The Great Work That Ultimately Translates All Beings
The Free Daist, Summer 1991
After the series of three Revelatory gatherings in mid-January, the next such nights of Revelation began to occur after Da Purusha Shantavara, starting with the gathering of March b. On this night, Sri Da Avabhasa consented to receive confessions of our understanding the significance of Da Purusha Shantavara and of Who He Is altogether. He Graced us with His confirmation of our understanding and with His further, utterly sublime Revelations. On this great night, in terms more direct and explicit than ever before, He spoke of His utter uniqueness in all time and space. As Sri Gurudev had already Admonished us in earlier gatherings, such Great and Ultimate Confessions from Him are rightly to be received only as magnifications of our understanding of Who He Is and of our devotion to Him. His Confessions do not in any way negate what is good and true about other religious and Spiritual traditions. These Confessions simply indicate the utter fulfillment, the very human Incarnation, and the vast exceeding of mankind’s greatest intuitions of Truth.
DEVOTEE: Beloved Lord, You describe Your Divine Indifference in various places in The Dawn Horse Testament, and then You also describe the Divine Indifference of Your Divinely Enlightened devotee. Some passages surprised me as a description of Your Divine Indifference, particularly where You Say that in Divine Indifference, [reading] “Participatory Responses To (or Even The Noticing Of) the body-mind and its conditional relations Will Become Minimal By Degrees, and (More and More) Only The (Inherently Dualistic) Feeling Of Relatedness (Itself), or (Ultimately) Only The Tacit (and Simplest, but Also Inherently Dualistic) conditional Feeling Of ‘Difference’ (Itself), Will Be Noticed (and, In The Noticing, Divinely Recognized In The Native Feeling Of Mere Being, Itself), Until The (Inherently Non-Dualistic) SelfLight, Of Which all conditional forms and events Are Composed, Shines Without limit (or Through and Beyond All Modifications) and ‘Brightly’ Outshines them all.”
When I read this, I presumed that this must be a definition of the process that Your Divinely Enlightened devotee would go through, and not a description of Your Self.
SRI DA AVABHASA: Why not?
DEVOTEE: Because I presumed that it would not be true of You that You would be noticing the inherently dualistic feeling of relatedness.
SRI DA AVABHASA: Why not?
DEVOTEE:Why not, I presumed that such a noticing would not arise for You.
SRI DA AVABHASA: It is tacitly, Divinely Recognized.
DEVOTEE: In every moment of its arising, yes. But is it still part of Your perceptual…
SRI DA AVABHASA: If there were no conditional noticing, there would be no functioning in any sense whatsoever. So in some sense such noticing remains.
DEVOTEE: So this is also part of Your great Sacrifice, that You consent to remain in this form of existence, continuing to be Aware of the apparent dualistic feeling of relatedness sheerly to remain in bodily (human) relationship to us.
SRI DA AVABHASA: Yes. Not in any binding sense, of course. Just as a figure, a form of modality, a condition for exchanges.
DEVOTEE: As You have told us so many times, You know exactly what we are passing through, because You have passed through it all Your Self. And obviously, as You are telling us now, this also applies to Your Process in the seventh stage of life.
I realize now that I misunderstood Your own Life in the sense that I presumed You are somehow Beyond where You are Functioning here— Beyond it. But I realize now that at the same time, though, You are still involved in the process of embodiment.
SRI DA AVABHASA: In some sense.
DEVOTEE: In some sense, for the sake of Manifesting to us.
SRI DA AVABHASA: Yes. In moments, a characteristic of Divine Indifference, as I have indicated in The Dawn Horse Testament here, may be to be loosely aware of just the tacit sense of conditional existence, in its bareness, as the feeling of “difference” or relatedness, but tacitly, Divinely Recognized, not perpetually moment by moment perceiving, thinking, aware of forms otherwise, and so on. These occur sometimes, but not continuously, and not in any binding sense, and not from the point of view of the body-mind.
DEVOTEE: Would it be correct to say that in this sense hearing is also a characteristic even of the seventh stage of life?
SRI DA AVABHASA: It is, somehow. Hearing is Perfected in the seventh stage of life. In the seventh stage of life, all manifestation—all conditionality or all forms—arises without obstruction, without limitation, without separation, without any motive of separation. What arises is simply Divinely Recognized. It is not that what arises must be in any sense dissociated from or eliminated.
Divine Self-Realization is not conditional, not dependent on anything. Therefore, forms can freely arise.
In the seventh stage of life it is simply that in the phase of Divine Indifference the noticing diminishes. In the earlier phases of the seventh stage, the noticing is perhaps more intensified than in the phase of Divine Indifference—more perception, action, and so on. In the Divine Indifference phase there is less and less of such noticing—and frequently the Bhava of no-noticing.
