, whatever
decorations, expressions, a massive collection of pattern,
refinements, some of which have become rather rigid and
continuous, and others still change a lot under the various
circumstances. Then youre back to being the outside again.
And we have to talk about you getting, or going, deeper, you
know? “Within” and “inside”.
(2.8) When you think earnestly, you roll your eyes back,
as if you are on the outside of the eyeballs or something,
and youve got to go literally inside your body, inside your
head, to locate the thoughts. If you believe you are the
body, thats how you would describe it when you are really
sensitive to it. And, otherwise, theres scientific
investigation or analysis or technical piece-by-piece
breakdown of the process, or whatever. Not that you have to
turn your eyes back, and that you literally have to go
inside your head, but the process of the energy associated
with the body and the body-mind makes use of certain
locations in the grosser appearance with which you are
associatedthis body, brain, and so forth. And certain
kinds of brain functions and body-mind functions are
associated with one side of the brain and some with another
or some particular area in the brain combined with some
others and so forth.
(2.9) Well, theres all this complexity. Its
electricalthis mysterious thing that comes out of the
wall, or whatever it is thats playing in that wall
there.
(2.10) The eyes may turn in the direction of the area in
the brain indicating that that area in the brain is being
focused and energized, and the grid of attention is being
associated with that functional area. So its not that the
eyeballs have to go up and look in there. Theyre turning up
rather spontaneously based on an energy kind of surge.
Theres just a functional use of energy, specializing,
locating in a certain way at the moment.
(2.11) That doesnt explain “you”, though, does it?
(2.12) Youre the one who has, it seems, a self-interest
in how all of that turns out or works or whatever. And yet,
apart from that washing machine, that mechanism itself, you
do not in any sense take yourself into account (or require
anyone else to take you into account) in your actual
condition, as you are. And it seems that, generally
speaking, people dont know anything about this in-depth
dimension of their actual experiencing existence moment to
moment.
(2.13) Its not part of common public discourse. Its not
the kind of thing people talk about on the street. You say,
“Good morning, hows the weather.”
(2.14) When youve got a moment waiting for a bus or
whatever, you dont start talking to whoevers next to you,
“Well, what about the nature of the self and the real
in-depth level of your experiencing, and your consideration
about that? And what goes on with you in meditation about
that? And whats your experience about this?”
(2.15) [In a high matronly voice.] “What are you
suggesting? What do you mean? Im standing here minding my
own business! Good-bye!” [laughter]
(2.16) “Oh, sorry! I thought everybody knew that.”
[Avatar Adi Da laughs with everyone.] “No, no, I
didnt mean to say that. What I mean is, if you have faith
and insist on feeling good, you should always be sure to
include bakery goods in your diet.” [laughter]
(2.17) You know what I mean? Any religion tends to become
that, but thats not whats interesting about it. Well, why
dont people talk about whats interesting about it? Religion
has to be more than just a conversation about social
behaviorwhether youre going to be harmless or harmful
to one another, that endless arrangement and rearrangement.
Of course, that is important, but that is just business to
handle. You handle that and then you get on with the Great
Business.
(2.18) But everybody doesnt want to handle this basic
business so that they can go on to some greater business,
because they dont think there is any greater business
anymore. So they make the ordinary business so complicated
that it never gets handled. And people are so strung out
about it, so nervous, so stressed about it and the
entanglement that it all is, that, like caged animals in
zoos, they lose their place in the pattern. And they get
disoriented, nutty, nervous.
(2.19) You are always being “what you look like”,
expressing that, moving its face around to express . . .
what? You all have emotions, but what is that? Such, such,
and suchall your descriptions are not merely of
something thats like a something happening at the surface of
the skin. Theres a “you” thats always being referred to.
But, in any moment, if youre called to consider the matter,
you are not merely this appearance. You are observing it
certainlyat the very leastbut even deeper than
that, prior to that, prior even to attention itself, youre
always potentially focused on a self-aware association with
deeper levels of what you might call “you” or “yourself”
than this outer “I am the body” persona. Its a selected
appearance or self-presentation commonly used in the waking
state moment to moment, but its not the only one you use.
You very often converse with people, or are present in a
room with people, or are doing whatever with people, or are
(otherwise) being oblivious to people, and yet carrying on
what you regard to be a perfectly normal,
just-like-youve-done-it-countless-times-before kind of
day-to-day activity, without any regard for anything
physical (or certainly not the “you”, the
social-persona-appearing-to-people kind of awareness).
