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THE PRACTICAL LIFE DISCIPLINES OF
THE WAY OF DIVINE COMMUNION
5.1
The life devotees live in relation
to me is one that necessarily involves disciplines and
Lawful or sacrificial conditions of life. If the appropriate
conditions are not assumed, the relationship between us
ceases to function spiritually. The habitual adaptations and
motivating tendencies of each life are a perpetual obstacle
to the necessary devotional-sacrifice. Without the Lawful
discipline of conditions, the perfect transformation and
dissolution of suffering and seeking in dilemma may not be
worked.
5.2
In every moment, you are obliged
first to handle things with your neighbor, that is, to
establish stable, ordinary conditions in this body-mind and
its relations. Only then are
you prepared to go to the holy place, to enter into sacred
occasion (such as meditation or the Company of the
Teacher)-even to realize this moment in Truth. Therefore,
the natural and obligatory life conditions
of the Way of Divine Communion are primary and necessary in
every moment. Otherwise, even though the moment itself is
Only-God, your own face will hide the Truth of
it.
5.3
The assumption of practical
life-disciplines in the Way of Divine Communion is the
beginning of transitional culture, which leads the being out
of mere tendency into self-control, insight, and commitment
to the Real Process.
5.4
The abandonment of egoic contracts
and cultic theatre leads to pure and true relational
conditions, not isolation. This discipline essentially is
one that makes relationships and conditions of life more
fully a matter of conscious
responsibility and it eliminates not intimacy, pleasure of
life, and creativity, but self-indulgence and childish,
adolescent, and self-centered or exclusive forms of
strategic activity, emotion, and thinking.
5.5
Devotees must continue to take
practical account of how they are each always involved in
physical, emotional-sexual, and mental obstructing, of life
as Divine Communion. The whole lower and ordinary human life
must become a sacrifice, turned utterly to service of the
Divine Presence. Thus, devotees will step
out of the lower or conventional human
focus into the authentic psychic focus (the heart, true
emotion, or love).
5.6 THE ESSENTIAL AND PROGRESSIVE
PRACTICES, TO BE LIVED AS SACRIFICE TO THE SPIRITUAL MASTER,
OF THE STAGES IN THE WAY OF DIVINE IGNORANCE
1. Maintain ordinary, relational,
active, serving, productive, constant, and positive
conditions of life, work, study, and enjoyment.
2. Strictly adapt the daily or
general habit of life to a moderate, regular, regenerative,
and pure lacto-vegetarian diet and to natural health
practices, excluding the traditional dietary accessories
(meat, poultry, eggs, fish, tobacco, alcohol, and refined or
processed foods) as well as non-medicinal or "social" drugs,
and avoiding arbitrary use of medicinal drugs. Maintain
these practices as ordinary disciplines, free of reflexive
and righteous concerns.
Devotees who enjoy a basically
purified and harmonious bodily condition, who have begun to
sit in formal occasions at Vision Mound Sanctuary, and who
have begun to adapt to the spiritual disciplines of the Way
of Divine Communion (the Breath of God and the Name of God)
may, if they choose, modify the strict, daily "sattwic" or
pure diet with occasional, intelligent, moderate, and mature
use of the traditional dietary accessories in ordinary,
human celebrations with family and other devotees. In such
circumstances the usual toxifying and enervating effects of
these substances are transformed or minimized by the
extraordinary level of happy, vital,
and relational energy generated and shared in celebration.
In any case, it may not be inappropriate for lessons to
continue at this stage relative to the deliberate,
occasional use of those elements in the diet which the usual
man uses habitually.
However, in the later phase of the
Way of Relational Enquiry, once real enquiry is stabilized
and spontaneous signs of "conductivity" are in evidence,
each devotee must presume the absolute discipline of strict
observance of the pure lacto-vegetarian diet. From this
point in practice, and throughout the stage of the Way of
Re-cognition, attention must be profoundly available to the
subtler processes of existence, and life energy must be
continuously intensified, maintained, and conserved. Even
minimal use of the accessories to the basic diet tends, at
least temporarily, to fix attention in gross objects and
processes and to obstruct or dissipate the flow of
life-energy. Therefore, such substances must be entirely
abandoned during these more mature or spiritualizing stages
of the Way.
