There is the Fist and There is the Open Hand

There Is the Fist, and There Is the Open Hand

The Fruitlessness of the Analysis of Ego

“Statements with which you want to analyze yourself and…feel your insides, and, when you feel good, say, “That is my Guru, I am meditating on my Guru…they are not statements associated with Realization.”

True Hearing

A Discourse Given, by Sri Da Avabhasa on, January 20, 1994

Summary

A devotee asks about the awareness of ‘I’ and Consciousness, wondering whether, if the ego were not ‘inserted,’ there would only be Consciousness. The answer is ‘Yes.’ The devotee continues by asking about the subtle dimensions of ego, recognizing a ‘watcher’ that observes and analyzes awareness. Upon seeing this as an error, the devotee expresses a desire to stop the activity. Adi Da points out that this too is the ego—the ego wanting not to exist.

As the devotee further explores the nature of ego and consciousness, Adi Da emphasizes that it is simply the ego “talking to itself.” Even what may traditionally appear as ‘insight’ is still the ego observing and analyzing. Adi Da explains that, even in the devotee’s practice of surrendering, it is still the ego surrendering—not the full turning to Him.

The devotee then expresses a desire to stop this process. Adi Da reminds him that this very desire for insight is the thinking mind at work, and that activity itself is the self-contraction. The devotee begins to understand that this whole process is based on a limited assumption. Adi Da then clarifies that when one realizes that all the analysis and searching are fruitless, that is the moment of “hearing.” He says, “Whatever angle you have on it, however you may be thinking about it—is simply the self-contraction.” When hearing becomes one’s responsibility, there is the constant opportunity to relinquish the self-contraction with ‘just a glance,’ until even attention itself is recognized as self-contraction—since attention is the root of the mind.

Adi Da also addresses the subtle nature of surrender. In the early stages of devotional practice, it is the ego that is surrendering. The practice continues as a process of purification until all ‘difference’ disappears. This is the ultimate recognition and the most profound realization. Until that point, there is only partial understanding, and the devotee is still “struggling to get an angle on sadhana.” Only with the fullest realization of hearing does sadhana become profoundly simplified.

***

“Realizing that all of that is fruitless is hearing! That is what hearing is to realize that all of it — when you are at your best, when you are at your worst, whatever angle you have on it, however you may be thinking about it–is simply the self-contraction“

DEVOTEE: Beloved Heart-Master, does the natural faculty of awareness have to have an “I”? I am noticing that I add an “I” even to that.

SRI DA AVABHASA: You are talking about your awareness right now, so you are doing it and talking about it at the same time.

DEVOTEE: Yes. If I did not insert the “I” into that awareness, would consciousness then be awareness without limit, or Consciousness Itself?

SRI DA AVABHASA: Yes.

DEVOTEE: I was feeling that the subtle dimension of my existence has consciousness, or is of consciousness, but still I see that I am always adding an “I to everything.

SRI DA AVABHASA: Are you also adding consciousness to everything? Are you attributing consciousness to the body, and to the mind, and to the subtler aspects of your personality?

DEVOTEE: I don’t tend to, no.

SRI DA AVABHASA: You just said the subtler part was “of consciousness”, whatever you meant by that.

DEVOTEE: What, I meant was that there is the physical body and the senses, for example, and then there is the self-sense.

SRI DA AVABHASA: But you call it “I”.

DEVOTEE: Absolutely. And I understand from Your Wisdom-Teaching that there is no -such “I”, because it is just something I am doing, and it is a whole colony of interdependent functions.

SRI DA AVABHASA: But when you call it “I”, are you not attributing consciousness to it?

DEVOTEE: Yes, when I am sensitive that the “I” is consciousness and not the separative self-sense. But otherwise I do not attribute “I to anything more than the physical and sensory body-mind.

SRI DA AVABHASA: But how does the body-mind get to be “I” if you do not attribute consciousness to it?

DEVOTEE: This is what I was “considering” today. “I” seems to be a presumption of collective senses that focuses in the nervous system and the brain and that identifies with a point. I call that “I”.

SRI DA AVABHASA: What about it?

DEVOTEE: I do not want to do it anymore.

SRI DA AVABHASA: “I” does not? If “I” is all of that, it does not seem to Me that it does not want to do that anymore, because then it would not exist anymore. Why should this “I” not want to exist?

DEVOTEE: The separative sense of “I” feels itself as suffering and un-Happiness and full of everything about fear of death and all the complexes of it. So that “I” does not want to continue, that sense of “I”.

