The Yajna Discourses of Santosha Adi Da (1995-1996)
There’s No Escape, There’s Only Realization
A Gathering “Consideration” with Beloved Bhagavan Adi Da In The Manner of Flowers On January 5, 1995
SECTION V
DEVOTEE: Beloved, I was thinking about the thing where You were talking about does a bee and flower know what color-that whole phenomenon. And I was reading a book called Before Civilization . I picked it up in Ireland when I was over there.
AVATARA ADI DA: Who wrote that one? It sounds familiar.
DEVOTEE: It was . . .
AVATARA ADI DA: Frankfurt? No, that’s Before Philosophy .
DEVOTEE: It was written in 1972 originally, but it was about the Syrian civilization and how classically the original architectural, archeological, and anthropological thing was that civilization all began from one spot in the Middle East. And they, by more sophisticated dating methods now, have established that civilizations occur spontaneously at the same level of development in different areas of the world, which was to me like a wonderful statement, because it proved what You always Said, which is that Consciousness and Being are Prior to any kind of evolutionary process.
AVATARA ADI DA: And there’s an eternal structure, structuring – not just outer events making modifications. So its not just the interaction between the bee and the flower that gets to take on the shape they want for one another. Its something behind and internal, a structure enforcing itself with both simultaneously. If it all depended on survival of the species kind of techniques to make changes . . .
DEVOTEE: It would never happen.
AVATARA ADI DA: . . . survival of the fittest and all that, it would take too long for any fundamental changes to take place. And how could anything appear anyway? Its moved from within, or from the structural level, and not merely from without. Even Prior to that is the Source. The more directed you become away from the Source, the more dissociated from it you become inevitably.
So even in the midst of this sphere of appearance and action, you must be focused in the Source, focused in the Realization of the Source-Condition, because any gesture otherwise returns you to the mode of self-contraction, fear, and seeking.
DEVOTEE: We’re never really separated from the Source, Beloved. It may appear to be so at times, but that’s not really true.
AVATARA ADI DA: No. But that’s no consolation in the moments when you’re not in touch with It as It. And you can be really out of touch with It, and for a really long time. So its no consolation, no great one anyway, or not enough, to simply have some feeling that everything’s really okay somehow, you know, or you can never be finally dissociated from the Divine.
But nonetheless, presently in your experience, that’s what you’re demonstrating, the feeling of separation from the Divine, from the Free Condition, from Happiness Itself. You show it all over your life, all over your body-mind, inside and out. Its written all over you, the scar of mortality, of conditional existence even altogether. That’s your experience, even though you say to yourself, “Its not really true. And ultimately Ill Realize it again.” In the meantime there’s all this suffering, disturbance, seeking, particularly if you’re sensitive and are not trying to constantly desensitize yourself or vacation from sensitivity.
Your experience is that of being separated from the Source-Condition, the Free Condition, the Condition of Happiness Itself, Unalloyed, not changing, not having to be sought. Reality is Always Already the case, but you can believe otherwise, you can presume otherwise, you can experience otherwise. And that is in fact what’s happening. The Way I’ve Given you is the Way out of that, the Way beyond it, not by dissociating from it but by Outshining it-Outshining it.
So then you must be directed to Me, directed to the whole process of Realization, and not always falling back into the gross self-position and exclusively ordinary pursuits.
DEVOTEE: Beloved, isn’t that the establishment of true faith? You talked of the knowledge that even though there is an appearance of separation, there really is no separation. That is whole-heartedly believed and felt.
AVATARA ADI DA: Yes, that’s good. That’s a factor in your disposition. But its not itself sufficient to be relieved of the disturbance. So its fine to, with full-heartedness, feel that that is so. But you must also do the sadhana altogether, such that it is so altogether in your experience, so you don’t have to keep telling yourself, “No matter how I’m suffering, there still is blah-blah-blah, and I’m going to get there some day by golly. [DEVOTEE laughs.] I’m coming, Lord.” You know what I mean? No. In the meantime with all that blah-blah-blah, you’re suffering, that’s it. The self-contraction, your own act of dissociation from the Divine.
So you have to find yourself out, and find Me out, and transcend the act of dissociation from the Divine Condition, Radiate beyond it. That’s fruitful religion. Other things are consolations under unchanging conditions of bondage.
So you get a lot of political and social propaganda about being good citizens, but the Law has a senior part. You’re here to Realize Me. So you can’t just get a political and social message. You have to get the true religious message, in order to be complete and rightly directed. In all My Work with you for these twenty-three years I’ve been struggling with you in your misdirectedness, Working to turn you about, redirect the tide here, by reorienting you to Divine Realization.