Instead, you are involved in a totally other kind of level
of focusingrather what people would ordinarily call
“internal”, entirely an emotional pattern or feeling, or,
otherwise, mental or verbal. You are constantly exercising
yourself in various ways that dont have anything to do with
being physically aware (or, otherwise, with specialized
physical awareness), such that all kinds of aspects of the
physical are not in your sphere of intentional
responsibilityand yet they come along anyway, it
seems.
(2.20) If its “you”, then how come you dont have to do
something about it all the time? Or how come when you
finally allow yourself to go to sleep and you wake up, to
your surprise your heart didnt stop beating because you woke
up again?
(2.21) The thing you were afraid of is that you werent
going to be able to wake up if you allowed yourself to go to
sleep. But finally you couldnt do anything about
itZAP. When you wake up, what you were afraid of didnt
happen. Your heart continued, your breathing continued.
(2.22) So you dont mind going to sleep quite so much. But
on the other hand, every time you wake up from deep sleep
into dream states or otherwise the waking state and so
forth, you begin to get the clear understanding that, one
time or other, you wont wake up, because the heart will have
stopped or the breathing will have stopped. And thats the
end of that one.
(2.23) So the one fundamental flaw in all of this is
death. The problem about life is death.
(2.24) Im not making a trivial statement. Saying it a bit
amusedly, perhaps, but, nonetheless, it is true. Its not a
“maybe”, its not something that has only happened to a
couple of people in fifty billion eons. Its not that kind of
thing.
(2.25) The process itself is not only that everybody
dies, but everything changes and disappears, it
disintegrates, passes through into flows of other patterns
and so forth. There is no final anything to you in this
moment here, or to anything else, or to anything you can
establish, anything you can acquire, anything you enjoy, any
relationship you can enter into.
(2.26) Its not like you can definitely get all that and
really do it good and so forth, and youre given a fixed
period of time and then its that. Its not that at all. It
can happen anytime, arbitrarily, before all kinds of things
get to be done.
(2.27) You could get to a point where you dont want to
start anything any more, because youre going to die. Well,
how come you got interested in starting anything to begin
with?given the fact that you always could have gone,
anytime.
(2.28) So theres all this bargaining about the simple
business of the fact that there is a body-mind alive and so
forth. Fine. So you do your bit personally and in a
collective relative to dealing with those things. But that
doesnt mean that thats that, thats all there is to life. It
doesnt make any difference what anybody says. You know that
you are involved in something more profound than fulfilling
the habit patterns of physical existence.
(2.29) Its not enough, at any rate, just to handle
life-business. It doesnt feel good enough. You cant commit
yourself only to that. You can do that, in your creative way
or whatever. But its only a portion of it, and its not the
fundamental thing.
(2.30) So people shouldnt be propagandized that handling
life-business is the fundamental thing. It should be put in
its proper proportion, and all kinds of things done to give
people the gift of presuming once again that the quest for
Wisdom is important, the process of all of that is
profoundly important. And you cant just devote yourself to
the physical exchange, or the patterns of
gross-consciousness.
(2.31) The non-humans already know this. The humans have
to build it into their individual and collective
understanding. Its intelligent to have noticed this. Its
intelligent noticing to have noticed thisthat it
doesnt feel good enough.
(2.32) On the other hand, you all seem to want to argue
for the persistence of just that. Your life-pattern, even
your expressions and so forth, frequently suggest that that
really is all you want. Or that your principal concern is
doing that for however long youve got. Or whatever
blah-blah, whatever youd say about itjust consenting
to be utterly superficial, to have given up the position of
depth in life and have come to the point where you dont
really care about it any longer, dont even want to really
hear about it.
(2.33) The in-depth process is the concern of beings, and
therefore human beingsall beings, human and non-human.
Its the most important matter. Its the primary matter. Not
to the exclusion of anything else, but in terms of primacy,
and of fundamental focus, this is it, its this matter.
(2.34) Because no matter what changes occur in life,
death comes at one time or another. Thats the end of it. So
the motive thats in life cant fulfill itself except as a
kind of plastic gesture in a pattern of “maybe some others
will make the gesture too, and things will go on”.
(2.35) But what is it all going on for? So that, out of
the billions of beings sent out on this shot, one guy gets
the egg, and for all the rest thats the end of it? Thats all
it was for? To perpetuate the pattern? The klikking and the
klakking?