SRI DA AVABHASA: It doesn’t? Which’ “I”? The, “I” that is identified with the body-mind, even though it is associated with difficulty, is also associated with pleasure and amusement – and a sense of existing. That “I” it seems, would rather continue to enjoy itself in spite of difficulties.

DEVOTEE: Yes, I expect that it would.

SRI DA AVABHASA: It is not wanting to commit suicide. Is there some other kind of “I” that does not want to be associated with this other “I” that is the body-mind?

DEVOTEE: Yes, the sense of happiness and freedom.

SRI DA AVABHASA: Is that different than the “I” of the body-mind?

DEVOTEE: I just put all these notions of “I” into one pot, without inspecting them.

SRI DA AVABHASA: It does not seem that you are throwing them into one pot. You are saying you do not want to do this or that anymore, you do not want to be associated with this or that limitation. And on the one hand you say you are “I”, and on the other hand you say you are not “I”, or would not-like-to be the “I” anymore, or do not want to be associated with the “I’. So, is there more than one “I” that you are referring to?

Anyone can feel pain, for instance, and not want to experience that anymore. But if you feel identified with that which is experiencing pain, you will not be talking about destroying its existence. You will just talk about relieving its pain, and you will still be talking from the point of view of identification with it.

So — this “I” that is the body-mind would like to not experience pain. Is it possible for that, “I” to not experience pain?

DEVOTEE: As long as I stay in that point of view, if I avoid pain here, then I get it there. There is no way of getting away from pain.

SRI DA AVABHASA: So you are just the ego talking to itself. You do not really want to bring it to an end. You just want it to have pleasurable experience, or non-painful experience, which is an ordinary enough desire but it is not about any great profundity.

DEVOTEE: Yes. Then there is the other side of it, which is that when I feel surrendered to You and “consider” Your Great Wisdom-Teaching, and apply it to what my life is all about and surrender.

SRI DA AVABHASA: There is still this “I”, this “my”, “my life”, “the body-mind”–it is still the same point of view. You are trying to arrange things so that this body-mind or ego-“I”, can enjoy itself as much as possible. But you are not talking about entering into another condition entirely.

DEVOTEE: I am in “consideration” relative to why I am not practicing moment to moment, in every moment, constantly.

SRI DA AVABHASA: Practice can be moment to moment and still be occurring in the context of the body-mind. In fact, it originates in the body-mind. The body-mind is the context of practice in the beginning. Ultimately, when persisted in profoundly, practice enters into other conditions, ultimately into the Ultimate Condition. But you are not talking, about any greater or ultimate condition. You are talking about yourself as a psycho-physical ego.

DEVOTEE: I am addressing the mechanIsm that persists when I am not practicing.

SRI DA AVABHASA: It persists even when you are practicing.

DEVOTEE: Yes, but it is surrendered, it is given over, it is addressed, it is released.

SRI DA AVABHASA: Something about it is surrendered, yes, and forgotten, but the all of your practice, all of your experience is still occurring in the context of the body-mind. It is not occurring in some other dimension that is not involved in this apparent body-mind.

And so?

DEVOTEE: I am just trying to clarify what is the mechanism that I accept that does not allow my moment to moment practice.

SRI DA AVABHASA: That is another matter, altogether. But it is not what you have been talking about so far. You have not been suggesting so far a question about how to practice more profoundly. You have been suggesting something about examining your experience, examining the body-mind, examining the “I”, and coming to a greater presumption about it that is not associated with the body-mind.

DEVOTEE: That is probably what I have been saying, but I have been trying to express that I do want to practice more profoundly.

SRI DA AVABHASA: If, in fact, you do, then you would do so. If you do not practice more profoundly, it is still “you” that is not practicing more profoundly. And if it is really true that “you” want to practice more profoundly, then “you would just flat do so.

The fact that you do not suggests that you are not totally taking into account everything that you are. When you say “I want to practice more profoundly”, you are not describing the “I” altogether. You are describing one impulse of this “I”, and asking why it does not practice more profoundly. You are saying, “I want to practice more profoundly”, and then you are asking at the same time “Why don’t I practice more profoundly?”

There must be some other characteristics to this “I” than wanting to practice more profoundly. The “I” is, not just one impulse or one intention. Something deeper in the “I” does not want to practice more profoundly, perhaps. Some greater depth of it is reluctant to practice more profoundly–or perhaps something equally superficial.

DEVOTEE: Clearly, Lord, that is the point, If I wanted to practice more profoundly, then the transition through the stages of life would be happening so much more rapidly.