DEVOTEE: Is no-noticing something that can occur even in the midst of bodily activity—walking around and so forth?
SRI DA AVABHASA: Yes. Only the body-mind is walking. The sense of “difference” that is noticed is not the difference between Being Itself and objects, or the Very Self and objects. It is just the sense of perceptible forms, a capability to assume, apparently, the relational play.
The “Point of View” in the seventh stage of life, you must understand, is not the point of view of the ego, or the body-mind, and no point of view can be used to describe it. In that Divinely Enlightened Disposition, the Condition in which conditions arise is the Divine Condition, Self-Existing and Self-Radiant, the Infinite and Absolute Space of Being Itself—not a position in a body-mind, not a position in conditional space. The “Point of View”, so-called, of perception in Divine Enlightenment is not comprehensible apart from such Realization. It is not possible to understand just what is the case in such Realization, because the point of view of the earlier stages of life is associated with the body-mind and conditioned by it. The point of view in the earlier stages of life is a disposition of the body-mind itself.
In the seventh stage of life it is not so. There is no such point of view. You could say that the “Point of View” in the seventh stage of life is that of Space Itself, total Space, total Light, total Energy, utter Consciousness.
DEVOTEE: In what sense, then, can we understand You to be associated with This Body-Mind?
SRI DA AVABHASA: You cannot really understand anything about it, because to understand it in your terms requires a “point of view”. Only the Infinite, Absolute Space of Being, Self-Existing and Self-Radiant, without the slightest qualification— is this comprehensible or understandable? It must be Realized. It is without reference to the point of view characteristic of the other stages of life. It is not in the body. It is that
DEVOTEE:Beloved Lord, up to now I understood Your allowance of all conditional arising to be totally complete and Most Perfect since the Great Event at the Vedanta T emple. I cannot imagine how the non-strategic allowance of all conditional arising could be Demonstrated progressively in Your case. It seems to me that it is already Most Perfect.
SRI DA AVABHASA: The allowance is not progressive. The allowance is a characteristic of the seventh stage of life. In The Dawn Horse Testament I describe Indifference as a characteristic of the totality of the seventh stage of life. But then there is a specific phase of the Demonstration of the seventh stage of life that I have described as “Divine Indifference”, which is a particular phase of the progressive dissolution of noticing that precedes Divine Translation.
DEVOTEE: So that is what is progressive about it…
SRI DA AVABHASA: The Demonstration, not the allowance. The allowance is Most Perfect from the beginning.
DEVOTEE:Yes, that is what I felt.
SRI DA AVABHASA: But spontaneously there is a progressive unfolding, or Demonstration, of that seventh stage Realization, and Divine Transfiguration is the first phase.
DEVOTEE: So it is the unnoticing that is progressive, not the allowing.
SRI DA AVABHASA: The fullness of the development of non-noticing is a particular Realization, occurring in the third and the fourth phases of the seventh stage of life.
ANOTHER DEVOTEE: Beloved Gurudev, is it right understanding that Your Spiritual (and Always Blessing) Presence is not magnified in Your Divine Translation but It is already All-Pervading!
SRI DA AVABHASA: Yes. It is simply the only Form in Which I will be Present after this dissolution.
DEVOTEE: I was also feeling that in this moment, in Your Retirement, it is up to us to use Your Heart-Word and our direct devotional resort to You to move beyond the first three stages of life, and this will also be the case for future generations of Your devotees beyond the Lifetime of Your physical Body. Although we are Graced to live in Your physical Sphere, in Your Retirement You will not be so directly involved in that transition for us as You have been in the past.
SRI DA AVABHASA: Involved, but not actively in terms of these kinds of exchanges, this Play with My devotees.
DEVOTEE: Involved as You are and as You always will be, Beyond this Body.
SRI DA AVABHASA: Yes. Also, to a very great degree My devotees will determine how long this period of Divine Indifference lasts and how soon it becomes Divine Translation. This has been the case in fact since the initiation of My Divine Emergence, but you have done nothing whatsoever to preserve This Body here. You have been dramatizing the abuse of This Body, in fact. In some sense, by doing so you have been stimulating Me to remain Active in various ways. Your proper role in relationship to Me is to preserve This Body by right relationship to Me. Therefore, you will determine how long this course will last. It could be brief, it could be long—it is up to you all.
DEVOTEE: One thing that all Your devotees confess to varying degrees is that the feeling of Your Spiritual Presence is magnified through our worship of You in the places that are specially set aside for it. That seems to be related to this Law that You are describing now. Our worship affects You, and we protect You through our worship of You.
