The Timeless Ego and a Devotee’s Vision
Adi Da Samraj, 2004
The following is an interchange between a devotee and Adi Da in 2004.
Afraid from Head to Toe
DEVOTEE: Beloved, Your devotee, from Marin has a question.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: Hmmm.
DEVOTEE: You may ask your question.
DEVOTEE: Beloved Lord, thank You so much for Your allowing us to participate with You in these gatherings.
DEVOTEE: You have to speak very directly into the phone.
DEVOTEE: Beloved, I am extremely grateful to be part of these gatherings with You. During these last couple of months, all Your devotees find these occasions to be extraordinary.
I have a question about a Darshan Occasion that I participated in with You during Your Revelation of the Four Thorns in 1997. Beloved, on this occasion, I yielded attention to You and You entered this body-mind and began to work up through the chakra system and You worked a purification and instruction relating to the first four chakras. And then, You revealed the structure of the heart on the right. And I saw the origin of the self-knot, by Your Grace, Beloved.
Then You showed me the S-shaped curve of light that exists between the heart and the crown of the head and beyond. Then You showed me tacitly and beyond doubt, You as the Purusha, the One Being who was in that moment living me and everyone in the tent, Lord.
This revelation was overwhelming, beyond anything that has ever occurred in my life. In the next moment, my vision was restored and I saw Your Body before me as an extension of that same One, and consciously so, Lord.
Beloved, I feel I have had the Vision of You, by Your Grace. And You have been speaking to us on these occasions a great deal about experiences and the transitory and non-spiritual and non-necessary nature of them. I can see that everything You revealed on that occasion that I was speaking about, including the awareness of the self-knot, refers back to the body, and it is to be yielded by means of Ruchira Avatara Bhakti Yoga.
I have a question about what occurred after that point. The S-shaped curve of light which seems to have been shown by You to be the regenerated form of Amrita Nadi, by Your description, did not appear as a transitory experience, but as a present structure. And the Vision of You as Divine Person, in no way referred to me, but to You, and to the Body-Mind You animate. In the moments of that vision, I was only aware of You. You were obvious, Lord.
Beloved, I’m an ordinary devotee, but by the virtue of Your Siddhis on that occasion, You made Yourself visible to me. Is this form of beholding You, that You refer to, do You refer to this as the Perfect Practice of Your devotee when they have become responsibly one-pointed in You? And is this interpretation of mine of this occurrence a correct one?
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: You haven’t described anything that has to do with the Perfect Practice?
DEVOTEE: Yes, I’m actually not representing myself as having done so, Beloved.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: As I understand, the question seems to refer to the Perfect Practice.
DEVOTEE: It seemed to me, Beloved, that recognizing You as the One who is alive as me and all beings, would be what Your devotee would behold if they were constantly beholding You in that fashion.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: Well, what does that mean? Beholding what?
DEVOTEE: Beholding You as …
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: Beholding what? Do you mean seeing something?
DEVOTEE: I felt You directly as the Divine Person, Beloved.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: What does that mean? Felt what? Was there some phenomenon associated with this?
DEVOTEE: It was barely a phenomenon. I suppose the only way I could say it was a phenomenon is that I felt that I was still not realized as You. I was seeing You.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: By seeing what?
DEVOTEE: It was not an experience that had any attributes to it, Beloved.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: Well, you for instance described the S-curve of Amrita Nadi as being made of light. That suggests some kind of visibility.
DEVOTEE: That’s correct, Beloved. It did, that did appear very directly.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: Yes, but you see, Amrita Nadi doesn’t have such a form.
DEVOTEE: I did see what seemed to be a thin form of light that rose from the heart as You revealed it, and curved upward and behind the head, and then dissipated out of the crown. And…
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: But how could you possibly see such a thing?
DEVOTEE: It was by Your Revelation, Lord.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: Yes, but how could you see such a thing?
DEVOTEE: I was witnessing it.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: It cannot be witnessed in such a form.
DEVOTEE: Well, Beloved, then, what do You feel it was that I saw?
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: Well, you’re not describing it. It’s not for Me to describe. In particular, you are describing an experience you said you’ve had, so you’ll have to particularize it in terms of phenomena.