In the Way of Radical Intuition,
when all gross, subtle, and causal processes are priorly
inspected and re-cognized, and the contraction at the heart
has been penetrated and dissolved, so that the being rests
spontaneously in the Radiance of Divine Ignorance, the
devotee may manage diet and all other life-processes
according to his or her own native choosing. Such choosing
is, in the case of the true devotee in Sahaj Samadhi, always
in conformance with the Law of manifest life, with which the
devotee is by then identical, and which is
sacrifice.
3. Realize the sexual function as a
regenerative and harmonious process of love-desire in
specific relationship. At the stage of the Way of
Re-cognition, the sexual process is completely integrated
with the cycle of whole body
conductivity and re-polarization of the body-being (toe to
crown rather than vice-versa). At that time the sexual play
is completely released from the degenerative process of
gross bodily discharge through conventional orgasm (except
where conception is specifically intended). In the stage of
the Way of Divine Communion, it is only necessary to move
out of self-possessed and self-indulgent patterns of sexual
practice and interest, into a responsible commitment of love
desire in an ordinary household intimacy. Clearly, the most
suitable circumstance for a devotional life that allows the
patterns of human intimacy is one in which both partners are
devotees, serving the same Master. All other circumstances
are problematic to one or another degree and represent, in
general, the fulfillment of merely conventional
possibilities. Devotees are not obliged to marry, but they
are urged to do so, not earlier than the age of eighteen,
but, hopefully, at least during the stages of either the Way
of Divine Communion or the Way of Relational
Enquiry.
A responsible commitment and
household arrangement between two truly homosexual partners,
male or female, can be considered to be a marriage in the
same sense as a conventional heterosexual relationship.
However, such individuals must test themselves most
profoundly, so that they are certain of the stability of
this form of love-desire and their ability to confine
themselves to it happily.
4. At every stage there is a
complex natural and real process of the body-being, which is
meditation, or technical re-adaptation to the natural state,
which ultimately transcends all conditions, high or low.
At every stage this includes
natural or spontaneously voluntary attention of the whole
body-being as feeling-observing-listening in the Presence or
the Radiant Current which pervades all life-feeling,
breathing, thought, and subtle
awareness. This may include special realization of the
breathing through voluntary action (as in the "Breath of
God" described in the Way of Divine Communion) or
feeling-audition of the current and subtle visualization of
its manifestations above the gross plane (as in the Way of
Re-cognition), and so forth.
5. There is at every stage
necessary realization of sacrifice into the Condition of
conditions on the basis of unqualified Ignorance. This is
naturally implemented via the Name of God (in the Way of
Divine Communion), enquiry in the form "Avoiding
relationship?" (in the Way of Relational Enquiry), preverbal
re-cognition (in the Way of Re-cognition), or tacit
dissolution in the Condition of conditions, or Only-God, in
radical intuition in the full maturity represented by the
Way of Radical Intuition.
5.7
Devotees in the Way of Divine
Communion should, in addition to strict adaptation to the
life and meditation practices and regular participation in
the seminars and other forms of personal instruction
conducted by Vision Mound Ceremony,
study the principal text of The Way of Divine Ignorance, The
Paradox of Instruction, and the literature of the practical
matters of the whole Way (Conscious Exercise and the
Transcendental Sun and The Eating Gorilla Comes in Peace).
They should be engaged in daily study of Breath and Name,
which contains the specific Teaching
of the Way of Divine Communion. And they should also study
the general Teaching, as presented in The Knee of Listening
and other literature which may be
published over time.
5.8
Devotees should economize sleep.
Seven hours of sleep at night is generally sufficient and
optimally refreshing. To sleep longer, as a daily rule, is
likely to be enervating in effect, since it permits
indulgence in dream activity close to the surface of waking
consciousness. Devotees who are eighteen years old or older
should experiment with sleep by limiting themselves to
periods varying from six to eight hours, until they discover
the discipline that provides optimum rest with the least
amount of superficial dreaming. (Some may find, if their
daily schedule permits, that they do well to sleep less at
night but to supplement their night's sleep with a rest
period of up to one hour after the midday meal.)
