Hazrat Babajan (c. 1806 – September 21, 1931) was a Baloch Muslim saint considered by her followers to be a sadguru or qutub. Babajan’s physical presence on earth lasted between 130 to 141 years. On September 18th, 1931, one of Babajan’s fingers was operated on at Sassoon Hospital, but afterward the ancient woman did not appear to be recovering, and a few days before she dropped her body, Babajan muttered, “It is time . . . time for me to leave now. The work is over … I must close the shop.”
One of her devotees pleaded, “Do not say such things Babajan. We need you with us.”
With a quizzical gaze she replied in cryptic fashion, “Nobody, nobody wants my wares. Nobody can afford the price. I have turned my goods over to the Proprietor.”
On September 21st, 1931, at 4:27 in the afternoon, Hazrat Babajan dropped her body. People were speechless when they learned that this ancient woman had died. Tears flowed throughout Poona, gloom hung over the city as if clouds had become her shawl. Thousands of people joined the funeral procession for her last journey through the streets of Poona. Babajan was buried under the same neem tree where she sat for so many years and people still come to her tomb every day.
Hazrat Babajan (c. 1806 – September 21, 1931)
Her association with Meher Baba:
“One day in May of 1913, while on his way to Deccan College in Poona, Merwan (later affectionately called Meher Baba by His lovers) was beckoned by a very old woman sitting under a neem tree. She looked very radiant and her eyes beamed with divinity. She wore only a rough blanket wrapped around her in sun, rain, and cold. This was Hazrat Babajan, one of the five God-realized Perfect Masters of the time. At this first meeting, Babajan embraced Merwan, and the effect of this contact led him to lose all worldly interest. He took to sitting with her regularly for hours, especially at night.
Then one January evening in 1914, Babajan kissed Merwan on his forehead, between his eyebrows, and made him realize in a flash the infinite bliss of Self-realization (God-realization). Merwan lost consciousness of everyone and everything, except the infinite bliss of his own Eternal Existence.”
Hazrat Babajan and Meher Baba (Their years of contact)
Leela from a devotee of Adi Da Samraj:
ZOE: One morning, after a long night, I wrote (Adi Da) a letter, a the end of which I meant to type, “I bow down at Your Feet.” But I forgot the “t” at the end of “Feet”, and instead it said, “I bow down at Your Fee.” I got a message via another devotee the next morning asking, “What do you mean by Fee? Do you worship His price?” Then days later some devotees were talking with Adi Da about his new book, The Dawn Horse Testament, and they happened to mention this mistake. He had a further comment on the matter: “My price is the ego, and she worships the ego, so it turns out to be true.”
Crazy Wisdom Magazine, Vol 4, No. 9 & 10, September/October 1985
This treasure (Realization), and the price it has to pay for coming into possession of it is its own existence as a separate ego. The limited individuality must disappear…
Meher Baba – God to Man and Man to God
The religious ego does not want God or Realization it wants merely a presumed executive-supplier, manager, middleman, and sometimes hoarder of the commodity of goods and, therefore, the ego always resists what is required of it as the necessary price for Realization. Ego is always looking for a customer satisfaction guarantee.
Adi Da Samraj – Adapted and edited by Beezone
(see Consumer Spirituality)
(The) dissolution of self can’t be done deliberately. it would involve too much fear. It would be terrifying beyond tolerance. The devotee does not willfully release the sense or assumption of separated, separate, and separative self. It is undone by the Power or Siddhi of the Heart itself. That is the work of Satsang. It is a seduction in which that principle of self is made unnecessary in each case without passage through the great fear. But to do it yourself, to do deliberate sacrificial sadhana in order to get rid of the ego is just a lot of nonsense. Every individual would have to cop out at some point. Nobody would go beyond the point where there is nothing left but this sensation of the “me,” without any content, without any theatre surrounding it, just that. Only Grace can take you out. It cannot be done deliberately. It depends on conscious enjoyment of the literal Presence of the Siddhi of the Heart, the Grace of the Divine Person. The Grace of Reality itself absorbs ego-consciousness and makes it identical to Absolute Consciousness. And it is all done in a very natural, easy transition. You couldn’t do it yourself. You would refuse to do it as soon as you realized what was actually required.
Bubba Free John, Garbage and the Goddess
This way is an Esoteric way. It is about Samadhi. It is not an exoteric way about social ego rules for their own sake, or any kinds of consolations or ideas that support egoity and merely the conventions of ordinary living. It is about Realization of the Divine Condition.
Realization of the Divine Condition destroys your life utterly—so watch out. The trouble with Divine Realization is there is no one left over to enjoy it. So to seek it makes no sense, because the one who is seeking it is the price.