DEVOTEE: Directly after this experiencing of almost as though a small flap on the right side of the heart opened in which I became directly aware of myself being originated as the self-contraction from that place. Directly after that, there was the revelation of this spire of light. That’s the only way I can describe it. It wasn’t even like a light. It was like a very, very thin shaft, almost, that rose and went behind the head, and went out through the crown of the head.
And it occurred to me, at that time, although not really in a well formed thought, it occurred to me that that was the energy form of existence.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: Well, there are a lot of presumptions going on in you about all of this. And there are many other aspects to the experience that you haven’t described yet in terms of phenomena. But there’s nothing in that description you just gave that has anything to do with Amrita Nadi.
DEVOTEE: I, I…
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: Or the perception that is characteristic of the position you suggest you were in in which to see it. So, it’s something else, which you would have to describe more fully.
DEVOTEE: Um-hmmm. It was a very, the whole progression happened in fairly rapid order, Beloved, and I uh…
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: But you see, such things don’t have this characteristic, Scott.
DEVOTEE: Um-hmmm.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: This is all mental activity that you are describing.
DEVOTEE: Um-hmmm.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: Based on whatever. You’d have to account for the rest of the experience, and why you’re making the presumptions you are about it by describing the whole experience in more detail.
DEVOTEE: Okay.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: But, the matters of Amrita Nadi are not of the nature of what you’re describing.
DEVOTEE: I obviously made some presumptions about this, Beloved, that are untrue. That’s what You’re indicating here. But in the moment in which it occurred, it felt as though that was what was being revealed.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: Yes, well that’s how things work with people, you see.
DEVOTEE: So, You’re saying that I fooled myself somehow with this?
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: Well, you’re not saying enough about it to address it clearly, but what you have said about it has nothing to do with Amrita Nadi.
DEVOTEE: Um-hmmm. Well, there was this visible shaft of light that did move upward. Or I shouldn’t even say that it moved. It appeared to, it didn’t descend. It appeared to have some sort of form of ascension, and it definitely did emanate from the heart on the right.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: Yes, well that’s an illusion.
DEVOTEE: That’s an illusion.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: Definitely. You were in no such position. There is no such experience on the basis of what you are describing, and there is no possibility of it in the egoic position.
[phone rings in background]
DEVOTEE: Yes, Beloved.
[phone rings again]
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: And you can make all kinds of presumptions mentally [phone rings again] and more or less in the sphere of imagination [phone rings again]. What’s going on here?
DEVOTEE: There’s someone coming in on the line. They’re trying to get him off. Sorry about that.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: Based on reading and enthusiasm and there could be other factors involved in it. You’d have to describe the rest of the experience.
DEVOTEE: Yes. First of all, Beloved, I, You know I, certainly, You know, am capable of illusion. I know that, but this took me by such surprise. I was approaching You at that time as an Advocate, and it was the most surprising thing that had ever happened to me, that any of this, that anything that happened on that occasion would happen. So, I’m not, at least in this moment, suspecting myself of having trying to manufacture it in some way. It felt as though it were You doing that work.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: Well, it can feel like anything whatsoever. That’s not the point. You were not in a position in which any phenomenon, if even that word is appropriate to use, and it really isn’t, relative to Amrita Nadi, could have been experienced. That wasn’t the position in which you stood.
DEVOTEE: Yes, Beloved.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: So, if you saw some kind of lights and so forth, whatever form they took, they impressed you, and moved you, and you’ve appeared to have made presumptions about it for whatever reason, but you’re not describing a process that has anything to do with the level of experience you think you’ve had.
DEVOTEE: I see, Beloved.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: It doesn’t mean you had no experience at all, but you haven’t spoken about most of it yet in terms of the phenomena or what exactly happened phenomenally without interpretation added to it, you see.
DEVOTEE: Yes. Well, the phenomena, Beloved, at least that part of it, was very brief. It didn’t appear as lights or sounds. It didn’t have that quality. It appeared as thin light. That’s the only way I could describe it.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: Well, what about the rest of this experience? You’ve described this part of it as a thin light somehow. What about the rest of it?
DEVOTEE: The part that was most extraordinary to me, and also overwhelming was to feel that I was, to suddenly feel after having seen You know what I’m describing as a form of light, feeling You as the Purusha, the One that is Alive as all beings.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: But what does that mean? What did you experience? What do you know about the Purusha? It’s just some word from the traditions. So, why would you be speaking in such terms? What kind of experience is this?
