THE METHOD OF THE SIDDHAS (1995) Part I: The Method of the Siddhas CHAPTER 11 Phases DEVOTEE: What is the point of images and visions? AVATARA ADI DA: It is always different. In one case, such an experience may coincide with one or another degree of Real transcendence. In that case, the one in whom the experience arises suddenly understands and is free of it. In another case, some conditional manifestation may arise, but one does not know what it is. One becomes disturbed by it, but one does not give in to it. Then perhaps some source—a teacher, book, something—will clarify it, and then one is free of it. In yet another case, such a thing will arise without any understanding on ones part, and one "buys" it. In that case, one enjoys it, one takes it as it is, one becomes full of it, one identifies with it, and one is full of regret and longing when it goes. Thus, all the extraordinary manifestations of vision, art, culture, thought, and life are, ultimately, ordinary—simply a part of the universal "creativity". Apart from Satsang, apart from the life of understanding, such things have no more ultimate significance than any other simple or ordinary event. There are people who, because of their chronic condition, because of the tendencies of their conditional state, manifest psychic powers of various kinds. Thus there are mediums and psychics, people who see your "aura", who see pictures around you, who hold your ring and tell you the answers to your questions, who give seances, who make predictions. These people are not themselves extraordinary. Apart from these "gifts" most of them are very "ordinary", even peculiarly unintelligent. You would expect, because these manifestations are extraordinary, that the character of the individuals through whom they are expressed would also be extraordinary. But it is not so. These phenomena are simply qualities that arise, just like a stomachache, or a left hand. There is nothing Ultimate, Truth-like, or even Truth-directed about occult, supernormal, and psychic phenomena, but if some such phenomenon arises in you and you buy it, then it becomes an aspect of your suffering. And all people are suffering, regardless of the qualities that are peculiarly theirs. From the Spiritual point of view, the future is a "creative" activity, not a predetermined one. Very often there are mysterious indications that arise, perceptions of a tendency that is operating or of a possibility of some kind. But Spiritual sadhana is not a matter of being determined by tendencies or premonitions. Spiritual sadhana in the world is always "creative" involvement with conditions. True action involves the transformation of time and space into the Conscious, Spiritual Event. Therefore, there may be indications of tendencies, of possibilities, of things that may occur, but all of this arises in relation to the Living Heart. "Creative", Free, and Conscious activity, generated in Satsang with the Most Perfect Realizer of the Heart, constantly breaks down the entire machine of destiny. There is no necessary event. It is all a "creative" activity. The more "tamasic", or inert, the body-mind is, the more likely you are to experience and suffer the events toward which you are tending. But the more movement toward purification there is in you, and the more harmony there is alive in you, and the more understanding there is in you, the less your future is likely to be determined by karmas, within and without. When people are talking about "seeing the future", they are really just seeing the tendencies in individuals, in groups. Some such people see psychic imagery, some have a complex intuition. It comes in various forms, but in any case what is seen is only a tendency, a possibility, a trend. And that is the limitation of the "psychic" functions. They do not in themselves enjoy "creative" involvement with the process of life. The naively psychic individual may profess to another, "Yes, you are going to die at the age of forty-two," or, "You are going to marry a rich man when you go on your round-the-world trip to Shangri-la." But that is not in fact how it necessarily will or must be. These are just possibilities, and the more you speak of them as necessary events, the more you make of life an un-"creative" process, a determined process. Therefore, the "Point of View" in this Satsang is always the "creative" viewpoint. Certainly, at times there may be intuitions, feelings, psychic premonitions, and the like, but they always arise within this "creative" process, this "understanding", this Siddhi, or Living Power, of Satsang. Satsang, or life in the Condition of Truth, breaks down rigidity, the "tamasic" quality. The functions associated with the phenomena of the occult and astrology, for example, are "internal" virtues of the vital and astral-emotional, or subtle, being, not of the Very Heart. They tend to interpret life as a fixed event, either in the past or in the future. There have been very few individuals who interpreted the conditionally manifested cosmic and human conditions from a position of Transcendental Illumination. Psychology's and sciences of the ordinary kind tend to treat the past as a fixed event determining the present. And the occult and astrological sciences, even with their attendant psychic phenomena, tend to interpret the future as a fixed event. But nothing is absolutely fixed. Consciousness Itself is utterly Uncontained. It is always a "creative" Force. It is always Humorous. The past is not absolutely determining the present. Therefore, one does not have to get deeply into ones past in order to be free. The future is