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GOD AND GURU Guru is Brahma, Guru is Vishnu, Guru is God Shiva, Guru verily is the Supreme Brahman; to that Guru I bow. GANDHI'S
MORNING CHANT
Guru as Divine From Week 11 - The the Life of
Understanding a 12 week course Adi Da taught in January of
1973
Tonight I want to talk to you about the last essay in the Wisdom of Understanding. It goes from page 266 to 268. As we went over last week dealt with the Guru as the spiritual master, about the true function of Satsang as the mere presence of the Guru as the principle of Satsang or spiritual life. This week we talk about the Guru s the divine form. Guru as God is not the human individual, ego, magnifying itself dramatically to itself and thinking it is God exclusively over everyone else and having all kinds of qualities that it sort of owns. That sort of divinity confession of is insanity. You find all kinds of people in mental institutions who think in these terms. Guru as God is not some ego who has begun to think he has all kinds of divine attributes. Guru is a function, where this individual who is manifesting the function of Guru in the world, when the ego has died, when the separative principle has died in this individual when the contraction has fallen away utterly, only the divine exists. That's all that appears, and he ecstatically knows himself to be the divine form, because he has died, because that limitation is gone, only the. divine exists. So he's no longer talking about himself as a separate entity who it divine, he is speaking ecstatically outside of his ordinariness. So the Guru is God, God is the Guru. It's not that the human Guru thinks he is God. The human Guru has become God by virtue of his spiritual death. And it's only in this sense that the Guru exists as the divine form, only the divine form is the divine form and it's simply that the Guru is one in whom this limiting principle has died. so that in him only the divine form is conscious. No longer is this separate entity the principle of his existence. That's what I was saying earlier about this name Dyanananda being my name, because it is not a personal name. When I am speaking I am not speaking about Franklin, this limited individual as being some super exclusive divine entity. It's just that this process has occurred. Only the divine is visible, only that is apparent. So the Guru's speech is ecstatic speech, not just self absorbed intoxicated speech. So this brief couple of pages here is this ecstatic speech, it is the word of one who in the midst of ego death', sees that only the divine form exists and he is that divine form. Only that form is manifest, only that form is obvious. Only that form is his form, only that function is his function. So such a one is both Guru in the world and God or the divine. At the same time he lives to as Guru to others and realizes himself to be only the divine form or in the divine form, he knows his very nature as well which is the self. So perfect realization, perfect spiritual death manifests as Guru, Self and God. These three transcendent qualities. And these three are the three forms of realization. These three are the three forms of spiritual experience. So the "I" almost every line in this section begins with "I". This "I" is not the limited "I" and it's a paradoxical "I". It's not a limited self. It's the speech or the word of the divine. So this is the point of view of this couple of pages. It's not the point of view of some human individual making great claims. It is the spontaneous speech of that form itself. The first few lines describe' the Guru or the divine form in terms of the three ordinary qualities or states. So the first "I am not the one who finding himself awake does not know who he is". This is the ordinary waking state. Men ordinarily are born, they live, they are awake in the world, but they haven't the slightest idea what it is. Who knows what this is. It goes on and on, they look at the news everything's so glib and right out there, but nobody has any idea what this is or what they are. Nobody has any idea. But everybody goes along through this mystery as if there weren't any mystery, as if it were all very obvious. They forget the fact that there is a profound mystery of unconsciousness fitted to their waking state. They do not know what this is and what they are. But one who speaks from the point of view of Truth, that very One dissociates himself from that limitation. So he is not one who finding himself awake does not know who he is. This is not his quality. The x ordinary waking state is not his limitation. So he goes on "I am not the one who finding himself in dreams and visions thinks he has returned to his deeper self. The dreamer, and not just the one who at night goes to bed and has dreams, but the quality of dreaming, the functioning, the function of consciousness that is dreams, visions, illusions, the fluid formulation of consciousness. Well in here the Guru is dissociating himself from that limitation. He is not the one who when he's dreaming, having visions, involved