DEVOTEE: The experience itself was to suddenly be aware that I was being lived, and that there was a Divine Person that was living myself and everyone in that tent.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: Well, that’s a generalized feeling sense that can be said to be meaningful. It’s not a question in itself. It’s a kind of experience of something about the meaning of Reality or existence that can feel for a moment to be true.
DEVOTEE: Um-hmmm. It appeared as though Your Own Body-Mind, Beloved, when my vision was restored, I was in a state of non, not even feeling my bodily awareness. And when I saw You sitting on the Dias in this beautiful Mudra, I felt You to be the extension of that One that I had seen.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: What do you mean “extension”?
DEVOTEE: I felt that You were that One, and that also, what was appearing to me as Your Body was consciously the emanation of that One. I simply felt that directly.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: Well, again, this is a kind of a poetic sense of how things are. It doesn’t mean there’s some kind of absolute profundity going on.
DEVOTEE: I see, Beloved.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: I mean what difference does this experience make?
DEVOTEE: It has made me feel toward You in a way in which I feel You as the Divine, rather than as a teacher, as a great teacher, which is the way that I had related to You previously.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: Why should you presume to relate to Me in that manner?
DEVOTEE: In the way that I related to You previously, Beloved?
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: Yes.
DEVOTEE: I think it’s because it didn’t occur to me that, I didn’t understand that that the Divine Being exists and that You are that One, previous to that.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: Do you understand that now?
DEVOTEE: I don’t fully understand it, Beloved, because it only fully occurred to me that time. I shouldn’t say fully occurred to me, but it occurred to me to the degree that I felt that I should, that I should attend to You in a different way than I had in the past.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: Well, how are you relating to Me now?
DEVOTEE: I resort to You as the Divine, Beloved.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: I mean right now?
DEVOTEE: Well, I’m in a little bit of a state of confusion, Beloved, because I didn’t, I’m obviously under some illusions here that I didn’t…
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: Yes, you’re using the word “I” about every third word. And…
DEVOTEE: Yes, I see, Beloved.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: …you’re relating to Me in a casual and presumptuous manner, as if you’re having a conversation with an ordinary social relation.
DEVOTEE: I apologize for that, Beloved. It is certainly not my intention, Lord.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: It’s not about apology. It’s evidence of your state.
DEVOTEE: Yes, Beloved.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: And the experience that you’re describing is not evidence of your state.
DEVOTEE: I realize that.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: It’s bullshit. Anything about it that felt good to you at the time and that awakened a feeling of devotional recognition of Me, well, there’s at least that part of it. But all the rest of this accounting, as if there’s some super-normal happening, almost enlightenment experience is just simply not the case. And if this recognition of Me you described were true of you now, you would be relating to Me in an entirely different manner in this moment.
DEVOTEE: Yes, Beloved.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: So, what elements of this experience have any authenticity to them?
DEVOTEE: Authenticity in terms of …
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: Anything whatsoever.
DEVOTEE: Well, there were a couple of other parts of it that I didn’t even mention that began this experience, Beloved, that the first thing that was shown to me was that fear is produced at the muladhar and at the sahasrar. I somehow…
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: At the muladhar and at the sahasrar?
DEVOTEE: I felt that at the lower body and the upper body that it was…
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: In other words, you felt afraid from head to toe?
DEVOTEE: I did. And I felt it was contained within those point.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: Well, that covers the whole animal, doesn’t it?
DEVOTEE: It did. It does, yes.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: Yes.
DEVOTEE: And I saw that I was producing it at those points. And I found it instructive relative to the practice of…
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: Well, fear doesn’t have diddily to do with the sahasrar. [Laughter] It has nothing to do with it whatsover. It may have something to do with the top of your head, but that doesn’t mean that that’s the sahasrar, you see?
DEVOTEE: I see I made that mistake, Beloved.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: Yes. If it was the sahasrar you were being aware of, you wouldn’t have been afraid.
DEVOTEE: I should say the top of the head.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: Yes. Well, that’s a different matter. You felt afraid from head to toe or toe to crown, however you’d like to put it. In other words, the whole body was afraid.
