PURIFICATION AND THE STAGES OF LIFE
Adi Da: The first five stages of life in the Way of Heart are done from the point of view of the body-mind or in the position of the body-mind. The sixth stage of life in the Way of the Heart is done from the point of view of the in-depth self, transcendental dimension of self and so it has gone beyond and the seventh stage of life is not a part of the psycho-biography of the ego. It is the divine demonstration.
That demonstration rather than sadhana is done from the divine point of view in the divine condition recognizing awe in everything. So there are three fundamental stages to the process you see. Everything is done in the context of the body-mind. The first two dimensions of the perfect practice or its done from the point of view of the conscious witness and such and then the seventh stage of life.
So everything preliminary to the perfect practice is really about one thing. Its this process of being purified of entanglement so that tension can fall or dissolve in its source, the native stage. All the agitations, entanglements, functional, practical, relational limitations, all of this must be purified in me when you have concentrated in me altogether and spiritually.
This process of purification of becoming established in the source position is to simply and straight forwardly establish all the basic practices so you can exercise them profoundly. You can’t exercise them most profoundly until you’ve got all of them intact covering everything.
So all the struggling with disciplines and that sort of business, instead of being straight forward, just keeps the practice superficial and prolongs it at a superficial level. It makes the listening process superficial. So a devotee should urgently embrace all of the practices and consistently practice them.
THE VALUE OF FRUSTRATION
Then it’s this profound intensity of consideration examining your act, your what are you doing. You see all of the this is in various areas of your life where you dramatize something or other, have a limitation as such and take some discipline on about that.
But it’s still kind of research to find out the source of this seeking of all of these disturbed patterns and so forth and then the arms of hearing are awakened, the fundamental grasping in the place of the self-contraction, a fundamental understanding.
Suddenly you have the capability to flower and be the open hand in communion with me. It’s from that point you have the fullest foundation of equipment to then move on to seeing me and be established in the most profound practice that precedes the perfect practice. Effectively it’s all purification.
You can see that it’s also about getting subtler, more refined, recollecting yourself, achieving a balance in equanimity in your disposition because you are focused in this moving beyond contraction into the radiant disposition in communion with me. That’s the exercise and the effects or purifications of all kinds. You don’t need to be necessarily outwardly very dramatic about this and that, whatever it takes. People get purified.
The frontal spiritual yoga purifies the entire body-mind. It is my crashing down. It opens up everything from above to the base. It does all kinds of physical purification, emotional purification, mental purification, subtle energy level purification. Sometimes it occurs very subtly in dreams or in the back of the mind so to speak. It just passes.
It’s the process of releasing energy and attention so you can be attracted by me spiritually to the source position. It is also why the purification takes place. That’s the very important reason why it takes place. Secondarily of course it generates positive signs in the life.
In the ascending course there are purifications of the same kind but it is associated with the pursuit of ascended samadhi which is conditional samadhi. In this way in the way of the heart which I have given you purification is from above downwards. It does all of the purifying of ascending yoga but it is not associated with this search for that conditional samadhi.
Instead it is done in communion with me such that you are drawn into the capability of the perfect practice. So practicing stages four and five are not in general necessary. There may be an unusual case here and there.
Devotee: How can you tell the difference between someone practicing in the various stages of life, as it relates to their indivdual purificaions.
Adi Da: Purifications can occur anytime even in the sixth practicing stage. You may still see some signs of apparent purifications going on in the body-mind or in some dimension or other of the character. It’s not perfection that moves you to the perfect practice, not perfection of the body-mind. It’s efficient purification and contemplative emersion in me to realize and stand of the witness position.
So it’s not that the individual has to become a perfect character according to some model or other. It must simply be purified to the point sufficient for that awakening. Purifications occur before the perfect practice but some may be in evidence even afterward. Even in the Seventh Stage of Life someone cuts their finger, they’ve got to heal, take in some toxins, they’ve got to purify. Ordinary disturbances do not cease, take a bath, all that pain in the ass stuff.
Sometimes the ascending yoga becomes necessary, not to realize anything but to release energy and attention to enter the perfect practice.
