Originally published in ‘The Free Daist’
The Bi-Monthy Journal of The Heart-Word and Blessing Work of The Divine World-Teacher and True Heart-Master, Avabhasa (Adi Da Samraj – The “Bright”)
My Work with Devotees
DEVOTEE: Sri Love-Ananda, a few weeks after I first came to You years ago and had intuited Who You Are, I left Your Company. You called me on the phone to talk to me about it and I said, “How can I be certain You Are Who You Say You Are?” It couldn’t have been more of a scientific materialistic presumption. And You met my doubt with laughter, to undermine it. You said, “You can’t.” Then You were silent and merely Present. I received Your Heart-Transmission, then, Your Heart-Certainty of that Truth. Then You immediately said, “Come up and be with Me.”
SRI DA AVABHASA: Conventional religion, traditional religion, typically expects to be believed on the basis of making grand pronouncements. Pronouncements are supposed to be sufficient to justify belief. The Way of the Heart is not based on belief.
That is why I have not been spending these—now twenty-one—years in simply telling you Who I Am and expecting you to believe it. I am always in “consideration” with you, addressing you directly, Revealing My Self to you directly, and looking for your response, finding out what is your experience, and “considering” that with you. The Way of the Heart is based on your experience of Me, not on My announcements about My Self. Where that experience is in you and confessed by you, yes, I can address it—and I do—and I say things about it and say things about My Self, but on the basis of your responsiveness, your real experience.
When you simply ask Me to tell you something for you to believe, what am I to say4 I am not interested in being here merely as an authority, saying things that you should believe. I am not here to invite pious belief. I deal with you directly, in most realistic terms. Ours is a “reality ‘consideration’” together. I am Present As I Am, but you have to find Me out. And wherever there is a confession or an experience that demonstrates to Me that You have found Me out, then I address you about That Which is Revealed to you and Which you are in touch with now. Then what I say about it is useful to you, meaningful to you. It is self-authenticating, not merely because I say it but because you have the living experience that corresponds to it.
Therefore, the Way of the Heart is not based on pious belief or pronouncements to be believed. It is based on your transforming experience. Without that, it does not make any difference Who I Am or what I say about My Self, because I am not here to enforce belief, piety, or adherence, not at all. That technique, which is so much used by traditional religion, is, in My View, no longer of any use whatsoever. It is no longer viable as a basis for the religious life, the real religious life.
DEVOTEE: Sri Gurudev, in the traditional books I read before I came to You, the message was that God is an alternative reality. That message was so different from my experience. Then I came upon The Knee of Listening, and You were so straightforward in Your Communication in that book. All the things that You described were things that I could relate to. But even then I still had this doubt mind, this questioning, materialistic mind. Not until I had my first meeting with You did that begin to crack.
SRI DA AVABHASA: But your notion of a Guru or a Realizer of one or another degree is still somebody who makes great claims and you are supposed to believe them.
DEVOTEE: It was Your Look at me, Your first Glance at me, that Communicated something entirely different. I can see that over the years what has changed that materialistic point of view is falling in love with You, because Your Love is undeniable. To love You is reality.
SRI DA AVABHASA: Yes, it is a pure religious response, but it also allows the coming forward of capabilities in you that are otherwise canceled by your habit of mind. I have just explained to you what is necessary for the conversion or the transformation of people in this epoch—real and transforming experience. That should also indicate to you why I have Worked as I have all these years. I have not been the official Guru, making pronouncements and looking saintly and there to be believed, but I have always addressed you and your limitations, entered into the Play with you that would address those limitations directly and give you the opportunity to respond to Me and break out of it. There were no limitations in people that I refused to address directly. I did not feel obliged or even moved to show My Self in the traditional, expected pattern, as the authority to be believed, creating some pious, idealistic gathering around Me. Instead, there was always this direct, most realistic “consideration” of the modes of limitation that people brought into My Company.
Such was the logic, the reason, the justification, for the entire process of the years of My Teaching Work, and, fundamentally, for My manner of relating to people altogether. You must appreciate and understand the “why” of it. It was not a digression from the right way of relating to people. I did not come here with great book-learning or attached to some tradition or other to enforce in your company. I came here just As I Am to do whatever is necessary for the sake of the Awakening and the ultimate Divine Translation of beings, and to do so effectively and without fail.
To fulfill that purpose required a unique Commitment, done in a unique time, not as times were in the past, not in the manner or fashion or symbol of the traditional literature. But because of how you are, I have Functioned as I have done.
You must help other people to understand this. Otherwise they may bring not only their materialistic mind but the traditional pious mind to bear in a critical way both on how I have Worked with you and on you who have appeared in My Company.
This is a unique Work in a unique time that requires a unique process if My Work is to be effective. I could not come here merely to appeal to your traditional pious mind. Your requirements are unique. Therefore, I have submitted to Work as I have. My Work is not about Me. As I have told you over and over again, it is about you. It was necessary. It had to be done as it was done, taking realistically into account what you are all about in this time and place and all of the limited human sign that is being manufactured in this time and place that will be perpetuated in the future.
