Avatar Adi Da Samraj

People are basically un-Happy, I have noticed. [Laughter.] Spiritual practice and religious belief or religious commitment are traditionally proposed as a means for attaining Happiness, but the instructions associated with a spiritual Teaching are received by the ego, this knotted being that wants to own it, to use it, and to be made Happy by it. You think that you can seek Happiness and find it. Thus, your search for Happiness is itself a confession of un-Happiness. I am here to tell you that you cannot Realize Happiness by persisting in un-Happiness or the method of un-Happiness. All seeking is the expression, the method, and the practice of un-Happiness.

It is not enough that what I am saying is true. It must also be understood. You must observe yourself, observe all of the means represented by your life and see that you are always un-Happy, always trying to become Happy. That being the case, you can ask yourself "Where is Happiness?" You might well ask! [Laughter.] But the process considered in the essays you have heard today is not a search for Happiness. Come to Me, sit with Me, live with Me, listen to My Argument, observe yourself, begin to understand. See Me, feel the Spiritual Divine and Awaken in My Company, in this community of practice. All of that begins to become the location of Happiness.

These essays are not suggesting that, un-Happiness being the case, you should go and find Happiness. I am not telling you who are un-Happy to do something to become Happy. You must first understand your un-Happiness. You already want to do something about it. You already want to seek Happiness. Instead, I ask you to consider this un-Happiness, consider this moment, this process, this activity, this self. If you will listen to Me to the point of hearing, to the point of understanding this consideration, you will also begin to "see" Me, you will also begin to become Awakened to the Spiritual Divine, you will begin to become converted to Happiness rather than the search for It.

All beings are always already Happy. You always know, at this very moment you know exactly, what it would be to look and feel and be and act completely Happy. Yet your attention is wandering from that Happiness, wandering into the self-contraction, into the not-self or the objects of self-contraction, the dilemma, the problem, the troubles, the fear, sorrow, anger, mortal pursuits, obsessions, desires, consolations of mind, emotion, body. That is why you are un-Happy. Clearly, Happiness is not to be attained by meditating on un-Happiness (or the self-contraction), but just as clearly it is not to be attained by trying to protect yourself from feeling un-Happiness.

Happiness is presently the case. In this moment you are already Happy. Sitting with Me, locate this Happiness. Feel where it is that you are now Happy. Look for it in your toes, in your fingers, in your shirt, in your head. Look for it in the chakras, your stomach, your desires, your wife, your husband, your relations, your pain, your pleasure. Find it. You are Happy. Where are you being Happy? Where is the actual feeling of Happiness? Simply locate it and meditate on it, feel it. Come into My Company and hear Me argue this Teaching, which is basically a criticism of un-Happiness, a call for you to observe the mechanism of your un-Happiness, so that you will not then go and try to become Happy, but will rather, having understood un-Happiness, become capable of locating Happiness.

The advanced practice of the Way of Adidam depends upon this hearing and seeing. You cannot fully practice Ruchira Avatara Bhakti Yoga, or the conscious process, conductivity, service, the disciplines of money, food, and sex, or any other aspect of this Way without listening to the point of hearing, without observing to the point of understanding the mechanism of un-Happiness or self-contraction, and without seeing, or being turned about, or being converted in your attention to Happiness rather than un-Happiness.

You tend to propose spiritual life on the basis of your un-Happiness. You have some problem and you want to be relieved of it. You want spiritual life to be the proposition of a method whereby you will be relieved of the problem of your life. Such a process might be proposed. Traditionally, it is proposed. In fact methods for release from un-Happiness are proposed by every condition, every moment, every circumstance, every being. Every moment of existence represents a proposition to you of a way to become Happy. It is not only religion and esoteric spirituality that are in the business of giving people methods for becoming Happy. Everybody is in this business, everything is in this business.

The fulfillment of all of those efforts, the fulfillment of desire in any form, is not God-Realization. The processes of our existence are all developments of our un-Happiness until we are Enlightened — until we understand the egoic self, are established in the Divine Being, and so recognize the universe. Until then, every moment of existence is the play upon the self-knot, the knot of the heart, the self-contraction, and we are bewildered and un-Happy.

There is no object high or low, in any dimension of the realm of Nature, the attainment of which is Happiness. Brahman or God or Happiness is not an object that can be attained. To Realize God, Truth, Brahman, or Happiness we must transcend the self-knot and our motivation toward objects of all kinds based on that contraction. The spiritual process in the Way of Adidam is not merely another form of what people are always already doing (which is the motivation of un-Happiness toward the goal of Happiness). If it were, it would be very much like having a meal when you are hungry, having sex when you desire it, or any version of the ritual of achieving a goal.