The purpose of all the previous stages is for purification and release of energy and attention such that the perfect practice can awaken. In other words, wherever the karmas are, they have to be purified. Sometimes a purification process can occur on the grosser level and will affect that in-depth level so the frontal yoga as I said covers the entire body-mind. It’s just done through the mechanism of descent like crashing down.
So if there is a lot of karmic content and impulse relative to the things that can be experienced in the ascending process then maybe in some cases that will be necessary because as I said purifications on that level occur in the course of the frontal yoga and the sadhana altogether.
You’re doing the frontal yoga in the sense that that’s how you concentrate the practice, the meditation practice and all the rest. That doesn’t mean you can’t have any ascending experiences during the course. I’ve known devotees who are beginners who have spiritual experiences of me.
It’s not like forbidden because they’re not practicing Stage 2 or 3 or beyond it. The frontal course is a specific yoga. That’s your responsibility, spontaneous movements, spiritual movements in the body frontal or spinal will happen spontaneously anyway, whatever has to take place.
So it’s very possible then that during the course of the period when you do the frontal yoga sufficient purification altogether can occur even in the case of someone who has a lot of subtler level or ascending kinds of karmas or attachments.
So people who are practicing Stage 3 do have ascending experiences potentially as many devotees who are not even at 1.2 have such that you must do the responsible sadhana in these stages whatever ones are necessary for this particular sadhana to be fulfilled. It doesn’t really matter having experiences that are in the likeness of what might be expected at some stage. It’s a matter of doing this ego transcending sadhana in the context of that stage.
Then there’s the real purification and transcendence. The power of hearing and seeing releases that. There’s no bind on attention, attention getting fixed in this or that drama or function or whatever. When that process has gone on sufficiently the attention is collected, not wandering. That doesn’t mean that in the process the psycho-physical personalities become some sort of ideal figure absolutely perfect in every way that anyone might imagine. No, it’s a matter of when has this purification taken place sufficiently?
So you must do the sadhana in spiritual terms but you don’t necessarily have to do it in practicing Stages 4 and 5. Everything that has to be purified anywhere descending or ascending will in general take place in most cases at practicing Stage 3. That’s the stage of spiritual purification. The yoga is frontal but the experiences can cover the entire circle.
So you don’t have to do the specific yoga of concentrating in ascent in the general case. There’s no need for concentration. The purification has already occurred in the entire mechanism descending and ascending. So for the perfect practice to begin establishment on the right side of the heart is what must have been allowed or accomplished by the previous sadhana so it’s freedom from the entire circle.
There’s nothing prior to witnessing it probably even to attention. So it’s not that if you pass from practicing Stage 3 to practicing Stage 6 that you have somehow avoided some part of sadhana or your enlightenment is going to be limited or something ultimately. No, as I am telling you, I hope it was clear before, the frontal yoga is simply the discipline.
The effects are in the circle entirely. That’s totality so that there can be passage out of the circle into descent into Amrita Nadi until the awakening stages in which there is the call for regeneration of Amrita Nadi and the enlightenment of the circle, literal enlightenment of the circle. You know what I mean. (Audience affirms)
That which is realized radiates freely in the body-mind whereas before it was pursued. Ultimately that ascent and onward to samadhi that is the sign of enlightenment or divine self-realization remarkably so because originally on the origination of the ego tour ascending in Amrita Nadi onward samadhi locking the heart behind, the right side behind and taking on the circle was the very basis for unenlightenment so what’s the difference?
Well, the tour of egoity required you shut to the door on the right side to the heart. So you had to go back and open it up again and then it’s fine to allow the light of self to pass into the entire body-mind and everywhere because you don’t lock the door and you recognize everything that arises.
If you lock the door and travel onward into Amrita Nadi into the circle you’ve left God behind. People imagine the divine person as above and beyond altogether outside the sphere of human existence. You have to somehow get out of at least the lower part to be happy or get to a very high part to be happy.
So the usual purpose is in the fourth, fifth and sixth stage of life to get outside in one sense or another. The fourth stages get from gross embodiment to a kind of saintly aspiration and the fifth is a matter of ascending into subtler levels of experiencing and after death to pass into subtler planes. It’s all a matter of getting out of some level or other and the sixth stage wants to get out of everything altogether.
