What
arises falls, what appears disappears, what
expands contracts. Every action has an equal
and opposite reaction. Neither the expansion
nor the contraction, neither the action
nor the reaction, is Truth. It is simply
expansion, contraction, action, reaction.
There is the dream, and there is sleep.
What is called the "expansion of consciousness"
is not Truth. It is the stimulation of perception.
Why must you seek Truth by this expansion?
The reason you feel you must pursue the
Truth with it is because you are suffering.
You are already suffering, whether you expand
your mind or not. Even if you succeed in
expanding your mind, you suffer. The one
who feels the mind expand is the same one
who feels the mind is not expanding or is
even contracting. He or she is a contraction,
a dilemma, a sense of separate existence.
That is the motivation to this search. The
sense of contraction is the motivation to
expand the mind. Simply to experience is
to expand the mind. It increases the objects
of the living consciousness. But all of
those objects of the living consciousness,
consciousness — high or low, beautiful or
not — imply the same status of the living
consciousness, which is the separate self
sense.
If you see one thing, say, a red balloon,
"I" is seeing this red balloon.
If you see every thing, "I" is
seeing it. "I" is seeing the seventh
heaven. "I" is seeing dog shit
on the street. It is always the same. The
contraction is motivating the search. The
separate self sense is its form. Understand
this. That understanding Realizes Truth.
Truth has nothing whatever to do with expanding
the mind or not expanding the mind. Truth
is not a form of experience. The pursuit
of mind-expansion is a form of the search,
dependent on separation, motivated by the
contraction. And successful expansion does
nothing whatever to the motivating condition
itself. The separate one only acquires various
objects for itself thus manufacturing
a feeling of security, an illusion of survival.
But it cannot survive. It has no independent
and formal existence.
"I"
is felt as a limited capsule of life-energy,
surrounded by mystery. It is like a time
bomb it has a certain amount of time
until it terminates. If you experience a
great deal with it, it burns out quickly.
If you throw it off a cliff, it smashes.
"I" assumes itself to be this
limited little thing under the conditions
of life. And people manipulate it from the
point of view of whatever strategy they
happen to choose. But always this original
assumption is your suffering, your limitation.
It is really a simple matter. The usual
person thinks: "This body and its psyche
are dying. This world is dying. Everyone
is suffering, everyone is seeking. There
is mortality, there is frustration, and
limitation." But none of that is Truth.
Those interpretations are not Truth. The
world itself is not Truth — nor is life,
nor psyche and body, nor death, nor experience.
No event is (itself) Truth. All that arises
is an appearance to Consciousness Itself,
a modification of the Conscious Light that
is Always Already the Case. All of this
is a dream, if you like. It is an appearance
in Consciousness Itself. Truth is Very Consciousness
(or the One and Only Conscious Light) Itself.
Truth is to all of this what the waking
state is to the dreaming state. If you awaken,
you do not have to do anything about the
condition you may have suffered or enjoyed
in the dream state. What happened within
the dream is suddenly not your present condition.
It is of no consequence any longer, once
you are awake. If you persist in dreaming,
and your point of view remains that of the
dreamer and his or her role within the dream,
then your possible actions are numberless.
But none of them will work to awaken you.
They will simply occupy you in the dream.
They will modify the dream state — but no
action in the dream is the equivalent of
waking. There are simply forms of fascination,
of occupation, of seeking — until you awaken.
Truth is simply Waking, No-illusion. Truth
is not a condition within this appearance.
Truth has nothing whatsoever to do with
the mind, regardless of whether the mind
is expanded or contracted.
Perception is simply what it obviously is.
There is no reason for any perception to
change in order for Truth to Appear as a
consequence. The dream does not have to
be changed in any manner for the waking
person to feel that he or she is awake.
Nothing has to happen to the dream. Only
waking is necessary. To one who is awake,
the dream is obvious. There is no illusion,
no suffering, no implication, regardless
of what appeared in the dream a blue
god, a dirty old drunk, the gorilla of death.
It makes no difference. It makes a difference
within the circumstances of the dream, to
those who are dreaming. But to the one who
is awake, it no longer makes any difference.
Perception, waking consciousness, is obvious
if you are truly Awake. If you are asleep
if you do not understand, if understanding
evades you there is nothing obvious
about this at all. Then life is a very serious
predicament very serious. What do
you have in such a case? "A few more
years and everything is dead." It does
not make any difference what the drama is,
or how you manage to amuse yourself during
that time.
There is One Who is wide Awake while He
Appears in the dream of ordinary waking
life. By His Mere Presence, by not supporting
the dream, He Awakens others. He is the
True Guru, Who I Am. The significance
of My Avataric Divine Work is not in anything
I do within
the dream. I simply do not support it. I
do not live as it. I do not believe it.
I do not take it seriously. Apparently,
I can feel and act as I please. I persist
in the common or ordinary manner. But I
do not support the dream. I do not live
from its point of view. I do not live its
structure to others. I do not live this
contraction to others, this avoidance of
relationship, this separate self sense.
Simply because I live in this manner, others
tend to become Awake. But while they are
Awakening, they persist in dreaming to various
degrees. Forms of the dream persist. The
search persists. Often, they get a little
distance from it, it seems to break up at
times, seems to disappear. It becomes vague,
it becomes uninteresting, it becomes unserious,
it becomes serious again. They play.
You are just beginning to wake up. Satsang
with Me is the dream wherein I Appear. Now
it is as if you are beginning to wake up
in your room. You are in bed, and it is
morning. There are a few things you begin
to notice which indicate that you are in
another state. Those who are Waking in Truth
begin to notice something. They begin to
recognize the signs. They begin to recognize
the activity of dreaming. They begin to
sense something very unusual about Me. Before
their actual Awakening, I appear as all
kinds of things to them. I suggest all kinds
of fantastic things. All the things they
can imagine while they dream everything
unbelievable is what they think I
am. I may appear to be extraordinary, a
doer of famous things. I may appear playfully
as that. But I am simply Awake. Nothing
is happening. Nothing has been accomplished.
All I have been is Awake.
I am like the sunlight in the morning. I
intensify the light of morning until you
awaken. Until the light awakens a person,
even the Light of Consciousness Itself,
the person continues to dream, tries to
survive within the dream, manipulates himself
or herself within the dream, pursues all
kinds of goals, searches, none of which
Awaken you. All ordinary means only console
a person and distract him or her within
the dream.
I
Myself, the One Who would Awaken you, am
not an individual within the dream. I Am
your Very Consciousness, Your Very Self-Condition.
I Am the Real, the Conscious Light, the
True Waking State, the True Divine Heart
Breaking Through the force of dreaming.
It is not that you are some poor person
who needs some other poor person to help
you out. It may appear to be so within the
dream, but, essentially, I am your own Most
Prior Self-Nature Appearing within the dream
to Awaken you. I Am your Awakening,
and your Always Already Conscious State.
Even while dreaming, you may experience
suggestions of waking. You may become momentarily
aware of the body, momentarily aware of
lying in bed. For a moment, the images of
the dream may stop. Just so, I Myself (within
the world) Am truly your Real Consciousness.
My Avatarically-Born Person in the world
is like an image in a dream. But, in fact,
I am more like your own moments of wakening
awareness that move you into the waking
state. I am not some separateness, some
individual. I Am Consciousness Itself, Reality
Itself.
No images. Images, blackness, brilliance
all these things are appearances
to Consciousness. They are objects. Nothing
needs to happen to them for Consciousness
Itself to exist. Nothing needs to happen
within the dream to verify Waking. Waking
is its own Fullness. Once one is Awake,
anything can appear. True Awakeness is the
foundation of this world-appearance. It
is its support, It is its Very Nature. Consciousness
Itself is not antagonistic to this world
or to any form within it. Consciousness
Itself is the Truth of all appearance, disappearance,
or non-appearance. Even when Consciousness
Itself is Realized, human life continues.
