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Chapter 7
TRUE MEDITATION IS IN THE FORM
OF SACRIFICE, OR RELATIONSHIP
7.1
Real meditation is in the form of
sacrifice, of relationship, not of inwardness or
concentration on the ego-based satisfactions of the
subjective order, high or low. All real meditation is
conscious realization of the Sacrament of Universal
Sacrifice, or Communion with the communicated Present
Divine.
7.2
The Divine is One, but not in the
sense of an Object or a Subject. That One may not be
realized by any concentration of the faculties of being, nor
does that one appear as any experience or archetype. When
all concentration, contraction, exclusion, separation, union
limitation, experience, knowledge, appearance, perception,
form, action, location, cognition, vision, psyche, process,
and exclamation cease to define the Consciousness, only this
One is Realized. The Divine is Paradox, Sacrifice, Reality,
Ignorance, Unqualified Radiance, Undefined Consciousness,
world-only, Mind-only, Truth-only, No-Thing, Al. No
realization realizes this One. Only the obviation of all
realization is Realization at last.
7.3
Meditation itself, in the Way of
Divine Communion, is the specific relational process of
present recollection or re-attention to the Divine Presence
via the Name of God and the Breath of God, on the basis of
right discipline as service to God. This process is only
gradually awakened. The first period of responsibility is
the assumption of the various life disciplines, including
the foundation principle of service. This is to be done via
regular study confrontation with the argument and
instruction that is the Teaching, and appropriate turning to
the Divine Presence through simple and natural acceptance of
my Prasad or Transcendental Company (the Sacrament of
Universal Sacrifice), in a place set aside for this in your
home, at the beginning and end of each day, and whenever
else this may seem right and altogether true. Likewise,
consider the Teaching and this Company with other devotees
regularly, at least once or twice a week, and accept the
invitation to sit with me, with loving attention, as often
as it is offered and made possible for you. All such forms
of Divine Communion serve to awaken you to this Presence
which is Realized in my Company, and which is all-pervading.
When this awakening truly begins, then meditation in the
form of the Name of God and the Breath of God may be
engaged, heart-felt, by you. This meditation or devotional
sacrifice should become random, even constantly true of you.
And you should engage it formally, twice each day, morning
and evening (or whenever appropriate), for periods of one
half hour to one hour each.
7.4
Thought controls or directs
attention and, therefore, experience. Meditation is a
process engaged previous to Samadhi or prior and radical
Intuition of the Real Condition. In meditation attention is
held to a single thought, or some other object prior to
thought, until experience ceases to arise solely or even at
all in the terms or conditions that are habitual or tending
to arise in the waking state (and in the binding or
unconscious conditions of the states of dreaming and
sleeping). Thus, meditation is a means, at least at its
base, of liberating and redirecting attention, so that
experience ceases to be fixed in and by what is already
known or usual. This may only be done if we are released
from the binding power of the random or constantly changing
stream of thoughts.
This release is enjoyed in a
different manner in each stage of the practice of the Way of
Divine Ignorance, or Radical Understanding. In the Ignorance
is regenerated in the Way of Divine Communion is the
recollection or feeling re-attention of the whole body-being
to the Presence. The specific form of this recollection is
naturally awakened and made attractive to us in the literal
Company of the Spiritual Master. It is not itself a willful,
mental, egoic act. We are awakened and drawn or attracted
into it by Grace in the Company of the Spiritual Master,
once we have "heard" the argument of the Teaching, and then
properly prepared ourselves and made an appropriate approach
via the Lawful, sacrificial, or relational discipline to
which the Spiritual Master has obliged us. Once we are
awakened to the natural, full, and wholly attractive
feeling-intuition of the Divine Presence, our meditation or
spiritual discipline and responsibility begins.
This is the process of meditation
in the Way of Divine Communion: In formal
sitting-meditation, we first surrender ourselves to the
Divine Presence, in a spirit of gratitude for the Teaching
and loving obedience to the Spiritual Master. Then, while
seated in an upright, stable position, the extremities of
the body locked in one another (hands meeting, and legs
meeting or crossed at the ankles), and, in general, the eyes
closed, we turn and yield with profound feeling-attention to
the Divine Presence, which has shown itself always to be
all-pervading, surrounding, and supremely attractive to us.
