The Brightening Way Talk Series – Adi Da Samraj – There’s No Escape, There’s Only Realization

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
I

AVATARA ADI DA: So what didn’t
we come to any conclusion about in these twenty-three
years?

DEVOTEE: Whoa! that’s the first question You release into
our “consideration”?

AVATARA ADI DA: Is there anything? [pause] Do you
all know what anything is yet? [DEVOTEES: No.]

DEVOTEE: that’s one conclusion we’ve
come to.

AVATARA ADI DA: But did you find out that you can Realize
What everything is? [silence]

Is anybody Realizing It now?

[long pause]

DEVOTEE: That was it.

MICHAEL WOOD: I think we should keep considering that
.

AVATARA ADI DA: Okay.

DEVOTEE:: It feels as though, Beloved, that when you
relax the conceptual mind, the perceptual mind is felt at
heart.

AVATARA ADI DA: Mm? And that’s a perception.

DEVOTEE: But it also shows you the deepest place to relax
into.

AVATARA ADI DA: Yes, well, what if you do that?

What if you relax that perception, too? In other words,
where there is no contraction whatsoever.

If there’s no contraction,
then you’re not merely experiencing but in some inherent
sense Realizing What Is , because you’re not adding
anything. There’s no “you” in
the active sense affecting What
Is. So you’re not experiencing What Is through any kind of
medium of thought or sensation.

it’s just It.

If you feel It utterly, then the perceptual mind that is
even aware of your own physical form relaxes and there are
no boundaries. And no separate self. [pause]

There are levels of emotion in it that follow, rather
formless-positive emotions,
negative emotions. That’s
just another modification of Energy.

Feel through each of those.

Add absolutely nothing to What Is. [pause]

There’s a kind of anxiety at
the root of it. That’s the ego
knot. Feel through it.

[very long pause, several minutes]

Now do you see how much further you’d
have to go to allow it completely? [Devotees answer that
they do.]

So you have to do the sadhana, you see. [long
pause]

DEVOTEE: Beloved, that was a very extraordinary
experience, because I felt like it began with the conceptual
mind relaxing to begin with, as we have talked about.

AVATARA ADI DA: Mm-hm.

DEVOTEE: And now all kinds of perceptions when we were
just silent there. And then even those perceptions kind of
all being just eliminated down to what felt like was the
contraction at the core here. And at the same time I was
seeing You, just Witnessing You. It was like I could simply
see Who You Are. And I felt like there were moments when I
would just evaporate into That in some sense, that this knot
was forgotten for a split second, but then it was right
there.

AVATARA ADI DA: Mm-hm.

DEVOTEE: It was so strongly there. And I felt, apart from
conceptions and perceptions and so on, that that was simply
going to be there until completely purified by sadhana.
There was no way of thinking it through or perceiving it
through. It was simply there. And I felt what needed to be
surrendered in order for that to be transcended.

AVATARA ADI DA: Yes, if you really feel that knot, you
don’t want to feel it. Hm? But
it is the ground of your ordinary life. You try to distract
yourself from it constantly, through seeking and
self-indulgence and whatnot. But if you really find out
about yourself, find this knot, find what your real
experience is, then you won’t want to put up with that. It
will oblige you to do sadhana, to feel constantly more and
more beyond it.

DEVOTEE: Beloved, I feel this. I feel this need to go
beyond that, what this illusion is, very strongly now. it’s
something that You Gave me this year.

AVATARA ADI DA: Tcha.

DEVOTEE: I feel that it’s such a profound vision to see
life as an illusion. The Beauty of What is other than that,
you know, is just Shining more and more to me.

AVATARA ADI DA: Mm-hm.

But to Realize It you must utterly relinquish your
self-position. So that doesn’t
make life a negative. That just means that that’s what life
is about. Life is inherently, by Law, sadhana, God-wardness,
going beyond separate self.

Generally, people don’t seem
to know anything about that. So by Grace you may become
aware of it, and no longer be willing to be distracted by
your cover-up, to keep yourself somehow or other unaware of
it and becoming very, then, superficial, peripheral, in your
mind, your body, your feelings. But all the time you’re
motivated by it. You re always
seeking something or other. You even forget what the hell
you’re seeking. Or in one moment or other it’s this, that,
or the other particular thing, but always avoiding the
knowledge, the discovery, of your own action that is
producing all of that.