A unique way of Working and a unique way of establishing the religious life has become absolutely necessary in this epoch. It cannot be generated on the basis of an appeal to past doctrines, symbols, ways of thinking, or lore. You must be converted most profoundly, and your conversion requires the most realistic and direct address to your limitations. Merely to superimpose pious belief on your limitations is utterly useless—utterly useless. This is My View, and it is true. To do so is without use. Therefore, another process was necessary, and that is what I have been doing.
DEVOTEE: All of us have observed that at different times during Your Work with us — entering into it as You have — there have been transforming moments when Your Work was expanded, as something in Your Incarnation itself — Your Divine Emergence — made it possible for dealing with a greater sphere of humanity. In 1975, on December 1, You Wrote what we call “the Way of Divine Communion letter”, explaining that Your Work up until that time had been for a few, as You Said it at that time, but that You were now available to Serve all who were simply moved to a better fulfillment of their born destiny. Five days after that letter from You, I first came across one of Your books. I have always felt that it was not a coincidence, that my discovering You at that time was a result of a change that had taken place in Your Work. You have been talking about how Your Incarnation in combination with our capability to respond to You is creating this Work.
SRI DA AVABHASA: Absolutely, yes. Everything about My Work, its apparent progress, and so forth, is about you—your experience in My Company, your response to Me. Because you have grown, the Sign of My Work with you could change, and now we are in another moment. The great incident seven years ago .vas a unique moment, but things .-.ave progressed further since then as //ell. My Sign, even though you would see that it is purely My Self at all times if You could see Me directly, :s. as a Play, always determined by your response, your ability to experience Me, your ability to embrace greater devotion to Me, greater self-discipline in response to Me, more seriousness in your practice of the Way of the Heart, and more effective practice altogether. As your practice has grown over all these years, there have been transformations in My own Statement about My Work and in My apparent Sign to you, changes and transformations in the effectiveness of My Work within the gathering of My devotees and outside it, because you could receive Me further.
It has been necessary from the beginning of My Life and Work to establish a core of people who are responding to Me. This has been absolutely essential. I have not done public work for this reason, because I am not here to be the official Guru making pronouncements. I had to deal with people directly in a transformative manner to the point where their experience changed, their responses changed, their practice became real and effective. That was the necessity. During the years of My Teaching Work I focused in that direct Work with people and not in making public pronouncements, traveling about and appearing in theaters and lecture halls. I have always confined My Self to those who are responding to Me.
And people who are responding to Me have always been full of limitations. Therefore, I have had to address them in their limitations. I have Worked with those whose response to Me was strong enough that they were willing to assume one or another level of necessary preparation and responsibility in My Company, and the responsibility of My devotees has certainly increased over time. Such will always be how I Work in terms of My interactions with people directly. Of course, My Work goes far beyond those who are focused in practice of the Way of the Heart as My devotees. But My apparent Work, My interactions, My Play with people, is always with those who are responding to Me.
“Your Work have often been moments, apparently, not of the capability of Your devotees to practice more greatly but of Your Despair over the extreme failure of Your devotees around You to receive You.”
DEVOTEE: Love-Ananda, it is paradoxical that in all the years I have seen You, the moments of what has seemed to be the most extreme transformation in Your Work have often been moments, apparently, not of the capability of Your devotees to practice more greatly but of Your Despair over the extreme failure of Your devotees around You to receive You. Our failure has always precipitated such a crisis in You that You have endured an extreme transformation that has manifested physically and altogether. Then a different Siddhi has Awakened in You that has made it possible for Your devotees to receive You differently and more fully.
SRI DA AVABHASA: When a certain way of Working was exhausted, when as much had been done as could be done, then I had to begin to Work on another level, in a different fashion, in order to be effective. The entire impulse in Me is that My Work always be effective. I am not here to posture, merely to be around people, merely to have crowds around Me. Always My Impulse is to be effective. Nothing less, nothing else, just that. I have always done what is necessary to be effective. The history of My Work is a sign of that process. At various moments when something else had to be done for My Work to be more effective, I did it.
My manner of Working with people in the earliest days, in the first year or two of My Teaching Work, was different than in 1973 and 1974. After that came all the Teaching years and their many changes. And then the Great Event of My fullest Emergence occurred here seven years ago, but it was not followed by any profound and glorious event in the gathering of My devotees, not immediately anyway. It was followed by a time of Tapas for Me, of suffering, of enduring being tethered, confined, manipulated, ignored, lied to. In some sense the last seven years have been the worst in terms of the manner of everyone’s relating to Me.
That Event initiated a new and necessary way of My Working, a magnification of My Work, that brought an end to certain aspects of My relating to everyone so that My Work would be effective. And now, seven years later, the effectiveness of that Tapas is beginning to be proven.