I am Talking about a great Spiritual matter. The ego is the price. And yet when you think of Realization, you think it is something you will achieve, and you will enjoy it or get the satisfaction of having achieved it or at least having it given to you and experiencing it. But that is nonsense.
Adi Da Samraj, The Aletheon, The Way of Zero Bargaining.
The price of Happiness in every moment is release of “self”-contraction. This release is possible only if there is most fundamental “self”-understanding.
Aletheon
“It doesn’t take being born as one of the rare few to be entered into the process of this Way. What is rare on any day is the number of realizers on the head of a pin-the number of realizers in the world, perfectly realized, absolutely realized, realizing the absolute, Self-Manifesting the Absolute.
How many such beings are on your block? Rarity. What is rare, is Realization. But ALL can take up the Way of Realization. Saying this is not something that flatters you as egos, because it requires profound practice and turning. It simply IS the case because Reality is the case. The Divine Self-Condition IS the case-the condition of all conditions, of all beings therefore. It is true that anyone, any of you, then, can respond to Me and embrace this Way.
It will require much, in fact, everything, from you for perfect Realization to be the case. But you can enter into that process for real and benefit from the presence of My Person and Blessing here and all My Instruction, by a turning of which you are completely capable and everyone is completely capable of that.
What is rare is for someone to appear among you who can tell you this, and offer you this gift, a gift that actually can be received by everyone. And it’s not that it requires nothing of you. It requires everything of you. Unfortunately for you, a huge amount of what it requires is all kinds of things that really you don’t want anything to do with.”
Adi Da Samraj – The Dreaded Gom Boo
Most people are willing to sacrifice things, but not themselves. They are willing to pay cash, in other words, for a quick salvation. Such “religious consumerism” is an ancient ritual of worship, but it is false and futile. True worship is the surrender of your own body-mind-”self” in Truth Itself, in the Living and Transformative Company of the Spiritual Master. People absolutely resist such surrender, because they know nothing about it. Human beings are, in fact, subhuman in their present level of adaptation. Devotional surrender of the egoic “self” represents a future stage of development for humanity as a species. In their present actual, literal, psycho-physical condition, human beings are incapable of such surrender. They must be drawn out of that limited condition, and into another state of existence. And it is as far to go from where they are now to Most Perfect Divine Self-Realization as it is from the amoeba in the primal mud of the Earth to a human being. Every aspect of your existence—even the body—must change dramatically.
There is an unspeakably profound difference between the condition of the usual egoic individual and the Condition of the Divinely Enlightened individual. If imagined in “evolutionary” terms, that difference is an inconceivable leap.
Aletheon – Adi Da Samraj
You want Most Perfect Divine Self-Realization – but you do not want to renounce all forms of attachment to conditional existence, as the “price” for such Realization.
Adi Da Samraj – Aletheon
When I Indicate that the ego is not an entity but an activity, that the total body-mind-complex is the whole bodily action of “self”-contraction – in other words, when I Indicate that renunciation in the Reality-Way of Adidam is renunciation of egoic “self”-identification with the body-mind complex – your “stop-lights” start flashing immediately. No – you do not want that. Your attitude immediately becomes, “Just wait a second here. what price are You Talking about now?
I’m Its Revelation. I Speak to you directly. I’m right here before you. Renunciation and Realization are simultaneous in the Perfect Realization of Reality Itself. It’s because of this equation between renunciation and Realization that you have refused Me. And you’re still bargaining with Me. It’s not that you don’t like the idea of something like perfect Realization of the Divine Love-Bliss. What doesn’t sound good about that to anybody, you see? So, you mummers pretend that you really are interested in that and here to give your all for it you see. You’re really My devotees. But, except, you need to have a consideration first. Let’s talk about this renunciation part, you see.
Adi Da Samraj
So, you are wanting perfect Realization, but you will not renounce, completely, as the price for it. So, the renunciation part has to have a gradual or progressive characteristic. The Realization part has to sort of, be sort of at the end there somewhere while you, in the present time, are focused on identification with the body-mind and minimally animated in devotional recognition-response to Me–minimally animated in terms of discipline, and so on. This has been the circumstance, the context of My struggle with devotees for this nearly 33 years
Adi Da Samraj
It’s not about being cynical. It’s about understanding the nature of life rather than living in a deluded manner like yahoos, paying the cheap price for the ride of the world as long as you can get away with it.
Adi Da Samraj
Beginners do not have the characteristics of the advanced and the ultimate stages of practice. If you want there to be profundity, you must be willing to “pay the price” of sadhana. There is no profundity otherwise.