(2.36) Thats the force thats happening.
(2.37) JAMES: Thats right, Beloved.
(2.38) AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: Yes, thats exactly it. But
not truly. Thats not the Truth of it. Or that understanding
is not Truth, it doesnt liberate you to presume that. None
of your thinking liberates you, generally speaking, except
thought associated with the process in which That Which is
Prior to thinking is Realized.
(2.39) You can function from the inside out, or you can
function from the outside in. So, thats a choice to be made.
To function from the inside out means that you fundamentally
function in depth, or doing the sadhana of the process in
depth moment to moment, seriously, whatever else you may be
doing. If that remains your constant focus moment to moment,
then the only way you can have anything to do with what you
look like is to work from the inside out. Because you are
not going to leave the so-called “inside” just to get
“outside” about anything. You know what I mean?
(2.40) So a person whos functioning in the depth, or in
that in-depth process, can only associate with everything
outside (or toward the outside) from there, from that
in-depth position, because you wont leave it.
(2.41) So you have to function from the inside out, from
the feeling dimension out, from the point of view of
discriminative intelligence and truly sympathetic and
sensitive feeling. The process is ever deepening. Its not
really looking back. But on the other hand, it doesnt leave
any place. Its just a deepening of the same disposition that
otherwise does everything. Its the same person that was
doing whatever he or she does in daily life before, except
now it is done from this in-depth position, because he or
she is involved in this ever-deepening sadhana-exercise.
(2.42) Clearly, somebody in whom that is occurring is
going to become more seriousnot inward in the sense of
being introverted necessarily (it depends on peoples quality
otherwise), but more feeling-aware and more discriminative
and so on.
(2.43) The thing about people in ashrams in a traditional
settingas it was My experience in this Bodyis
that a very high percentage of them are always involved in a
meditative exercise of some sort, a kind of ecstatic or
mystical exercise, even. Even if you saw them involved with
some commonplace task at the moment, you could see it about
them somehow that theyd been involved in this in-depth
practice. It was affecting their whole quality. They didnt
stop it just to go out and pump water at the corner, you
know? Whats so important about pumping water at the corner
that you are going to give up your in-depth process of
self-transcending Divine Communion? You know what I
mean?
(2.44) DEVOTEES: Right.
(2.45) AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: You can pump the water. You
dont have to be really out there saying, “Wow! Getting the
water is so fantastic!” [Beloved Adi Da laughs with
devotees.]
(2.46) JONATHAN: We do that.
(2.47) AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: Yes. You dont have to be the
TV jerk, you know. Its not going and getting the water that
is interesting, not that itself. Its the in-depth process
itself and the pattern within which that occurs. The
in-depth matter is always the primary one, the thing of real
importance that is always on the edge of the profundity of
dealing with the problem (which can be described in many
forms). Ive just suggested to you the simple problem. The
problem Ive stated is that the problem about life is
death.
(2.48) You can see in these people at traditional ashrams
that theyve allowed themselves (however much active or
intentional volunteering there is in it) to become, in their
appearance, people who are obviously engaged in
Contemplative activity, one way or another, however you
would describe it in particular in each case. There are
certain characteristics people show if they do that a lot
and dont try to stop looking like they are doing that when
they go about their so-called “life-activities” (as if
meditation is not a life-activity).
(2.49) In other words, you are supposed to be even
physically, or altogether psycho-physically, transformed by
the in-depth process in meditation and in daily life,
constantly. You are supposed to be changed by that. If you
rigidify everything of the body-mind for the sake of some
outward conformity, from whatever direction it seems to you
to be requiredinside or outsidethen your
religious and Spiritual life cant change anything. So there
has to be at least a dimension to that. The interior of that
has got to be available, then, for the real religious and
(in due course) Spiritual process.
SECTION III
(3.1) As I just said to you, whats really of interest,
but which people dont talk about in their casual meetings or
even their serious ones often, is the process in depth, that
most profound exercise. Because the problem about life is
death. All the ordinary occupations, then, are business to
be handled, but theyre not sufficient for Happiness, theyre
not about Happiness, they dont feel good enough themselves.
The core dimension of all of this has got to be dealt with,
this problem of death has got to be dealt with.
(3.2) You cant just throw yourself into the pattern in an
infantile fashion and just sort of go with the flow. Who is
making this flow? It didnt fall out of the sky like a spray
of golden messages, or blessings, manna out of the sky or
something. Its the product of all kinds of influences and
arbitraries and mistakes and limitations and human
individual judgements, even collective judgements. All kinds
of thises, thats, and all the rest of it, is this pattern
flowing. Why should you just consent to go along with it?