in subtle experiences in other words, thinks that this is his true self, his true nature, his real state. And this is the illusion of a yogi, the usual yogi, the seeker for subtler forms of consciousness. As soon as he has a good dream or a really good astral experience or a fine vision of some sort or other, he thinks that this is the very profundity that is the core of his existence. But from the point of view of Truth this is not so. This is only another form of the mystery, another form of illusion or distraction. So the Guru dissociates himself from that limitation. He doesn't think when such things arise that this is his deeper self. He is not confused or limited or distracted by it. So he goes on, "I am not the one who enjoying the bliss of deep sleep and meditating thinks he has become free and should not move to any other state." Again he expands the concept of this state. It's not simply the state of deep sleep in which there is no reflected awareness, no thinking, no visions, no subtle consciousness. Deep sleep in this sense and profound meditation in the sense of going deeper beyond the forms that arise in consciousness, this is another form of distraction. This is itself another form of mystery, of non-comprehension. Whereas the meditator thinks that as soon as there is no thought, that this no thoughtness is his true state, that this bliss of being free of forms in consciousness is his true nature. So such a one who becomes attached to this level of consciousness wants always to be unconscious, wants always to be asleep, wants always to be rigidly and exclusively confined to a no-thought, no-form, no-world condition. But the Guru, one who lives from the point of view of truth dissociates himself from t that limitation, both from the demand for this state itself, or the illusion of it, the distraction by it, and also the illusion that it creates, that this is the fundamental state. And this next line also refers to the waking state. "I am not the one who having slept, awakes." The very first line, "I am not the one who finding himself awake does not know who he is", speaking purely in terms of the mystery of the waking state itself. Here he speaks in terms of being awake but he speaks of it in reference to sleep. So in deep sleep there is this formless consciousness and one who wakes from deep sleep into the ordinary waking state, in that transition identifies with the mystery of that state in which there is no identification absolutely with waking consciousness, but there is a transitional state between formlessness and form with which we can identity. But it too is only a mystery. It is another form of non comprehension, of unconsciousness. All of the three ordinary states as well as the transitions between them are forms of quality, of distraction, of non-comprehension, of unconsciousness, of mystery, in every state, in every one of the three ordinary states, we do not know what it is. One who is awake in the world, one who is having a vision, one who is experiencing mindless meditation or deep sleep, in each of these states he is essentially in the same condition. He is in mystery, he does not know what it is. He does not know who he is. So all of the three states are forms of non comprehension. But certain individuals would have you believe that, yes, the waking state is untrue but your subtle, internal life is what you A truly are, so they would turn you toward that, distract you with that. Or another might say, Oh, the waking state is an illusion and so is all of these phenomena of consciousness, this whole subtle and visionary life. But, beneath that is another form of consciousness in which there is no form, no quality, and that is your = true state. But from the point of view of truth none of the ordinary states or qualities is the truth. They are all forms of distraction, of non-comprehension, of mystery. Because one who is having any one of the three ordinary qualities is simply distracted. He does not know what it is. So up until this point the Guru has been saying what he is not, he has been dissociating himself from the three ordinary forms of limitation, the three ordinary states, waking, sleeping and dreaming, and their counterparts in subtle. life, in formless conscious life or meditation. Now he begins to say what he is, I am this, I am that. I am the one who is with you now. I am that One. In other words he is not elsewhere, he is not hidden within his present appearance, he is not somehow mysteriously contained and behind it. He is that one, that very nature who is present, is what he is, and he is chat, and he absolutely is that, without any qualification. There's nothing mysterious about him. He doesn't refer to some special quality, subtler than the present one as his true nature, nor to some quality of his appearance as his true nature. But his very presence is his nature and he is that presence, that very consciousness, and that very consciousness or presence is not to be of identified with any of the three ordinary qualities. |
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