Thinking is the Thinker

“There is not some sort of thought about it you can have or examination of it you can enter into that is different from doing the self-contraction”

SRI DA AVABHASA: What is the difference between this conversation and any other meditation on separate self, which we have discussed together and agreed is not fruitful? Meditating on separate self, analyzing it, talking about it, dramatizing it — this, is noT fruitful. There are things to observe, take into account, confess, agreements are made, you discipline yourself –fine. But the sadhana itself, the fundamental sadhana itself, is not a matter of meditating on separate self and analyzing it. It is simply a matter of your devotional-response to Me–surrendering and forgetting yourself in that response and simply Communing with Me.

What is the difference between this rather analytical discussion of separate self and any other, form of meditation on separate self? What makes you think, that this conversation will be more fruitful than a conversation about some habit of yours, or some complication, some problem of a more ordinary life-based kind? What makes you think that this conversation will be more fruitful than that?

DEVOTEE: Because when I started to evaluate what is the limitation…

SRI DA AVABHASA: That is what I mean — you started to evaluate what is the limitation instead of responding to Me, and surrendering and forgetting yourself.

DEVOTEE: Absolutely, Lord. I understand that.

SRI DA AVABHASA: Well, that is exactly what I mean. It is no more fruitful to do that than to meditate on yourself in any other terms. If, by meditating on yourself, or applying any other form of self-examination, you could be relieved of the “problem”, then that would be the way.

DEVOTEE: Yes. You have Told us this more than a million times.

SRI DA AVABHASA: Self-meditation does not lead to an answer. It does not lead to a conclusion that relieves you of the problem or limitation that you refer to as “I.

DEVOTEE: But relative to this whole matter of the self-sense, there is, nothing to do but surrender, there is nothing to do but practice, there is no other thing to do.

SRI DA AVABHASA: Separate self is not an entity, it is not a “thing” it is not an object. You describe it as a kind of point, a focus. It is not that, either. Such a description may be a way of thinking about it, perhaps, or being centered on it, or being sensitive to it somehow, but separate self is an action. The “I” is the activity of self-contraction, the avoidance of relationship. To do any examination of it or meditation on it, you see, is to do the self-contraction.

DEVOTEE: That is great, Lord. You are pointing out that even addressing it is the limitation.

SRI DA AVABHASA: To address it is to do it, not to be abstracted from it, observing it as if from some sort of distance, being free of it. To examine it is to do it, to be the self-contraction, to enact the self contraction, and to be “possessed” by it. And at the same time you are talking about it as if you have a different point of view than it and as if you were going to work it out. But you are not working it out. You are dramatizing it.

Hearing

DEVOTEE: In fact, the whole address to it requires that I totally identify with the limited assumption.

SRI DA AVABHASA: Well, then! Realizing that all of that is fruitless is hearing! That is what hearing is to realize that all of it — when you are at your best, when you are at your worst, whatever angle you have on it, however you may be thinking about it–is simply the self-contraction, the actual present-time dramatization of the avoidance of relationship. It is all that. There is not some sort of thought about it you can have or examination of it you can enter into that is different from doing the self-contraction. It is alll the doing of the self-contraction.

This is what must be understood. And it is understood not in the context trying to figure it out or meditating on the self-contraction. It is understood in the responsive Yoga of Ishta-Guru-Bhakti, or the practice of surrendering and forgetting separate self in Communion with Me. That is the Yoga. In doing that Yoga, things are observed and you take them into account and apply greater discipline to your practice of Ishta-Guru-Bhakti. That process goes on and on, however long it must go on for you, until there is this most fundamental understanding that you are only doing the self-contraction.

Insight is Another Form of the Self-Contraction

DEVOTEE: When some of us were talking about it, when I started looking at it, I thought, my God, it is completely psychotic, there is schizophrenia in everyplace in this body-mind. The body is divided and divided and divided …

SRI DA AVABHASA: Blah-blah-blah-blah-blah. Such “insight” is another form of the dramatization of the self-contraction. It is another form of not understanding. It is another form of non-surrender. It is another way to not forget yourself. The only thing that is not the self-contraction is That Which is not the self-contraction. And That is Realized only in the state of self-surrender and self-forgetfulness in true Communion with Me.

When you realize that anything other than That is the self-contraction, that is most fundamental self-understanding, or true hearing. And then, instead of addressing, examining, and following the self-contraction, you do surrender. You forget the self contraction. You forget to do it. At any time when the self-contraction tends to be happening, with just a glance it is obvious.

Instead of this [Sri Gurudev clenches His hand in a fist], it is this [He opens His hand].