This turning may at random be aided by directing the whole
body-being through the mental Name "God." But the essential
process is simply to yield all feeling-attention to the
Presence. This must be done constantly, with all attention,
and all feeling, or else we will wander in attention through
random thinking-knowing and forget the Presence.
When stable, thoughtless, feeling
attention in the Presence is enjoyed in this manner, we are
drawn into a sense of Fullness. It is in this sense of
Fullness that the Breath of God takes place in its true or
truly potent form. The Breath of God may take place in a
relatively conventional way as simple reception-release,
with inhalation and exhalation, while we go about the usual
round of thinking and acting. As such, however, it is not
much more than a physical and superficial psychological
exercise. The Breath of God in its true potency is active
only when we are abiding in Ignorance (not qualified by
thought, or knowledge) in the Presence, alive in the sense
of blissful Fullness which is awakened only in that
case.
When feeling-attention is released
into the Presence, we are abiding in Ignorance, prior to
thought. Various phenomena may arise in such a moment. The
body may tremble and feel heat or cold or radiant bliss. We
may feel disposed to move the body into spontaneous patterns
or gestures, or make sounds. We may feel, see, hear, smell,
taste, or otherwise sense uncommonly. We may forget the body
in blisses, other visions, and the like. In any case, even
while moving and feeling in these and any number of other
ways, simply persist in feeling-attention or
whole-body-being yielding into the Presence, and breathe
while in the Fullness of the Presence (receiving the
Presence, resting in the Presence, and yielding all
conditions, good or bad, high or low, into the Presence).
(At times when the body is forgotten in the Presence, we may
rest in the Fullness as Bliss without any awareness of
breathing or reception-release, but only of effortless
surrender into Blissfulness, Brightness, or other senses of
the Fullness of the Presence.)
The process of meditation should be
engaged in this manner twice daily (and even at random for
briefer periods) and continued in each sitting as long as it
may be truly done, for up to one hour. In the beginning, it
may be difficult to maintain or constantly return to the
meditation for more than fifteen minutes to half an hour.
Nonetheless, maintain the sitting, but do not struggle, for
at least one half hour on each occasion, and this will
gradually and effortlessly increase up to one
hour.
The process of meditation will
gradually, by Grace of the attractiveness of the Presence
rather than your willful interest in attaining the Presence,
become natural, deep, and spontaneously prolonged. Do not
struggle in a concerned manner, but do persist in a feeling
and lovingly distracted manner. Begin each period of
meditation with surrender to the Divine, with gratitude for
the Teaching and the Spiritual Master, shown by the offering
of gifts, usually of fruit, flowers, and the like, and end
each such period with the same grateful surrender and
acceptance of the Gift of Grace, shown through acceptance of
the return of some portion of your previous offerings.
(Thus, the Sacrament of Universal Sacrifice is the Theatre
in which meditation is to take place.)
The spiritual practice of the Way
of Divine Communion is mature when, in regular and prolonged
periods of formal meditation (up to one hour), the devotee
enters easily and rests stably in thoughtless
feeling-attention in the Presence, and the living cycle of
the breath takes place for prolonged periods in the Fullness
of the Presence. It is not a matter of remaining "blank" for
up to an hour, but of easily and randomly moving beyond
thought into feeling-intuition of the Presence and its
Fullness, and to be able to continue to move beyond thought
at random for up to an hour. During such a period of
meditation, there must be prolonged moments and periods of
literal thoughtlessness, but an abiding sense of Fullness or
Radiance persists rather than blankness, and there is
abiding in this Fullness of Bliss, so that even thoughts may
again arise, but in a natural manner, emptied of the power
to destroy or distract from feeling-intuition of the
Presence and its Fullness.