So it is a Grace to find it out. But it is not in itself
Graceful. In other words, it’s not a mere pleasure to find
this knot, you see, if, having found It out, you must do
sadhana. Otherwise, well, maybe you’ll
forget a little bit again by getting very superficial, but
you’ll give
up the opportunity to deal with it.

DEVOTEE: Beloved, I feel that everything in the world is
about that. That is all it’s about, is avoiding that.

AVATARA ADI DA: Avoiding this knowledge of this knot. The
whole worlds avoiding this knowledge of the knot.

DEVOTEE: Everything that I’ve done, even in Your Company
and the practice that You’ve
Given us, I’ve had to come to see that everything I do,
everything I do, everything I do, …

AVATARA ADI DA: Mm.

DEVOTEE: … is intentionally keeping me from feeling
that and going beyond that.

AVATARA ADI DA: Well, truly, you’re only willing to feel
that knot that motivates you when you simultaneously,
Gracefully, discover What Transcends it and are Given a
Wisdom that communicates itself to you so that you know how
to go beyond it. In other words, individuals will
automatically dissociate from this depth unless they can
somehow come to terms with it through the Graceful discovery
of What Transcends it and the finding of Wisdom to deal with
it.

So when all those things coincide, and all of a sudden
you find you’re able to feel this thing that motivates you,
this knot, this disturbance, because you know that
there’s something you can do
about it, then there is the What to Realize that’s beyond
it.

But still the sadhana is a matter of actually dealing
with this dis-ease. In other words, the religious life, this
Way in particular, is not about consolation merely and
distraction and so forth, in the conventional sense, or
ego-supporting sense. The process, moment to moment, goes
beyond the self-contraction, particularly as hearing
awakens. that’s when there is most profound understanding,
knowing of this self-contraction, and that it is your own
activity. But even the sadhana from the beginning is about
going beyond this knot and not avoiding it through
conventional-mindedness and consolation and such.

So the actual process is to stay in place, in this place
of separate self, surrendering to Me, to the point of
self-forgetting Communion with Me, true going beyond it. Its
that from the beginning, not merely after hearing. Even from
the beginning it is so. But you have to understand that
that’s what the sadhana is about, or you will miss the point
and think the religious life is about consolation or mere
behavior and so forth.

You are to stand in that position of that knot, feeling
your own dis-ease, motivation.

DEVOTEE:: it’s so painful just to feel that, though.

AVATARA ADI DA: But it’s there anyway. [DEVOTEE:
Yeah.] So you must embrace this Way and actually go
beyond it.

But that means you have to endure it over the period of
your sadhana. There’s not only
the fundamental knot itself. There are all of it’s
reflections in the body-mind, tendencies of one kind or
another, and so on. You have to endure the purification of
these things by standing in the knot-position, sensitive
to all the limitations of your disposition, and surrender to
Me to the point of forgetting it, relinquishing it, keeping
the faculties all focused in Me, in this Communion Only then
do you make this knot obsolete.

You initially go through a process of purification where
the resultant knots, the different kinds of behaviors,
attitudes, and so forth, that bind you appear. These must be
purified through the initial stages of sadhana, even up to
the “Perfect Practice”. So the initial sadhana is purifying,
and it’s necessarily, then, a matter of being in touch with
this knot in life-difficulties and so on, all tendencies
that would make life difficult. Instead of dramatizing them,
maintain the discipline of this Way and practice this
Communion every moment.

In this manner you will be purified by this Communion
with Me in all those areas that are relaxed, forgotten,
disciplined. So that more and more the practice becomes
extraordinarily concentrated, not in peripheral matters of
experiencing and so on but in the root itself. And then the
“Perfect Practice” can begin. So, once sufficient
purification has occurred, that there is this extraordinary
concentration, then suddenly My Instruction about the
Witness becomes inherently Obvious and is thereafter not
something that can be forgotten.

it’s not a something that can be forgotten. it’s not
merely a thought. it’s a noticing that you never forget. Its
a noticing even beyond the mind.

Now, you can notice it, of course, for a moment, if I
Call you to.

[Beloved Adi Das Voice becomes quiet.] I mean,
isn’t it true, right now? No
matter what is arising, you are the Witness of it?
[Quiet assent from devotees.]

But to Stand in the Witness-Position Itself, truly,
requires purification of attention, and therefore of the
bondage signs in the body-mind altogether, and in life,
experience.