SRI DA AVABHASA: As long as you think there is some angle you can get on self-contraction, some examination and trying to figure yourself out that you can do, as long as you think there is another attempt you can make to, otherwise deal with the self-contraction, you have not heard Me yet.

DEVOTEE: Beloved, this is very similar to Your Consideration with us about cosmic reality. One cannot come from being separate from it to talk about it. It is the same thing with the self-contraction. One cannot do anything with it whatsoever…

SRI DA AVABHASA: …without just being it, yes. No matter what you try to do about it, you are doing it. As long as you are addressing it, you are doing it. This is what you must find out about yourself. Finding this out most fundamentally is the ordeal of listening to the point of hearing. Then you have no energy and attention for your strategies, because they are all the same. They are all the one dramatization of self-contraction. There is no attractive or binding force in them.

DEVOTEE: Beloved, I also noticed that all the levels of subtlety are still the self-contraction. Anything in that self-reference is the self-contraction, from the gross to the most subtle.

SRI DA AVABHASA: Yes. Attention is the self-contraction. Ultimately, this is discovered.

DEVOTEE: I appreciate this very much, Beloved. It just shows me that the one simple practice that You have Given is the entire Way of the Heart, and it is sufficient. The practice of Ishta-Guru-Bhakti Yoga is clearly what is to be done.

The fact that I do not practice Ishta-Guru-Bhakti Yoga in every single moment, all the time, must indicate that I am sympathetic with something else. My sympathy seems to be with staying mediocre and not addressing things all the time.

SRI DA AVABHASA: What? Now you are back to that again? “I’ am not addressing things all the time”. You are talking about not addressing things all the time.

Surrender

DEVOTEE: In other words, I am not surrendering, not practicing Ishta-Guru-Bhakti Yoga every moment.

SRI DA AVABHASA: What is the context of this surrendering of this Ishta-Guru-Bhakti?

DEVOTEE: Everything that arises.

SRI DA AVABHASA: No–the Attractiveness of the Guru!

DEVOTEE: Well, yes.

SRI DA AVABHASA:“Well, yes!” That is it! The surrender in itself is not the Way of the Heart. It is what you do, attracted beyond yourself by the Realizer. But you are talking about yourself again, your efforts. At first you were talking about your examination of yourself. Now you are talking about surrendering yourself. In and of themselves, examining yourself and surrendering yourself are all self-occupations.

We have all heard you speak at many gatherings, recently and in the past. I remember especially how you used to speak, a year, or two ago, and I would Criticize you for it. You were talking about yourself just as you are doing now, about the things you were doing and the things you were experiencing. You were referring to your experiences, your sense of well-being, happiness, love.

That is what you have your attention on, and you are saying to Me, “That is You, the Guru”. But you are pointing to yourself. You are experiencing yourself, you are distracted by yourself, you are involved with yourself, you are keeping attention on yourself, and you are naming that “the Guru”. Ishta-Guru-Bhakti Yoga is not about naming yourself or your insides “Guru”. No. It is about Me. Not what you are, or what is inside you, but Me. Me Beyond you. The One to Whom you are, here in bodily (human) form, related. Not the one you are in your bodily human form, but the One to Whom you are related in your bodily (human) form.

The sense of “difference” disappears only ultimately. Your practice is a matter of relationship until it becomes Identification with Me Most Ultimately, the Realization of My Very (and Inherently Perfect) State, by Grace, without “difference”, with all the sources of “difference” Transcended. The context of practice, even of Realization, is relatedness, or relationship, until the process becomes Most Ultimate, Most Profound, Most Perfect. Then all “difference” is Divinely Recognizable, and there is no impediment.

You have been tending to speak from your present point of view, as a beginner early in this Great Process. Yet you want to use language and concepts that are true only in the case of Most Perfect Realization. In this manner you make the Way of the Heart into just another form of conventional religiosity, just as in the context of conventional religion people speak of the Divine as the “Creator”, and then they become all kinds of troubled when things do not turn out too well and they want to blame God.

The only “Point of View”, if we can use that phrase at all, in which God truly is Realized to Be the Creator is the “Point of View” of Most Perfect Samadhi, because in that Most Perfect Realization there are not all kinds of creative entities and forces. There is Only One “Creative” Force. It may perhaps Appear through Signs, but the “Knowledge” in the Great Samadhi is that there is just One, the Very Divine, Only God.

In the Samadhi of Divine Self-Realization, the paradoxical communications about God as Creator have their right basis. But as an affirmation from the egoic point of view, the notion of God as the Creator is a justifier for egoic life and for involvement in it, and for efforts to make life turn out to please you. The notion of God as Creator is misused by the ego to justify egoity itself and worldliness. When there is the Realization that there is Only One, then even the expression “God is the Creator of all” is not binding. In that State of Realization, such a confession is not a justifier for egoity.