Activity in the waking state should
also demonstrate a natural economy. The daily diet should be
moderate, entirely wholesome, and lacto-vegetarian. Sexual
intercourse should be confined to relational or love-desire
intimacy in a mutual household commitment in marriage, and
its frequency should be moderated by the full feeling of
love-desire, wherein there is clarity, strength, and freedom
from self referential and mental craving. Likewise, the
cycle of every day should allow for an appropriate balance
of work, recreation, intimacy, and solitary privacy (for
study and meditation).
5.9
The daily diet and health practices
for devotees strictly exclude the use of all unnecessary
dietary elements and all foods that toxify and enervate the
vital system and reinforce habitual cravings. The
conventional diet and life-practice
common in the world today is founded in an irreducible
identification with the vital or gross body point of view.
Such a way of life is created via the impulse of vital
shock, or mortal fear, and ultimately only serves the
disposition of dying and a struggle relative to constant
vital imbalances. The practice of devotees should be simple,
pleasurable, intelligent rather than righteous, and free of
designs based on the search for consolation, stimulation,
and release.
In the beginning, the dietary
practice should strictly exclude all conventional and
unnecessary accessories to the pure, vital lacto-vegetarian
diet described in The Eating Gorilla Comes in Peace. Thus,
there should be abandonment of all use of meat, poultry,
eggs, fish, tobacco, coffee, tea, refined sugar or other
refined and impure manufactured foods, hallucinogenic or
"social" drugs, and all forms of alcohol. "TV-drugstore" or
open shelf medicines for internal use should be avoided, and
conventional medical cures should be accepted only as an
emergency resort, where natural applications and methods
that use the body's own healing power or process are not
wholly sufficient.
The substances chosen for the
body's care and general adaptation should yield an ongoing
sense of vital strength and balance, and not produce primary
or secondary effects, now or later, that are signs of bodily
toxicity, vital and emotional enervation or over
stimulation, or diminution of clarity and natural control of
mind.
If you enjoy making special
occasions out of anniversaries of births, marriages,
traditional holidays, or any random meal, you may easily do
so with the application of study and imagination relative to
the benign and delicious elements that are wholly usable
from the viewpoint of this pure and enlivening diet. Study
books on the traditional cuisine's, and then modify the
recipes by applying true dietary principles to your
preparations. Then your meals will be wholly pleasurable.
Surround them with loving, a sense of visual beauty, music,
and humor. Then you also serve the lawful liberation and
occupation of your family and friends.
When you have matured in practical
service, and have begun to attend formal occasions at Vision
Mound Sanctuary, and have begun to breathe and contemplate
the Divine Presence in the Company of the Spiritual Master,
you may add the traditional dietary accessories (meat,
poultry, fish, eggs, tobacco, alcohol, and refined or
processed foods), but not drugs, to your occasional
celebrations with other devotees, but never out of habit or
mere craving, and never when alone, as a private bodily
indulgence. Real celebration is an intensely energetic and
Radiant, and therefore self-purifying, activity. If you
genuinely celebrate in one another's Company, and in Divine
Communion, you will feel little or no negative effects from
consuming these accessory substances. Whatever effects you
may feel should be purified easily and quickly as you resume
daily practice of the strict diet, and the accessories of
celebration should, therefore, not impair the functions of
body, emotion, or mind or impede your spiritual practice
either during the celebration or afterward.
Nothing serves the steadiness,
strength, and clarity necessary for an enlightened life of
spiritual practice more than a "sattwic" diet, or one that
is pure, whole, moderate in quantity, free, as a matter of
daily practice, of stimulants, toxins, and enervating
substances, and intelligently maintained from the beginning
of one's sacrificial commitment to the Spiritual Master and
the Way. If the diet is true, then all other habits of
action, association, sex, emotion, and mentality tend to
re-adapt to their own lawful disposition with natural
ease.
5.10
Dietary and other life-conditions
are recommended and expected-not monitored and enforced.
