Beezone Edit of original talk by Da Free John, October 28, 1982
What Is the Conscious Process?
“…the ultimate Occupation”
A Beezone study of the original talk “What is the Conscious Process”
BUBBA: I want to talk to you about the origins of this process of “conductivity,” which is not a yoga in the traditional sense. Yoga, from the traditional point of view, is a way of gradually approaching a new condition called Enlightenment, Self-realization, Cosmic Consciousness, Divine Realization, Nirvana, and so forth. it is a strategic method to approach this new condition. Therefore, it begins in a condition that doesn’t already enjoy what it is seeking. The origin of yoga and of all seeking is a dilemma. But this process of conductivity is not a way of approaching the Divine, or the Divine Condition, or whatever you want to name it. It is life already lived in the Divine. It is that process generated when the Truth is already enjoyed as the principle and condition of conscious life.
Garbage and Goddess – Chapter 9
“You are responsible for the various forms of your practice, the forms of conductivity and the conscious process”…not the Spiritual Master.
“This practice of conductivity is a great art. Therefore, the practice develops over time…in the form of an effective life-practice…that practice of conductivity is a change in your capacity to be responsible for the full openness of this frontal line of your manifest existence. Until you become fully responsible for it…you are always experiencing symptoms of one or another kind, chronically… physical and emotional symptoms… in the form of your complicated living.”
“The conditional root of attention is the self-contraction. Attention is not finally controllable by effort, but it (or its binding power) naturally dissolves if the self-contraction is presently observed, tacitly understood, and transcended.”
“Such present observation and transcendence are the fundamental exercises of the
conscious process…”
“But this liberation requires that one abide always in Satsang, knowing there is only God and that no life-level events can create or destroy the condition of relationship, which is the principal, original, and unqualified condition of life. He had the responsibility, in that very moment, to assume and live from the point of view Bubba had revealed to him weeks before, in which “there is no separate one” and “the body is sustained by a yogic process,”
Garbage and Goddess – Chapter 8
Beezone Study:
This includes the original talk and Beezone’s study on it.
Intro:
That whole affair of practice, which ultimately becomes awakening, is what I call the Conscious Process. The Conscious Process cannot be reduced to exercises that go into the name of the conscious process. The Conscious Process is really the entire Way, including the secondary means.
The Conscious Process in the Way of the Heart is not the whole but a part of the total affair of practice, which involves the transcendence of ego, or conditional attention.
It is also the epitome of this Way and it is the essence and most fundamental exercise of this Way. The practice of this Way has many features and forms and the Conscious Process being one of them, develops by stages. It is associated with the total culture of life because the concept of Narcissus or ego applies to every single aspect of the life of the individual.
People thinking about the Conscious Process may see it in abstract terms if they truly don’t fully read Adi Da. They would perhaps see it in terms of the present day ‘dharma’ of ‘non-dual’ teachings. People who preach ‘no path’ or identification with the Absolute. This is an error in understanding Adi Da.
Today many teachers and teachings advocate identifying with consciousness and affirm that the essence of being beyond thoughts and actions is presently and already identified with the Absolute. They presume Enlightenment and advocate no need or purpose for a teacher, Spiritual Master or in in fact a path, sadhana any spiritual discipline. This again is an error of understanding.
Continue to read on and understand the spiritual process is about purification and freeing energy and attention from the self contraction. In freeing energy and attention from the self contraction the the habits of ego equanimity and responsibility for conscious process are awakened.
Adi Da’s essay
WHAT IS THE CONSCIOUS PROCESS?
In The Liberator Eleutherios, I have written, “Be Conscious as the Feeling of Being and Realize that It Is Radiant Happiness.” This Admonition summarizes the Teaching relative to the conscious process which epitomizes and fulfills the entire Way that I Teach.
However, it must be understood that this Practice (of the Conscious Process) or ultimate Realization of the conscious process, is not a matter of remaining fixed in the conscious or merely left-brained mind of the waking state. It is a matter of Realizing the Transcendental Condition of Consciousness, Free Being, or Self-Radiant Happiness – what is called “Turiya,” or the “fourth state,” in the Hindu tradition.