So sadhana is tapas. You must be in the place of the
knot, sensitive to the
limitations in your own disposition, but in every
moment-instead of dramatizing that-disciplining it,
surrendering it to Me, entering into Communion with Me by
forgetting the content that is simply the garbage result of
not living in Truth in the past. So it has to be made
obsolete. All the modifications of the fundamental Reality
must be purified and transcended. What there is to Realize
is the Unconditional Reality, the Reality that is Always
Already the case, even now.

Now you are preoccupied with the modifications of that
Reality, that Divine Reality, distracted by them and
dissociated from the fundamental Reality by this very knot.
You must enter into depth, no superficiality, as you did in
the first part of this consideration. Ordinarily you are not
doing so in the fullest or stable sense, you see. And so as
soon as you relax into your just fundamental feeling, you
feel a knot there. You don’t
simply feel the inherent Love-Bliss of Reality-but you do
feel It, Flowing through it, but you’re experiencing this
knot in the midst of It. To Realize the Divine
Self-Condition, you have to go beyond that knot.

So it’s not really a matter of thinking, accumulating
experience, and so on. it’s a matter of being established in
that place, surrendering to Me to the point of
self-forgetting. And this allows a course of purification
and development that becomes the “Perfect Practice” and
ultimately the seventh stage Demonstration. It is truly an
inevitable process, able to go by it’s appropriate stages
and so forth, unless you step outside the process itself and
become superficial again. But if you stay with the process
itself, as I have Given it to you altogether, then the
development is inevitable.

So if your development in this Way is slow, its because
you’re stepping outside the process. it’s not that the
process itself is retarded.

This is why the hearing matter is so profound and
fundamental to this Way. it’s the foundation of the process
that must develop, because it’s about finding the self-knot,
the self-contraction, finding it as your own activity,
feeling it’s disturbed, ill-at-ease characteristic but also
even in every moment of such sensitivity enjoying the
capability to feel beyond it in this Communion with Me.

So hearing is the first great step beyond the initiation
of Ishta-Guru-Bhakti Yoga. In other words, the first
dimension of the process is concentrated in the awakening of
hearing, because you must enjoy and suffer this capability
to stand in the egoic position and feel beyond it. If you
don’t do that, then if you faked
your way on to level 2 and then beyond and so forth,
you’d simply be involved in a
kind of evolutionary or developmental ego-game. Whereas the
Way of the Heart is about the transcendence of egoity.

DEVOTEE: I saw that, Beloved, when I was Contemplating
You. I was feeling this knot of self-contraction and the
Bliss of Your Beautiful Form at the same time. I felt Your
Current of Energy, and It threw me back into the sense of
the descending Current and something like “the Thumbs”. But
when that happened, I lost sight of the self-contraction and
I also lost sight of the Bliss of Your Form. So there was
something about the …

AVATARA ADI DA: You lost sight of that, too?

DEVOTEE: [Laughs.] When that happened, I just
noticed that I got absorbed in myself rather than in
You.

AVATARA ADI DA: Tcha.

DEVOTEE: That was an example of the fact that I’m not
hearing. Just even that moment of distraction, I could feel
it as such.

AVATARA ADI DA: Mm-hm. Because you’re experiencing it as
an event happening to You. Whereas hearing is about that
unique understanding in which the self-contraction is not
something happening to you. it’s something that you do. Only
when that is discovered have you discovered the capability
itself, so that you can continue doing it. it’s a unique
discovery, most profound discovery. And it’s the basis for
the rest of the Way of the Heart. it’s what allows it to be
a truly ego-transcending process and not merely a
developmental or ego-evolving process.

DEVOTEE: There’s never been
anything like it, Beloved.

AVATARA ADI DA: Tcha.

it’s also for this reason that in the general case the
transition from maturity at level 3, the transition can be
made at that point to the “Perfect Practice”, in the general
case. Because the Way is not an evolutionary process, but
it’s about ego-transcendence, and that’s the fundamental
understanding associated with true hearing. So in general
what follows from there is simply the fundamental process of
seeing Me, not merely having Spiritual experiences in My
Company but “Locating” Me, and then the next step is the
“Perfect Practice”.

So hearing is what allows that unique process. It has
some features to it for which you can find analogies in the
Great Tradition, but fundamentally it is utterly unique.

DEVOTEE: So Beloved, when someone is seeing, that person
never loses sight of Your Form.

AVATARA ADI DA: Yes. you’re entered into My Form, not
merely having experiences in your own apparent form, or
body-mind, you see, but felt beyond that into My Spiritual
Person. Then the Force of My Spiritual Attraction will draw
you into the heart place on the right, and the “Perfect
Practice” can begin.