The Way of Divine Communion as a
whole is mature when the devotee serves the Divine Presence
and the Spiritual Master under all conditions and through
Lawful (sacrificial, relational, and regenerative)
participation in all conditions, and when, in formal
meditation as well as under all conditions in general, the
devotee naturally turns beyond knowledge, thought, and habit
or tendency into feeling-intuition of the Presence and
breathing or surrendering into the Fullness of the
Presence.
The release of attention from
thought, or the binding power of thought on attention and
the whole of life, is enjoyed only in the Condition of
Ignorance. In the Way of Divine Communion this enjoyment
takes place as just described. In later stages, enquiry (in
the form "Avoiding relationship?"), re-cognition, and
radical intuition, along with their special ways of
directing thought or yielding attention to and through
objects prior to thought, serve the same function in
Ignorance. (In the stage of the Way of Radical Intuition,
the formal and, in effect but not in intention, remedial
process of meditation is replaced by the Samadhis of the
priorly intuited Condition of the Real.) The Way in any
stage is fulfilled only in the case of the devotee who
enters into the discipline of meditation in the form which
has been given him (or her) as his present responsibility,
and who enters into it in Ignorance, with profound
feeling-intuition-yielding, passing beyond thought (or
knowledge) and abiding beyond thought in the Condition of
Divine Ignorance or Fullness itself for prolonged periods.
In the case of such a devotee, his or her life in general
becomes naturally re-adapted in habits and tendencies,
becoming itself transformed into an expression of the same
meditation, even while the conventions of action, feeling,
and thinking, albeit transformed, continue in an ordinary
way.
7.5
The time of sitting in meditation
(the spiritual engagement of Breath and Name) is an
outwardly nonformal extension or realization of the formal
Sacrament of the Universal Sacrifice, or Prasad. Therefore,
the devotee engages in an inwardly formal process that 7.5
essentially duplicates the outward formalities of the
Sacrament of the Universal Sacrifice. This inwardly formal
process is what is implied by the invitation to devotees to
simply sit and be consciously involved in the enjoyment of
mutual sacrifice in the Company of God.
Divine Communion is the condition
of life in which there is constant and conscious involvement
in a total, practical, and mutually sacrificial relationship
with the living Divine Presence. This Divine Communion is
the foundation principle of the Way of Divine Ignorance. It
is realized in action in more total, perfect, and
spiritually profound ways as the stages of practice develop.
The devotee initially realizes this Divine Communion in the
form of the practical or functional devotion of life as
service to God. Later he takes this a step further. When
sitting in the Communion Hall, the place set aside in his
home for formal Communion with the Divine, he constantly
sacrifices himself to God and constantly receives the Grace
of the Divine spiritual influence. As long as he or she can
consciously maintain this activity while sitting in the
Communion Hall, the devotee may remain. If distractions
begin to hold his attention too powerfully, then he should
leave the room and continue his practice in the form of
practical service to God. (The devotee may spend up to an
hour each time, twice a day, in this process of Universal
Sacrifice.)
Sitting in the Company of the
Divine is Divine Communion. It is always the great occasion
of mutual and universal sacrifice. Each stage of the life of
Divine Ignorance, or Radical Understanding, is right
fulfillment of the Law, which is Sacrifice. Therefore, the
devotee simply sits in the Company of the Divine. But the
living and the sitting must be forms of the Law, forms of
sacrifice in the manner or after the model of the formal
occasion of Universal Sacrifice.
When you sit in meditation, you
should constantly and consciously sacrifice or surrender to
the Divine Presence all the while. This is not to be made a
self-conscious effort. It is not a kind of "working on
yourself." It is simply a matter of the random and natural
return of attention, with love, to the Presence. In the
process, you will observe the modifications of your
attention, including distractions and subjective
involvements of all kinds. When these arise, simply return
and yield heart-felt attention to the Presence, and breathe
the Presence through cycles of reception and release. This
is your gift of self, your real sacrifice. When you make
this sacrifice, the Divine returns to you the natural
intuition of your true Condition.