not absolutely fixed by the stars. At every moment all possibilities exist in the stars. Therefore, it does not make any difference what fixed moment in time and space one takes as the point of view from which to read past, present, or future. What is always the point is this "creative" Realization of Truth. The Real life of understanding is the only appropriate point of view under any conditions. One of the Lessons the Great Siddhas have always tried to communicate to people is the undetermined, or fundamentally Spiritual, Nature of life. The Great Siddhas always have urged human beings to conceive and know life as a Spiritual Event rather than a fixed conditional event. Rather than mortality and suffering, they communicate existence always to be Life and Truth. But in order for that to be so in fact, a new "Point of View must begin to develop. It is always already Free, not fixed. It is not simply a movement, not simply desire, but It is Conscious, Fluid, Intelligent, inherently and priorly Full of Truth and the Blissful Force of the Truth. The Truth is That in Which the stars are hung, and by Which this limited mind of tendencies and fixations is supported. When that "Point of View" is Realized, when Satsang becomes your Condition, every moment becomes the Spiritual Event. Because of this, many great Teachers, such as Gautama or Ramana Maharshi, when asked about the states after death, or the future in life, or psychic powers, would simply not entertain the discussion at all. On occasion Ramana Maharshi gave more or less direct replies to such questions, but, for the most part, He would only say, "Find out who wants to know this." This was His manner of turning the person toward the fundamental Truth Which Transcends and even, at last, Masters destiny. The same is true of Me. I am perfectly willing to talk about these phenomena in general. But they are just here, like This Body, this room. They are only conditional phenomena. They do not determine the Truth or limit the "creative" life-intensity of one who understands. Truth must become the "Point of View". When Truth is the "Point of View", there is no past or future that can absolutely limit your state. Then time and place become relatively insignificant. Then it makes no ultimate difference whether the "good" thing is going to happen or the "bad" thing. In either case, you are going to have to understand. Apart from Truth, when the "good" thing happens you suffer just as much as when the "bad" thing happens. Apart from Truth, the individual lives the subtle contraction and the avoidance of relationship under all conditions. But if, on account of Truth, this subtle strategy does not occur, then you can really pervade the "good" thing that happens, and there will even be a kind of enjoyment or interest when the "bad" thing happens. Whether they are psychic, extraordinary, or ordinary, regardless of their particular makeup, all human beings are suffering. Just so, in all human beings there arises the possibility, in the midst of all this suffering, to live from an entirely "radical" and Free "Point of View". Seen in these terms, then, the purpose of extraordinary things that arise without a persons understanding is just like anything else that arises, any misfortune or fortune that may arise. All experiences, "good" or "bad", are there, ultimately, to turn one into a crisis relative to ones own search. All kinds of conditional manifestations, ordinary and extraordinary, arise in Satsang, and the Force, the Shakti, the Intensity, of Satsang with Me very often tends to bring on relatively unpleasant manifestations in the form of purifying events. If you abide in the Condition of Satsang, if you live the "Point of View" of Satsang, if you resort to Me while going through these processes of experience, they can serve the Real process of understanding. Ultimately, these things are simply what they are, not what they imply. They arise like the stars, the world, and all bodies. Either they can serve the formulations of suffering and its search or they can serve Satsang, depending on the present condition of the individual. DEVOTEE: Why do You at times appear to be weeping when You are sitting with us in Satsang? AVATARA ADI DA: The reasons for it are varied and complex, like any other manifestation in Satsang. This weeping may appear if there is an intense Energy process going on in Satsang. This ascending Force, especially, makes the eyes tear. There is no emotion associated with My weeping. It is just a physical manifestation that purifies the eyes and the centers in the head that are associated with them. Depending on the movement that is going on, sometimes there is a subtle activity, an activity in the subtle body, or the pattern of ascent, that is like suffering. It is like suffering, but it is a Yogic process. When I sit with others in Satsang, there is the communication of various forces, of mind-forms, of all kinds of qualities. The transformation of all of that does not occur without cost, without something happening. In what is called "ordinary life", people are rather insensitive to what is going on between them and others. For this reason, they are very willing to indulge life. Individuals allow other people to do whatever they please, and they themselves do whatever they please, within the limits of their own desires or fears. People are unaware of the nature of what I have simply called "relationship". They do not know what it is, what it involves as a psycho-physical event, a psychic event, a subtle event. It is the transference of life, the communication of the forms of