Thats to abandon the in-depth faculty of discriminative
intelligence, and the deeper faculty of heart-intelligence,
heart-feeling awareness. So, all this “going with the flow”
business, and all the conventions associated with it, didnt
come falling out of the sky like a Divine message. These are
all very human patternsthey could be changed.
(3.3) Whats happening? Especially this: Everybody is
going to die. So, what is this really all about? So you cant
merely go with the flow, commit yourself to an exercise
thats about death, about everything coming to nothing. I
mean, what is the point of that?
(3.4) So thats the problem that death introducesthe
pointlessness of any change whatsoever, the pointlessness of
human existence. You feel already associated with it, so
youd like it to feel as good, or unfrightened and
pleasurized, as possible. But that still doesnt change
anything about the fact that its going to die and could at
any moment.
(3.5) As I was saying to you earlier, this is not a
different condition than the chameleon or the lion or the
butterfly or whatever is confronted with. Its the same. Its
the same that the trees are confronted withthe fact
that everything changes and everything stops. Yet nothing
stops directly, everything just flows into a pattern of
another kind.
(3.6) No matter what arises, no matter what changes occur
(even positive), theres still death at any moment. Anything
can change at any moment. Everything changes, does change
every moment. Its just klik-klak, klik-klak, klik-klak.
Slight shift, replication, basically. But also a lot of
sudden endings, sudden changes. Its a plastic domain of
changes, shape without meaning. The meaning-dimension is
subjective, the domain of “you” mysteriously associated with
the pattern that arises, which is nothing but shape, the
sense of shape, modifying moment to moment.
SECTION IV
(4.1) How can the root be inside, unless you feel you are
at the outside?
(4.2) The outside position is arbitrary, but nonetheless
dominant. Its the picture you maintain, and with which you
identify moment to moment. And all your speech references
suggest to everybody else that they regard you as such
moment to moment.
(4.3) You can look for causes of anything, but also you
can look for the source of anything. These are not
necessarily the same. A cause is a “what”. A source is a
“where”. The Source of all Conditions is Perfectly
Subjective to it, not objective to it. And yet that Source,
when Realized, is not separate from, not “different” from,
anything that arises. It is not merely a philosophical
judgement, it is Realization. And it coincides with the
unique Yogic Siddhi I have described as Divine
Recognition,22 in the case of My devotees who Awaken to Me
in the seventh stage of life.
(4.4) The Siddhi of Divine Recognition cant be imitated.
It cant be philosophically just chosen and done as an act of
will. It is associated with a Realization and cant be
engineered otherwise.
(4.5) If you maintain this in-depth process, you also
find that you have clarity of discriminative intelligence in
every such moment. So its not that you become stupefied.
(4.6) The functional, practical, relational, and cultural
disciplines at the foundation of this Way create this
pattern, this shape that associates the body-mind with the
asana of the in-depth process, even in the context of
so-called “daily life”, so that the individual becomes a
Yogic “embodiment”, so to speak, a Yogically patterned
individual life, or life-process.
(4.7) But, in the midst of this human life-process, you
can associate yourself with all kinds of potential
activities and amusements and patterns of one kind or
another. This is something one can do. But what should you
do? Well, you yourself determine this in every moment based
on your disposition. One who is My devotee, one truly
practicing the Yoga of this Way, is in the in-depth
position, the position that freely exercises the
feeling-disposition and discriminative intelligence, with
regard to everything to do with mind, emotion, and body, and
action, “in life”, as we say. Thats how it functions in
relation to the usual categories of daily life, and,
otherwise, it persists in this in-depth process, this
in-depth seriousness, to Realize the Source-Condition That
must be Realized at the root of all this, so that this
strange paradox of birth and death can be comprehended, can
be made a process that can be heart-embraced, altogether
positively.
(4.8) How can one heart-embrace, altogether positively,
what looks to be just totally arbitrary pattern-activities,
ending in death? What could possibly, on the face of that,
be positive about it in any great sense?other than the
fact that youre stuck in it, make the best of it, and try to
feel good.
(4.9) But youre not exactly stuck in it, altogether,
because you can respond to Me and you can be in that deeper
disposition in which you can go through a process of
changein other words, where you dont have this utterly
rigidified life, but can change it, even change what you do
outwardly, in the context of living in community and so
forth, taking on all the disciplines.