The Conscious Process Practice or Realization requires:
1. Real preparation – the purification or release of attention from the self-bond.
… a. Hearing = Understanding
… b. Seeing = Conversion
… c. Practice = The Artful Science of Equanimity
……..1. Self-discipline
… … 2. Service
… … 3. Conductivity – “the capacity of the body-mind to conduct, or be surrendered into, the All-Pervading Life-Current.” It is the practice whereby the body and energy are harmonized and brought to a state of balance or equanimity as a necessary base for the conscious process”.
“Conductivity, therefore, is a basic practice in this Way. It is associated with the attitude of going beyond the self-contraction and allowing attention to be focused in understanding in this moment through the conscious process”.
… … 4. Real Meditation
2. The liberation of attention from the self contraction (or ego-bond – Conductivity = the liberation of attention (or functional consciousness), from bondage to the limiting structures of the three common states:
a. Waking
b. Dreaming
c. Sleeping
The practical discipline (Conductivity) of the Way that I Teach involves:
1. Sequence of preparatory disciplines or phases of the conscious process.
2. Culture of associated secondary or supportive disciplines which may be regarded as
conductivity.
The conscious process forms:
1. True prayer
“It may at first take the form of true prayer, but it must ultimately take the form of enquiry, or “real meditation”.
2. Enquiry (meditation)
also see:
Let the Spirit Carry the Body While the Mind Enquires
3. Recognition
4. And the first two stages of the Perfect Practice – The Perfect Practice has three stages, all taking place in the Domain of Consciousness, that is, in direct relation to the Awakened State and the Divine Person in His Ultimate Identity as Consciousness:
The three stages of the Perfect Practice
1. Be Consciousness.
2. Contemplate Consciousness.
3. Transcend everything in Consciousness, Recognizing all objects in and as God.
The Three Parts of Conductivity
1. Feel-surrender into the all-pervading Life-Current (or Divine Radiance) in all directions from the heart.
2. Relax into the Life-Current bodily, base toward crown.
3. Breathe the Life-Current to and from the vital center.
On this basis, practice the conscious process
see:
Surrender Bodily in the Spirit and Merge Attention into Its Source
Divine Ignorance, Conductivity, and the Conscious Process
Conductivity, Prayer, Meditation, and “Seeing”
The Bodily Secrets of Conductivity
1. The secret of conductivity: Treat the world and every condition as Energy.
2. Keep the head cool and the vital warm.
3. See all forms in the Transcendental Being.
4. Use every circumstance as an incident of Transmission of the Radiant Principle. Open to it, circulate it, communicate it.
5. Work to keep physically, emotionally, and mentally relaxed and balanced.
“Conductivity, the practice of equanimity, and all the life-disciplines are basic practices. They are expressions of the point of view of understanding, and by application to these disciplines, energy and attention are released for the conscious process…” …”it is not a fourth or fifth stage practice”….
“If you do not found yourself in this radical disposition of Ignorance and Understanding then the practice of the disciplines…are transformed…into seeking ..and..conventional exercises “
Subtle Error of Conductivity
“There’s a dimension of meditative practice that may involve bodily submission into the Life Current in a particular form. In any case, that is only a secondary aspect of the process. That is what I call conductivity. The fundamental process is the process in consciousness. It begins with basic understanding, or insight into the self, and then becomes surrender and self-transcendence. But it’s not merely a process of submitting to energy.”
The Energy of Consciousness – Adi Da Samraj, 1982
Extra ordinary experiences tend to arise and individuals become enamored of them and become the object of their meditation.
“Extraordinary experiences begin to arise. And rather than transcend these experiences through the conscious process, individuals tend; to become enamored of them and so attracted to them that their practice becomes meditative submission to the potentials of experience.”