The true spiritual process is not a version of the conventional ritual of the body-mind or of the ego. The true spiritual process is based upon understanding the mechanism of egoity, embodiment, self, and self-contraction. If you — you as this self-contraction — ask Me how to Realize Happiness, basically I have nothing to say to you. There is no way for you to become Happy. You simply are not Happy, and that is what you must recognize first.

Understand your un-Happiness. Then you will be capable of locating Happiness, and, having located Happiness, you will be capable of practicing the Way of Adidam, which is nothing but the devotion of life to Happiness. The practices of this Way are not methods for attaining Happiness, but they are the expressions of Happiness. The disciplines of money, food, and sex are not a way to become Happy. Discipline is difficult enough — why should we also burden it with the obligation to make us Happy! [Laughter.]

The first thing you encounter in My Company, this Satsang with Me, is My Teaching Argument. It has many, many forms, but fundamentally it is a criticism of self-contraction or the mechanism of un-Happiness, and it is a criticism of all the things that you want to do about your un-Happiness. It is a criticism of your entire life. No congratulations whatsoever come to you through confrontation with My Teaching and with Me. Why should you be congratulated? You are un-Happy! Un-Happiness is a common attainment. [Laughter.] Why should you want to settle for your present state? Why should you want to be congratulated in it? You have not even begun and already you want to be acknowledged for having attained It.

The ego, Narcissus, the self-knot, is always defending itself, always seeking isolation and immunity from relations. The fundamental condition of the Way of Adidam is Satsang, or the relationship with Me. The fundamental condition of existence is participatory relationship with the Divine, or the obligation of self-transcendence. We do not exist in isolation. The Divine Being, Person, or Self is not within us in isolation. The Divine Person is the Condition within and from which "I" is contracting. The Divine Self is the Identity from which we are contracting in our egoity, our independence, our conventional individuality, our isolation, and our inwardness.

People read My Teaching and they want to be the Gurus of others. They think about My Teaching a little bit and they want to be famous as Spiritual Masters. They manage to keep their physical life somewhat straight for six months and they want to be regarded as Avatars! Life is foolishness. This is no time, in any case, to be tolerant of foolishness. The world is mad, and these are dreadful times. Things are not going to be easier in the years ahead. The spiritual process has always been lived in difficult times. Therefore, the spiritual process tolerates no fool. The spiritual process itself will spit you out. It is not an easy attainment, but a profoundly difficult affair. Even what you have listened to today has been heard by only a fraction of the human race in all of history. The opportunity to practice is extremely rare, and the fulfillment of practice is practically unknown.

In some sense you could say this life is hell. In our religious language we talk about what could happen to you after death: you can go to heaven, you can go to purgatory and get cleaned up, or you can go to hell. And then having gone to purgatory or to a temporary hell, perhaps you will be lucky enough to be born as a human being and devote yourself to the spiritual process. Looking at it in another way, you could say this birth itself is hell. This is one of the hells, because this is a domain of un-Happiness. What else is hell but a place of self-obsession, bewilderment without release? This is a tormented place, not tormented by constant fires and people gnawing on your skull, although these things also happen. [Laughter.]

But the nature of this hell is that we are self-possessed. We are born in un-Happiness and we do not transcend it readily. We constantly pursue Happiness through all kinds of incredibly complex means, and we never attain It. In the entire history of this mortal gathering there have been occasional individuals who have actually Realized (to one degree or another) the nature of existence, the Condition, the Reality, the Divine Nature and Domain, not simply as a form of belief, but fully, bodily, utterly, transcendentally. Such Great Ones become a mechanism in Nature that serves the possibility of Awakening in others.

If Spiritual Realizers did not turn about and Teach, this would truly be a hell instead of being like a hell. It would truly be a hell if there were no possibility of Enlightenment, if there were no Teaching, no Spiritual Masters, no sacred Way, no sacred community, no capacity for understanding or self-transcendence. It is true the world is always struggling against such possibilities. The world does not like Spiritual Masters, Spiritual Teachings, spiritual communities. Neither do individuals like these things. Thus, those who take up the Way of Adidam struggle with Me, struggle with My Teaching, the community, the institution, animating the endless affair of brutishness, betrayals, attacks, plain old neurosis, non-service. The world in its hellish form is at war with Happiness.