Perhaps human life is enjoyed even more.
It is used. It becomes functional to an
extraordinary degree.
The usual man or woman barely functions
at all a couple of good days a month.
The rest of the time the person is either
trying to be healed or exploiting himself
or herself, trying to get straight, trying
to work, trying to cope. Every now and then
there is a little clarity, when the person
just stands up, walks across the room, opens
the door, and goes outside. The rest of
the month is spent dreaming and thinking,
when just to walk across the room is part
of an enormous search, an unkind adventure,
an approach to victory against odds. But
all the person is doing is simple things,
simple functions.
One who understands, who is Awake, functions
very well under the conditions that appear.
Those conditions may be forms of this waking
world, or they may be subtle forms, subtle
worlds, any of the possible forms. Under
all conditions, understanding is appropriate.
There is no experience, no state, that is
itself identical to Truth. Just so, the
Truth is not different from any experience
or state. Truth is the Truth of all
of that.
I am a kind of irritation to My devotees.
You cannot sleep with a dog barking in your
ear at least most people cannot!
There is some sort of noise to which everyone
is sensitive, and it will keep them awake.
I am a constant Wakening Sound. I am always
annoying people with this demand to stay
Awake, to Wake Up. I do not seduce them
within the dream. I do not exploit their
seeking. I am always offending their search
and their preference for unconsciousness.
I show no interest in all of that. I Criticize
is mightily. I am always doing something
prior to the mind. I always act to return
you from the mind, from fascination.
I am not what the dreamer thinks I am. The
dreamer thinks I must have a certain appearance,
say and do certain things, have certain
magical powers, produce certain magical
effects. The dreamer associates all kinds
of glorious and magical things with Me.
But I am always performing the Awakening
act, putting an end to the dream. Therefore,
I do not satisfy the seeker. Those that
come to be satisfied are offended. They
are not satisfied. They feel empty, they
do not feel their questions have been answered,
they do not feel they have been shown the
Way. They came for some "thing".
Within the dream, the dreamer is always
being satisfied by the Guru. The dreamer
climbs up on the top of the mountain, and
the Guru is sitting in a cave. The Guru
hands the dreamer a little silver box. When
the dreamer opens the box, there is a blue
diamond in it. The dreamer takes it out
and swallows it. Then the dreamer's body
explodes into a million suns, and the dreamer
shoots off into the universe! But in Reality,
the True Guru does not function in that
manner. The True Guru is not noticed by
someone who is seeking for such satisfaction,
who is looking for the "signs"
of the Guru, who is "hunting"
the Guru. The True Guru does not assume
any particular visibility that can be counted
on. The True Guru is likely to remain unnoticed.
People are likely to be offended if they
do not feel any Force, any Energy, in the
Presence of one who is supposed to be Guru.
They tend not to notice or value someone
who is simply Awake. They are looking for
the one who has the blue and yellow light
over his or her head. All of this
until they become dissatisfied with the
search. When they start being sensitive
to their own search, they begin to feel
simply desperate. Then all that is left
is this contraction I have so often described.
When the search begins to wind down, and
you begin to realize you are suffering,
then you become sensitive to Me. You become
attentive to the Very Nature of the One
Who is Awake.
It is stated in the traditional writings
that of all the things one can do to Realize
one's Freedom, the best thing one can do
the greatest thing one can do
is spend one's time in the Company of one
who is Awake. For one who is My devotee,
that is Satsang with Me living in
relationship to Me and in the company of
My devotees. All other activities are secondary.
And Satsang with Me is not a strategic method,
not an exercise or meditative technique
one applies to oneself. It is simply the
natural and appropriate Condition. It is
Reality Itself. Satsang with Me is (Itself)
Truth, or Enlightenment. There are no other
means given to My devotees.
There is nothing that you can do
to save yourself, to become Enlightened,
to become Realized. Nothing whatsoever.
If there were something, I would tell you,
but there is nothing. This is because one
always approaches the Truth from the point
of view of the search. Human beings seek
the Truth. But the search is (itself) a
reaction to the dilemma, an expression of
this separation, this avoidance of relationship.
So none of this seeking nothing
you can do becomes or attains the
Truth.
All the means of transformation belong to
the Truth Itself, to the Divine Person,
to the True Divine Heart. Therefore, Satsang
with Me is (Itself) the only sadhana, the
only true Spiritual practice. Living, working,
sitting with Me is sadhana. It is meditation.
It is Realization.
To Enjoy Truth is simply to be Awake. I
have often used the contrast between the
waking state and the dreaming state to symbolize
the difference between "radical"
understanding and all the forms of seeking.
All attainments, all forms of cognition,
all forms of mind, however sublime, belong
within the "dream". When extraordinary
and even miraculous conditions are actually
enjoyed or experienced, they reveal themselves
to be essentially of the same nature as
the ordinary experience of suffering that
provoked the search to begin with. In My
own Case, there is no consolation in samadhis,
or trance states, no consolation in visions,
no consolation in going to other worlds,
no consolation in any Realization that can
be attained. At last, when understanding
is most perfect, it becomes obvious that
all that has ever occurred has been a modification
of Consciousness Itself (or the One and
Only Divine Conscious Light). This entire
thing that has been upsetting you
all this movement, all this seeking, all
this attainment has been a modification
of Conscious Light. There is a Conscious
Instant in which it becomes Obvious that
This Is So. And that is if one can
still apply any name or significance to
it whatsoever most "radical"
(or most perfectly "gone-to-the-root")
understanding.
But the ordinary Yogi, whose Spiritual principle
is the search, is involved in fantastic
dramas of experience. Such a one has all
kinds of things to do to, with, and
around himself or herself with the
body and mind, with all the egoic ornaments,
the suffering, the extremes, the endless
number of searches, strategies, or egoic
works. The ordinary Yogi-ascetic has a fantastic
a fantastically distracting, a fascinating
life! It is a great, great adventure.
Even the ordinary Jnani the philosophical
ascetic, one who enjoys conditionally achieved
Self-Knowledge is absorbed in a fascinating
life of Silence, of acquired Peace, of strategic
Formlessness, separated by a waking sleep.
Such a person is absorbed in his or her
own inner subjectivity. But for one who
has understood, there is no drama. Therefore,
I do not have anything with which to fascinate
people. No sign, no act, no word, no costume
can represent it. No closing of the eyes,
no blissful smiles, no shuddering, no reports
of visions none of this is necessary
to keep My devotees "interested"
from day to day. Nothing is happening anymore.
The only Forceful Communication is That
Which cannot be Communicated by any conditional
means neither by purposive silence
nor by speech.
Truth does not specially Appear in the form
of anything extraordinary or fascinating.
Truth is the most Absolute Communication
and It is the most Obvious Communication,
because It is Inherent and Self-Evident.
Satsang with Me (or the devotional and Spiritual
relationship to Me) is founded in the Inherent
and Self-Evident Condition of Reality, and
is expressed in the living condition of
relationship. What has to be added for that
to take place? Nothing! Your true living
condition is expressed in every ordinary
or present situation. Relationship itself
is, in every moment, always already the
case. Therefore, Satsang Itself, the devotional
and Spiritual relationship to Me, Reveals
the Truth by first Revealing the most obvious
of all conditions.
DEVOTEE:
Will You say something more about the state
of turning around when we re-cognize our
consciousness? I think You once spoke about
an intuitive feeling of something prior
to our ordinary state.
AVATAR
ADI DA SAMRAJ: What is re-cognized is
not Reality. What is re-cognized is your
activity. Pick up an apple, then put it
down. You can see yourself doing that. The
seeing does not involve anything apparently
extraordinary. You can also catch yourself
thinking certain thoughts. The re-cognition
of which I speak is that kind of thing.