DEVOTEE: Beloved, I remember one time when I was driving
up to the Mountain Of Attention here when I was living in
Marin. I was a single person at the time. And I believe it
was during the time of the Love of the God-Man Celebration.
I had never seen You before. I was relatively new. Anyway,
for a moment as I was driving my car, I happened to look
across at these two people driving alongside me. They were
an older couple. But it was like You Said, for a moment I
was in the Witness-Position, just for-I don’t
know how long it was. But it just became very clear that it
was the state that I’m never in, or very, very, rarely.

AVATARA ADI DA: it’s not uncommon for people to report
something like this, though, having either occasional or
frequent experiences of that kind.

DEVOTEE: I did recognize that it was through Your Grace
that I was allowed to Witness this.

AVATARA ADI DA: I’ve told you all about My experience
with Sue Ellen Beckman [when Avatara Adi Da was a
teenager], when Id be standing on her doorstep? that’s
similar to what you’re suggesting, Carl. It happened to Me
many times, and it generally would always be in the same
place, too. Id be saying goodnight to her at her house, shed
be about a step above Me, Id be looking at her, and suddenly
there was no familiarity whatsoever. No thinking about
anything, no being a body, no recognizing names, faces, or
what a face is and not only being the Witness as attention
might be, observing, but more than that, such that there was
a direct awareness of the infinite Field that is the True
Domain of the Witness.

So this sense that Carl described and that I have
Described is not an uncommon experience. Spontaneously it
happens to people. Maybe sometimes people don’t
really make much of it or notice very much about it. They
just forget about it. But of course phenomena such as these
are cultivated in this Way. They are a potential, by Grace,
in My Company, all kinds of experiences. So devotees
commonly report experiences, even as beginners, that are in
the domain of the advanced stages of life and the
Witness-Position, and so on. These experiences should
inspire you and give you a sense
of what this Way is all about and so forth.

DEVOTEE: Yes.

AVATARA ADI DA: But you still have to do the sadhana. The
sadhana is staying in touch with your own very action in
this moment and going beyond it, forgetting it in Communion
with Me. If you just look for experiences-so-called
Spiritual experiences, psychic experiences, or blisses in
the body, whatever-you’re becoming superficial again. Those
experiences may come or go, but to look for them, to avoid
the sadhana of staying in place where that knot is and
feeling beyond it is to waste the opportunity of this
Way.

So experiences may come and go. Devotees have
experiences, certainly, and basically they serve to inspire
you. that’s about it. The sadhana is just the same thing
every moment. it’s not boring. it’s the fundamental living
event. But you must persist, moment by moment by moment. To
be renounced in this Way is to be in the disposition of
going beyond the self-contraction. But it’s also to be in
the disposition of renouncing attachment to or search for
conditional experiences. In other words, you persist in the
fundamental sadhana rather than pursue such things.

DEVOTEE: Then doesn’t that
occur quite naturally as a result?

AVATARA ADI DA: Which? The experiences?

DEVOTEE: Mm-hm.

AVATARA ADI DA: Yes, the experiences, as I Say, come
about spontaneously, but They’re not themselves the sadhana
and They’re not something to cling to or to pursue or try to
repeat and so on. So you must persist in the sadhana. Of
course, that means you have to know what this sadhana is.
We’ve been talking about it for
a while before you two [indicating Rod and Julia]
arrived. But the others of you know what we talked
about.

And the conversations we had at Sugar Bowl and the
conversation I had with the Kanyas the other night that was
recorded are other considerations I’ve put to you recently
to serve devotees generally, but also in particular to serve
this Lay Renunciate Order matter. Even up to today, it
hasn’t gone very far. I’m having
to remind everybody what this most profound sadhana is
really all about and Call you all who are considering this
LRO matter to consider all that very seriously.

So it’s no small matter to hear Me.

DEVOTEE: it’s not for fools.

AVATARA ADI DA: No. So for individuals to be accepted,
relative to this LRO matter, for
level 1.3 or level 2, there must be the signs of all this
profundity. People think it’s such a big deal to discipline
themselves, that they want to be patted on the back for a
little bit of straightening themselves out. Sometimes that’s
enough for some people to start thinking grandiose things
about themselves-hearing, seeing, advancement, all the rest.
Whereas it’s not enough. it’s just basic practice. The real
process goes on from there.

DEVOTEE: Beloved, it seems the more profound the sadhana,
the less grandiose peoples presumptions are about
themselves.