You should not relate to my Prasad,
my Presence, merely as if it were yogic energies or any
other fixed kind of influence. You should simply receive me
always, under all the conditions of life and meditation, and
notice all of the ways in which my Presence communicates
itself. In this way you will come to know me as I am, in
Truth and completely. I am simply the Condition in which
everything appears.
7.6
True meditation is not the
exclusive, self possessed method of passivity, but natural
Radiation, happiness both prior to and as the whole
body.
Do not merely and passively receive
me, but duplicate me through sacrifice-this is the way to
use me. Initiation is a process of your transition from the
passive, merely arising condition to the Real Condition,
prior to all arising, via duplication of the True and the
True Man. The process of the Name of God and the Breath of
God is that participation or sacrifice in the Presence of
the Real in which we duplicate that Condition, the Condition
of self, mind, body, and all worlds, high or low. If our
Realization of the Presence is through sacrifice, then we
are Radiance or Love, whereas if we only receive it and
depend on it, as a Parent, outside ourselves, we are always
empty.
Be aligned to me by radical
duplication, not waiting. Feel-Radiate as the whole body
through the Name and Breath of God. Be in love. See me and
be as I am. Do not merely depend on me, nor presume
independence from me, but love me and be love.
Feel-Radiate in perpetual
Ignorance, confounded in Paradox, free of the binding power
of every kind of knowledge or contraction. Feel as the whole
body-not with it but as it-without defining it. Be whatever
is the case altogether. Since that cannot be known in
itself, one can only abide as the very Condition in which
all conditions rise and fall.
Sitting meditation is simply a
special or sacred occasion of intuitive understanding, or
Ignorance, and natural abiding, or Radiation. All times and
places become such sacred occasion for one who constantly
practices the true discipline. Such a one is a lover, man or
woman. Such a one abides as love, as delight, the healing or
Divine Power that is Ignorance, the perfect Body of
Man.
When, in Ignorance, "I" is the body
(whatever the body is altogether) the gesture of existence
itself is spontaneous Radiation. The gesture is thus
coincident with both deep surrender-openness or receptivity
to and rest as whatever is the case (which is also
unknowable and unknown). In that case, reception and
Radiation are the same.
The Radiation is the
condition-expression of the whole body (elemental, etheric,
mental, super-mental, egoic) from and as its very Condition.
It is Love. It is rest in identity with the Presence, even
toe to crown, unchanged by the parts of breathing. This
Radiation becomes true of you not by any effort to Radiate,
to brighten as the ego, but by the natural practice of
devotional sacrifice, through devotional attention to the
Presence of the Divine, through service and Communion with
the Spiritual Master, and through the sacrifice of Breath
and Name.
7.7
By the time formal meditation
becomes a responsibility, the devotee (unless specially
disabled) should be able to sit comfortably and for
prolonged periods in either the "full lotus" or the "easy
pose." Until then, he or she should practice these poses,
outside of meditation, as a practical preparation. If
meditation becomes appropriate, but no such pose is yet
comfortable for prolonged periods, then the devotee may sit
in a chair that provides a firm seat, with hands folded in
one another (or one on each knee, with index finger and
thumb joined) and with legs crossed and touching at the
ankles (not at the knees). (The chair may also have a firm
back, and even arms, to prevent the body from falling over
in deep meditation, but the devotee should sit so that the
body, rather than the back of the chair, provides its own
support. The Japanese style "kneeling pose," done on the
floor or a platform, may also be adopted by some as an
alternative.) It may also be found useful to sit with the
body square to the four directions. The traditional
recommendation is to face north (thus duplicating the
attitude of facing the conventional source or "top" of the
world) or east (the direction of the arising
sun).
7.8
Particularly in meditation or
during exercise, do not wear tight-fitting clothes or too
much clothing (stopping access to air-which should be fresh
and in natural circulation in the rooms we live or sleep
in-or obstructing blood-circulation and the energy flows of
7.8 the body).