The Subtle Error
“Fundamentally, what you were invited to enjoy when you became involved with me was not the practice of enquiry or the practice of conductivity. The invitation was for you to enjoy Satsang, present intuited happiness in the Divine. When that begins, then all of the transforming events follow. Then there arises the primary process of self-observation, insight, and enquiry. And there may also arise the secondary process of the movement of the life-force, and your consequent participation in it in the form of conscious conductivity. In order for that to be true sadhana and not an organ of the search, you must continually return to the fundamental, which is Satsang itself. It is to that fundamental and prior Condition, Satsang, that you are continually returning, even in the midst of these transforming events. Otherwise, they become your concerns. They become distractions, fascinations, images in the pond, ritual instruments, liturgical instruments for the priesthood of Narcissus. So I am continually reminding you of this fundamental Condition.“
Garbage and Goddess – Chapter 9
Practice a broad spectrum of functional and relational (SECONDARY – supportive disciplines – ‘conductivity’) disciplines:
1. General health
Relax into the Life-Current. We should not resist its changes, but we should not be fascinated with them or trapped by them. Work to keep physically, emotionally, and mentally relaxed and balanced. Don’t intentionally let the abdomen get cold or the head hot.
a. Yoga
“In and of themselves, physical exercises and traditional Yogic poses are not the ego-transcending discipline of “conscious exercise” that I have Given to My devotees. “Conscious exercise” is a unique and specific (by-Me-Given) approach to (and understanding about) exercise and all common daily activities. In and of themselves, the physical exercises and traditional Yogic poses of the “daily form” of “conscious exercise” are simply structurally correct models for physical movement and posture (altogether). In order to become “conscious exercise”, those formalities of physical movement require not only the discipline of the physical body but also the simultaneous discipline of mind, emotion, and breath-in intrinsically ego-surrendering, ego-forgetting, and ego-transcending devotional Communion with Me. Therefore, “conscious exercise” is not the same as conventional physical exercise-because “conscious exercise” is founded in the turning of the principal faculties of the body-mind-complex to Me. Thus, “conscious exercise” is mature (or truly human) activity, since only when all the functions of human existence are so coordinated do they become a single, non-problematic condition of existence that is rightly and fully aligned to the Acausal Divine Self-Nature, Self-Condition, Source-Condition, and Self-State of all-and-All.”
Aletheon – The Necessary Foundation of Right Life
2. Diet
3. Sexuality,
4. Intimate society
5. Community
These (SECONDARY – supportive disciplines – ‘conductivity’) disciplines, in the midst of the entire culture of:
1. Devotion
2. Study
3. Right relationship to the Spiritual Influence of the Adept Spiritual Master
These supportive – secondary – but necessary regime of practice that ultimately provides the maturity or free ground for the fulfillment of the conscious process.
As a matter of preparation the fulfillment of the conscious process requires, the significant development of truly free energy and attention – Conductivity. Energy and attention must be truly and stably free from bondage to the self-contraction in every kind of functional and relational context.
see:
“Without Conductivity the Conscious Process is a verbal exercise”
The Disposition of Enlightenment
The Attitude, of Conductivity: The world, the body, the mind, the self, and every state of experience or cognition is nothing but a form or state of the Radiance, Life-Current, or Shakti of God. Therefore, recognize all that arises to be such. Relax and surrender the body-mind to feel into the Radiance or Love-Bliss that is the Substance of manifest existence.
The Attitude of the Conscious Process: The world, the body, the mind, the self, and every state of experience or cognition is nothing but a contraction or modification of Being, Consciousness, or the Transcendental Divine Self. Therefore, recognize all that arises to be such, moment to moment, and so be Free.
These two primary attitudes coincide in every moment of true practice of the Way. Their simultaneity expresses the tacit. Realization of Radiant Transcendental Being as the always present Identity and Condition of existence, and such Realization is always already established in That of which every arising condition is a transparent, nonbinding, temporary, and unnecessary modification.
Readings:
Surrender as the total body-mind into the All-Pervading Life-Current via the Radiant feeling-attitude of the heart. On inhalation, open the entire body-mind with the feeling heart and so receive the Radiant descending Life and Love-Bliss. On exhalation, release the feeling heart in blissful love-aspiration, thus channeling the rising Life-Current of Love-Bliss to its highest place. Do this breath after breath.