But all these pursuits including the first three stages of life in their usual egoit form are based on separation from the divine condition, the presumption of egoity. They are motivated to find the divine condition because they can’t recognize anything. They’ve lost the divine condition. They locked the door. The ego locks the door. That’s the knot on the right. So when the door is opened and there is the realization of the true inherent state and then the current passes and then ascent into Amrita Nadi and the circle, there is little enlightenment of the body-mind and everything is recognizable in all the purposes previously pursued and the first six stages of life are released.
There’s no further karmic embodiment, no further history but that of the divine person. Well in that condition of a full awakeness, everything is recognizable as the very divine self-condition and it is the divine self-condition. All this is nothing but that right now. It is entirely me. If you would recognize it you would have no sadhana to do. So you must realize the divine self-position and condition.
So it’s nothing the body-mind can presume to the degree you are attached to the body self-presumption. You must serve me and contemplate me in every kind of service and in meditation. When the process of your contemplation of me becomes more profound and even subtle, then you’re in the aspiration of becoming one with me, united with me, a part of me so you can be one with me.
So the disposition of the aspiration to being one with me, communing with me utterly, grows beyond the servant stage. The servant life remains. The depth of the process becomes one of entering into contemplative communion with me. You enjoy undifferentiated union with me; ultimately non-separation from me and then the contents of the perfect practice is from the point of view of that. I am your very self. I am you and that is what the perfect practice is about and this culmination is as I have revealed it to you and never shown before. This culmination is the 7th Stage demonstration of open eyes.
Did that cover all of that then? The thing of it is, we haven’t even spoken yet. You’ve just had one half a line to get in all of this. I should congratulate you on what you were going to say Daniel.
(a long winded question is asked by a devotee about the self contraction….)
Adi Da: I feel a little commentary coming on……..(laughter)
…..your way of stating that illustrates the difference between listening and not yet hearing and hearing. You were talking about in effect you were relaxing the self-contraction. Looks like it’s a knot in your solar plexus or something in communion with me. That’s how you were using the exercise and that’s how it would be done from the point of view of non-hearing.
The point of view of hearing is at the point of the self-contraction, the point of the act of self-contraction and in communion with me passes beyond directly as flowering truly. It’s not merely a sensation that you’re experiencing. It is an act you are performing. You’re doing the self-contraction. It’s not merely happening to you.
I’ve used the illustration since the earliest days of a man pinching himself. You all know that one right? He’s uncomfortable and so forth. He tries to shake it off, whatever he does and then eventually discovers he’s been pinching himself all the while and takes his hand away and all his problem disappears.
Well I’ve used that little bit to try to describe to you what hearing is about. It’s not a matter of dealing with something that is subjective to you in the context of your human existence. It’s not objective to you. It may seem to be so until you hear me. In some sense that’s the fundamental description of the difference between non-hearing and hearing.
In the case of the non-hearer you don’t yet at the place itself understand most fundamentally that your search, your disease, your struggle and so on, your pain of existence is something that you are doing so that’s hearing from that point you can be in communion with me pass directly from the self-contraction act itself and you can do this then under all circumstances in every context of experience. But other stages evolve from them.
The same hearing gesture is your capability and your responsibility and immediately very quickly prepares you to do the yoga of seeing me such that the hearing process is taking place in the full dimension of spiritual existence and the purification is more profound, final.
You are referring to the self-contraction. You are having some experience of it but as if you are outside it somehow, somewhere and don’t quite have the key then to get rid of it. So you examine each piece of your life. You see how you do it there in some behavioral or other terms or what not and you work on that same discipline and so forth and that gets better but there is still this disturbance, this stress, this pursuit and so on and your examination of all that becomes summary because you are it. You’re being it. You’re doing it as an action. You’re in that very place and you know all about it just like you know how to open your hand instead of pinching yourself or open your hand instead of making a fist. It’s the core of all your doings, your thinkings, your feelings and so on and you’re doing it right at its root all the time and yet you act like it’s totally mysterious to you. I might point this out to you and it’s totally mysterious to you.
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