AVATARA ADI DA: Mm-hm. Truly, there’s
no one to have any presumptions about.

Another thing I was talking to the Kanyas about the other
night, which was in that recording, I guess some of you
heard it, is some matters particular to the seventh stage of
life. I was talking about the fundamental Nature of Reality,
that simply What Is, is What there Is when everything else
is eliminated. Well, broken down into it’s parts and going
deeper and deeper, you see, when you get to the place you
cant reduce to anything further, that’s What Is. Hm? that’s
Reality.

Every schoolboy, schoolgirl, knows, from a little bit of
science class, that all there is is light. Everything’s
light, energy. it’s part of the common presumption of the
present day. With all of it’s other limitations, this is one
of it’s presumptions. it’s remarkable that it hasn’t
produced any cultural changes yet. [Laughter.]
Everything just seems fleshier and fleshier and more and
more stupid and technified, whereas what is really profound
about all of that is not all this invention you can do,
preoccupation you can create, but this fundamental
communication about reality, that it’s light.

All of this is Light! it’s just one Buzz, Shakti, Hm? The
Divine Radiance. You can look at a form, get into it’s
parts, you know-the human body, lets say. There’s
that fleshiness, and then there’s
the chemical and molecular levels, and atomic levels, and so
forth. Eventually you get to Light, or Energy Itself. And It
cant be reduced to anything else. You cant break It down
into any parts. It doesn’t have
any parts, you see. it’s fundamental Reality.

There’s one other irreducible
Reality for you to discover, likewise, and that is
Consciousness. There are conceptions, perceptions,
blah-blah-blah-blah-blah-blah-blah, hm? At the root of it
all is Consciousness Itself, and It cant be reduced to
anything else. it’s like Light. You cant break It into
parts, and there’s nothing on
the other side of It but Itself. Light and Consciousness are
the same Thing. Generally Consciousness is what you call the
Subjective Part of It, and Light
is the Objective Part of It. But
in reality They are One.

Reality Itself, just simply What Is, cant be reduced to
anything.

It is Self-Existing.

it’s Inherent Nature is Radiance.

And it’s Quality is Love-Bliss, the Very Divine
Person.

I am Speaking to you now.

It is so!

But you are apparently dissociated from Me, from this
Very Condition. The self-knot, the self-contraction, is how
you’re doing that. You are doing it. This is what you must
discover, and this is what hearing is about. By entering
into Communion with Me from that position, moment to moment,
going beyond that knot, you enter into the real process of
the Way of the Heart, Which is about Realizing the Condition
that everybody already knows is True-Light Itself,
Love-Bliss Itself, Consciousness Itself, the One Infinitely
Conscious Buzz that you are experiencing right now!

But, of course, in the midst of It, you are dissociating
from It also, so you feel this knot of contraction. But you
also feel this Pervasive
Presence when you feel the Depth also, in any moment that
you are truly sensitive, anyway.

So the process is about Realizing the Condition That Is,
Realizing My Very Person, by going beyond the self-knot,
utterly. And at first there is a lot of sequence of
purification, as I Said, going beyond distraction by mere
modifications. And then there’s
entering into the profound Depth of the Self-Radiant
Consciousness in the “Perfect Practice”.

Of course, through that process of purification and
Spiritual Awakening, there are many changes that occur in
the personality of the body-mind and so forth that one could
call Spiritualizing. But it’s only with the seventh stage
Awakening in Which there is Inherent and Most Perfect
Identification with the Divine Self-Condition, the
Demonstration of That, through the process of Divine
Recognition, is the actual Incarnating of the Divine, the
actual Manifesting of the Divine.

So the seventh stage Demonstration is one of
progressively absolute Radiance, or “Brightening”. So there
are stages to that Demonstration, ultimately to the point of
No-Noticing, Divine Translation.

DEVOTEE: And must that process be fulfilled once it’s
begun, Beloved? In other words, once the seventh stage
process is begun it will be fulfilled?

AVATARA ADI DA: Inevitably, yes. But it is a matter of
Indifference when it occurs.

it’s not that it has yet to happen, either. The
Realization is already the case. The Samadhi is already the
case.

DEVOTEE: it’s just a Revelation.

AVATARA ADI DA: But it’s Demonstration is in the context
of conditional existence.

DEVOTEE: Transfiguration, Transformation …

AVATARA ADI DA: Yes, Indifference, and ultimately
Unqualified “Brightness”, Divine Translation.