conscious life. In the usual man or woman, though, this transference, or communication, is contracted and destroyed, swallowed, reversed, and poisoned. And people do not know that this is what is going on in themselves and others. People nowadays talk about "vibrations"—this vibration, that vibration, good vibrations, bad vibrations. There is some vague sort of sensitivity awakening about the qualities that people manifest in life. But there is a Real process, which is called "Satsang". It is My Unqualified Communication of the Heart. It is simply Unqualified, Conscious Relationship. This process is Consciously Lived by Me. That is this Satsang. It is a process in consciousness, even a profound Yogic process. But when it occurs, there is often a quality of suffering. Something must occur, something must open, something must be done. And when that is going on in fact, sometimes there is the appearance of weeping in Me. There is the appearance of sorrow, perhaps at times even the apparent mood of sorrow, but it is not identical to sorrow. Something of the Blissfulness of the process of transformation is also Manifested, and Bliss is the core of that appearance of sorrow. There are other times when this process has already taken place, when I have endured the transformation of the karmas of My devotee in My own Body, when the Circle of life is open, free, and the Flow of Satsang has occurred. Then the vital and subtle mechanisms are released in Me. The physical and subtle awareness is let go, and there is an intense concentration in the Light, or Force, Above. This weeping also occurs at those times. But it is just Blissfulness. The ordinary person is insensitive to this real mechanism. He or she is not living it. He or she is not living the "Point of View" of Satsang, or Truth. I have described the quality of life in the usual person as a kind of revulsion. The force of life falls down out of the brain, down the spine. It is released sexually. It is released through the various gross manifestations of life-energy, in various kinds of self-indulgence. It is only used, and never consciously refreshed. The mood of the usual life is trapped between the extremes of comedy and tragedy. People laugh a lot, but what is laughter? What happens when there is laughter? It feels good, but the process involves a form of revulsion, like vomiting. And vomiting is also a form of revulsion. What happens when a person weeps in the ordinary manner? The breath is disturbed. The person cannot control the breath. The chest is convulsively constricted. There is no genuine humor in the person, no Conscious Freedom. There is only revulsion in the ordinary person, down the back and up the front. But in one who understands there is "conductivity", descending in front, ascending in back. The traditional Yogis talk about the ascending Energy and how important it is to conserve the sex-fluid, and the life-force in general. The traditional Yogi is concerned to get the ascending Current going. There is partial wisdom in that, and in fact the ascending "conductivity" does tend to establish itself more and more firmly in the process of Satsang with Me. The circular "conductivity" of life tends to be re-established, as opposed to the unconscious tendency of life-functions to revulse, to release their own force and become empty. This revulsion begins to be replaced by the movement of real "conductivity" in the Condition of Satsang. But this process tends naturally to occur in various and complex forms in the life of Satsang with Me. That is why I have emphasized a practical foundation. I have said that the practical foundation of Satsang is an ordinary, pleasurable life, not a suppressed life—you know, no work, no contact with life, one apple every three days, and no sex for five generations! But I require of My devotees an ordinary, pleasurable life, a functional life, limited to what is supportive, what is enjoyable, what is full. Such a conscious application of life tends to break the chronic pattern of contraction, of revulsion, in a person, at least on the level of practical, human action. And that allows this "conductivity" to begin at the level of life. Some people who take up the Way of the Heart begin to feel the Energy, the Force, of My Company. They speak of various kinds of Force-manifestations and experiences of My Presence. This is evidence that "conductivity" is beginning at the most obvious level, the life-level. Therefore, this Satsang involves "conductivity", descending, ascending, rested in the Heart, Prior to mind and form, Prior to knowledge in the mental sense. At last, all of the "mentality" of Spiritual life is the contraction of the Heart, the limitation of the Heart. Spiritual life, for Me, has involved the observation of this entire Manifestation, or Circle, of life I have described, not the control of It by means of the search. It continues to Manifest Itself endlessly. It is not stopped. All kinds of things have occurred since I wrote The Knee of Listening. The same essential Condition and dynamic Enjoyment has remained from that time, but the Revelation of this Great Process has continued. All I have done is observe It and allow It to take place as a Living Function. It is a Miraculous Phenomenon that no one seems to know about. No one appears to suspect It. The usual man or woman does not suspect that life is miraculous, that there is this miraculous Process of Satsang, the Communication of Truth, Which can make Itself Known on many levels—on the life-level, in the descending pattern, in the ascending pattern, in this intuitive life—this "radical" Realization, this Love-Blissfulness, this Intensity, this "Real" meditation, this "radical" understanding. What most people hear are the little stories, little jokes, that appear in the traditions, glimpses and characterizations of portions of that Great Process. No tradition has comprehended It fully, even at the level of description. All traditions are limited to the viewpoint of one or a limited combination of the three primary centers. But there have been great Saints, great Yogis, great Sages, great individuals. Wherever such a one has arisen, that one has Communicated through Satsang to various people who were close to that one. All kinds of experiences were generated in that manner. And in the midst of all of the people who enjoyed these different kinds of experience, little groups would gather. You know, people sitting in Satsang who had all been having a buzzing in the right ear got together after the death of the Guru and established the "buzzing-in-the-right-ear school". All those who were sensitive to the subtle-body manifestations went off and talked about chakras, the Kundalini, "internal" sound, and light. Many separate groups, schools, and traditions grew up on the basis of particular and unique experiences and tendencies. But all experiences are generated by one Great Process. The "unity of all religions" is not that they have all said the same thing. But if they were all added together, they would amount to a collective, nearly complete, description of all but the most ultimate stage of the one Great Process. Each religious and Spiritual tradition has represented an experiential portion of that Great Process. Historically, the unity of all religions will not be realized by everybody's coming into agreement on some abstraction common to all, but, Served by My guiding examination of all traditions, there will come an acknowledgment that all of these traditional media together amount to a mutually dependent description of the One and Single Great Process of Conscious Existence. Therefore, this very Process, Completed by the Revelations that are My own unique Work, will become the Life of Truth in the future, rather than the traditional dogmatization and ritualization of random, exclusive "internal" and "external" experience. All of My Life, I have been waiting for the time when I could be outwardly Blissful, when I could Manifest that Love-Blissfulness to all. But, all of My Life, I have not been doing that. Even as a baby, I learned very quickly that It could not be expressed, that It could not be lived openly, not among those who were suffering, seeking, motivated in forms of dis-ease. After so long, it has now become possible to Live this Love-Bliss, this Truth, openly. I have developed the Means whereby It can be Communicated to those who are willing to endure the transformation of life. But even in the community of My devotees the same resistance is presented to the Process of Truth. Even in the community of My devotees there tends to be the same game: "No Bliss, do not be Blissful, not already, not already Happy, not already Free, not yet, not me, not with you." But I am not willing to endure the conditions this resistance would lead to. I will "create" the conditions! The Love-Bliss of Truth Itself, not the egoic ignorance of human beings, must Generate the conditions of life. When Truth becomes the "Point of View", when that Love-Blissfulness becomes the "Point of View" that "creates" life, an entirely different situation has arisen in the world. The world is not ordinarily living from the "Point of View" of Truth. It is living from the point of view of its suffering, its dilemma, and there is no room for Blissfulness, for Truth, for unreasonable Happiness. Therefore, the True Guru, the Great Siddha, always seems remarkable from the point of view of ordinary people, because that one lives from the "Point of View of Truth. Such a one decides to live the Very Truth, What is only Obvious to that one, and he or she "creates" the conditions wherein It can be Manifested. All I am doing is establishing the appropriate conditions for Satsang with Me. These real conditions are difficult for some people to understand. People think I am just supposed to open the door to all, without conditions. Everybody is just supposed to wander in, listen to a lecture: "Hm, not bad, think Ill take this Gurus Initiation." No conditions! People think Spiritual life is a "high", a form of entertainment, a free lunch. But Spiritual life involves incredible conditions! Think of the conditions that had to be met for your physical birth. If it were left to human beings to handle the affair of their own birth, no one would ever be born at all. Maybe every now and then an arm would be born, or a yelping pile of meat. An entire family might consist of an arm, an apple, and a #2 Mongol pencil! Examine the lives of the Great Siddhas, those who are generally supposed to have been great Saviors, great Teachers. They really worked on those who came to them. People like to imagine Gautama just wanted people to sit quietly every now and then and read philosophy between their meditations. You should examine what the Buddhist community involved at the beginning. The essential literature that has been left by the early Buddhist communities consists of lists of conditions, or rules, for living in the Spiritual community. Not philosophy, not enlightenment experiences, not all that juicy stuff, but lists of conditions: when you could bend down, when you could go for food, in whose presence you could eat food, what you could eat and when. The Buddhist communities were