It is to see yourself, but in the most intelligent
manner, the most direct, most all-inclusive,
manner.
Of course, people already, intuitively,
live in Reality, as the Real Self, as the
True Heart, as Real Consciousness. They
already do that. That is why all of you
can sit here in various limited conditions,
but none of you is screaming in fear. The
implications of all that is ordinarily being
done in the living consciousness are not
presently suffered. It takes some profound
event to awaken the latent sense of fear.
"Radical" understanding is Very
Reality, What is always already the case,
Clarifying Itself, Enforcing Itself. Reality
is the present impulse. It is always the
present movement, but, temporarily, It Appears
under the form of the search, then of weariness
from the search, then of Real insight, of
understanding perhaps of self-Enquiry
until It Appears under no form at
all apart from the simple, spontaneous,
obvious re-cognition of all that arises.
Where the present activity is re-cognized,
where the avoidance of relationship is known
again, the natural, or ordinary, state is
transparent to Reality.
Reality Itself is always already the case.
Therefore, Reality Itself need not be understood.
Rather, the present activity (or the avoidance
of relationship) that is the obstruction
to the Realization of Reality Itself (or
What is always already the case) must be
understood (or re-cognized, or known again)
and, thus and thereby, transcended. Therefore,
when the present separative activity is
known again, then What is always already
the case but Which the ego-"I",
or separative act, is always vanishing from
the living consciousness, consciousness
simply and inevitably Stands Out.
And in the most perfect form of that re-cognition,
everything is Obvious. There is no dilemma.
There is no longer the sense of a separate
one in trouble, suffering, needing to survive,
needing an attainment for his or her Happiness.
There is no identification with subjectivity,
either as a separate ego-"I" or
as the entire display of apparently "internal"
life. Then all that you had piddled around
with for years, thinking it to be "your"
necessity all of this subjective
mind, pattern of brain waves, psycho-physical
drama of impulses and shapes becomes
transparent to Reality. In that case, only
the Very Force, or Inherent Intensity, and
the Very Consciousness, or Inherent Being,
that is Reality Stands Out, utterly Free
of all that arises, and yet not separated
from any conditional thing or conditional
state that arises. Thus, Reality Itself,
Which is Self-Existing and Self-Radiant
Consciousness Itself, is lifted out of that
image of barriers created by skull and skin.
Psycho-physical existence no longer serves
to stimulate the presumption that Consciousness
Itself is necessarily limited and only conditionally
existing. Therefore, ultimately, when understanding
is most perfect, egoic identification with
the body (and the total body-mind) disappears.
Where there is such great understanding,
limited and limiting egoic identification
with the body-mind dissolves spontaneously
not as a result of one's doing anything
to it, but by virtue of the spontaneous,
Prior Enjoyment of That in Which the body-mind
and even all conditions arise.
The seeker is always trying to do something
to the separate self. First, you are just
exploiting it, enjoying the strategies of
life-games, until you begin to break down
a little bit, in despair of your ordinary
destiny. Then you begin to turn towards
"Spiritual" life, or to some sort
of remedy but even then you are always
trying to do something to this separate
and personal state, to get rid of your suffering,
to make your mind quiet, to become "one"
with something, to get free, to get out
of this THING. That is the point of view
of the seeker. The seeker is always only
modifying that original sensation, trying
to get rid of it with deep relaxing sighs,
with all the efforts toward the attainment
of pleasure and the escape from suffering,
but always he or she comes back to the same
sensation again because, as the seeker,
one is always working from the original
point of view that is one's suffering. The
seeker's dilemma is one's self-image and
the separative principle of one's action.
As the seeker, one only plays with one's
original limitations, until the game begins
to lose its ability to distract and entertain.
Then the energy one formerly had for seeking
begins to dissipate, and one falls into
one's actual state, which is suffering,
this separateness. Hopefully, at this point
one also moves into association with the
True Guru and begins the life of Satsang,
of Truth. In such a case, in Satsang with
Me, the Truth is Lived to the seeker, who
then lives It as his or her Condition. Gradually,
you become less and less involved with the
suffering and seeking images of yourself.
You become less concerned with the usual
process of your life. You are doing less
and less about it. You are trying less and
less to get free, to get realized, to get
to God, Liberation, and pleasant sensation.
You are not trying to stop doing all of
that. It just begins to wear down, while
you live the conditions given by Me. You
simply notice it. You cease to be occupied
with it because the Truth is being
Lived to you. It is being Lived as yourself,
by My Avatarically Self-Transmitted Divine
Grace.
That Enjoyment Which does not support separation
and seeking is the ground of "radical"
understanding. In this Satsang with Me,
that Enjoyment replaces the ordinary operating
basis of your life. You simply forget your
adventure of suffering, that is all. Another
Intensity the Power of Satsang with
Me distracts you from mere suffering,
or the separate and separative and always
seeking self, until Truth Itself becomes
Obvious. Therefore, Truth is not a matter
of doing something to this ego, this separate
self sense, this identification with the
body, or anything else. It is a matter of
living the Truth, and Truth obviates what
is not Truth.
In this Satsang with Me, I Live the Intensity
and Generate the conditions of Spiritual
life in relationship to the one who approaches
Me. Over time, more and more responsibility
is given to the individual in this Satsang
with Me and more and more is to be
experienced, understood, and realized. The
process is a Gift a Gift that is
progressively profound. The Intensity that
is Reality comes on the individual first
as a sense of Presence, perhaps, or of subjective
energies and sensations, various "Spiritual"
experiences. But then the process begins
to assume the more fundamental characteristics
of Consciousness Itself, the Intuition of
Reality. Finally, present existence becomes
both Force and Consciousness, a Single Intensity,
Which is Reality.
One of the oddities of teaching in this
time and place is that people arrive already
committed to some form of madness. Because
there has been so much of the search, people
do not arrive simply suffering knowing
full well they are only suffering, regardless
of what kind of a good time they had last
weekend. They do not come even in this condition
of mortal sensitivity. Nowadays there is
very little of the simplicity that you read
about in the Bible and other Scriptures.
This time and place is unlike the ancient
times in Israel and India. Now people come
committed to the search. They come to defend
it, to make arguments about it, to get angry
about it, to feel displeased about the criticism
of it, to resist the Guru, to "hunt"
the Guru, to offend, fight, and blame the
Guru. There has always been some element
of this, but it is a peculiar quality of
this time and place that people come to
defend their search. What must be demanded
of them is the understanding of their search.
In this Satsang with Me, the search is always
offended by My Avatarically Self-Revealed
Divine Word and Life.
DEVOTEE:
What are we seeking?
AVATAR
ADI DA SAMRAJ:
Listen. There is a dilemma. Hm? Is there
a dilemma? There is no dilemma? When you
walk out the door and the usual activity
resumes, there may seem to be a dilemma
but is there a dilemma? There is
no dilemma. There is only the sensation,
the appearance, the assumption, of dilemma.
If you understand it, you understand in
this moment that it has no existence. It
does not exist. In that case, the question
about how the dilemma comes about is unnecessary
and itself untrue because, as soon
as you look for the dilemma, it has no substance.
But some continue the assumption of dilemma
and suffering. And the assumption is your
own activity. At the same moment in which
you assume there is suffering, dilemma,
that your search is appropriate, the dilemma
is not discoverable. But in fact there is
only "This", there is only the
Obvious, only the Event Itself, Prior to
dilemma, or all apparent "experience".
The dilemma never arises. As soon as you
begin to feel it, if you examine it, you
realize it has not occurred. It has no substance.