Indifference may sound like a dull thud in the midst of
that. [Laughter.]

DEVOTEE: Not the way You Show it, Beloved.

AVATARA ADI DA: You just sort of go comatose or blank or
something. No, it is beyond the Transfiguring and
Transforming processes. It is immensely Full in the
body-mind. The body-mind is simply Radiant. And that
Radiance is magnified in the Divine Indifference stage to
the point of Divine Translation.

But this “Brightness”, this Realization of the “Bright”,
is the seventh stage Awakening.

So the “Brightness” is what I have Brought to you. that’s
What I Am. that’s Who I Am.

DEVOTEE: So, Beloved, when you’re Divinely Indifferent,
you’re just Residing in Your Love-Bliss and Giving it to
everyone? Is that it?

AVATARA ADI DA: Mm-hm. that’s it.

The inherent Nature of Light, or the Divine Conscious
Bliss, is Radiance. I was discussing this with the Kanyas
the other evening, as a way of Helping everyone to
understand something more fundamental of what the sadhana is
about. It is the sadhana of the “Bright”.

The ordinary human disposition is attached to
two-sidedness. On the one hand there is pleasure and pursued
pleasurable states. On the other hand there is negativity
and a kind of lightlessness, or darkness. And you’re
attached to a body-mind that is mortal, and that makes it
more negative in the balance
than positive.

And so you’re always, by tendency, literally
un-en-lightened, not lighted, not “Bright”, not Radiant.
you’re contracted, not Radiant. Radiance, however, is the
inherent Nature of Reality. So the sadhana is-I’ve used many
metaphors, like “living in My Kiln”-through Communion with
Me, self-forgetting Communion with Me, to Reside in My
Self-Radiant Position. It is to be Radiant, rather than
self-contracted. Every moment of Communion with Me is this.
And then with hearing it becomes more profound, and seeing,
and so on. But it is a “Bright” course of identifying with
My inherently Radiant Condition, and thereby being Radiant,
becoming Radiant, being Radiant yourself rather than
contracted. All of the dark, negative, egoic
“self-possessed”, mortal, and so forth lightlessness in you
must become Radiant instead. The Way is literally the Way of
becoming En-Lightened, becoming Perfectly Identified with
“Brightness”. Me.

So it is a matter of constantly becoming Radiant instead
of contracted. On Melrose Avenue when I first began to
Instruct devotees, I would often use this gesture of closing
the fist and then opening the fist. [Beloved Adi Da
makes the Gesture with His right hand held at the center of
His chest.] Everybody intuitively felt what that meant.
They knew it’s got something to do with energy and all that,
too, you know. They felt all that in My Company.

But what does that mean? You can either be contracted and
therefore dark and dissociated from the Divine
Self-Condition, or you can be Radiant, not only open but
Radiating. Hm? And the more you do this sadhana, the more
obvious the Disposition of Radiance becomes. Even the
“conscious process” becomes a non-verbal feeling beyond
contraction. You can do it in every moment relative
to everything. Instead of being darkened by the tendencies,
you can feel beyond the self-contraction and all the
tendencies.

So those who do this sadhana seriously, for real, become
“Brighter” and “Brighter”, literally. It is Light. It can
even be seen. By some it can be felt. So through this
process of purification, you don’t
just get thinner and thinner and more and more ascetical.
You get Fuller and Fuller, “Brighter” and “Brighter”. Hm?
This is how devotees should understand it. They always think
in terms of getting disciplined and dried up, so they always
want to use something or other to feel good. But, no, this
Way is a “Brightening” Way. It is not about
self-contraction. It is quite the opposite. it’s not about
pleasurelessness, but it is about Happiness Itself, Which is
greater than ordinary pleasure but allows for it also.

DEVOTEE: There’s an Irish
saying, Beloved, describing a very happy person, he was so
happy he was like a cat milking the sun.

AVATARA ADI DA: Milking the sun? Ah, Tcha. that’s
good.

So when making these observations, as I Said, trying to
assist people in this LRO consideration, and as I was
telling people today, My observation-and obviously I’ve been
telling people for a long time-My observation of devotees in
general, including those who apply for this LRO matter,
suggests to Me that They’re struggling with, or otherwise
demonstrating, limitations in the real moment to moment
practice of Ishta-Guru-Bhakti Yoga. And, along with that,
They’re struggling with or otherwise neglecting the various
disciplines.