Its been a struggle with, as you know yourselves, very ordinary people, obsessed, driven to conditional existence, identification with the mortal body-mind, even though its what they fear. So you come up with all kinds of resistance and arguments to the contrary and dullness and so on. And I’ve been addressing you in the midst of everything to bring you to the point of true practice, true listening, true devotion, and very quickly potential hearing, and then on. [pause]
Faith is fundamental to why you keep on doing that sadhana, then. But it should be made the basis for a sadhana , not merely for consolation.
DEVOTEE: I was just remembering a time when earlier in the evening, Beloved, You just took the moment and transported every one of us into the Samadhi of “the Thumbs”.
AVATARA ADI DA: Mm-hm.
DEVOTEE: And it happened-its full bodily-and then You Said, something with a wave of Your hand or something, You Said, “And now its gone.” All of a sudden [snaps fingers] You just stopped every one of us. And it was such an incredibly strong Yogic Force in my body, which this body isn’t used to. And I could just feel like afterwards the body was doing a great deal to recover from it even, it was so strong, and that there was so much to be purified yet.
AVATARA ADI DA: You reminded Me of the story that Baba Muktananda told. It was written in Chitshakti Vilas about a Kundalini Master at an Ashram, some number of people residing there on retreat and so forth. And he knew that by an act of will he could instill the Kundalini process in anybody, and He could turn it off, too. So in order to test the people who were there, to see who was faking it, who’s looking for status, not really going through the process, he would sometimes magnify the Kundalini Energy, and the people would make various signs of that. And at other times he would even look like he’s doing it, but he wouldn’t. And the ones that would just sit there composed he knew were his true devotees, whereas the ones crowing and all the rest of it and hooting, he knew they were self-generating it. They were faking it in some respects, then, you see.
DEVOTEE: I know that You do that, Beloved. Sometimes, to test people. I know You do.
AVATARA ADI DA: In order to Instruct them or whatever, I Work in all kinds of ways, and most of it is not visible. So there’s different signs that appear in the case of each one in their moments.
You cant blame Me for the conditions of your existence, however, all those happenings. They are structured inevitabilities, like the form of the flower. My Intervention is a Spiritual one that enables you to be purified in the midst of all that and rightly directed in the midst of all that, and to live this process of Realizing Me.
Therefore, the profound Influence would be in the case of people who are doing the sadhana most profoundly. Others may have a hectic or busy life or whatever and want to thank Me for it, or some things they like about it and want to thank Me for it, but still basically, rather than indulging in profound sadhana, they are indulging mostly in conditions, especially conditions of the ordinary bodily life.
DEVOTEE: Beloved, I remember when I first came here in 1972 . . .
AVATARA ADI DA: Don’t remind Me. [Laughter]
DEVOTEE: Oh.
AVATARA ADI DA: Its going on twenty-four years, then, now, right? In a few months. Twenty-four years, nearly a quarter of a century of this direct consideration with Me. Yours is a remarkable history in My Company in itself. But still twenty-four years later, and you’re still bargaining about student-beginner business. You know what I mean?
DEVOTEE: Yes, I do, Beloved.
AVATARA ADI DA: And you do like to take the consoling ride a lot. No matter what you do, even if you don’t really do any great sadhana, you’ll never be separated from Me, right?
DEVOTEE: No, I never will, Lord.
AVATARA ADI DA: Right. Well this is-in fact, you’ve told Me this, that this is your point of view. I remember you even wrote this to Me this last year some time in some letter you wrote. Like the remark you made before, that no matter how things appear, you still never can be separated from the Divine Condition and so on.
These things are certainly true, but you so often find it sufficient just to affirm those things and not do any sadhana or not do anything about the condition that you’re actually experiencing or as you’re experiencing it.
DEVOTEE: And You re always showing me that I cant truly Realize You unless I fulfill the Law.
AVATARA ADI DA: Right. So this has been the substance of our relationship. [Chuckles.]
DEVOTEE:: Beloved, when You were talking about the hive, I was reminded that the queen bee in a hive, in a beehive, is the source of every individual in the hive. She’s the only one that lays eggs. So there’s nothing that exists in that that isn’t directly related to her.
AVATARA ADI DA: And its all structured from the beginning. These aren’t a lot of little guys, you know, making it up as they go along, nor are they thinking it in the conceptual way you know about thinking. They are structured inherently. They are participating in a structuring energy. So they do all of this spontaneously, very orderly but entirely spontaneous, because its controlled at the structural level. It doesn’t involve individuation or figuring-it-out kind of business. And so the entire group goes through a cycle, and then that’s the end of that one-like a plant or a flower. Its just as structured as that. Even though they look like individuated beings, they’re not.
DEVOTEE: Its really a plant or-the hive is really a plant-a flower.
AVATARA ADI DA: Yes. Its just like that. They thrive on flowers. You become what you meditate on, you see. There is a kind of identity there. They are identical, structured the same, and this is how they relate to one another. This is how they get in touch with one another, because they are structured to do so, from the structural side, not from the outer interaction side merely.