If it is something that has no substance,
no existence, how can you be in it? If you
understand, there is no dilemma. If you
do not understand, there appears to be a
dilemma. But as soon as you ask yourself
about it as soon as you look into
it, as soon as you examine it you
realize it does not exist. The seeker goes
on reinforcing his or her assumption, but
that does not mean the dilemma exists. If
it existed, there would be something you
could do about it. It would be substantial.
It would be different from something else.
It would have some kind of cognizable shape,
limitation, dimension, consequence. Then
ordinary Spiritual "magic" and
"Yoga" would be appropriate, seeking
would be appropriate. But as soon as you
examine it directly, you cannot find it.
You can only assume it, but you cannot find
it. Therefore, since it cannot be found,
since dilemma does not exist, the search
is not appropriate. The search is only what
you do when you assume the dilemma to be
the case. As soon as you understand the
assumption, the search falls away.
DEVOTEE:
I have found that the dilemma often manifests
in a number of different sensations. The
external level that generates them is not
real. But the reaction feels real. Would
You explain this?
AVATAR
ADI DA SAMRAJ: Why do you assume that
your apparently internal reaction is more
real than the external forces to which you
react? What you are saying is that your
assumption of dilemma, or suffering, is
real in any case, even if external or conditional
circumstances do not justify it! This assumption
you want to make about your own contraction
is the assumption that I have been talking
about. It is your assumption, is it not?
DEVOTEE:
Well, yes, the assumption is a mental thing,
but the sensation is something else.
AVATAR
ADI DA SAMRAJ: On the mental level there
is an assumption but can you distinguish
it "radically" from what you call
the "sensation"? It is all one
process, and that entire process is what
I mean by the assumption. If you put your
hand in a fire, and then draw it away in
reaction to the heat, have you not assumed
it to be hot? Have you not acted as if it
were hot? You may think about it afterwards,
and say it was hot, but whether you think
about it or not in that instant in the fire,
there is this response, this reaction. Thoughts
are of the same nature as pain, or any other
reaction. All personal events are forms
of contraction. They all have the same quality,
the same structure.
Withdrawing your hand because the fire is
hot is of the same nature as thinking that
the fire is hot before or after you touch
it. It is just as much an assumption, in
other words. To assume something is to suppose,
act, or react as if it were so. It does
not require thinking. Thinking is not the
only form of assumption, of supposing. You
suppose on all kinds of levels. Your affirmations
about things are not simply mental. There
are mental assumptions, there are physical
ones, there are vital ones, there are mechanical
ones, subconscious and unconscious. The
mental or the conceptual assumption is one
form of it, but there are many forms. And
the mental does not exist in isolation.
DEVOTEE:
Would You please clarify what You mean by
"dilemma"?
AVATAR
ADI DA SAMRAJ: We have been speaking
about it in the same sense that I speak
of it in The Knee Of Listening. All
forms of seeking all pursuits, all
searches for the goal, all strategic Yoga,
all Spiritual processes that pursue an attainment
of some sort are responses to a felt
dilemma, however it may be categorized,
however it may appear at any moment. The
dictionary definition of dilemma is "two
assumptions", an impasse, a predicament,
a living state, or condition, of contradiction.
The root of the search is something prior
to the seeking itself. The seeking does
nothing to its own motivation. The seeking
simply fulfills its particular desire. Its
function is not to modify its own motivation,
its source, its root, the dilemma itself.
A search can never exceed its own motivation,
its fundamental assumption which
is dilemma. Therefore, I have spoken of
Spiritual life in terms of the re-cognition,
or knowing again, of motivating dilemma,
or suffering, rather than the pursuit of
attainments. I have talked about Spiritual
life, or Real life, Conscious life, as the
spontaneous re-cognition, the "radical"
understanding, of this motivation, this
suffering, that is prior to one's seeking.
Traditionally, Spiritual life has been oriented
to the search and to the attainment of the
goals of seeking.
DEVOTEE: When You speak of "relationship",
do You mean relationship to oneself or to
another?
AVATAR
ADI DA SAMRAJ: All forms of it. Relationship
itself, as the essential condition. What
I have called "dilemma" here is
this sensation, this motivating sense, this
assumption, this feeling of contradiction,
this experience which implies and reflects
something that has already occurred
which is the avoidance of relationship,
this contraction, this separation. The avoidance
of relationship is that root-activity that
has always already taken place, prior to
the search. And you feel it as the dilemma,
this subtle sensation, a knot in the stomach
the drive, the movement, the motivation,
that generates and necessitates your seeking.
Where the avoidance of relationship has
not occurred, where there is only relationship,
there are none of these knots, these motivating
reactions.
Apart from understanding, it is certainly
true, you do experience and react to the
knots of contradiction. The presumed forms
of suffering are experienced, they are appearances,
they are conditions in which one must somehow
live and survive. If you have some sort
of subtle aggravation fear, anxiety,
anger you feel the knots here and
there. And you go about your search on that
basis. You seek to be free of the sensation
of the knots. But in spite of all the things
that you do, nothing is done to the original
state to which you are always responding.
As a result, you begin to presume more and
more that this state is actual, that it
is your real condition. You become increasingly
convinced that your search is appropriate.
And so you become less and less intelligent
about the present motivation of your life.
You become more and more involved in this
pattern of always doing something about
it. You always and only react to the dilemma
as if it were your fundamental condition.
The great seekers are those who make the
most dramatic attempts to "do something
about it" perfectly, absolutely.
Now, all the forms of seeking that take
the dilemma seriously, and assume it as
the essential fact of life, are of the same
nature. This prior contradiction is what
they assume, this avoidance of relationship.
The dilemma, the "knot", is the
foundation of the search. It is the actual
"Lord" of your Yoga. Dilemma is
the Yogi! Simply to do some mentalizing,
some philosophizing, some relaxing Yoga,
does not do anything to all of that. Only
"radical" understanding obviates
the search and its root. "Radical"
understanding is Consciousness Itself, the
Very Force of Consciousness Itself, Living,
Awakening, Existing, even apparently Acting,
Prior to this presumption of dilemma. The
only thing already Free of the presumed
dilemma in the living consciousness is That
Which Is Very Consciousness Itself.
The entire reaction to subtle aggravation
has shown itself to be fruitless. When it
has been followed to its end when
you have taken the entire course and gotten
all the lessons, when you have done all
the usual meditations and have gone through
all the experiences, when you have read
all the books this dilemma is still
there. At the very best, the search itself
begins to break down. Then, gradually, the
dilemma ceases to be reinforced by any secondary
activity.
Then the force of life's awareness falls
into this dilemma, it becomes only this,
it is no longer doing anything about this
nothing. It is not even trying to
analyze the dilemma, so that it will come
to an end. No thing is being done. The living
consciousness, for the time being, becomes
identical to dilemma. When the search falls
away in natural frustration, ordinary consciousness
becomes this dilemma. In other words, it
is doing nothing else, nothing apart from
this. This is the profound stage of practice
in My Avataric Divine Company when, while
holding on to My Avataric Divine Wisdom-Teaching,
and to My Avataric Divine Person, the crisis
of consciousness is endured. Then there
is the re-cognition of the dilemma, and
only Consciousness Itself, or that Very
Reality Which appears otherwise isolated
as separate, or limited, consciousness,
Stands Out.
The dilemma, like the search, is ultimately
re-cognized to be your own activity, your
always present, chronic activity. It is
the structure and motivation of the usual
drama of every life. When there is that
re-cognition, there is understanding. Previous
to that "radical" crisis, all
the things that you may regard to be understanding
are only secondary approaches, secondary
experiences, in which the dilemma has already
been assumed.
DEVOTEE:
How does this relate to the different
levels of consciousness?
AVATAR
ADI DA SAMRAJ: There are no levels.