And the struggling with the disciplines produces drama
and lack of results in the gathering. The absence of true
and moment to moment Ishta-Guru-Bhakti Yoga just shows
itself as mediocre practice altogether.

So these are My observations of the gathering in general.
And I’ve Called for all kinds of positive
changes to be made in all of that, but when I receive
a list of people applying for the Lay Renunciate Order
telling Me that They’re 1.3 or even actually level 2-uh,
well lets put it this way, I generally don’t
find the list convincing. [Laughter.]

DEVOTEE: Delicately put, Lord.

AVATARA ADI DA: And so in conversations such as this one
and similar ones recently, including at Sugar Bowl, I’ve
been trying to get everybody to understand what a profound
process this is, and what it is as a process. There have to
be the signs, the history of right and serious practice, and
there has to be the “Brightening”. And if you’re just
struggling with even what is Ishta-Guru-Bhakti Yoga and how
to do it and only remembering it sometimes and likewise
arguing about the diet or whatever else, and throwing
yourself into, you know, blithely into the bondage or
“bonding”, then how much even of listening is there? How
much of real sadhana?

The profound incident of what you could call hearing in
My case was insanity . I mean, all these people who are
declaring themselves to have heard Me-when was that day?
[Laughs.] It is an extraordinary Realization. I have
no doubt that devotees generally even have some sense of
this understanding, because they have My Instruction about
it and They’re doing sadhana with some degree of energy and
attention. And so they do see things getting clearer in
various aspects of their lives, you know. You can say this
about devotees in general. They feel less aberrated about
this, that, and the other thing over a period of time and so
forth, so that, in other words, They’re being purified of
some aspects of their ego-routine and seeing that the Wisdom
works, the Way works. And because they can even explain that
much change in their lives in the language of understanding,
then they imagine they’ve heard
Me, because they could describe it as understanding and
self-contraction and avoidance of relationship and “I
don’t do it now anymore with my
girlfriend”, or whatever it is, “or at least not so much”.
And so they may think that itself is hearing, because they
can describe it in the language of self-understanding.

it’s the little bit of the Law that casts out so much
fear you feel good about yourself, you see. But you have to
get the whole Law to hear Me. Hm? And not just the little
bit.

DEVOTEE: Beloved, that’s what I felt after that
feeling-Contemplation that we did of You earlier.

AVATARA ADI DA: Mm. This evening.

DEVOTEE: Mm-hm. That there was such a profound difference
between, you could describe what You were Initiating us into
at that time in the same language …

AVATARA ADI DA: Mm-hm.

DEVOTEE: … that we read all the time in Your
Instruction.

AVATARA ADI DA: Mm-hm.

DEVOTEE: But the difference in the understanding of it
between the exoteric understanding of it …

AVATARA ADI DA: Mm-hm.

DEVOTEE: … at the level that You were just Describing
and the esoteric understanding of it that You Gave all of us
earlier tonight is so profound. it’s just an amazingly
profound initiation.

AVATARA ADI DA: Tcha.

DEVOTEE: Night and day. Night and day.

DEVOTEE: Beloved, I felt there was a tacit moment of
recognition and a change in what You just Said, where we
tend to feel good about ourselves and maybe have a good
feeling and so then imagine that’s hearing.

AVATARA ADI DA: Mm-hm.

DEVOTEE: And then when You asked us to feel our anxiety,
to feel the anxiety there …

AVATARA ADI DA: Mm.

DEVOTEE: And right then it snapped into something
entirely different, which was just no bullshit.

AVATARA ADI DA: Mm.

DEVOTEE: And it’s not this, you know, ideal that’s going
on but this actual total recognition, conscious recognition,
of the contraction and of Your total Radiance and the Energy
that You Are. And I could feel that when I recognized that,
that it was just a matter of always surrendering into that.
Whenever this is felt …

AVATARA ADI DA: Mm.

DEVOTEE: … surrendering into that, and then it more and
more becomes that.

AVATARA ADI DA: And not surrendering merely
superficially.

DEVOTEE: it’s not superficial at all.

AVATARA ADI DA: Surrendering from that very place of the
knot. And that’s the unique hearing capability. Hm?

Now, before that capability truly awakens, as I Said, you
can make use of self-understanding as I’ve Communicated it
to you and various aspects of the sadhana, and be purified
of some aspects of the behavioral and emotional and mental
aspects of your life, and feel good about that-and should,
of course. it’s positive. But it’s not hearing. it’s not
itself the sign of hearing. Hearing is this fundamental
responsibility. You see?