So the bees aren’t making it up as they go along, and they’re not individually creative. They’re doing something they are structured to do, just like a plant grows flowers, petals, gets bushy and all the rest, and then fades or whatever, goes through all these cycles. Its structured exactly the same way. There’s force there and pattern enforcing itself.
You all like to think that you’re not quite like that, that all of your movements, behaviors, thoughts, internal activities, and so forth are some kind of creative thing you’re generating, and you’re very individuated, very independent, very individual altogether, and not part of a structure immense, universal, just patterned. You don’t even like to think of yourselves being patterned. Its a particular part of the modern consciousness. It was more acceptable to past generations, many generations ago, to think of being part of a pattern and controlled by it, the Divine Will being behind it, but nonetheless a pattern that fixed all events and determined your destiny, the everything-is-at-the-mercy-of-God point of view.
But, in reality, you are as structured as the hive, as structured as the rest of the cosmic domain. You are imagining individuation in a unique modern way, and separation in a more excruciating way, but you are manifesting a pattern. The pattern can go haywire. Not everything that grows survives and becomes great. There are all different kinds of fates. And you are the examples of that, you see. That’s what egoity is about. That’s being haywire.
So I’m here to show you how to wire it up straight, and make it fulfill its real purpose. Otherwise you have a bad destiny as a plant or a bee or a beehive really-there is no such thing as a bee. There are only bees. There is no such thing as a person in the absolute sense, in the separate sense.
So you’re all kinds of patterned to move in the total direction of the seven stages of life, to Perfect Realization, but you’re aberrated in the midst of that pattern. The hive doesn’t work. All the apparent individuals in it are messed up from going all kinds of directions and feeling unpleasant feelings. They are out of the pattern. They’re misdirected-you are, in your ordinariness.
The force of the hive must redirect you. The Person of the hive must reconform you to Himself.
You see what I Do.
Then the structure of the human being can show its greatness, living the law of its purpose, sacrificed to it, in the Realization sense. And all the human faculties and designs demonstrate their real purpose, fulfill their real purpose. Paradoxically that real purpose is not about preserving the body-mind forever, but about transcending it in the Divine Condition.
So its got to be hip and cool again to be conformed to the hive, to the Law, to unity and cooperation and Godwardness in the fullest sense, the most profound sense.
The body-mind of Man is structured for Enlightenment. Its structured to self-destruct in God. But you are diverting yourself from that purpose, by identifying with the body-mind independently, separatively, egoically, in the self-contracted manner. You’re becoming eccentric, falling out of the pattern. The structure, if allowed to fulfill itself, leads to perfect Divine Realization, but you want to stop along the way. You want to be possessed of separate self and carry on an adventure from that frightened point of view.
That’s“no watermelons this season”, you see. [Beloved is making reference to devotees inability to consistently grow watermelons on Naitauba] Its not fruitful. Its just a complaint, a form of suffering. Do sadhana, and the body-mind is conformed to its law, and you to your great purpose, and it all falls in line. The force of structure is there, if you allow it to be so. And you’ll see that the body-mind has to be a sacrifice in the Divine Person. There is suffering in the mortal condition itself, and you must feel beyond it. You must submit it to the Divine Condition. Play your role in life, but as sadhana. Don’t be bound to the form itself, but be given up.
It started a few hundred years ago, this modern consciousness of individuation as it is politically made. Its an extraordinary exaggeration of egoity made into politics. Of course, it has some attractive and positive elements, but it has great faults, and supports the culture of body-identification and so-called materialism and so forth, and dissonance from the structure, the purposes of right life, but also Ultimate Realization.
That great pattern is structuring you like it structured the flowers and bees to go with them simultaneously, and every other form. You are structured in that particular fashion to experience in certain ways common to others, and then some may be unique, but to struggle in that limitation, to go beyond it. Your brains and other structures are purposed to allow the operation of the body-mind, even from a subtle level. But they’re also purposed to keep out all kinds of things, all kinds of experiences, perceptions, that if you had them fully and directly, you couldn’t function bodily, you couldn’t function in the human form. So all kinds of experiences and perceptions, etc., shut off. It is possible to go beyond those structural knots and be purposed to do that for its own sake in order to have the experiences that result from it, but its not Liberation yet.
So right purpose is to transcend the knots in directedness to the Divine Person, and to allow the body-mind, all experience, simply to be a structure of inevitability. Align it rightly, lawfully, and then let it be. Then you have the sufficient purity to advance further, to grow beyond it.
So the politics of individuation is, apart from some of its merits one might presume, basically the politics of egoity. And it glorifies egoity. And the messages commonly given in such a disorderly hive, hiveless gathering, tend to support a point of view that keeps you from considering a greater resolution, a greater principle. Its all this “me, me, me independently doing my own thing” kind of business, failure to be aligned to the lawful structure of existence and oriented toward Ultimate Realization.