DEVOTEE: Yes, but it seemed to…
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: And that’s the problem in this conversation, Scott.
DEVOTEE: Yes, I see what You mean, Beloved.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: That’s the source of this experience.
DEVOTEE: The source of this experience, Beloved.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: Yeah.
DEVOTEE: Was the fact that I was afraid from head to toe.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: You are afraid.
DEVOTEE: Yes, I am.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: And that’s that. And when there is such fear, the ego gets all kinds of inventive to protect itself.
DEVOTEE: I see. I did that to myself?
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: Yeah. You’re doing it right now.
DEVOTEE: Yes, I am, Beloved. You’re right.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: You’re being afraid of Me.
DEVOTEE: I love You very much, Lord.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: And you’re being afraid of Me.
DEVOTEE: And I’m being afraid of You. Yes, Lord.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: Not surrendered.
DEVOTEE: I surrender to You, Beloved.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: You must surrender to Me. It’s not that you are surrendering to Me. You don’t need to concoct all kinds of visionary defenses. You must surrender. It must be real.
DEVOTEE: Yes, Lord.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: Really practiced devotion that goes beyond your fear ultimately, because you are surrendered to Me, for real.
DEVOTEE: Yes, Beloved.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: And not forced by fear into inventing an illusory life of revelations.
DEVOTEE: I can’t believe I did that, Beloved. I will try never to do that again.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: Well, it’s not even a matter of trying not to do it again. It’s about being My devotee, truly.
DEVOTEE: Yes, I understand that.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: And, you see, ordinary religious history is filled with people who have had visions because they are terrified of their mortal condition. People virtually invent their whole lives, in fact, on the basis of fear. And it can be such a strong and naked motivator that it controls one emotionally and mentally and in the deep psyche, and you have to generate a sense of importance to defend yourself against it.
DEVOTEE: Yes, I see.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: The genuine process of Communion with Me and the real spiritual process has nothing to do with this tacky, pseudo, revelation kind of nonsense you just described. It has nothing to do with it whatsoever.
DEVOTEE: Yes, Lord.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: Whatever there was in this experience that had any genuineness about it, beyond the fact that you became aware of the fact that you are afraid, is only important if it brings you to true devotion.
DEVOTEE: Yes, Lord.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: And if there is true devotion, true devotional surrender to Me, not only do illusions fall away, the need for them falls away.
DEVOTEE: I see. I see that.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: Just imagine if what you described as a kind of revelation of ultimate reality was all there was to it. What if I had spent all of these years Teaching on the basis of nothing more than what you know that experience amounted to? What if that’s all there was to it? What if it were that ordinary, that superficial, that casual, that self-possessed? What if it were nothing more than that? It wouldn’t be worth a gob of spit.
DEVOTEE: Yes, Beloved. Thank You, Beloved.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: Real spiritual life is a great and most profound matter. And it doesn’t take, when it is authentic, it doesn’t take such a form. That experience began in fear, and that’s its foundation. That’s its cause. And that’s fundamental to your suffering, and fundamental to what you need to deal with in your practice.
DEVOTEE: Fear, Beloved?
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: Yes.
DEVOTEE: And fear of You, Beloved?
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: Fear of Me, and therefore, the inability to be surrendered to Me. And so there’s a self-protective wall that can established when that kind of disposition is not relinquished.
DEVOTEE: Yes. And how would I best do that, Beloved?
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: Well, I’ve told you what the practice is, and that’s it.
DEVOTEE: That’s it.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: Right practice. Actually surrendered practice of devotion to Me. Not self-protective at all. The visions you described are incorrect.
DEVOTEE: I see.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: They’re not true to Reality. It is not the nature of Amrita Nadi and the processes associated with the right side of the heart should take the form you described. To make presumptions about Me in the manner you’ve just described or on the basis of what you’ve described is not right.
DEVOTEE: Thank You for that clarification, Beloved.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: The devotional response to Me is a tacit response. It is a heart response. It is not based on some visionary presumption of the kind you described. Such knowledge is not available in that form. That’s not how such knowledge or recognition of Me occurs.
As you said, you were relating to Me just as to a teacher of some kind. Well, why would that be your presumption? I never presented Myself as that.