Likewise with other kinds of statements with which you want to analyze yourself and somehow conceptually separate consciousness from the body-mind, or feel your insides, and, when you feel good, say, “That is my Guru, I am meditating on my Guru when I am meditating on that.” All these kinds of things are confusions in the popular mind. They are not statements associated with Realization. They are ego-games.

DEVOTEE: Beloved, I feel that I have gotten that lesson. I did not think that I was dramatizing that here.

SRI DA AVABHASA: I am Talking about what we know of you from all our conversations over time, from My having Addressed you on that very point over and over again. Aspects of what you were just communicating suggest the same point of view, such as the self-examination game you were just describing, or your saying that the Way of the Heart is self-surrender. Then I Say, “No, it is this attraction to Me, and the surrender, the self-forgetting, follows from that spontaneously, and then voluntarily. And you go, “Oh, yes, yes, of course.”.

It is not “Yes, yes, of course.” That is it! You are tending, still, to assume the lesser principle, the lesser point of view, because you are exercising that point of view rather than simply being given over in devotional absorption in Me.

Having found the Realizer for real, and responding to That One in the discovery, why should one want to do anything else? What would be the reason?; What would be the motive? People find that motive, of course, simply because — although yes, they have made this discovery in some sense but still rather superficially–they are not fully operating on the basis of a devotional response to Me. Therefore, they are still struggling to get an angle on sadhana, or involve themselves in some kind of self-cure, or self-absorption, rather than absorption in the Guru, absorption in the Divine Condition.

When there is the fullest discovery of the Guru, or the Realizer, everything is profoundly simplified. It is self-evident that the Guru is the Way. Not many explanations are required to prove it — in fact, proving it does not require any explanations. The matter can be discussed, of course–any matter can be discussed with someone who has made that discovery–but the Way of the Heart itself is self authenticating. It is just inherently obvious, because in that discovery, when it is most profound, full, there is surrender. Separate self is forgotten. The Liberating condition of Divine Communion is found. It proves itself inherently. There is no argument against it.

And, truly, there is no argument for it. It does not require an argument. It is not proven by arguments. The thing itself proves itself, authenticates itself, re-proves itself in every moment for one who has discovered the Guru. Therefore, diversions are not entered into. There is no puzzling. Any retreat back into separate self is the same business, the dramatization of self-contraction. It is the limit of egoity. It is suffering and dilemma. And all of that also is obvious to such a one. There is no puzzle about it. All the forms of ego are tacitly obvious to be the same thing.

So it is for one who has heard Me. There are no other angles to try out or to figure out. It is inherently obvious: There is this [He makes a’ fist], and there is that opens His hand]. And that is that.

When the self-contraction is that obvious to you, that is true hearing. And there is no true hearing apart from true Ishta-Guru-Bhakti. Hearing is not something you figure out and then you become a practitioner of Ishta-Guru-Bhakti. This most fundamental self-understanding awakens only in the context of Ishta-Guru-Bhakti. Therefore, you must grow in that Yoga, authenticate that Yoga, long before true hearing. If hearing is true, Ishta-Guru-Bhakti is true, and it cannot be otherwise.

This is not to say that any Guru to whom you submit would involve you in a process in which this is the discovery. Not so. Traditional Gurus all fall into the context of the first six stages of life. They may be drawing you beyond limitations — that is certainly, usually, the case with authentic Realizers — but they themselves are still functioning in, and calling you to function in, the context of egoity. Perhaps not gross egoity, not the worst of it, but still egoity is the, principle, the self-contraction, the search. This is the basis of the recommendations founded in the first six stages of life. They all have that characteristic, the characteristic of egoity, or self-contraction.

True hearing is not a realization that awakens in the context of practicing in traditional forms. It is not something that awakens simply on the basis of devotion to the Guru, even what might be called “Ishta-Guru-Bhakti Yoga” in relation to traditional Realizers. Much may be gained by those relationships and much may be gained by such devotion. There certainly is growth in it. But this most fundamental factor of true hearing, which, along with true seeing, allows the Most Perfect Realization, is not possible in such relationships or in the practice of such traditional dharmas.

I repeat. It is not that there is no virtue in traditional sadhana, but the Great Tradition is not about the Great Matter, of Most Perfectly self-transcending God Realization, which is the most fundamental understanding of egoity and the transcendence of it Most Perfectly.