(4.10) If life and death are opposing while in
conjunction with one another, that doesnt feel good enough.
Thats in some sense terrible, in fact. Its inherently
terrible, however you may work to make it feel as good as
possible at the moment, nonetheless.
(4.11) Everything is a limitation. Limitations can be
attractive at the moment, and not so attractive eventually.
Generally speaking, many of the limitations of so-called
“ordinary” life are attractive to you. Thats why you get
involved with them, rather automatically, naively, and so
forth, even early in life.
(4.12) Theres nothing in all the three
stateswaking, dreaming, and sleepingthat is
Liberation, Enlightenment, or Happiness. But there is That
Which is Enlightenment, Realization, Happiness (Itself),
Always Already. That is the Reality.
(4.13) But your search within the waking stateor,
otherwise, in something like the domain of dreams, or
sleepingcannot Realize Happiness. It cannot come to an
end. The process itself can come to temporary ends, or get
bogged down, and so forth. Then it can really end, as well.
But it never becomes the Realization of Happiness Itself,
Happiness as Always Already the Case, Happiness as
unchanging, unconditional, or not held in place by
conditions.
(4.14) So none of the possible experienceswaking,
dreaming, or sleepingare about that. They are all a
pattern of a kind, those three states. Theyre conditional.
Everything that arises in those three states changes, passes
away, dies.
(4.15) You dont even know what a single thing is. You act
by a combination of convention and motivation to
survive.
(4.16) JAMES: Beloved, to be Your devotee requires this
knowledge about death alreadyconfrontation with death
enough to know that you have to practice beyond.
(4.17) AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: Yes. How you live depends on
your resolution, or lack of resolution, relative to the
inherent problem of death, and the fact that youre not
something like a super-duper washing machine with a
such-and-such-number-of-year guarantee on it. It could not
only break down, but disappear at any time. Thats not much
of a washing machine! [laughter] Thats a piece of
bad bargain. Thats a real cheap deal, a bad deal. Thats what
I call “retail”. [laughter] “Never buy retail.”
(4.18) Anyway, how did I get to talk about that?
[with mock incredulity] Retail and wholesale? What
is it? As if life is sufficient just as a
who-knows-when-its-going-to-disappear scramble of humble
human habits.
(4.19) Of course, then there are all those who try to
sell it to you, make it exciting. Well, fine, that keeps
everybody as merry as possible, maybe, or something. So
thats good, thats positive enough. But its still not enough.
Its still a kind of enslavement. Its the root of all
enslavement.
(4.20) Youre working for a purpose that you cannot
fulfill, that cannot be fulfilled in your case. Its like
worker bees in a beehive, whose lives are strictly
mechanical, missions going on back and forth relative to
this and that service to the hive. And then its dead. Its
just brushed out. Body kicked over the edgethats the
end of that job, you know. And they just keep replicating
them in there, in the queens chamber of replications.
(4.21) MICHAEL WOOD: Arent the bees Contemplating,
though?
(4.22) AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: Yes, they are. But thats the
pointthat they are Contemplating, they are not merely
there. And thats what Im saying to you, then. The Way of the
Heart is about Contemplating. Not merely being here, but
Contemplating, under whatever the conditions of the moment.
Its not just some utopian-belief message or whatever about
your outward experiencing. Its an in-depth process of going
beyond the limitations that human and all conscious beings
suffer, inherently.
(4.23) And its not only a matter of going beyond
sufferingit is certainly that, but its not merely that
or only that. Its about directly Realizing That Which is
Happiness Itself, the Root-Condition Itself, before all of
your excursions of possibility wherein you lost the
depth.
SECTION V
(5.1) People who have had what are called “NDEs”
(“near-death experiences”), in general, say that from that
point on in their lives, theyre not going to be afraid of
death. Something has changed about it. And each of them will
have their story about whatever kind of experiences they
had. It only goes to a certain depth, because its not the
actual death. Well, thats a very interesting in-depth
phenomena.
(5.2) But if you just look at the descriptions of the
phenomena, they dont exactly make clear why you would no
longer have a problem about death, or death wouldnt any
longer be a problem. What exactly is it, then? Perhaps what
it fundamentally is, is that these people always are still
reporting in the ego-“I” person about this matter. Their
experience has satisfied something in their egoic
dispositiona sense of continuation, a sense that death
is not what it looked like it was going to be, but it is
what allows you to continue as an ego-“I”.