I Is The Body of Life -Chapter Two: The Natural Vision
The Way Of The Heart Is Primarily A Matter Of The Conscious Process
The Dawn Horse Testament – Chapter 13
“…and this exercise, like all forms of breathing-conductivity in the way of the heart, is generally to be done via the nose, rather than via an open mouth, and with the tongue pressed lightly to the roof of the mouth, so that the natural circuit of the breath-process is maintained. And, as should be the case in all instances of breathing-conductivity in or via the frontal line at any developmental stage of any form of the way of the heart, inhalation-reception into the frontal line should, at random, or occasionally, be pressed down fully to the abdomen, while pulling up internally at the bodily base, so that the frontal line may be opened more fully, especially at the chest, the solar plexus, and the lower abdomen, and any following, or otherwise random, exhalation-release should be “relaxed into” either the frontal line, downwards, or the spinal line, upwards.”
Chapter 20 – The Dawn Horse Testament
This Way is not merely some kind of self generated discipline, some effort made by the ego, that ultimately winds up being Enlightenment.
The Conscious Process Is the Epitome of This Way
The secret of conductivity: Treat or relate to the phenomenal world and self (body-mind) as Energy rather than mere matter. And treat or relate to every condition of the phenomenal world and self, positive or negative, high or low, as the same ultimate and total Energy (or Radiance of Transcendental Being).
Body and mind are the same Energy. Use every condition or circumstance as an incident of Transmission of the same Radiant Principle. Open to it, contact it, and circulate it. And communicate it in all directions and relations through love.
I Is The Body of Life -Chapter Two: The Natural Vision
The Secret of practice is this: In every moment, instead of merely thinking and acting, engage the conscious process.
Instead of Indulging in Thought, Practice the Conscious Process
DEVOTEE: Master, what are the characteristics of somebody who is capable of the practice of yoga?
MASTER DA: First of all it is not a matter of whether or not they are capable of yogic practice, but whether or not they are qualified altogether. The individual should demonstrate the intelligent, rigorous application of discriminative intelligence. He or she should show the signs in meditation of yogic phenomena, which will naturally appear at a certain level of maturity. Conductivity is essentially a yogic process, and the conscious process is essentially a process of intuitive intelligence.
Conductivity: Surrender into, receive (or contact), and circulate the Energy (or Radiance) of which everything (including the body-mind) is made. Preserve it with true happiness, which is equanimity, peace, and calmness. Through self-understanding and self-control, transcend reactive emotion, physical excess, exaggerated desire, and the dominance of either right-sidedness or left-sidedness of being. Keep the head cool (relaxed, open) and the vital warm (covered, relaxed, circulating). The head (or the entire upper coil) is the epitome of the highest vibration and the vital region (or the entire lower coil) is the epitome of the lowest vibration. The heart and the central current are the center of original or primary Radiance, prior to vibratory differentiation’s. The frontal and spinal lines are the circuit of transformations. (The lower, or vital and generative, force is circulated toward and transformed into the higher, and vice versa.)
I Is The Body of Life -Chapter Two: The Natural Vision
Skillful Means For Collecting attention, mind, vitality, bodily Orientation
Dawn Horse Testament – Chapter 35
“…and this exercise, like all forms of breathing-conductivity in the way of the heart, is generally to be done via the nose, rather than via an open mouth, and with the tongue pressed lightly to the roof of the mouth, so that the natural circuit of the breath-process is maintained. And, as should be the case in all instances of breathing-conductivity in or via the frontal line at any developmental stage of any form of the way of the heart, inhalation-reception into the frontal line should, at random, or occasionally, be pressed down fully to the abdomen, while pulling up internally at the bodily base, so that the frontal line may be opened more fully, especially at the chest, the solar plexus, and the lower abdomen, and any following, or otherwise random, exhalation-release should be “relaxed into” either the frontal line, downwards, or the spinal line, upwards.”