DEVOTEE: I suppose I should say, Beloved, that I became involved with You in 1973, and for the first at least several years, I felt You as my teacher, and I didn’t really understand what a guru was. So, that’s how I meant that I was thinking of You as a great teacher.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: Yes, but I was there for your recognition. That you didn’t recognize Me has nothing to do with whether you knew anything about it or not, you see, in the sense of information.
DEVOTEE: I understand.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: In other words, your manner of relating to Me in that period of time was an expression of your own limitations.
DEVOTEE: Yes, I understand that, Beloved.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: And, those limitations are the patterning of your own person that you have to deal with in your sadhana of devotion to Me.
DEVOTEE: Yes, Lord.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: An ordinary teacher just gives lectures and passes on traditional lore of some kind or another, you see. Ordinary teachers do not manifest the Signs and Transmission influence that was there to be experienced in My Company at that very time.
So, that you approached Me in that manner or had this sense of Me is simply a sign of your own egoic dissociation or characteristic.
DEVOTEE: Beloved, maybe I misrepresent myself. I felt You to be the most extraordinary Being that I had ever met, when I met You. I have always felt that way.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: Well, that doesn’t necessarily say anything profound or anything of an ultimate nature.
DEVOTEE: Yes, Lord. Although, when I first read Your Teaching, it had such a strong impact on me that I knew that You were the most extraordinary Being that had ever written anything. So, it’s not as though I am saying that I thought You were an ordinary teacher. Please, Lord, I hope You don’t think that that’s what I was inferring.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: Well, I’m not concerned about being insulted. I’m simply reflecting you to yourself, and how the disposition you are communicating to Me right now is the same one that was active in you then, in the time you first approached Me back in the early 70s, and the same one that was present in that experience you described.
DEVOTEE: Yes, I see.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: 1973 and the moment of this supposed vision and this moment right now are all the same. You are the same. They are all moments of egoity in which you are associating with Me through the medium of your own egoity, and that’s the limitation that I’m reflecting back to you, and you must surrender through right relationship to Me.
DEVOTEE: Yes, Lord.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: It has nothing to do with the kind of experience you just described to Me. First of all, you described to Me this muladhar-sahasrar fear thing, and then, first of all you described to Me your Amrita Nadi experience. And what’s in between the two?
DEVOTEE: Obviously, Beloved, what occurred was, by what You’re saying, not Your Revelation, which was my presumption. But what did occur was that I felt each chakra being shown to me as either an obstruction to be purified, or an obstruction that was not being purified. And this happened up through the first four chakras. And, it’s as though You were moving up, up the body, and then, the attention went from the fourth chakra to what felt to me as the heart on the right. That’s how it appeared to me, Beloved.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: Well, what form did it appear to you? I mean what form did this experience take? You were just sitting in a gathering?
DEVOTEE: No, I was sitting in a Darshan occasion with You.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: Yes, that’s what I mean.
DEVOTEE: There were 700 people in the …
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: I gathered. In the tent?
DEVOTEE: In the tent with You. Yes, Beloved.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: Yeah. So, in a gathering of devotees.
DEVOTEE: In a gathering of devotees.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: And so, then what happened?
DEVOTEE: There was a moment where I felt myself being in avoidance with You, and I caught myself doing that, and I moved my attention strongly to You. And then, in that moment, I lost ordinary bodily consciousness and felt as though I had been entered, or taken over, by You. And then, all these things started to happen.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: What happened? What things happened?
DEVOTEE: Beloved, the first thing that happened was the revelation of the fear that I had just felt a moment before was shown to be produced at the top and bottom of the body. And I saw that I was doing that. That I was actually producing it, and that the simple seeing of that made it possible for me to let go of it and stop doing it.
Then, in the next moment, there was this very rapid movement up the chakra system which I felt…
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: Yes, but you see, you’re already talking about something that itself is imaginary. There is no chakra system. What chakra system?
DEVOTEE: The points in the body that seem to hold various forms of attention, Beloved.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: Well, what makes them chakras, except reading presumptions or hearing Me speak about it, or things you’ve read, or whatever. What chakras about it?
DEVOTEE: I did make that presumption. I didn’t think during the experience that they were chakras.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: Well, what was the experience then?
DEVOTEE: The experience was a movement from the bottom of the body…
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: Movement of what?