Temporarily, you think there are all of
these structures within your being. You
assume there are barriers, separations,
forms that you are, forms that you are not,
activities that are yours, activities that
are not yours, separate functions in yourself
like boxes and drawers functions
here, functions here, functions here, different
pieces of yourself. But there is only One,
Single Intensity that Is. It is your True
Nature. It is all things. There is only
this Intensity. It has no form, no division,
no separation, no "me", no this,
no that, no inside, no outside. No suggestion
of division arises in Real Consciousness
even when all worlds appear. Therefore,
understanding is an absolute, "radical"
event. It is not some remedial event, some
cure. It is not identical to some thought
or cognition, some feeling, some symbol,
some vision, some suggestion, some belief,
some sensation. Those are all forms of experience,
and, therefore, they are secondary. They
are all forms of the dilemma.
How could a person seriously exist for one
moment consciously thinking that he or she
has a thought level, and a feeling level,
a this level, and a that level, all kinds
of separate "bodies", functions,
and the rest? How could you exist for one
moment really thinking that to be your present
and ongoing condition? You would go insane!
Indeed, such a picture of life is insanity.
In such a case, you are already shattered.
Then you are imagining yourself to be a
whole bunch of little things with no fundamental
Existence, no Prior Self-Nature, no Force.
But in fact you do not presume that. You
do not fundamentally presume there are these
levels, pieces. All of that is only many
words but the mind is one. Every
living being intuitively presumes only his
or her Real Nature, the Power of Reality.
Therefore, one is able to experience the
massive complexity of ordinary life, but,
ordinarily, one remains relatively calm
and capable of functioning. This is not
because one is particularly wise, but because
one does not really live as if division,
multiplicity, and death were already one's
condition. Fundamentally, already, this
Oneness, this Singleness, this Force, this
Intensity, this Consciousness, this Reality
that is one's Ultimate Nature, is also one's
present Enjoyment. This is so at the rudimentary
level of primitive intuition, and it must
be so if functional life is to continue.
If you did begin seriously to presume separateness,
multiplicity, and division in Consciousness
Itself, you would go insane. Indeed, that
presumption has taken place in rudimentary,
functional life in those who are called
"insane". They have become relatively
incapable of intuiting their own True Nature.
The ordinary man or woman has just become
incapable of experiencing and generating
life from that "Point of View".
But, intuitively, the same one remains always
and already in the Force of his or her True
Nature. Such a one presumes, most fundamentally,
this Simplicity, this Intensity, this Singleness,
this Non-separation. One who might be called
an "enlightened" being, a Realized
being, is one who not only intuitively presumes
the Condition of Reality but who lives it
Consciously. Such a one lives without any
doubt whatsoever regarding this Ultimate
Simplicity the Obviousness that is
the Ultimate, or Perfectly Real, Condition
of moment to moment existence.
Until it is lived Consciously, one's ordinary
state appears as a subtle dilemma and a
motivated search. Intuitively, every being
always already lives as the Real Self, the
True Heart, the Force of Reality
but, in the functions of ordinary consciousness,
there is the appearance of particularity,
of multiplicity, of separateness. All of
this appears to run counter to one's intuitive
presumption. The appearance, the quality
of rising experience, tends to inform one's
intuition. This "information"
tends to become one's presumed condition.
And this presumption corrupts and ultimately
superimposes itself on the force of intuition.
It does so by reinforcing the process of
identification, or "ego" (the
stream of self-cognition), differentiation,
or mind (the stream of thoughts), and desire
(the stream of motivations, the endless
movement toward contact, connection, union,
and temporary loss of the sense of separate
existence).
The ordinary person, the sane person, passes
into the Force of his or her own intuited
Nature during sleep. But during the time
of waking, and even in dreams, he or she
carries on the search, this movement within
the presumed dilemma of experience. Such
is the pattern of one's life until
there is "radical" re-cognition,
or knowing again, of one's root-activity.
Whenever that re-cognition takes place,
one not only intuits one's own True Nature
in the subtle depths, but it becomes obvious,
in every condition of conscious life, that
there is, in Reality, no separation, no
actual identification with the states of
birth and death. There is not, in that moment,
even the slightest impulse to believe the
implications of ordinary experience. The
Force of the Real Self, of the True Heart,
overwhelms the qualities of experience and
consumes them. The Real Self, or Unqualified
Reality, is the foundation of all experience.
What the ordinary sane person intuits is
already his or her True Nature. It is already
Reality. But in the one who most perfectly
understands, It is Obvious, It is Apparent,
It is Conscious. For such a one It is always,
only, and already Obvious and he
or she need not go through any sophisticated
mental operations for It to be so. It depends
on nothing. It is just as Obvious as ordinary
perception is to the usual man or woman.
When you are dreaming, you take the dream
very seriously. You assume your role within
it, your drama within it. You respond to
the condition that seems to be so, whatever
the particular circumstances of the dream.
If the gorilla is chasing you up the beach,
you feel all the threat. All the emotions
become involved, all your strategies of
survival, or non-survival, become involved.
If it is a sweet, enjoyable, astral sort
of dream, with all kinds of friends and
voices and colors and movements, you assume
that to be so. You float around in it. You
take it seriously. You assume it to be so.
You assume it because you have no other
point of view from which to enjoy or suffer
the dream except that of the dreamer. But
when you wake up in the morning, the gorilla
that was just about to bite off your head
loses all significance. All the implications
of the dream are already undone in one who
is awake. It no longer has any real significance,
it no longer has any implication for life.
It no longer is a genuine threat to life.
It no longer is anything except that appearance.
And the only difference is that you are
awake. Nothing has been done to the dream
itself. You have only awakened, and therefore
the dream is obviously not your condition.
Understanding is very much this same kind
of thing. Understanding is to the waking
state what the waking state is to the dream.
In the ordinary waking state you assume
all conditions to be so: "my"
life, "my" symptoms, "my"
knot in "my" stomach, "my"
headaches, "my" fear, "my"
everything else, "my" circumstances,
"my" poverty, "my" need
to do this and that, "my" death,
the news, the war, and all that appears
in life you all take it very seriously.
Here you are, in My Avataric Divine Company.
You are very seriously here to get out of
all of this limitation. Everyone has come
here very seriously for this very serious
Spiritual purpose. Now, since you have come
here for such a purpose, if I were to tell
you to go home, concentrate on yourself,
and have visions, what would I be doing?
I would be offering you an alternative within
the dream itself. I would be asking you
to remain within the condition of dreams.
I would only be telling you to dream another
kind of dream. I would simply be exploiting
the dream itself, which in this case is
the ordinary waking state. I would be recommending
experience to you as the path of Truth.
But all of that is more of the same thing.
It is only another condition for you to
take seriously and assume to be your own.
Understanding is not a form of philosophy.
It is not a seekers' method. It is not something
within the "dream" itself. It
is like the waking state as opposed to the
dream. I am the True Guru, Appearing within
the dream. I am the Heart Itself, "radically"
Conscious, Real, Alive Free, by virtue
of My Very Self-Nature, from the implications
of the ordinary waking state, and from the
implications of even all conditional states.
But the ordinary Yogi, the usual teacher,
the philosopher, is a role within the "dream"
of waking. Such a one operates from its
point of view and is identified with it
whether suffering or happy within
it. The dilemma is there. His or her realization
however extraordinary it may appear
is an artifice whose roots are in
the condition or point of view of the dream.
The usual teacher is only recommending some
distraction to you, some occupation, some
solution within the dream itself. But the
Heart Itself is "radical" understanding,
simply Awake. "Radical" understanding
is itself the True "Waking" State,
the Real Self, Reality Itself. The Heart
has no philosophy, no subtle vision, no
special experiential state associated with
It. Therefore, like one in a dream, one
who understands is not presently affected
by the waking state. But, unlike one who
dreams or appears within a dream, such a
one is always, already, Consciously Free.