(5.3) So its a misinterpretation of Reality, based on an
experience that only went to a certain depth. The
after-death process is not about something congratulating
the ego-“I”, but a process in which the ego-“I” is gone
beyondultimately, Most Perfectly so. And all kinds of
levels of limitation likewise, then, gone beyond, in the
ever-deepening profound.
(5.4) The profundity of religion is not about the fact
that there is no death. Its about the fact that there is.
And that means life cannot be blithely entered into, it has
to be entered into profoundly. There must be the in-depth
process.
(5.5) Such it is. Such it is.
(5.6) That is the Way of the Heart.
(5.7) The NDE message seems to be that egos dont die at
death, they survive it. Well, thats obviously not an
experience based on a profound going-on that is the actual
death-process. And not only that, it is not based on the
full range of what the death-process can bepositively,
negatively, or whatever. It could be all kinds of things in
moments, and whatnot.
(5.8) So the true message from the “other side” is not
about ego-survival, its about ego-transcendence. But a
little bit of the experience of it, and then coming back
into the framework of the body, can bring about deluded
notions of the importance of the experience.
SECTION VI
(6.1) Even though there is death, what makes death
bearable and profound is not the fact that death doesnt
exist, but the fact that it does, that it is a real process.
And that real process, and the Reality in Which that is
occurring, is the profound matter, even while alive.
(6.2) All the arrangements you can make with the
body-mindwaking, dreaming, or sleepingare
temporary. I dont care if its your girlfriend or your
boyfriend or your Samadhi. As long as its a state of the
body-mindwaking, dreaming, or sleepingits
temporary. Its not it. Any experience that depends on
conditions of any kind is conditional, and, therefore, is
not Eternal, not Always Already, not Permanent. It is
temporary.
(6.3) Are you satisfied with the presumption that you are
temporary? Or that existence must be a “you”, and, being a
“you”, it must also be temporary?
(6.4) The profundity of the Way of the Heart is in the
depth. The Way is in-depth, in the process itself, not
merely in the social gleefulness, or in the social
whatever.
(6.5) Typically, when you address somebody as if you have
a serious interest in them, they think you want to know
about their health or some physical condition or other,
their work-conditions, life-conditions, whats going on with
their intimate or not. They think thats what youre
interested in.
(6.6) But, you see, thats not whats really
interesting.
(6.7) Your serious relationships, the ones you should
value as being most serious, are the ones in which you
really relate to one another relative to the in-depth
process of this Way. Know that seriousness in one another
and relate to one another on that basis, talk with one
another relative to it at times and so forth. Each
relationship has a different pattern, but, nonetheless, the
serious relationships are those. You can have relationships
of all kinds, for one or another reason. But the serious
ones, if they exist at all, would be such. And, in fact,
unless a relationship has and allows and you fruitfully
enjoy seriousness, you wouldnt say it was satisfactory. You
are still, in other words, dealing with something about it.
Its not right.
(6.8) The only matter of real interest in any moment
(presuming youve handled the necessary business for the
moment) is just this most serious, in-depth “consideration”.
And not just blah-blah-blah about it. I mean the process,
the in-depth process, all the faculties entered into it. And
you dont leave that position. You just do everything from
that maximum depth-position that is characteristic of your
sadhana at the moment. In fact, the only reason people would
have a positive disposition to do all their life-business is
if there is an in-depth process in Reality that is respected
and actually experienced, entered into constantly by
people.
(6.9) After a while, it doesnt feel like youre going
“inside” anymore. Youre already there. So the deepening is
of another kind. Its a deepening in place. And its also not
going “inside”, its radiating. Its not imploding, going
“inside”, its radiating from the center.
(6.10) Of course, many of you are smiling now and making
indications that youre familiar with what Im talking about.
Well, in some sense, you are, but, in the most fundamental
sense, you are not at all familiar with what Im talking
about. You would just very much like to Realize that
Condition.
(6.11) But you, of course, have not Realized Happiness
Itself yet, because you have not found that Source-Position
of Absolute Satisfactoriness. So youre still effectively a
seeker in each moment, from the heart.
(6.12) Right off the bat, for Meimmediately
observing this thing that lives, it diesyou didnt have
to tell Me anything more about how to be a window salesman
and such. Whatever was going to be necessary for physical
survival and so forth, that was not going to be any big deal
for Me. I wasnt going to devote My Life to
thatspeaking in ordinary terms about this matter,
speaking of My Self in this metaphorical, ordinary
sense.