DEVOTEE: Movement of energy and also becoming aware of activities in the body at various points in the body.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: Movements of what kind of energy?
DEVOTEE: Well, for the most part it was to see that there was the self-contraction occurring.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: Yeah, but what energy?
DEVOTEE: For instance, at the point of the navel, there was as though there was a fiery ball.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: What do you mean “as though it were a fiery ball”? Did you see a fiery ball?
DEVOTEE: No, it felt fiery. It felt painful, and it felt resistant.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: Well, fiery meaning what? Hot?
DEVOTEE: Meaning hot, and that I didn’t enjoy the feeling of it. It felt tight.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: Yes, well, you had fear altogether and then you noticed fear in the base and the top of the body, and now you’re feeling pain in your navel.
DEVOTEE: Yes.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: Well, when does the wonderful part of this experience begin? [Laughter] It sounds like quite a state of contraction so far.
DEVOTEE: It was a state of contraction, yet.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: What kind?
DEVOTEE: It was a state of contraction, certainly to that point.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: Yes, it certainly sounds like one. And then what else?
DEVOTEE: Then, I felt my heart in the middle, my emotional heart. I felt it open greatly such that I felt a lot of love, and I felt that You opened my heart.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: Well, that’s at least an identifiable, emotional sensation. So that sounds good.
DEVOTEE: Then, Beloved, the next thing that happened was this sensation of the heart on the right.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: What kind of a sensation?
DEVOTEE: An awareness that something was happening there.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: Well, that’s not very explicit.
DEVOTEE: It was almost as if a flap – it’s the only way I could describe it…
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: A what?
DEVOTEE: A small flap.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: Flap?
DEVOTEE: Flap, at that point that lifted up or opened up.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: Flap like f-l-a-p?
DEVOTEE: Yes, Beloved, opened up.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: Yes.
DEVOTEE: And I intuited that that was the place where I originated my own self-awareness.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: You originated your own self-awareness?
DEVOTEE: It seemed like something I was doing, Beloved.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: Yes, so now you’re talking about feeling some kind of egoity in the right side of your chest.
DEVOTEE: Yes, it was a knot.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: Yes, well, you see, the egoic knot is not the foot of Amrita Nadi.
DEVOTEE: Okay. I guess I’ve misunderstood that then, Beloved. But it did feel like that was the place where I was originally being contracted was at that position.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: Contracted in what form?
DEVOTEE: Having an awareness of myself.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: But what do you mean by that?
DEVOTEE: Feeling separate.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: So, a feeling of separation?
DEVOTEE: Yes, yes, Beloved.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: So, most of the sensations you’ve described, virtually all of them, so far, except for feeling an opening of emotion that felt like, had the quality of love, in the heart, apart from that, every other sensation and place of sensation you have described has been essentially a negative one.
DEVOTEE: Everything prior to …
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: The muladhar, what you call the sahasrar, the navel, the right side of the heart, each one of these places where you’ve described sensations or some characteristic awareness, you’ve described in a negative, through negative language. Fear, pain, separate self-sense. The only place where you felt anything like a relief from these various limited sensations was in the heart area, where you described a kind of opening of love feeling.
DEVOTEE: Yes, that was so.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: And what else?
DEVOTEE: When this appearance of the heart opening on the right occurred.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: Well, you didn’t describe the heart opening, you see, you described self-contraction on the right.
DEVOTEE: Yes. It felt like an opening in that it was a revelation. It revealed itself as a place where I was doing this.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: But who was doing it?
DEVOTEE: I was. It was being done there, Beloved, and I was witnessing it.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: But you were aware as it.
DEVOTEE: Yes, I was.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: So, you weren’t the Witness of it. You were observing it or feeling it, noticing it, experiencing it.
DEVOTEE: Yes, Beloved.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: Well, that’s not an opening on the right side of the heart. That is the knot on the right side of the heart.
DEVOTEE: Yes.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: Just as you described the navel in terms of a fiery kind of pain sensation, and you described the two ends of the body as being characterized by fear.
DEVOTEE: Yes.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: So, you’re thoroughly describing an egoic self-awareness. The only part of this that is not in your description so far is this emotional opening in the middle of your chest.