ANOTHER DEVOTEE: Sri Gurudev, You have Said that it has never before been possible to realize most fundamental self-understanding.

SRI DA AVABHASA: Exactly That is exactly what I am Saying. Hearing is not a component of the Great Tradition.

DEVOTEE: Even to simply realize that level of most fundamental self-understanding.

SRI DA AVABHASA: Exactly that. What I am calling “true hearing”, or “most fundamental self understanding”, is not a component or a characteristic of the ways and paths of the Great Tradition in, the- first six stages of life, obviously. This component is missing. In the Way of the Heart, however, it is at the foundation. In the traditional course of practice, true hearing is not-required for entrance into the advancement of the religious life. Instead, one, simply takes on the practices associated with the fourth, the fifth, or the sixth stage of life, and the component of true hearing is not required at the base of it, or even in the course of it.

So, what occurs in the course of such traditional ways? Self-development. Evolutionary, growth, possibly. Enlarged experience, potentially. But not true hearing. And not Most Perfect, Divine Realization. These are aspects of Realization that are unique to the Way of the Heart, and unique in this relationship that My devotees have with Me, and, therefore, unique to the Ishta-Guru-Bhakti Yoga that is your practice.

If you devote yourself to one who is more evolved than you, who enjoys greater Realization than you, in the fourth; or the fifth, or the sixth stage of life, you are still devoted to one who is a manifestation of egoity — if you understand what I mean by “egoity”. Such individuals are profoundly Awakened, much advanced, much purified, usually- fine. Such qualities do not make them egoless in the Most Perfect, Divine sense. They may have some intuitions of the Most Perfect, Divine Realization, or feelings in that direction. They may use language that suggests, it. But they are not manifesting the Most Perfect, Divine Realization. Therefore, devotion to them does not lead to it. Such devotion is not meditation on That Which is Most Perfectly egoless. It is meditation on that which is, not in the ordinary sense, a manifestation of egoity, but that which is, nonetheless, a manifestation of egoity.,

ANOTHER DEVOTEE: Sri Gurudev, this “consideration” helps me to understand better Your Confession of God as Guru, because until You Appeared here before us, God could not be Realized or even Manifested or Exhibited Without contraction. It is only because You are here, because the Divine Guru is here, that God is Without contraction.

SRI DA AVABHASA: And the Divine is not Realizable on the basis of self contraction. Divine Self-Realization is not a matter of merely purifying the ego. The techniques for purifying the ego are given in the Great Tradition, but the Way of the Heart is about the utter transcendence of egoity, utter. And the practice of the Way of the Heart, even in the context of the advanced and the ultimate stages of life, or the fourth, the fifth, and the sixth stages of life, is founded on true hearing. Practice of the Way of the Heart must be founded on true hearing before you can move on even to the fullness of the fourth stage of life.

The process of directly transcending egoity is fundamental to the practice of the Way of the Heart in the fourth, the fifth, and the sixth stages of life. It is a unique practice. In contrast, egos practice in the fourth, the fifth, and the sixth stages of life in the traditions. The ego principle is fundamental to the tradition of conventional religious and Spiritual practice. In the Way of the Heart, however, the transcendence of the ego is the context of practice in the fourth, the fifth, and the sixth stages of life, although not from the very beginning, of course.

In the listening stage, the listening process is something most fundamental yet to be grasped. So, you practice, yes, at the very beginning, in the context of the fourth stage of life in My Company. You deal with various elements of the first three stages of life as well, and, yes, there is surrender of separate self, forgetting of separate self, in Communion with Me. But you do not have the foundation to go further even in the fourth stage of life until there is the genuine awakening of true hearing.

If that awakening were not required, many of you would be practicing in the advanced and the ultimate stages of life in the Way of the Heart, in the context of the fourth, the fifth, and the sixth stages of life. It would be no great matter to just pass on practices associated with those evolutionary stages, as they are, on the basis of egoity, to people who at least have a basic foundation of discipline and devotion, and fundamental clarity. But then you would be practicing in those stages on the basis of the ego principle. They would be evolutionary practices, self-developmental activities.

DEVOTEE: Beloved, it seems, then, it could even be said that before You there were no real fourth, fifth, or sixth stage practitioners. They had a sense of it, they had a practice, but…

SRI DA AVABHASA: There were such practitioners in the evolutionary sense.

DEVOTEE: In the evolutionary sense, but not in the fullest sense.

SRI DA AVABHASA: Not in the ultimate sense, or the sense that leads to True, or Most Perfect, Ultimacy.