Chapter 20 – The Dawn Horse Testament
“You must be responsible for yourself at the human level, and in a profoundly uncommon way. You must live the discipline of ordinary life. You yourself must be love under all ordinary, daily conditions. You must make this change in your life. There is no way whereby you can be relieved of this necessity – and nobody else can do it for you. Nevertheless, all of that ordinary responsibility simply prepares you for the right relationship to Me (in and As My Divinely-Avatarically-Born bodily human Divine Form and Person).”
“The Super-Physics of Divine Enlightenment” –
“I was considering this cramp in the solar plexus with you the other evening. We were having a conversation about the yoga of the frontal line. Perhaps the most common experience people have of contraction in this frontal line is a cramp over the solar plexus, the “knot in the stomach” that people refer to. If you become aware that you are suffering this knot and this anxiety over the solar plexus, your first resort, by tendency at any rate, will be to try to relax it. You will take deep breaths and so forth. That may work if the contraction is rather superficial and your attention is relatively free, but you may also discover that you cannot do it, that you cannot relax it. In that case, you will begin to think some more and work on your trouble, whereas the most direct way of dealing with it is to divert attention from this knot, rather than keep attention in the knot and try to undo it. I suggest to you, as a practical matter, that instead of keeping your attention in this knot over the solar plexus and trying to relax it, you should simply remember that attention goes wherever the knot is. Attention gravitates toward the contracted states and becomes fretful, suffers the pain of these contractions, gets stuck in these contractions and then tries to work its way out of them, you see. Well, this knot over the solar plexus is occurring a little more than halfway down the frontal line of the body. The Current of life is not descending below that point. The knot over the solar plexus is a little bit like nausea, the urge to vomit, weeping, and anger. This contraction is a revulsion, a reversal of the Current in the frontal line of the body, and in effect it prevents this line of force from going to its lower terminal in the bodily base.
One way of naturally relieving this contraction, in addition to the basic resort that is your devotional practice, is to place your attention lower down in the body, below the point where you feel that cramp. If you place your attention above the point of disturbance, the revulsion will continue. The most intelligent approach, therefore, is to place your attention below that point, where there already is no contraction, you see. Place your attention below the navel in the vital battery region, in the genital region, or at the perineum. Do nothing other than that. Simply place your attention there, and then practice the meditative disposition, the devotional disposition, the breathing and relaxing that are your daily practice You will very likely notice that in those moments when you otherwise would not be able to release such a contraction, it will naturally relax, and you will enjoy the capacity to breathe and feel and submit the total body-mind to this Fullness. Indeed, this is how conductivity must be practiced, by submitting yourself to the native disposition of the body rather than fastening your attention to some point in the circuit of the body-mind. The way, then, to submit whole bodily when the body-mind is in a contracted state is to place your attention lower down in the line of the frontal Current, place it in the lower abdomen, in the genital region, in the perineum. In these regions there is in general a residual sense of pleasure, because there is a portion of this Current always descending—it does leak through this knot, you see. Thus, if you place attention in this pleasurable expression of the Current, the knot, which is being reinforced by holding attention in this anxious place, will tend to relax. Then resort to the devotional disposition, and the practice of conductivity will be found to be fruitful”.
It is the work of (conductivity) the secondary disciplines – (or the entire regime of conductivity) – which – release(s) energy and attention from the ego-bond.
Without this supportive exercise – Conductivity – the conscious process remains nothing more than a minor psychological and verbal exercise of the waking mind. It is only to the degree that energy and attention are set free by the practical and meditational exercises of conductivity that the conscious process can enter profoundly into the Real Source of life and attention.
It is because of the absence of profound practice of supportive disciplines involving total psycho-physical submission into the Life-Current that the Way of the conscious process gets reduced to a kind of “talking school” obsession with “consciousness.” Many people read and even write books and give lectures about the primacy and freedom of consciousness, as if they could, merely by analyzing consciousness out from the mass of thinking, knowing, and experiencing, achieve the incomparable State of “Jnana,” Enlightenment, or Transcendental Realization. But all such talk is the mediocre chat of the waking mind.