The waking state is simply an utterly different
condition from the dream. That is why you
feel free of the dream upon waking. I Appear
in the midst of the dreams of ordinary waking
life like sunlight in the morning. When
you are still dreaming, still asleep, the
sun comes up. It gets brighter and brighter,
and the light comes into the room. At last,
the light, the day itself, becomes sufficient
to wake you and then, all of a sudden,
you are not dreaming, and everything is
all right. I am simply that sunlight process,
that intensification, rising on you always,
without any other special activity. My relationship
to you, your living condition of relationship
to Me just that relationship
is sufficient. There is only sunlight on
the pillow until that Intensity is sufficient
to wake you up. It is the kiss of the Prince
and Sleeping Beauty. Such is understanding.
But the teachings that are generated in
the great search are all exploitations of
your dream state of suffering. They take
it seriously. They assume it to be the present
condition, even if it is regarded to be
only temporary. And that is the fundamental
error of all traditional and remedial paths.
They are all generated from the point of
view of your suffering. They serve your
suffering, and they reinforce it in spite
of themselves. Therefore, to the seeker,
to the one suffering in dreams, the teachings
of the ordinary Yogis and philosophers seem
very hopeful. They seem to represent something
very desirable.
You are running down the beach away from
the gorilla. Now, suddenly, there is a guy
sitting outside a hut next to a pool of
blue water. He has long hair, and he bears
all the great signs of an ascetic. He says,
"Just sit down here. Very quickly now,
because the gorilla is not too far away.
Breathe very deeply, and concentrate between
the two halves of your brain." He has
not changed your actual living condition,
but he has distracted you. The form of experience
that he has stimulated in you by the force
and influence of his personality certainly
appears to be desirable over against being
devoured by the gorilla. But, at last, it
is simply a distraction within the dream.
It is another form of the dream. It is an
event within the dream. All of the searches
that people are involved with are attempts
to forget the gorilla. And that is their
maximum possible attainment. Therefore,
when you seem to have forgotten the gorilla,
all of a sudden you are smiling again. You
feel fantastic! There is no gorilla! There
is? No, nothing! People assume that the
consolations and exchanges, or transformations,
of state generated by seeking are pleasure,
creativity, Freedom, Realization, Liberation,
God-Union, and Nirvana. But do you see how
all such attainments relate to suffering
itself?
The gorilla is what is going on for people.
It is death. Are you interested in that?
Hm? It does not make any difference what
you do for the next thirty years (if you
have that long) you are just going
to go back to zero. Some of us were looking
at a book this morning called How to Face
Death, or something like that. How absurd,
this notion of facing, or confronting, death.
The first thing you lose in death is face!
That is why the characteristic forms of
morality in the Orient are largely based
on the "saving of face". Loss
of face is loss of life, loss of actual
existence. Well, that is what happens in
the terminal psycho-physical event that
is called "death". That is what
death is all about. How can you face it?
Everything you do to face it, everything
you do to prevent the gorilla, has no ultimate
effect on the gorilla. All seeking is simply
your distraction, your makeup, your false
face, your fascination, but Zap! the gorilla
gets you every time. Everybody dies. Everybody
who has ever lived has died. There are billions
and billions of human beings who have died.
Multiples of billions of other entities
and creatures die every moment, even as
a by-product of your breathing. All these
breathings disintegrate billions of tiny
entities in organic fires. There is no harmlessness,
no non-killing. The death by slaughter,
the consumption and literal transformation,
of apparently separate entities is going
on all the time. There is no escape from
death. There is no sanctity in vegetables,
nor even freedom for those who reduce cattle
to sandwiches. The entire cosmos is a continuous
sacrifice, in which all things, all beings,
are ritual food. At best, the search can
only modify the apparent circumstances of
one's death. Ordinary Yogis or religious
people may at last manage to forget the
gorilla. They may think they are looking
at the blue of Krishna or the white of Jesus
until they lose face. Until the sudden
zero, they are looking at Krishna or Jesus.
They are only consoled, only distracted.
Their hoped-for realization and their death
are kneeling in one another.
There is no philosophy whose force is stronger
than the force of death. The philosophies
by which people counter or react to death
are in opposition and at best only
seemingly equal to the power of death.
Therefore, it is possible to be consoled
and distracted, but nothing greater is attained
by those who react to death, who make adventure
in relation to the gorilla. There is no
philosophy, no vision, no attainment, no
success, that will make death a literal
delight, that will make it anything less
than it appears to be within the dream itself.
But if one simply awakens from the dream,
then as the waking state is already
free of the "awful" that appears
in dreams one is already free of
the implications of the billions upon billions
of deaths that can be dreamed. The one who
understands is simply one who is Awake.
Such a one has no other specific and necessary
peculiarities. Such a one is not elaborate
at all. It is the one within the dream who
is very complex, because he or she has so
many things to do. But the one who is simply
Awake is simply Awake. Such a one has integrity.
And the One Who Comes to Awaken others is
Himself the waking sunlight, the Very Light
of Truth, but That One Appears within the
dream of human beings as an ordinary person.
That One may seem extraordinary and a paradox
to the dreamer because the dreamer
is very serious about all of this
but That One, Who is only Awake, is not
serious about it anymore. That One does
not fundamentally assume the condition of
the dream as limitation.
The one in the dream is waiting. "It
is going to happen any day now either
Jesus is coming or the quake is coming,
one or the other. Or the war, or the bomb
it is all coming. And you have got
to prepare for it, boys and girls!"
But the one who is just Awake slowly sips
a cup of sweeted herbs. Everybody else is
"Phew!" hitting the panic
button, or else inhaling consolations with
their minds. But this one is unreasonable.
Such a one just does not care. There is
no sign in that one of any seriousness about
this entire problem. For the seeker, life
itself manifests as a problem, a fundamental
dilemma. For the one who understands, there
is no fundamental dilemma.
Only the Condition of genuine Waking is
truly and "radically" Free of
the condition in the dream. But that True
Waking Condition is not the thing that is
attained by any of the means generated in
the dream, the search. And the means designed
within the "dream state" of ordinary
life are often magnificent, extremely elaborate.
They grow out of practical necessity, and
so they are very complex, very elaborate.
They take many, many factors into account.
Traditional religion and Spirituality, conventional
Yoga, magic, occultism and mysticism
not to mention all the "sciences",
so called, in life, the life-strategies
and life-remedies are all highly
complex, and often very successful in relieving
the symptoms, or experiential dis-ease,
of un-Conscious life. And the methods and
artifices of seeking fascinate those who
are simply suffering. Everybody is looking
for the consolation or technique that distracts
to the maximum degree. Everybody is willing
to pay money for what is not bread. People
are not truly looking to be sustained. They
do not require Truth. They only desire to
forget or escape the gorilla. But I am not
such a one. I Live only Truth to living
beings.
I have talked about the relationship between
the True Guru and his or her devotees as
being the essence, the fundamental Condition,
that is sadhana, or Real Spiritual practice.
But this sadhana is not a form of concentration
on the Guru as some separate and merely
symbolic entity. That is not relationship.
That is your own fabrication, your own suffering
again. Where there is relationship, there
is no need for all of these symbolizations.
And the true nature of sadhana in My Avataric
Divine Company is to live the Condition
and the conditions of relationship to Me
in My Function as Guru. Within the dream,
the potential images may be consoling, and
even hopeful but such consolation
or hope is not the equivalent of being Awake.
Consolation and hope depend upon your being
asleep. The forms of seeking exploit your
capability for identification with the fundamental
dilemma of dreaming, which is its unconsciousness.