My Teaching is Wisdom about un-Happiness and the offering of the Transmission of Happiness, the offering — to everyone who will hear and see and take up the Way of Adidam — of every possible advantage that can be given to beings born in this dimension. Yes, the Teaching is good, practice is good, community is good, you as a practitioner of My Teaching are good, but it is even better if there are the Spiritual Master, mature devotees, the Sanctuaries, the means of Blessing, if the Transmission is Radiating through all of time and space through My Blessing-Work. This is much better. And in fact it is those more profound forms of Transmission that are the true Treasures, the real or ultimate means upon which all other Agencies are based.

You must understand that this Communion is not a religion business or a cultic haven where the neurotics of the world may dramatize their suffering. The world is already a haven for the dramatization of suffering. The institution of Adidam is simply a vehicle for My Teaching and Blessing Work, a means whereby the Teaching is made available to as many people as possible, a means whereby a cultural gathering of practitioners becomes the context of practice rather than isolation, a means whereby Sanctuaries can be created and empowered and preserved and made accessible, a means whereby the Spiritual Master can be maintained as Spiritual Master and not some worldly functionary and made accessible to those who will practice.

My Teaching is a serious and profound matter, and you must study it profoundly and devote your entire life to it. The process is most difficult, as any creative process is difficult. And because the Way of Adidam is the greatest process of all, it is therefore the most difficult and the most relevant. All other difficulties or forms of tapas [heat] are simply expressions of this one fundamental tapas, the heat of the spiritual process. And what is the spiritual process ultimately? It is a matter of keeping attention in Happiness rather than in un-Happiness, keeping attention in My Well of Happiness, the Condition, the present Locus in which My Happiness, My Current of Love-Bliss, is actually felt, and on that basis developing the various aspects of the Way of Adidam: real meditation, conductivity, service, and self-discipline.

Many people who are beginners and many who remain beginners even for a very long time are struggling with the life-disciplines, service, conductivity, and meditation. They are struggling, but actually these aspects of the practice are only the remote cause of that struggle. Such people really are struggling with disciplining the ego, with their resistance to the ritual of purification and devotion. They are trying to practice without first establishing the foundation. As seekers, as un-Happy people seeking Happiness, they are trying to practice. They are not founding their practice in surrendering the faculties to Me. Therefore, they can only imitate certain of the outer, behavioral features of practice, but they cannot really practice.

You can practice the Way of Adidam only if you are Happy, through your surrender to Me. Therefore, I have said many times, and I say it again: Come to Me when you are already Happy. Do not come to Me un-Happy. There is nothing I can do about it. If you want to live an un-Happy life, then that is your business, your concern, your karma. I am not your parent. You must become interested enough in the transcendence of all of that to practice the Way.

Why struggle with Me? Why struggle with My Teaching? Why struggle with this Communion? If you do not want to practice, then do not practice. If you want to live as you are tending to live, then go and live as you tend to live. Choose it if you will. But if you cannot choose your destiny as it is, then consider My Teaching and understand.

Hear Me. Awaken to the Spiritual Reality in this Company, take up the practice seriously, become a serious person, not part of the mass of molecular machinery, the robot world of body-minds.

The Way of Adidam is serious, I am serious, this Communion is serious, and we are struggling to preserve our Communion and to be of service to people in these difficult times. What you are offered therefore is this relationship. I am here. I am present in the world. I am no longer active in the ordinary sense, but I am present here.

My business with you all is not to give talks anymore. Your questions are problems, and the Way of Adidam is not a solution to your problems. The Way of Adidam is based on the Happiness that is Transmitted in My Company. You should approach Me and use Me for that Transmission. You have the opportunity to sit here with Me — do you feel the Happiness, the Current of Happiness?

The greater the force of your attention, your participation, your submission here, the more profound the realization of that Current becomes, the more it attracts attention, the more it becomes the foundation of your life, the more you become capable of the discipline of service, the more you become capable of adapting the body-mind to that Current, breathing it, feeling it, relaxing into it, the more you become capable of keeping attention in that Well of Happiness. To attract your attention to the Current of Happiness is the purpose of My birth.

Everything is un-Happiness except the location of Happiness. All other pursuits are contraction from Happiness. Therefore, you must found your existence on Happiness. You must understand the mechanism whereby you become un-Happy and constantly locate this Bliss. And then practice, make use of My Company personally in the form of all the Agencies that I have established here, make use of the capacity to enter into the sphere of My Influence through meditation. I am manifesting in this appearance, but I am that Current.

How much of it you receive or notice in any moment depends on how great the vessel of your gift. If you hold up a thimble, even if the ocean fell on your head, you would have only that much! [Laughter.] Why defend yourself in My Company? Why defend yourself in the Company of God? Why blame God? Why make God into your parent and then play adolescent, dependence-independence games with God? God is not outside you making you, God is this Current, this Nature, this Being, of which everything, including your apparent self, is a modification, an unnecessary play, transparent when we recognize it.