(6.13) In other words, Im Calling you to feel this in
your self, in your casethis difference it would make
if you really, seriously examine the fact that everybody
dies, and theres no guarantee you get to live even for one
more moment. So, to really take that seriously, examine it
seriously, it makes any participation in mere physical
pleasure, or social pleasure, or any kind of occupation at
all, experiencing at all, something less than a primary
interest, something profoundly less than primarily
interesting to you. Youre already detached from it somehow.
Theres another kind of depth thats already established in
you, just having noticed this.
(6.14) Its a kind of wound. Its not “something to be
avoided and so you get cynical” kind of business. No. This
death matter is something to be profoundly “considered”.
Your entire sense of it, presumption about it, depends on
your condition altogether, with respect to existence. It
shows your level of wisdom or Realization, or lack of
it.
(6.15) All wisdom, ultimately, is about this paradox of
life and death coinciding. Not even one moment of life is
guaranteed. Therefore, not even a fraction of a moment of
even any purpose at all is guaranteed, or has anything
(therefore) fundamental to do with the place you are born
in.
(6.16) So this conjunction of (it seems) these profound
opposites is a thread of seriousness in youif you take
it seriously, rather than just try to keep it in the
background. It generates a seriousness in you, and moves you
to always go beyond.
(6.17) Thats the quality in the disposition of someone
who becomes, in one way or another, involved in the
religious life, especially the esoteric religious life.
SECTION VII
(7.1) AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: Are you all in the waking
state at the moment?
(7.2) DEVOTEES: Yes.
(7.3) AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: What makes you think that?
[laughter]
(7.4) Death is just the continuation of the in-depth
process (or event), as in life. This depth being the central
zone, its what life and death play off of. An arising and a
stopping. Both are on this same sort of wave-pattern. But
the steady root of it is the depth. And death, therefore, is
the continuation of the depth-process. This is what there is
for you to be invested in.
(7.5) Its just another form of retreatthe death
process. But in any case its nothing more for you than just
continuing the in-depth processdeep process. Because
what any kind of conjunction can feel like to you, be
experienced to be by you, is determined by this degree (or
actuality and quality) of the depth-sign in you.
(7.6) So true and right depth in every momentthat
is the Pleasure Dome Principle. It constantly goes beyond
the limitations of outside and inside.
(7.7) Depth has no side.
(7.8) You cant shape depth.
(7.9) The depth has no shape.
(7.10) Its in-depth.
(7.11) Not on the end of your psycho-physical effort.
(7.12) Not anywhere that your search presses toward.
(7.13) Its not the sensation of the seeking.
(7.14) Its in-depththe sensation that makes you
seek, the dis-ease, the discomfort that is behind any
seeking, desiring motive in any moment, any condition of
stress.
(7.15) Its all this seeker sensation, the knot of
self-contraction.
(7.16) Its not object to you.
(7.17) It is you.
(7.18) Its your own action.
(7.19) Youre doing it yourself, to yourself, totally
psycho-physically, just as if you were pinching yourself23
and only found this out somewhere along the line, even after
having done it and suffered its effects for a great long
time.
(7.20) Mm?
(7.21) All you had to do is take your hand away.
(7.22) Its like that, in every moment.
d* * *d
Notes
21. To Stand as the Witness is to be Identified with
Consciousness Itself, free of all identification with body
or mind. The Witness-Position is the Native Position of all,
but it is only stably Realized with the transition to the
sixth stage of life.
22. In the seventh stage of life, the Realizer of the
Divine Self simply Abides as Consciousness, and he or she
Freely Recognizes, or inherently and Most Perfectly
comprehends and perceives, all phenomena (including body,
mind, and conditional self) as (apparent) modifications of
the same “Bright” Divine Consciousness.
23. Avatar Adi Da has often used the metaphor of
“pinching yourself” to illustrate His Wisdom-Teaching
relative to the self-contraction. The person is pinching
himself or herself, and thereby causing all kinds of
dis-ease and suffering. The person has been pinching for so
long, he or she does not even realize that it is his or her
own action that is causing the distress. If the person
realizes that it is his or her own activity, then he or she
can stop pinching and thereby be relieved of that
self-imposed distress. Please also see “The self-Contracting
Habit Of the usual life”, pp. 188-91.
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