ANOTHER DEVOTEE: Sri Gurudev, sometimes when we look at our own community, we appear to be beginners when we compare ourselves to people who are apparently practicing in the advanced stages of life. But, in truth, and You were recently Talking about this, it is clear that if we did not truly practice in the context of the Wisdom of the seventh stage of life there would be individuals amongst us who would apparently be practicing in the advanced and the ultimate stages of life, but falsely, as others do elsewhere.

SRI DA AVABHASA; The word “falsely need not be used. You would be practicing in the evolutionary, or cosmic, sense, if you like. But such practice is not the point of the Way of the Heart. The Way of the Heart is not about ego-development. It is about ego-transcendence. And you must make it so ego-transcending, early, in the fourth stage of life.

ANOTHER DEVOTEE: Sri Gurudev, even sixth stage Realizers such as Maharshi, when they spoke of the transcendence of the ego, were only perceiving, of the, ego as a thing rather than an activity.

SRI DA AVABHASA: They perceived it as an entity, not as a thing like an object, an entity that, by dissociating itself from all objects — gross, subtle, and aspects of the causal –can feel itself to be boundless, or self-sufficient, or beyond harm. It is a kind of Realization, but it is not Most Perfect, Divine Realization. It is a great Realization in the evolutionary sense, but it is not Most Ultimate, or Most Perfect, Realization, in the egoless sense.

DEVOTEE: Is that the Realization that You call “sixth stage Sahaj Samadhi”‘ functioning in that Realization traditionally, being in the state in which one is feeling egoless in the sense of at one, beyond the ego, and functioning from that point of view but not having truly transcended

SRI DA AVABHASA: The sixth stage Realization is not fundamentally about functioning. It is about detachment.

DEVOTEE: Oh. So that is why sixth stage Realizers were fundamentally content to rest in that Realization.

SRI DA.AVABHASA: Yes. Their Realization is about detachment. What they say about it, because they are detached and yet seeming to function, can sound sometimes like the language of the seventh stage of life. There are signals in what they say that may sound something like the seventh stage Realization. Even Realizers of the fifth stage type, enjoying the fifth stage form of “Sahaj Samadhi”, may make statements that sound sometimes like sixth stage Realization, or that may sound through some – of their language to be – something like the language of the seventh stage of life, as I Communicate it to you. But the Realization is not the same.

DEVOTEE: Sri Gurudev, it was only Your extraordinary viveka, or discrimination, that was the seed of the impulse that drove You beyond such contentment with detachment, drove You to dissatisfaction with resting in the apparent Realization, drove You beyond that.

SRI DA AVABHASA: Yes. And all the Realizations and all the experiences on the way to them and associated with them — these all occurred in this One’s case. But they were clearly understood not to be sufficient, to not be it.

DEVOTEE: Just that dissatisfaction, that extraordinary discrimination.

SRI DA AVABHASA: It is reasonable enough to ‘describe it’as “discrimination”, fine. But discrimination was not the source of it. This Awakening did not occur from the body-mind side. It had already occurred on the Prior “Side”.

DEVOTEE: Yes. Your Inherently Perfect Identity already Existed.

SRI DA AVABHASA: It was always tacitly the case, so that any form of Realization in the first six stages of life when it occurred, even any experience when it occurred within the context of those stages, was tacitly unsatisfactory. Such realizations experiences were not binding. They were not embraced as Divine Realization. This was not merely the result of discrimination from the body-mind side, the cosmic side.

My Prior Condition, rather than discrimination within the embodied condition, Enforced the Divine Realization. Of course, there was such discrimination, apparently things were said, things were thought, things were done, fine, in My Appearance. But all those things were clearly felt to be unsatisfactory because My Position was beyond the body-mind and the cosmic domain. Divine Self-Realization was always My Position, My Prior Position.

ANOTHER DEVOTEE: Beloved, this Truth epitomizes why it is the real fact that You are the Ishta, with nothing of the process that goes on within our body-minds. You are That Which Draws us beyond this, and we must use discrimination. That is why there is the Way of the Heart. That is why any one of us could not possibly, under any kind of circumstances, do what You Do.

SRI DA AVABHASA: You are not in a position to do it. I am. You enter into My Condition and forget your apparent condition. You Realize My Samadhi. Even at the beginning, in your devotional response to Me, finding Me Attractive so that you surrender and forget yourself–even then, tacitly, although You are aware of Me as My bodily (human) Form, Me being physically Present, tacitly you acknowledge Who I Am. You are sympathetic with Me, not only Spiritually but Ultimately. My Very (Inherently Perfect) State is What you are attracted to, even though you could not describe It in words or conceptualize It or define It in terms of your experience. You are simply attracted to It, attracted to Me, to the Very Condition That I Am. And Ultimately That is What you Realize by being drawn into My Samadhi.