Although life-supporting habits, humorously rather than
righteously applied, are recommended to all, each devotee
must master the conditions of his or her own living and
presume the right play of discipline. All devotees will be
welcome to participate in regular educational functions at
Talking God Seminary-as long as they maintain themselves in
an orderly fashion and with serious interest. No one will,
however, be permitted to sit on formal occasions or
participate in service and educational functions at Vision
Mound Sanctuary who makes more than modest or occasional use
of the conventional "occasions of celebration" that are
common to people in our society. Such accessories include
alcohol, tobacco, coffee, tea, meat, poultry, fish, eggs,
and processed foods. Individuals who apply for instruction
in the process of conductivity in the mature phase of the
Way of Relational Enquiry must by then follow all the
conditions of diet and life, as stated in Breath and Name
and other texts, strictly and constantly. Such strict
observance must continue through the entire stage of the Way
of Re-cognition. Devotees in the Way of Radical Intuition
must be presumed to be thoroughly aware and responsible
relative to the patterns of their own lives, and, therefore,
they are inherently free to manage the conditions of their
own living.
5.11
Some may enjoy the occasion of
heart-felt chanting, or singing of songs and hymns, or the
making of music of a traditional or modern and devotional
kind. There is no objection to this as an ordinary amusement
or pleasure in company. Even occasional spontaneous singing
or chanting or music making in private, or unseen and
unheard, is ordinary enough, although singing, and all
music, like speech itself, is essentially an invention
created for play in relation to others. The disposition of
feeling may be served by heart-felt attention to the
activities of devotional music-making and conventional or
dualistic invocations in the form of hymns, songs, and
chants, but the fundamental process in Ignorance is in
silence, wherein even speech or song or any sound is often
found to be an aggravation, and, in any case, not Truth.
Those who are not trained to sing and chant generally do so
only when the occasion requires them (or privacy permits
them), and they are rarely then free of either
self-consciousness or irony. And those who are trained to a
degree seem never entirely free of the fatuous clinging of
tongue to eyelid of which every church soprano is eternally
guilty.
Heart-felt chanting, hymning,
singing, or general music-making is a traditional magical
and egoic process of invocation of various influences,
whether supposedly Divine, or subtle, or cosmic, or mental,
or vital and worldly. Once that game is tested in Ignorance,
it becomes only a conventional amusement. So, sing and make
music for fun, and as truly heart-felt service and attention
to the Divine Presence. Speech and song and every sound
must, however, with all other arising, be undone in Truth,
and they are no more direct and necessary and true a way to
the Divine Condition than upchuck of lunch is a way to eat.
Your devotional responsibility does not carry any obligation
for Sunday merriment or solemn cloistering in barber shop
quartets. Music is an ordinary pleasure, whether heard in
inner or outer chambers. The soul is not our Condition, nor
is the soul's fulfillment the Way to Truth. Therefore, enjoy
music, chant, and song to your soulful content as a way to
celebrate with one another, but never let a line of tones or
even a single sound distract you from the obligation to come
to rest in Fullness, prior to all things.
5.12
Right association is, like right
diet, a profoundly clarifying and stabilizing discipline. As
you mature in practice, you will find yourself less and less
inclined to live in large cities, to spend time in public
places and gatherings that are empty of Divine occasion, or
to view or participate in the stupid, casual, and gross
amusements of the usual man, publicly or privately. Be free
of such things more and more. Live a life of true pleasure
and intimacy, of intelligent consideration, judgment, and
persuasion, more and more. And, from the beginning, spend
more and more time in the company of other devotees and in
right and happy occupation in their company. Devotees should
not live as the usual man in one another's company, but as
devotees. Do this more and more.
5.13
The secret of the realization of
the Way of Divine Communion is constant maintenance of the
living form of approach characteristic of a devotee. The
various forms of practice are simply forms of responsibility
for the natural activities which proceed spontaneously and
always in one's own case (although unconsciously in the
usual desiring and self-oriented pattern of life and
experience) in the course of approach to God in, as, and
through the Divine Presence. These forms of practice must
remain natural, alive, heart-felt, simple, direct, never
becoming formalities so technical as to be distracting for
their own sake. They are all forms of Divine Communion, not
methods for getting to Divine Communion or any experiential
consolation that distracts one from simple, absorptive
Communion with the all-pervading Divine Presence or
Reality.