They may satisfy you within the context
of your assumptions, but they are not the
equivalent of Waking Up.
What is required to Wake Up? What can you
do within the dream to Wake Up? Nothing.
There is only the Waking Itself. All actions
within the dream are forms of the dream
itself. Waking is another process, and it
occurs by other means, by already conscious
means. I am not a symbol, a condition of
the dream itself. No mere symbol, no mere
condition of the dream, can Wake you Up.
I Am the Light of Consciousness, the Real
Self, already Awake, Functioning Alive.
I Appear in human Form within the dream
of life not to console you, but to
Awaken you through the Real crisis in consciousness.
I am a frustration to the unconscious condition
of the dream.
There are those who preach various forms
of mental preoccupation, and there are those
who preach various forms of subtle preoccupation.
They are all the same. They are all doing
the same thing. They are all serving the
dream. They are not the Self of Reality.
They are not What the True Guru is, What
the Great Siddha truly is, What I Am. The
Man of "Radical" Understanding,
Who I Am, Functioning as True Guru, is the
Awakener. I am always already Awake. I could
not care less about your urges and demands
within the dream. I refuse to satisfy them.
I would rather beat you on the head with
a stick than give you an experience merely
to console you. I have no intention of satisfying
anyone's egoic game. All the demands for
satisfaction that you bring are frustrated
in My Avataric Divine Company. What is satisfied,
what is made to grow, is that fundamental
Intuition of Reality that is already the
Foundation of your existence. That Intuition
is intensified in Satsang with Me, the Condition
of relationship between Me and My devotees.
And all the rest, the fascinated search,
begins to fall away. In this Satsang, the
search begins to reveal itself, until it
becomes obvious.
And understanding itself will not necessarily
have anything peculiarly dramatic about
it. How dramatic is it to wake up in the
morning? You do not go, "Wowwwwwww!!!"
You do not scream, "Fantastic! Oh,
Revelation!" All you do is open your
eyes and live. You just wake up. The Realization
that you are not stuck in the dream has
a certain pleasure associated with It, but
It is not usually a fantastic sort of fireworks.
It is a natural, already Happy Event. In
The Knee Of Listening I described
My Great Re-Awakening to the Divine Self-Condition.
That Ultimate Event was not dramatic at
all. I was sitting on a bench in a little
temple. In the moment of Re-Awakening, I
simply opened My eyes and walked out into
the street. I did not talk to anybody on
the way, and I did not say anything about
It to anybody at home. I did not describe
this profound Event to anybody at all for
many weeks, even months. And when I began
to talk about It, I tried to make clear
that Its true Import was extremely subtle.
It was not "extraordinary" in
any conventional sense. It was without drama.
I was simply being Awake. There was nothing
to compare It to. It was not the attainment
of anything.
Within the dream there are all kinds of
attainments. The gorilla is chasing you
and Smack! the big purple mountain has a
crystal cave underneath. You go running
into it, and you enter the water that is
there. You go deep. And then there are red
brilliant lights. Pearls and sacred ornaments
hit you on the head. And you go shooting
up like a rocket of gleaming silver and
gold fire. You flash to the top of the mountain.
Your head explodes into billions of serpents.
At last you stand immortal and victorious
on the mountain top. You scream at all the
gorillas from the top of the mountain. You
destroy them and smother them and smash
them to smithereens! That is the attainment
within the dream. That is the usual Yoga.
That is the typical vision. But "radical"
understanding is simple Waking Up.
Now, this dilemma, this unconsciousness,
this "contraction" I have often
described to you, is the "dream".
It is the crucial presumption. It is not
changed or undone by the fact of the ordinary
waking state, nor by any ordinary life-activity
or seeking. It is without benefit of this
intuited Reality in Which you truly live.
Therefore, you presume and live that condition
of suffering, separateness, and fundamental
dilemma, until you Awaken in spontaneous,
"radical" Insight or until
you become shattered, insane, corrupted,
thoroughly unconscious. If the gorilla eats
you in the dream, you feel eaten. You are
eaten. Those who dream long enough, who
try all the alternatives within the dream,
who have suffered all the attainments and
failures within the dream, who no longer
have anywhere to go, who are only dreaming,
who are only suffering, who no longer take
their search "seriously", for
whom the search is no longer the thing to
which they resort, who have despaired of
their own adventure, their ecstasies, their
attainments, their strategic paths, their
methods, who are only suffering, who are
only in dilemma, who in fact are only experiencing
this contraction, the compulsive avoidance
of relationship, but are doing nothing about
it any longer, who know they cannot do anything
about it any longer they become sensitive
to the sunlight.
To move into My Divine Presence is not something
My devotee does. The devotee does not actually
go to the True Guru. The devotee cannot
decide one morning to go to the True Guru.
The devotee does not know where the True
Guru is. How can he or she go to the sunlight?
My devotee is somebody lying asleep in bed.
My devotee does not go to Me. I am the Sun,
rising, intensifying the light, until My
devotee realizes that he or she is in My
Divine Presence. That realization is Satsang
with Me. And "radical" understanding
is itself True Waking, True Knowledge, or
re-cognition, of the "sunlight".
All seeking for Me, all going after Me as
the Guru, is an activity within the dream.
I cannot truly be found within the dream.
Only the imagery of the dream can be found
within the dream. Perhaps My Avatarically-Born
bodily human Person can be found, but My
True Self-Nature and Function cannot be
comprehended by the "dreamer",
by the seeker, or by his or her strategic
methods.
If you yield to the gorilla at last, if
you give up your search not willfully,
but spontaneously, having despaired of your
seeking essentially you have surrendered,
or yielded, to that Reality you have always
intuited. And that spontaneous surrendering,
that Conscious "dying", that yielding
to the gorilla, is a sign of Waking. It
is the far end of sleep. It is the beginning
of that sensitivity to the morning. As soon
as you become sensitive to it, you just
Wake Up and go about your business.
The life of My devotee is a very natural,
functional life of Real Enjoyment, of Intelligence.
It is a life Awake. It is not a life "in
bed". It is not spent meditating in
the crystal cave. It is a simple, normal,
ordinary life of Happiness. It is to live
already Awake. Of course, I have been talking
in similes. Perhaps you have the idea that
the "waking state" is the only
condition uniquely free of the limitations
of the "dream state". But even
though all men and women are apparently
awake, they know no other state that transcends
the ordinary limitations of the waking state.
People ordinarily do not pass into the "fourth
State" (Beyond waking, dreaming, or
sleeping) in which even the ordinary waking
state loses the force of its implications.
That is why My Avataric Divine Guru-Function
is lived in the waking world. I Am that
"fourth State", Alive in the waking
world, under the appearance of the waking
condition. Just so, "Real meditation"
is not a fixation of the eyes on physical
sunlight, nor on the energies, ordinary
or extraordinary, that appear and move in
the waking life. "Real meditation"
is present Enjoyment of the Sun Itself,
the True Sun, Which is Reality Itself. That
"fourth State" is Awake to the
"waking state". To acknowledge
Me, to enjoy Heart-Companionship with Me,
the One Who Is always already "Awake",
is to be Awake yourself. When you truly
see Who I Am, you are already Awake. Until
that moment, you are still woozy. But if
you live in My Avataric Divine Company and
fulfill the conditions I require of you
for your sake, you begin to feel a distance
from the dream, from its compulsiveness,
its repetitiveness. What is happening in
such a case is that the Real Self, the Heart,
the True Sun, Who I Am, is being Intuited,
Enjoyed. And when you truly see Me, when
you truly see the Sun, then you yourself
are Awake. Just as the morning sun, the
appropriate hour, the physics and biology
of one's life-condition, conspire to awaken
one to the ordinary world from one's natural
sleep, just so, Satsang with Me, the entire
Condition and sadhana of Real religious
and Spiritual life, Awakens you to your
Perfect, always present, and True State.