7.9
Formal meditation should generally
be done just after arising in the morning and at leisure (or
just before retiring) in the evening, since these are the
times when gross obligations are least effective on the
being. Thus, meditation will coincide with the cycles of
Earth itself, so that the gross efforts of the environment
are also relatively at rest and subtler processes are most
available or in evidence. Meditation should not generally be
engaged when feeling in present need of food, or too soon
after eating, but rather when you are most fresh, strong,
and free of gross obligations. Use leisure less for
entertainment's and more for meditation, study, and
devotion.
7.10
No one should begin the formal
study and practices of the Way of Relational Enquiry who
does not regularly and truly sit in meditation one half hour
to one hour, twice a day, in stable sitting pose. (And
occasions of sitting for approximately one hour should be
quite frequent-once a day on the average.)
7.11
MEDITATION IN MY
COMPANY
Consider what you know. You do not
even know what a single thing is. Then rest-abide in that
Ignorance, as whatever is the case, not within what arises,
but as what arises, as the body itself, whatever is the case
altogether (which is not knowable, but with which one is
identical). Rest-abide in my Presence as whole body
attention, not waiting within for changes, but in love. Do,
feel this more and more perfectly. Radiate as whole body
happiness. Be happy as the body altogether. Look, feel, act,
be completely happy as whatever is the case, whatever the
body is altogether, under the conditions of whatever is
arising. Persist in this under all conditions. In this
persistence we are glorified immortally, and the whole
future is appropriate, not worthy of fear.
Be the heart. Radiate the whole
body. Feel Radiance as the whole body, full of pleasure in
the feet and head, the eyes, all organs, the abdomen and sex
organs, the chest and shoulders, hands, bowels, anus, 7.11
spine, forehead, all space, all arising. Be constantly aware
of the Real Presence and be submitted into it with every
part of every breath.
7.12
Conventional meditation is
inwardness, or remedy by subjectivity. Real meditation, the
meditation of devotees in the Way of Divine Ignorance, is a
process of awakening from subjectivity. The process is
gradual in its perfection, but its Truth is certain from the
beginning.
The inner "I" is not the resort in
this Way. "I am not the body" is not the point of view of
practice. The endless distraction of subjectivity, of
contraction, is considered and undermined through various
kinds of participation during the four great stages of
practice.
The Truth is not the view "I am the
body." However, this is factually true of "I," and,
therefore, our practice must center on relationship and
release from the reflex of contraction, rather than on
conventional and exclusive inward turning. Real meditation
must center on insight into the avoidance of relationship,
and every form of contraction or reactive reflex, rather
than the search for subjective fulfillment's and all the
glamorous illusions of experience.
Thus, the Samadhi or perfect
Intuition of the Real Condition in which our real meditation
is resolved at last is utterly free of subjectivity, of
knowledge, of thought, of self, of perception, of sound, of
light, of vacant silence, of action, of experience, of
limitation. The Realization which comes to maturity in the
Way of Radical Intuition is free of subjectivity, or the
reflexive gesture of inwardness, as well as all the
complications of objective relationship, or the gesture of
outwardness. It is Radiant, not contracted. It is not
inwardness, nor is it compulsively motivated by any object.
It is Ignorance, or liberation in Real God,prior to the
limitations introduced by subject or object and all the
habitual adaptations founded in the dilemma or dream of
subject-object realms.
Therefore, devotees in the Way of
Divine Communion should realize the relational character of
their entire discipline. The Divine Presence is not found
within but revealed to us in relationship. The spiritual
practice of Breath and Name is a process in relationship to
the Divine Presence. And the whole living discipline
relative to study, money, food, sex, and service is natural
fulfillment of the Law, which is sacrifice, or the
discipline of relationship.
The Way is not a call to precious
inwardness, nor to outer obsessiveness in a search for gross
fulfillment's, but to Truth or Real God. Much of inwardness,
or the realms of subjective distraction, is stirred up in
the stages of the Way. Just so, the circumstances of life
are constantly transformed, to test the devotee. Therefore,
remember the discipline always, and remember constantly to
listen to the Teaching, so you may hear the liberating
argument and remain free in my Company.
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