So its certainly appropriate and necessary to be individually responsible. That’s a good democratic idea. But its also necessary to be combined by right life with the structure of existence and the ultimate purpose of existence. So you cant just have the politics of individuation. You must have the politics of cooperation and tolerance, but demonstrated by free individuals, rightly aligned individuals.
So the culture and politics of individuation is abandonment of the structure that is universal and making the apparent individual separated being into the principle of existence. There must be some kind of a balance between participation in the universal and functioning clearly and freely as an individual individually responsible. But you must participate in the structure of reality, and be disposed in it such that you transcend all limitations ultimately.
A true democratic order, then, is responsible individuals in tolerant cooperation with one another, handling the business of life but keeping it straight and simple, supporting one another in the sadhana of going beyond. But if you reverse it, turn it away from that directedness, just focus on the individual, the single conditional manifestation, that is what egoity does. That’s the fault from which you’re suffering. You must reverse that orientation.
Don’t you all profoundly prefer never to have to be afraid again?
DEVOTEE: Yes.
DEVOTEE: Profoundly.
DEVOTEE: Absolutely.
AVATARA ADI DA: Don’t you most profoundly wish never to experience anxiety?
DEVOTEES: Yes.
AVATARA ADI DA: And the collapse on separateness altogether? I mean, if you really examine yourself, do you have any greater impulse than that impulse to be free of all this? In your ordinary distractedness and preoccupations and so forth you may seem to be choosing something else. But if you really examine yourself, is there anything at all more important to you than to be utterly free of fear, utterly free altogether, in a state of unalloyed Happiness?
So if you know this, whenever you get serious with yourself and examine yourself, then you show your maturity, your real humanity, by being willing to commit yourself to it, to do that in fact, rather than continue the preoccupations, the superficialities, of your current grind. You choose the profound life instead-if you’re really serious about not wanting to be afraid anymore. How can one not be serious about it? But it seems like you’re not all that serious.
You want never to be snuffed out, never thrown into unconsciousness, darkness, and yet somehow aware of your isolation and disturbance. You don’t want that. So why should you play life unconsciously, such that it produces that very thing? You have to use your discrimination, your listening to Me, to profoundly consider these matters and really choose a reorientation of life. You have to become thoroughly intelligent about it and intelligent with it.
That’s why I have down here, in the back of the Ashram here, Fear No More Zoo. Come in and get involved. Living things are there being without fear, human beings without fear, all beings without fear. There’s a kind of congeniality in the Zoo-almost any zoo really, at least some level of it, especially as we do it here-that is immediately capturing, like going to Disneyland or something like that.
So Fear No More Zoo is one of the sacred places in this Ashram. Just as you go to Earth Fire and Skyway and so on, you should go to the Zoo as a sacred place. Feel what its particular components are. The more I get to do what I Intend there, the more you will observe it. But even as it is, as simple as it is, it immediately awakens a certain congenial disposition in you, if you go down there sensitively of course and free to do so.
Its another place of puja, a kind of walking, petting puja. [Laughter.]
DEVOTEE: It awakens compassion for all living beings just to be down there.
AVATARA ADI DA: And a feeling of non-difference, of Unity, and non-difference too.
I spend a lot of time around non-human guys, you know, keep pets and so forth. To Me they’re the same as human beings, in the ultimate sense the same.
DEVOTEE: I was just going to say, its wonderful to observe Your relationship with animals, Beloved, and the way they respond to You.
AVATARA ADI DA: Mm-hm. Tcha.
DEVOTEE: Its such a unique relationship.
AVATARA ADI DA: But I don’t imagine them being lowly or separate, or different in any sense whatsoever. And that’s what you should realize when you go there. That’s how you should use it, to support your sadhana. The entire Ashram here is a kind of Yajna. All the places are sacred, have a special meaning, purpose, and significance, and all the rest, a special purpose. And the Zoo is one of them. Its about fearing no more, about going beyond the knot of separate self, being in the condition of the Samadhi of God-Communion, and, at the level of form, feeling structured and a great Unity.
DEVOTEE: And all in You, Beloved. Its all-its all in You . . .
AVATARA ADI DA: Mm-hm.
DEVOTEE: . . . all of that structure.
DEVOTEE: That’s what’s so wonderful about watching Your Demonstration, Beloved. Its not just the animals and humans that You treat that way. Everything You touch is a puja article.
AVATARA ADI DA: Tcha.
DEVOTEE: Everything we have You treat that way. [pause]
AVATARA ADI DA: If you understand all these that we’ve been talking about so far, then you should be able to understand better what I mean by true Hermitage. This is how we get the “religion business” out of Hermitage, by people seriously practicing in the manner we’ve been discussing, handling business there but involved in this profundity with Me.