5.14
The Way of Divine Communion is the
Way of devotees, who are under the constant obligation to
make their very being into present devotional sacrifice.
Thus, in every moment, they turn to the revealed Divine, the
Presence, via the discipline of various practices, instead
of dramatizing craving and self¬possessed responses to
arising conditions, within and without. Each instant of
practice requires first the turning of attention, and then
the intuitive and felt yielding of the whole being (opened
and released in the same direction). Thus, in every moment,
the devotee makes and meets the "mark," which is the
Reality. (To "miss the mark" is the meaning of the ancient
word "sin.")
5.15
The traditional "yamas"
(restraints) and "niyamas" (observances), which are the
religious and moral foundation of yoga, involve
responsibilities relative to mind or intellect, speech, and
body. They include the yamas of internal and external
nonviolence, truthfulness, non-stealing, celibacy (or sexual
self-mastery), and non-covetousness, and the niyamas of
internal and external purity, contentment, austerity, study
of scriptures (and of self), and worship or meditation on
God.
The Way of Divine Communion is the
foundation stage of preparation and approach to Divine
Realization, which establishes the principles and conditions
of the whole Way of Divine Ignorance, or Radical
Understanding. This whole Way represents the true and
responsible practice of life, founded in the conscious
process and commitment to the Spiritual Master in God, which
is implied in the traditional yogic and religious
descriptions.
5.16
I do not require the discipline of
conventional renunciation. Neither do I allow commitment to
the karmas of self-indulgence. My devotees serve me through
the humorous discipline of an ordinary pleasurable life.
This is the foundation of their perfect Realization or
Divine Life.
5.17
The stages of practice will, in the
majority of cases, require many years to mature. Spiritual
maturity is not quick. Nor is spiritual discipline the kind
of activity one could wish would come to an end. It is not a
hopeful or strategic activity, the result of which is some
acquired state called "Enlightenment." It is a unique
process in action, founded in a unique relationship to the
Source of what presently arises, and, therefore, of all that
arises. It is itself the very essence of true Enlightenment
or Intelligence (which is not a state or any relative and
limited condition or point of view, but a Process in
Consciousness).
People are fascinated by hopeful
techniques, or the influences of extraordinary beings and
places. They want a result fast, so they can indulge
themselves in the result (and, usually, all other
fascinations) without fear. But real spiritual practice
involves the whole of the being, and all of one's life. You
must engage the discipline as long as you live. And you must
do it with the whole force of your being. The instants of
interesting practice or experience, or of the fascinating
influence or effects of contact with extraordinary beings,
including the Spiritual Master, or the company of other
devotees in Divine Communion, are at best signs that may
lead one to intensify one's real commitment to the lifelong
discipline and sacrifice of attention. Spiritual life is the
real practice of manifest existence. Therefore, devotees
should not look for brevity in my Company, nor for
consolation, effect, or fascination. They must be prepared
for eternal practice, and to be intelligent rather than
credulous and unstable.
5.18
Conscious, sustained, and regular
as well as constant practice of the obligations of practical
and spiritual practice must become the habit of devotees. If
they spend their life's time considering, listening about,
thinking about, and puzzling about or resisting it all, the
proof and the enjoyment of it will never be shown. Whatever
your practical or spiritual obligations are now, do them
more and with greater, more conscious, and constant
intensity, interest, and surrender. Spend less time
instructing yourself or being instructed and more time in
the discipline and the meditation that is appropriate to
your stage of spiritual life.
5.19
Each stage of practice is continued
until certain signs appear spontaneously. The next stage of
practice always implies responsibility, both tacitly and in
action, for signs that have already and non-strategically
appeared.
5.20
Before any individual moves from
one stage of the Way to the next:
(1) the general phenomena of the
new stage should be shown in spontaneous evidence,
and
(2) the conditions for which the
individual was responsible in the previous and present
stage(s) should be under natural, stable, and mature
control.