The Conscious process goes through stages of development as the individual matures, but the conscious process is not the whole of the practice. The practice is associated with supportive disciplines that are secondary but necessary, such as the dietary discipline, general health discipline, the discipline of sexuality, and of service. All of these disciplines come under the heading of what I call conductivity
The Conscious Process Is the Epitome of This Way
…because I speak with emphasis on the conscious process as the root of spiritual life, doesn’t mean that I’m justifying some sort of contempt for the spontaneous and subtle events. And people should not get the ego of a little mental understanding and think that they have become superior to the Siddhas, who manifest all the glorious Siddhas. It is simply that the fundamental process of spiritual life and understanding in Satsang is the conscious one, and it is neither here nor there in terms of identification or separation from phenomena and functions. So the process of understanding is always one of not identification or not seeking toward or separating from any kind of phenomenon. It is always one of understanding.
The Life of Understanding – Week 9
The conscious process is the process which is generated from or at the most fundamental level of awareness itself …in each of the stages..are all moments of the same process of self-transcendence…maturity in this conscious process develops over time, a positive equanimity begins to characterize the body-mind
Instead of Indulging in Thought, Practice the Conscious Process
This Way is a hard school. As well as being a life of Grace, a life in which there is great help, that transcends the limits that you would bring to practice ordinarily, but is is also a difficult affair. It requires great responsibility, great attention for this exercise. But if you enter into it truly and seriously, then all of these kinds of changes or effects that are generated over time, will amount to a purification of attention from its habits. Psycho-physical equanimity, responsibility for energy and attention will be the result of that purification. On the basis of such equanimity the release of attention and energy from the ego bond will be the arms and means for the true practice of this Way. Only then can the admonition, Be Consciousness as the Feeling of Being and Realize that it is Radiant Happiness Itself, be realized and understood. It can in some cases be fulfilled instantly by anyone who hears it. You can sympathize with it to the degree that you can enjoy a level of self understanding. But you cannot fulfill it fully because the purification is not complete. This is why you must go through the process of purification and rebalancing.
In order to Realize theTranscendental Truth that Is Consciousness, the entire process of attention must be liberated from functional bondage to the states and functions and emotions and thoughts and relations of the egoic or self-contracted body-mind.
The Way is not merely a matter of self-generating these disciplines. The Way that I Teach (in both its preparatory and mature or ultimate forms) is the Way of “Satsang,” or Transcendental Spiritual Communion with the Adept in God (or Reality). The practices of conductivity and the conscious process are simply the means whereby individuals enter into that Communion moment to moment. The Adept Spiritual Master provides the Ultimate Means whereby the practices of conductivity and the conscious process become fruitful.
It is in the “talking school” of heady non practitioners (or self-contained egos) that we hear so much nonsense about the non-necessity of a Spiritual Master. Of course, the Adept is of no use (except perhaps to write books to feed the ego minds) for those who are self-bound and not interested in the real fulfillment of the Great Way.
There are also many kinds of ego-based, childish, adolescent, merely cultic, and false kinds of approach or attachment to the Adept — and I criticize those inappropriate approaches and attachments more than any of those who merely damn and anathematize the Great Relationship between the devotee and the Adept Spiritual Master. But when the Way is fully understood, valued, and practiced, then – and only then – the Great Relationship is seen to be the Primary Principle of the Way itself.
The Adept Spiritual Master is not merely an independent Realizer of the Truth. The true Adept is a “Siddha,” or a Living Agent of Help and Awakening. Thus, beyond the Work of Communicating the Arguments of the Way, the Adept is Present to Transmit the Power of Awakening.
Don’t punish yourself with practice. Develop your understanding through study, and gradually and progressively adapt to the personal, moral, and formal exercises. Do it simply, easily, from the heart, and you will inevitably grow beyond yourself.
Instead of Indulging in Thought, Practice the Conscious Process
Read original talk – What Is The Conscious Process?
Further readings:
The Conscious Process Is the Epitome of This Way
Compilation of Three Talks on the subject of The Conscious Process
Instead of Indulging in Thought, Practice the Conscious Process
The Conscious Process is not a fourth or a fifth stage practice.
Da Free John
1982