Adi Da Samraj
The eternal Bliss, the Absolute Truth, the Infinite Power, and the Unfading Glory of God-realization, are not to be had for nothing. The individualized soul has to go through the pain and struggle of evolution and reincarnations before it can inherit this treasure, and the price it has to pay, for coming into possession of it is its own existence as a separate ego. The limited individuality must disappear if there is to be entrance into unlimited existence individuality which is identified with a name and form creates a veil of ignorance before the God within; for this ignorance to disappear the limited individual has to surrender his limited existence. When he leaves not a vestige of his limited life, what remains is God. The surrender of limited existence is the surrender of these firmly rooted delusion of having a separate existence. It is not the surrender of anything real but of the false.
Adi Da Samraj
Countless silly people think that they are Enlightened when, at best, they feel good today. That mediocre sense of pleasure is not Enlightenment. Enlightenment involves no thinking whatsoever. There is no rational justification for Enlightenment, no logical sequence of thought that leads to it. Enlightenment is a spontaneous, absolute, transcendental Awakening that is free of all the seriousness and necessity of bodily and mental existence. Therefore, death, the cessation of experience, the cessation of states of mind, the cessation of the body, the cessation of the world, is no longer a threat. So much the worse for it! There is complete freedom from the implications of all that dreadful destiny that everyone fears so profoundly. The Enlightened being is not at all threatened by all of that. He is laughing. He is free.
Adi Da Samraj
But one must pay the price for this Freedom. It is not simply an attitude toward the world that one enjoys from some conventional position of separation. There is the Radiant Transcendental Consciousness, the Absolute Divine Reality. That truly is Existence, and It must be Realized if Enlightenment is to be true. In that Realization, the Divine Person is tacitly obvious, as concrete as any object that you now associate with bodily life and experience. Once this Realization is Awake, there is no necessity to the phenomena of experience. They simply continue in this moment, but they have no power to deceive.
Adi Da Samraj
Most Perfect Realization of Reality Itself utterly destroys your egoic life – so watch out! The “trouble” with seventh stage Divine Self-Realization is that there is no “one” left over to enjoy “It”!
Therefore, to seek That Realization makes no sense from any conventional “point of view” – because the one who is seeking is the “price” that must be paid in order to Realize “It”. You imagine that “you” will enjoy the satisfaction of having achieved Realization, or having Realization Given to you – but all of that is nonsense. Realization is not something “you” will achieve or enjoy – because the ego is the “price“.
Aletheon – Adi Da Samraj
DEVOTEE: It sounds like the old, “Pay me now, or pay me later” principle.
AVATARA ADI DA: Yes. The later you wait to pay, the bigger the price. You cannot die, but you can suffer death and suffer mortal limitations. Good, so notice that and want to go beyond and purpose your life to going beyond. Then you will not just slide into the lowest common denominator while alive or after death. There will be greater possibilities, greater transitions. If you get really serious about it and bear down, you can transcend the cosmic domain, or conditional existence altogether.
It is also true, then, that you can pay Me gradually or pay Me suddenly. In the traditions of religion and Spirituality it has been understood since ancient days that there are really two paths – the gradual path and the sudden path. You can surrender a little bit, be purified a little bit, and go a little higher in the planes of cosmic existence – a bit at a time, lifetime after lifetime after lifetime, in various forms, in various planes, and then eventually dealing with the Ultimate matter.
Adi Da Samraj
We want to move cautiously and slowly, step by step. But remember, if you move in this manner, you will save your ego at every step. It is really to save your ego that you refuse to take a jump. A jump is certainly dangerous for the ego; your ego cannot survive after a jump. You go slow just to save yourself, but what is being saved at every step will remain safe even at the last step of the journey. And then your ego will tell you to somehow enter moksha or liberation keeping yourself intact. But it is simply impossible to save yourself and enter moksha. It has never happened. Entry into moksha is possible only after the ego has been completely annihilated. The death of the ego is the price of freedom.
This is the problem you are going to encounter at the end, howsoever you avoid it. It is inescapable.
Therefore I say it is far better to invite the problem and face it at the very beginning rather than postpone it until the end.
Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh
The disciple is oriented towards his own obstruction, his own path, and so he is delivered this process of the apparent destruction of obstructions and limitations. This causes him discomfort. But the great remedy for that discomfort and the conscious crisis that must occur is Satsang, the very and functional relationship to the Guru. The more the disciple lives Satsang, knows it, enjoys it, the less he is affected by his own crisis. Then the crisis of transformation becomes a very simple, pure, harmonious process. But the more he turns from that condition, relationship and process which is Satsang, the more he becomes fixed in his own obstructions. Then, when his obstructions tend to get shaken up, even broken apart, he has only them to which he can resort, so that he feels the discomfort, prolongs the suffering, and exaggerates his “path.”
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