5.21
In every stage or phase of practice
there are three necessary components, each of which appears
in a somewhat different or unique form in each
stage:
5.22
(1) sacrifice (devotion,
service)
(2) attention (concentration,
inspection)
(3) intuitive insight (the
conscious process, either as exercise or tacit
realization).
All three components are matters of
responsibility, if not intention, and all must be present
with profound intensity if Realization itself is to be
Present.
5.22
Practice of the Way of Divine
Ignorance is not founded exclusively in the relationship to
the Spiritual Master. It also involves full commitment to
the condition of relationship itself. The relationship to
the Spiritual Master is the epitome and primary form of
relationship. And that relationship contains hidden the
whole Mystery and Form of Truth. But it cannot be enjoyed or
understood apart from the practical or sacrificial
application of your life to the whole condition of
relationship as it everywhere and every moment
appears.
Therefore, the practice of the Way
of Divine Ignorance is the practice of relationship to the
Spiritual Master, but also the practice of the condition of
relationship itself. That is why I give practical
instruction in the form of life-demands. The Spiritual
Teacher must be the Master of actual conditions. He is
always bringing his devotee (man or woman) into appropriate
conditions, to test and mature him. In every circumstance,
his devotee will either function in relationship openly,
effectively, wisely, and with love, or he will observe his
own resistance, understand, and gradually restore himself to
the relational condition in that area of his (or her)
functional life.
The practical living of the
conditions of relationship is of primary importance, and it
is the fundamental principle of the process of true practice
in every stage of real spiritual life.
5.23
The true Form of our relationship
is communicated and expressed in the Sacrament of Universal
Sacrifice, which each devotee is rightfully obliged and
fitted to enjoy, in privacy as well as in the company of
other devotees. You should participate daily in this
Sacrament, which is formal recollection of attention, in a
mood of gratitude and surrender, to the Divine Mystery,
Fullness, and Grace inherently communicated in Ignorance and
in confrontation with the Teaching and the Spiritual Master.
Do this at least twice each day (morning and evening),
usually in conjunction with a period of private
study.
When meditation also begins, each
formal sitting should be integrated with this acknowledgment
and acceptance of Grace in the form of gifts. As your
practice of the Way matures, each moment becomes a version
of this Sacrament. It is not, if you engage it truly and
with devotional intensity, a mere and childish ritual. It is
the whole Teaching, discipline, and practice summarized in a
single activity that implicates the whole body-mind in
Sacrifice. By this Sacrifice you constantly recollect the
true purpose of our Meeting, and so you will always rightly
sympathize and constantly re-adapt to appropriate conditions
of life and service in my Company.
5.24
HEAT
There are certain basic
considerations relative to practice that should remain
effective in the daily affair of living this Way.
First of all, the Way itself
involves application to ordinary forms of relationship and
activity-but all such forms are to be lived Lawfully, as
relational discipline. When ordinary conditions of life are
themselves made forms of loving sacrifice, then ordinary
life itself becomes a form of ascetic practice or "tapas"
(which means "heat"). It is not necessary or even useful to
embrace habits of action and isolation which are
conventionally ascetic. Neither is it appropriate to indulge
and exploit the gross and subtle potentials for fascinated
and consoling experiences. The true Way involves
re-adaptation of ordinary actions and relationships to the
Law. Thus, such ordinary relations and enjoyments and
responsibilities become ascetic in the truest sense. They
awaken the "heat" which is the sign of the frustration of
old adaptation. And this "heat" (mental, emotional,
physical, and spiritual) purifies and transforms us in our
habits and liberates us from the illusory consolations of
experience.
A second principal consideration
follows from this. Those who constantly and steadily embrace
ordinary relations and actions in the spirit of the Law-as
sacrifice, service, love, the discipline of relationship
itself-necessarily experience the "heat" which is the sign
of the frustration of old adaptation, old tendencies, old
(both latent and habitual) desires, motivations, demands,
and preferences. Those who live the Lawful practices of the
Way of Divine Ignorance constantly experience the recurrence
of un-Lawful inclinations. The obligation of this practice
is that you must not indulge patterns that are separative,
self-indulgent, and a violation of the Lawful conditions you
have agreed to fulfill by virtue of entering into the
Company of the Spiritual Master. Nonetheless, patterns of
un-Lawful inclination still arise. Thus, you feel
frustrated-the "heat" of practice is awakened. This "heat"
is not necessarily pleasant. Thus, devotees tend to develop
habits and points of view in practice that tend to sidestep
the heat or tapas of the spiritual process.