DEVOTEE: Beloved, this is the most unique difference
between Your Teaching and all traditional teachings of all
time.

AVATARA ADI DA: Tcha.

DEVOTEE: In that those traditions generally are about our
always experiencing this not feeling good.

AVATARA ADI DA: The traditions are based on the
self-contraction. They’re based on a search generated by
that.

DEVOTEE: The great path of return.

AVATARA ADI DA: Yes. So it’s a progress of stages, not to
the seventh, but of developmental stages, ego-motivated, and
producing states that are ultimately egoic because they
depend on conditions. But the Way of the Heart is not that.
And I’ve been making this point over and over again since
the day I began to Instruct in 1972, and even before then.
The experiences are not it!

And then I didn’t just Say
that that’s so. There was the Garbage and the Goddess time,
and all kinds of other times, for that matter, in which
people experienced spontaneously all kinds of phenomena
associated with all those developmental stages of life. And
then I would constantly point out, “that’s not it. But what
are you doing?” Re-sensitizing them to themselves , to their
own action that’s producing the search for those experiences
or wanting to cling to them or wanting to repeat them or
make the Way into a process for achieving such things. it’s
not at all that.

I’ve Communicated to you the uniqueness of this Way from
the very beginning, but your grasping of it is slow. All
experiencing, and all thinking for that matter, all
conditionality, is a development of the self-contraction.
it’s a development from a place of anxious dissociativeness,
the ego, wanting to expand it’s sphere to feel better and
better. And ultimately what will it discover in it’s own
utter dissolution? The Divine Condition is to be discovered.
But It is simply Reality from the beginning.

So the Way of the Heart is not about that developmental
course but about the direct process, in every moment, of
Realizing the Divine Self-Condition, going beyond egoity and
Realizing That. that’s what this Communion with Me is about
from the beginning, then-the direct gesture of going beyond
the ego-knot rather than just surrendering with and as the
body-mind, founded on the ego, to have experiences.

I see still even many devotees showing the sign, even as
beginners coming for My Darshan, that what They’re supposed
to be there doing is some kind of working on themselves to
gain some experience for themselves. Whatever that might be.
Often it is obviously shown even in their bodies as wanting
to experience energy, Spiritual signs in the body-mind and
so on. it’s not that such experiences do not and will not
arise in the Way, but they are not the point. They are not
it. They are not Realization. Therefore, the process of the
Way is not a matter of seeking such things. The process is
always the one of directly transcending the ego-knot, moving
out of the position of self-contraction into Radiance, My
Condition.

that’s the Way of the Heart from the beginning. Do you
see clearly the difference? [Devotees confirm that they
do.] And hearing is simply the establishment, on the
basis of all the foundation practice, the establishment of
this capability, most direct, with fullest comprehension,
fullest responsibility, so that you can do that sadhana, of
going beyond the self-knot, under all the circumstances that
may arise in the developing stages of life. They will not
then become ego-reinforcing. They will not be deluding. They
will simply be purified, like all other tendencies, and
you’ll move on to the “Perfect
Practice”.

So I’m always trying to find more ways to put it to you.
And so you have this Literature now that is very full, and I
hope it is fully Communicative. [Devotees praise
Beloveds Source-Texts.] Additionally, conversations
still continue from time to time.

DEVOTEE: Like tonight.

AVATARA ADI DA: Like tonight, yes. I’m always Working,
and therefore always Working to have this point become
clear, and have this understanding become clear, have the
sadhana become clear to you so that you can do the sadhana
better and know the difference between the signs that must
be there for real transitions and notions that you all may
develop otherwise somehow, that are less than that.

So I’m happy to entertain this possibility of a Lay
Renunciate Order, but these matters I’ve been putting to you
all during this last week in particular are the measure you
must make of yourselves.

Are you doing this sadhana itself that I am Describing to
you, that I have Given you? Are you really practicing
Ishta-Guru-Bhakti Yoga moment to moment? Do you, if you’re
claiming to have heard Me, stand in the position of the
self-knot and right there-that’s your action, you see?-feel
beyond it in Communion with Me through self-surrendering,
self-forgetting practice? Are you doing that, or not? And
you must really examine yourselves and see if it’s so. And
if it’s not so, well, it’s not 1.3 yet, but hopefully you
know better than before what the sadhana requires and are
more serious about it.

I’m not looking to not get a Lay Renunciate Order out of
this “consideration”. I’m looking to actually get one, but I
have to have the goods.