DEVOTEE: Yes, Beloved. That is correct.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: And then the last part of it is this experience of Amrita Nadi, so-called, as you described it?
DEVOTEE: That is what happened before I had this love, this being a revelation of You, Beloved. Yes.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: In other words, you felt this contracted self-awareness in the right side, and then there was this Amrita Nadi experience.
DEVOTEE: Yes. I believe there was a relief of this self-contraction in the heart, first, although I can’t characterize it as having been anything blissful or profound. But it seemed as though it stopped so I would move on to the next thing that I would see.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: But you see, you can’t “see” Amrita Nadi. You cannot experience it on that basis.
DEVOTEE: What is the correct way it is seen, Beloved?
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: Through absolute, unconditional, Divine Self-Awareness. It’s not an egoic state, and it does not appear in the form you described at all. It is not possible, in fact, in the state you described. So, you’re describing some kind of activity in the mind or imagination or somehow in your presumption, however it arose, that you identified with Amrita Nadi. But it has nothing to do with Amrita Nadi. Amrita Nadi does not arise from the ego.
And if there is the vision of lights of any kind in the form you’re describing it, you see, it is in the domain of the mind, not the domain of Amrita Nadi.
DEVOTEE: I see.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: And it has to do with simply the lower mind functioning in a reverie similar to what occurs in the dream state.
DEVOTEE: [inaudible, sound quality fluctuating] in a dream, Beloved.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: Yes, just as in a dream, you can dream virtually anything, you see. You could have had a dream of a horse standing in the right side of your heart, standing on its hind legs with its head sticking out of the top of your head. And this is a very possible dream or reverie that someone could enter into, when they are relaxing beyond conventional association with the body anyway. But that doesn’t mean it’s some kind of legitimate, ultimate mystical experience. It’s due to very ordinary causes, and is an ordinary experience, and has no ultimate significance or lasting transformative value in the life. But it can be deluding, but you’re describing, you see, the surroundings of an experience that you interpreted as having some kind of ultimacy about it, including some recognition of Me, using traditional language such as Purusha, that’s based entirely on a body-mind that is in knots. That is possessed with fear from head to toe, in which the navel is like a tight fist, a knot, in which the consciousness is enclosed in the self-contraction, egoity itself.
There was some, it appears, sensations over the heart that were touched somehow, perhaps, by a piece of you able to experience devotion in the moment, or at least relaxation, emotionally, in the midst of this contracted, fearful, painful state.
And all of the visionary parts of it – Amrita Nadi and philosophical ideas are simply mind-based phenomena, basically just ideas in a state of reverie that was egoic and afraid and minimally, emotionally open.
And rather than being something in which there was no body consciousness, you’ve described an experience that’s totally about body consciousness. Every part of it has a very specific bodily referent. So, you were not unaware of the body. You were very aware of the body and its contracted condition, and somehow, at heart, also a wanting to expand out of it devotionally. And that much about it can be said to be positive and real enough to be mentioned. But it shows you what you have to deal with in yourself.
DEVOTEE: Yes, it does.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: Your heart-motive of devotion is struggling with a body-mind that is heavily patterned in fear and self-defensiveness and self-protectiveness, and you’re not to be blamed for it, or anything like that about it. It’s just simply something to know about yourself, and to take seriously about yourself, and to be sobered by.
DEVOTEE: Yes, Beloved. I understand what You’re saying.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: And this is what about the experience to make much of, not the visionary and philosophical exaggerations, but this clear self-awareness of yourself, afraid and vitally knotted up, and yet wanting to be devotionally turned and surrendered to Me.
DEVOTEE: Yes, Lord.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: And that disposition needs to take over your body instead of this knot taking over your body. And this happens in true devotional turning to Me without presumptuousness, without approaching Me as an ordinary man, without any casual regard of Me, feeling beyond your disinclination to be surrendered beyond your self-protection.
That willingness enables you to grow by taking that feeling that you were able to come in touch with in your heart on that occasion and basing your relationship to Me on that, instead of on the rest of it.
DEVOTEE: I will do so, Beloved.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: Hmmmm.
DEVOTEE: Beloved, thank You so much breaking this years long illusion that I’ve had.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: Tcha.
DEVOTEE: I love You very much. Thank You so much.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: Tcha.
[End of Part 2]
[End of gathering Talk]