The most destructive of these
habits or points of view that weaken the transforming power
of the heat of your discipline is that of concern relative
to the tendencies that characterize your life. Negative,
self¬indulgent, and self-possessed tendencies of all
kinds are constantly awakened in the intentional frustration
or natural asceticism of our discipline. There is no end to
what may be revealed about oneself in negative terms.
However, to become concerned and , chronically depressed
through self-criticism and analytical self¬watching is
simply another form of self-possession, or separation into
subjectivity. The true practice is neither to indulge or
dramatize un-Lawful tendencies, nor to become bound up in
self-concerns, doubts, despair, and the whole self-possessed
desire for a pure and lovable ego. Rather, the practice is
to steadily engage relational disciplines, and to persist in
an ordinary life of service, study, and positive or moral
restraint of functions. If this is done, you will observe
that the heat of discipline becomes a purifying and
transforming current of life. Then, secondarily, you will
notice that the signs of old adaptations are gradually
transformed, becoming less and less gross, less and less
frequent, until, at last, they cease to arise or to qualify
the natural Intuition or Radiance in Ignorance.
Transformation of the loveless
adaptations of life is a secondary or indirect expression of
our practice. It may not be attained by direct, willful,
strategic, concerned effort in dilemma, in a milieu of
problems and solutions, but it occurs naturally in a life
which is persistently turned, as an ordinary discipline,
from problems, concerns, and subjective dis-ease, to felt
sacrifice and loving service. Such is the sane and venerable
discipline of those who are devotees rather than
self-seekers. This discipline is present release from the
ego-position. Other disciplines or ways, ascetic or
self-indulgent, and, only reinforce the ego-position, the
principle of separation, and thus they accumulate
experiences and changes of which are only a hedge or armor
around Narcissus.
Therefore, accept the discipline of
the Law as a whole-body obligation in my Company. Endure the
heat thus awakened. At first it burns up the signs of old
adaptation in a purifying manner, but then it becomes a
transforming and illuminating fire. Renounce indulgence or
dramatization of un-Lawful inclinations. Likewise, renounce
all reactive concern about the continuous pattern of arising
tendencies. Whatever arises in this discipline is only a
reflection, high or low, of old adaptation and, as such,
requires neither analysis nor complaint. Be at ease in
service and devotion. All past actions, their tendencies,
and their destinies are unnecessary for the devotee. Thus,
the devotee yields all to the Divine and is happy in Divine
Communion, in Ignorance, free of bondage to both . knowledge
and victory.
Be applied to the Law bodily,
emotionally, with present attention in relationship. Persist
in the ordinary disciplines of service, study, practical
restraints and, when appropriate, the spiritual practices as
well. Endure the heat. Do not indulge un-Lawful tendencies,
but also do not become concerned by any tendencies you feel
to persist in spite of discipline. Thus, the heat will
always increase. You will be purified, transformed, and
re-adapted in your adaptations. Turn your view from
subjective conditions of thinking, emotional inclinations,
obsessive desires, bodily states, and circumstances of
conventional opportunity. Turn to the Divine in Ignorance.
Allow the heat of discipline to provide a link to the
Presence shown to all devotees by Grace. The heat awakened
in the discipline is the power or devotional fire that then
becomes the available energy of spiritual practice. Thus,
spiritual discipline only follows in the case of practical
discipline. The grosser elements must be transformed in fire
before the subtle is revealed above. Then even the subtle
must be converted and dissolved in the same fire. That fire
is the Heart, the Radiance, the Condition of conditions. It
is the Principle in the midst, the fire in the middle
("pyramid"), beyond both the lower and the higher physics.
It is Bright in Ignorance. It is the Light in discipline and
devotion. It is the devotee of the Presence, and it is the
Presence itself.
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