All of the secondary forms of associating
with Me are indeed secondary. All of your
ordinary waking activities even those
in which you communicate with Me, are effective
only in the ordinary waking state itself,
the dream of usual life. They may be appropriate,
even necessary, but they are not themselves
the Way in My Avataric Divine Company. The
Way of Adidam is the Condition Itself, the
relationship itself. It constantly exists.
It is the sadhana. It is the meditation.
There is nothing else that needs to be added
to it. The Condition Itself, the relationship
itself, is the sadhana.
There is no end to the numbers of living
beings who can do this sadhana. The sadhana
of relationship to Me is what My devotee
must always realize and live. Since I always
already Enjoy the Great Condition, It takes
up none of My time. There is no limitation
to My capability to be that fundamental
Enjoyment for all beings. The limitations
are on My devotee's activity within the
life-appearance, and on My apparent activity
within that same appearance. But those limitations
are only the forms of pleasure and communication,
wherein human beings represent their understanding
to one another. Even so, I am rising above
the house. I am not this limited state.
I Am your own Enjoyment, Most Perfectly
Known.
Since this True Waking is your Reality,
your True Condition, the dilemma cannot
be found when it is sought. It is purely
an illusion that is assumed by the dreamer,
by the one who only seems to be awake. You
spend your entire life within the dream,
within this vast adventure, to find the
princess in the crystal palace and save
her from the dragon, or to wait in the crystal
palace to be rescued by the prince. You
live an endless, endless adventure
millions and millions of ages, year after
year after year of numberless complications.
But at some point along the way, you become
serious enough to examine your motivation
to seek, to examine the cause, the root,
for which this goal is only the symbol.
At last one realizes that one cannot find
one's symbolic satisfaction. And this falling
into one's dilemma, then falling through
it, is the unqualified Intuition of one's
Ultimate Nature and Real Condition.
There is no fated time when this will occur.
You need not persist to the end of your
seeking before it is appropriate to understand.
A person can wake up at any time. You do
not have to go through the entire dream
process until you seem to find the princess
sleeping in her castle or the prince finds
you. You do not have to dream the entire
sequence of the dream. Karmas, or destiny,
are not absolute and necessary in this sense.
It is appropriate to wake up at any time.
It is only one who continues to believe
in his or her own search who must acquire
and achieve a great deal before Realization
is "appropriate". Such a one has
"twenty more years of striving",
or "twenty more times to be born for
death's sake". That one has an obligatory
number of things to do. He or she must do
certain things while embodied and earn a
certain amount of money. He or she is born,
so it is thought, with various conditions
to fulfill. But the ideal of seeking is
really absurd. You cannot imagine the dreamer
defending all of that, but only one who
appears within a dream. And even the one
in the dream will not defend his or her
dream-destiny of seeking in the presence
of the gorilla. You can only imagine a person
defending it when surrounded by delights,
or when full of capabilities. Then such
a person is like a child whose mother wants
him or her to wake up to go to school. The
child does not want to get up. The child
says, "No, I'll get up later."
He or she does not want to go to school.
The seeker does not want to go to "school"
the seeker does not want to live
the sadhana, the discipline, the real conditions
of life that are found in the Company of
the Guru. The seeker does not want to understand
his or her own adventure.
The waking state promises something relatively
undesirable to one who is suspended in the
twilight state of a pleasant dream. Such
a one is reluctant to understand, too distracted
to be interested in understanding. The ordinary
reluctance of people is not truly caused
by a premonition that the life, or sadhana,
of understanding is so difficult. It is
only that they do not yet care about it.
Somehow, for the moment, everything seems
all right. For the most part, the usual
man or woman possesses a relatively healthful
physical life with certain satisfactions,
certain opportunities, things to do, books
to read, a future of places, physical pleasures,
mental pleasures. With all of that, who
wants to Awaken? And most people come to
Me in that condition. Therefore, I do not
take them seriously. I know they are only
indulging themselves, even if to others
the new arrivals seem to deserve only mercy
and the grin of promised salvation. When
these seekers come to Me, they make all
kinds of complaints about their fundamental
suffering. "Please give me this salvation,
this realization, this release!" But
they are not really looking for that. They
are unwilling to endure the discipline of
Truth.
There are certain limitations to the entire
adventure and pleasure of ordinary life.
You know you are going to die some time
but, essentially, mysteriously, life
still seems to be full. Thus, Truth is not
likely to enter the usual picture without
the intervention of some fundamental, transforming
event. But if you are smart if your
life is generated with Conscious Intensity
you do not have to become desperate
before you will turn to the Truth. Your
circumstances do not have to become empty,
corrupted, and diseased. You do not have
to wait for the failure of life itself before
you will turn to Truth. Someone who is waiting
for life to disprove itself is only indulging
himself or herself. There is nothing profound
about the search or the suffering of such
a one. But if one is smart, if one's life
is an intensity, one is always turning to
Truth from birth. The more distracted people
are by the pleasures of existence as the
condition of their life, the more mediocre
their realization, on every level
even on the level of life itself. People
who are just plain satisfied with how good
their bodies feel barely function at all.
There is no life-force, no life-intelligence,
in such people. They do nothing. They just
smile and play with sexual partners all
the time. They do not create anything. They
Realize nothing. They do not intensify the
quality of life. They have achieved nothing
more than symbolic existence. They may have
to suffer drastic conflicts and upheavals
before their unconsciousness begins to break
up, but the suffering is not truly necessary.
It is unnecessary to go through a long term
of seeking, of suffering, of breaking down,
of corruption, before Truth becomes appropriate.
The Realization of Truth is not a matter
of heavy, self-involved, constricted, willful
effort. It is as natural as a simple response
to sunlight. It is simply the relationship
to Me, the intelligent life of Real sadhana.
Truly, what you bring to Me is not your
dilemma. The dilemma has no real existence.
You may be preoccupied with it, but I pay
no homage to it. I may appear to take it
quite seriously, or I may display only the
most playful attitude toward it even
allowing My devotee to suffer or enjoy it
temporarily, because it is of no ultimate
consequence. Truly, what people bring to
Me is their Intuition of Reality Itself.
It is only that they are not consciously
living it. But it is the very premise of
their lives and so they come to Me,
Who Lives that Intuition Consciously, Who
is the Sun to their deep-seated Intuition,
and I Draw their Intuition into this instant.
Only the seeker takes the dilemma seriously,
but the waking state does not take your
dreams seriously. It is not the least concerned
with your dreams. And, luckily, all beings
are already alive with their Intuition of
Reality. Therefore, they have this affinity
with sunlight, with the True Waking State
with Me. Unqualified Reality is What
they are already living, and that is What
is consciously discovered in relationship
to Me. Because they are always already Inhering
in Unqualified Reality, it is Reality Itself
that Draws them to It. It is the Intuition
of Reality Itself that leads people to Me,
that leads them to maintain themselves in
My Avataric Divine Company. All "reasons"
for holding on to Me fall away, and also
all the reasons for not holding on to Me.
None of these reasons has any ultimate significance.
The affinity of your True Nature, your Intuition
of your True Nature, the Heart Itself, is
entirely responsible for this sadhana. When
you become less concerned for your particular
search, for your inwardness, for your adventure,
you have simply become more sensitive to
your Real Condition. You have felt the sunlight
falling on your sleeping eyes. When your
eyes have opened in the morning light, everything
will be obvious to you. And you will know
that you have never slept, that you have
never dreamed, that you have never been
limited to any thing that has appeared.
You have never been in any condition that
you have assumed. There was always only
Reality Itself, your True Nature
Which
is Love-Bliss, Consciousness, the Unqualified
Intensity.
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