If you are thinking, is that locating this Happiness? Is Happiness in your thinking? Are any of these thoughts Happy? [Laughter.] You are already feeling this Current, this Happiness. Where is the feeling? Even in a moment when you are physically in pain, emotionally in pain, mentally distressed, even in that moment you can locate this Current of Bliss, of Happiness. Even in such a moment you are already Happy. That Current that you may realize [as already present] at any moment is the link to the spiritual process.

In addition to realizing that link, finding that Happiness, in every moment you must understand the mechanism whereby you forget Happiness, whereby you contract from it. You must understand more and more and locate this Current consistently. Then over time it will begin to saturate the entire body-mind and the entire world. It will magnify itself. Its extent will begin to be shown. This is the work of Transmission that cooperates with you in your practice, your surrender, your hearing and seeing. The mere sense of Happiness that you may now contact is not itself ultimate Enlightenment. It is Enlightenment simply. It is the basis of existence, not the end of existence nor the goal.

The Way of Adidam is based on Enlightenment from the beginning. Having realized this basis, now you must practice, and if you will practice this Happiness, then its Siddhi [Spiritual power] will be magnified, and you will pass through and beyond conditions of experience and knowledge that belong to the lesser stages of life, the first six stages of life, in this good Company. If you are not presently locating this Current, then you are unconsciously and literally forgetting It, contracting from It. You must consciously associate attention with this spiritual Current, or Blissful Being, or you will unconsciously withdraw from It.

This is why I call meditation the conscious process. Real meditation is not something that goes on magically or subliminally, like the movement of energy through the nervous system. You must devote attention to that Current, to Me. You must randomly exercise the body in submission to My Current through the parts of conductivity, feeling into My Current from the heart in all directions to Infinity, relaxing bodily from base to crown in My Current, breathing in a descending and ascending circuit, breathing and circulating My Current bodily and expressing the bodily Realization of the Spiritual Reality through service and the life of equanimity, the lawful conservation, the creative discipline of the body-mind, which is not a matter of conventional asceticism or arbitrarily taking on behavior patterns that are conventional or unconventional. It is a matter of a lawful, creative, spiritual process brought to bear on the functions of existence.

My Current can be felt throughout the nervous system, circulating in the crown and the bodily base. It can be felt in primary functional centers of the nervous system, in the centers of the body-mind associated with the first three stages of life or the more gross levels of existence, or the fourth stage or the fifth, the subtle brain centers and such. Ultimately My Current is felt rising up in the right side of your heart, between the right side of the heart and the crown.

But in your devotion to Me, your enquiry or your recognition in the midst of that devotion, you realize that Current, that Nature, that Being prior to all conditional references. That One is neither inside nor outside. I am not "self," neither am I "not-self," I am not within, I am not without, I am not up or down. I am not located anywhere but in Myself. When you have transcended all the centers of the possible location of attention in this devotion to Me, then you enter into the seventh stage of life wherein everything that arises is recognizable in this Divine Being.

In the seventh stage of life, wherein you are utterly established in a condition of Identification with Me, Who is the Self of your self, you recognize the Condition of objects and of the realm of Nature in that same Self. And as you persist in this process of recognition, you are Transfigured, Transformed by this free Bliss. But also the seeds of the motion of attention, or the contraction of the Universal Being, fulfill themselves and are not regenerated.

Divine Enlightenment is establishment in the Self or in Amrita Nadi, the Current that stands between the right side of the heart and the place above the crown of the head while that Current also flows or rotates in the circumstance of the body-mind and its relations. That is Divine Enlightenment. In the midst of that Bliss you recognize conditional existence in every moment of its arising, and the seeds that move attention into the grosser and subtler planes of this circuit gradually are released.

Then, in Divine Translation there is no descent or ascent. What there is in that case is to be Realized. It is the end of embodiment, and beyond it nothing whatsoever can be said that makes the slightest sense, except to say that it is the Ultimate Unqualified Realization of the Divine Reality and Domain. It is simply utter identification with Happiness, with Me, without the slightest qualification.

The Way of Adidam, therefore, is not to seek Happiness but to locate it or identify with it and practice Happiness, by locating Me. If you do so, then this Happiness will magnify itself and become Divine Enlightenment. If you will not practice Happiness, you will also never Realize it. Either you practice Happiness or you practice un-Happiness. You pay Me now or you pay Me later! [Laughter.] Now do you have some fundamental understanding of this principle?

DEVOTEES: Yes.