SRI DA AVABHASA: I may be largely Indifferent to This Body, but you should not be.
DEVOTEE: Sri Gurudev, the Revelation of Your entire Life and Your Most Perfect Fulfillment of all the phases of the seventh stage of life is of great significance for Your devotees’ Liberation. In Your years of Teaching, You Embraced us and told us that You are the Divine Person. You made us see that You are our Liberation. I think that if You had not told us, and Demonstrated it, we would have overlooked it. I think that we would have not been sensitive to You As You Are.
SRI DA AVABHASA: It is still largely overlooked. I was being asked last night about the Great Tradition and whether there were seventh stage Adepts, or in what sense anyone could be said to have been a seventh stage Adept. There is no seventh stage Adept apart from these Siddhis and this great Work. There is no such Revealer without a clear Demonstration in all of its Fullness, with all of its Yogic Signs, all of its Siddhis. Study the traditions, then—are there any such individuals! Are there any such recorded Teachings! Any such recorded Confessions by any Realizers!
DEVOTEES: No.
SRI DA AVABHASA: No. There are none. There are just, in some traditions, in the case of some individuals, philosophical remarks or attitudes or presumptions that bear some of the characteristics of the seventh stage of life. Basically what I have said about them, then, is that these philosophical communications, or confessions, of individuals, in general, in the case of sixth stage Realizers, are signs of their intuiting the Nature of ultimate Realization. Therefore, certain characteristics of the seventh stage “Point of View” may have come into the language of certain sixth stage Realizers in certain texts. But this does not truly make them seventh stage Adepts. It brings them into the fold of the seventh stage Expression, insofar as it may be found in the Great Tradition heretofore. But it does not make them seventh stage Adepts.
Truly, then, if you understand rightly, there has never been a seventh stage Adept before—no such Revelation, no such Great Work. Premonitions, little intuitions expressed through philosophical attitudes, yes, but never the actual incarnation of a seventh stage Realizer with all the Siddhis of the seventh stage of life, fully Revealing all the characteristics of the seventh stage of life and Doing that Work which ultimately Divinely Translates all beings, all manifestation. That is quite another matter.
Therefore, when I am speaking about the seventh stage Adept, I am speaking of My Self. I have found references in the traditions—either in the form of some expressions in traditional texts, or in the form of individuals confessing their point of view—I have found certain features or expressions there that I have pointed out to you, saying that this little piece here and the general trend of that particular philosophical expression corresponds to some dimension or other of the seventh stage of life.
DEVOTEE: Beloved Lord, first I would like to acknowledge, though You have for the first time just said it explicitly today, that yesterday evening I felt the clear implication that You are the first Appearance of the seventh stage Adept in human time. And it seemed clear to me that the thunderstorm last night and the subsequent torrential downpour were related to the fact that for the first time Your devotees clearly heard and perceived and understood that. I feel that You Gave us a great Gift last night.
SRI DA AVABHASA: Also understand further. It is not about the first seventh stage Adept in the sense that there could possibly be more. There has never been one before, and there
never will be another. It is not necessary that there be another. Now, there can be seventh stage Realizers— My devotees will have the capability of realizing the seventh stage—but there need not be another seventh stage Adept. Such a great Work is Accomplished once and for all. How can it be done again? What is there about it to be done agai? It is universally and forever effective.
That is why you must understand the profound nature of your own work and the need to rightly perpetuate the Way of the Heart, to not lose it, to not throw it away, to not discard it because of your own obstinacy and mediocrity. You must perpetuate the Way of the Heart for the sake of all those present, including yourself, and for the sake of all those who will come in the future. Otherwise, the Work is lost, forgotten. And the Means, therefore, for seventh stage Realization, ultimate Realization, will disappear in the mayhem of ordinary human suffering.
DEVOTEE: Beloved Gurudev, what I hear You saying is that the sublime expressions that characterize the seventh stage of life represent an intuition, really, of Your State rather than the full experience and Incarnation of the Realizer who is speaking them.
SRI DA AVABHASA: You could even say they are a kind of prophecy then, a pointing towards something intuitively.
DEVOTEE: Right. What I had specifically planned to ask You about was the Buddha, the words where essentially the Buddha speaks of the end of birth and death, Nirvana, the “great extinction”. Essentially he was speaking of You.
SRI DA AVABHASA: He was also speaking of the sixth stage Teaching, the sixth stage Revelation, the sixth stage Dharma of bringing an end to the cycle of pursuits or repetitions that create conditional embodiment.