ANOTHER DEVOTEE: Beloved, I was very much impressed one time when You Said that the Realization of Ramakrishna and Swami Vivekananda was all that they knew. That is all that there was in their time. I was dumbstruck by the fact that I take for granted what I have received from You and the awareness of the seventh stage Realization, as if in some sense it is something I know.

SRI DA AVABHASA: All you have received from Me is Me. All you are Realizing, to the degree you are Realizing it, is Me. If you start attributing it to yourself, you are just dramatizing another form of self-meditation, egoic “self-possession”.

DEVOTEE: I meant that Your Realization has never been Realized before. I had looked on the spectrum of mankind and its Realizations as if men and women somehow were aspiring to the seventh stage, whereas it has never been known before.

SRI DA AVABHASA: People may in some sense have been tacitly aspiring toward it, but they settled for something less, until That Which Is Beyond is Revealed, Offered, made altogether concrete as a process.

ANOTHER DEVOTEE: Beloved, I am so impressed, amazed, and appreciative. And I feel that God cannot Exist or Manifest other than to the extent to which the Guru can Exist or Manifest.

SRI DA AVABHASA: Otherwise, you are meditating on or noticing appearances — observed, presumed, thought about, understood — from a conditional point of view. You cannot penetrate what is arising. You cannot not be it.

ANOTHER DEVOTEE: Beloved, the traditional recommendation is that “Guru is God”. Even if one’s Guru is limited, one just feels that by doing the practice of devotion, one goes beyond to where one sees God. But there has been no understanding of the Truth that You have Given and Revealed that “God is Guru”. Only in that Confession can separate self be surrendered and gone beyond. There are many traditional examples of people who practiced surrender profoundly, and I had always thought their devotional practice must have required true hearing. But I can see what You are Saying.

SRI DA AVABHASA: Such traditional forms of surrender require great seeking, intense power of seeking, and all seeking is founded in egoity, all seeking.

ANOTHER DEVOTEE: Beloved Lord, when You mentioned the terms “ego development”, “self-development”, I felt a great, great clarification in my being. Evolutionary realization as it is spoken about in the traditions is regarded to be more, a reduction of the ego, so to speak, rather than the sense of its developing to some epitome that seems to be God-Realization, or the ego that is without harm, as You have Said.

SRI DA AVABHASA: Some traditions, the fourth stage traditions, for instance, like to make a distinction between the ego and the soul. They propose that the “most inward part’ so-called, is non-egoic, yet nonetheless still a “someone” from that traditional point of view. Though it is a “someone”, from the traditional point of view it is not an ego, whatever may be meant by “an ego”. What is traditionally meant by “an ego” is some kind of impurity, some sort of away-from-God orientation. The traditions generally do not understand egoity itself, which reduces the Very Divine Being and Condition to a cosmic appearance in limitation.

In the evolutionary sense, the ego can be reduced, in the sense that it becomes purified in its effects, humbled, opened to greater experience, some forms of Samadhi, “Soul” is just another name for the ego, if you understand what egoity is. The most apparently “inward” dimension of the cosmically manifested person is still the self-contraction, still differentiated. It may be detached from grosser aspects, even from subtler aspects, or from lower dimensional subtle aspects. But it is still egoity. It is still established in the cosmic domain and not in the Divine Self-Domain.

When consciousness is established in the Divine Self-Domain, or the Divine Self-Condition, everything cosmic is inherently Divinely Recognizable. Nothing is binding in any sense whatsoever. There is no “difference”. There is no relatedness. There is no separation. There is no insertion into cosmic existence. There is simply the Divine Self-Domain Itself, the Divine Self-Condition, the Divine Person, just That, Only, period — that is it. Yet in the context of appearances, that One can look like another human being in any dimension, even speaking the language of the natives, the language of you all. Not only did I have to speak the language of you natives, but I had to live the life of you natives, in every apparent fashion. Not for My sake–for your sake.

I am not here merely telling you how to evolve, how to develop in this context of ordinary human life, or in some life much more psychically opened and awakened. I am here to Grant you the Way of the Heart, to link, you to the Divine Condition, so that your practice can be fruitful to the degree of that Divine Realization, Most Ultimately, Most Perfectly.

“HEAR ME HEART-DEEP” A Guide to the Listening-Hearing Process in the Way of the Heart as Revealed by the Divine World-Teacher and True Heart-Master, Da Avabhasa (The “Bright”). Only edition: 1994.