concerned, above all, that their members lived straight. The "philosophy" was for those who had already gotten straight. But today people think philosophy or some formal meditation process is supposed to get them straight. So they try all the meditation techniques one by one, like drugs, without fundamentally changing their condition. Thus, Spiritual life fails for them. What did Jesus of Nazareth do for people? He really turned his disciples around. He really worked them over. He changed their lives first. He demanded things of them. He kicked them around. He told them where they were at. Just so, if this Satsang with Me is to be lived, real conditions must be established. There must be an entirely new order of life. An entirely new point of view must be lived. Therefore, the traditional points of view, and the ordinary human points of view, are not sufficient. They no longer apply. But people want them. They continue to defend them, even in Satsang with Me. It is ridiculous. They come in pain, and they wind up defending their state, their dis-ease. Such people often must be returned to the "Straightener", the ordinary world of suffering and death, until they remember again that they are suffering. Appropriate conditions must be established in your individual life and in your community life with others of My devotees. An appropriate order of life must be established, in which there is room for Absolute Blissfulness. This Absolute Blissfulness is too Happy for people in the usual condition to tolerate! It is really too much. They cannot live with It, they cannot function with It, they cannot accept It. They are always looking for something that is just a little aggravating! Here—this little cramp in the solar plexus—this is what they are living in. But when the life is only open, when this incredible Force is flowing through, It churns you, It purifies the life. Then there is nothing at last to be unhappy about, nothing to think about. The flood of Enjoyment rushes through the body, dissolves the mind, overwhelms the life. The Real intelligence of conscious life begins to intensify and function in place of egoic ignorance. And that intelligence has no answers. It has no questions. That State without answers and without questions is the True State. From that State, the "creation" of marvels begins. For years, I would sit down in meditation, and all My own forms would appear—My own mind, My desires, My experience, My suffering, My feeling, My energies, My this and My that. But, at some point, it all came to an end. There was no thing, nothing there anymore. None of that distracted or interested Me. "Meditation" was most perfect, continuous. Then I began to meet those who first became involved with Me as My devotees. And when I would sit down for meditation, there would be more of these things again—all of these thoughts, these feelings, this suffering, this dis-ease, this disharmony, these upsets, this craziness, this pain, these energies—all of this again. But they were not Mine. They were the "internal" qualities and life-qualities of My devotees. So I would sit down to meditate, and do the meditation of other people, other beings. When I would feel it all release, their meditation was done. And I began to test it, to see if this meditation went on in some more or less apparent manner for these people who were not with Me. And I found that this meditation went on with people whom I had not even met. People I saw in dreams and visions would show up. So the meditation went on. It was the same meditation I had always done. The same problems were involved, the same subtleties, but the content of the meditation was not Mine. After the Events described in The Knee of Listening, there was a period of time when the universe, the cosmic process, was Meditated in Me. Various siddhis, or Yogic and occult powers, became manifested. The movement, or process, of the cosmos is a Meditation, a purifying Event. Everything is Satsang. There is only Satsang. It is Eternal. But after this is all seen to be so, It must be lived. After the period in which the siddhis appeared, life became a matter of dealing with existence as it truly is, as Satsang. But new devotees do not yet know that life is Satsang. They are not yet experiencing that Fullness, that fundamental Enjoyment, that living Freedom. They are not conscious and responsible at all levels of conscious life. So a kind of seriousness wants to creep in. The dilemma and the search would like to reassert itself in the community of My devotees. The temptation arises to turn Satsang with Me into the search again. But the same thing must occur for others that occurred for this one. And True Satsang is that process. "Radical" understanding is that intelligence. And the only means to keep the Way of the Heart from turning into a search is simply to order it, to put the life of the community and its sadhana into appropriate form. There is the tendency, even among those in Satsang with Me, to indulge their ordinary strategy, to be resistive, to be eccentric, to be self-indulgent, to dramatize the avoidance of relationship. To them it does not seem to involve anything terribly dramatic. It is easy for them to get involved in that sort of mediocre strategy again, because they are insensitive to what it does, and to what must be done for it to be straightened again and again. But I am very well aware of it. There have been numberless cases where people dramatize their resistance to Satsang, and thus toward Me. To them it may have appeared very simple. Just a little emotional resistance, a little bit of craziness off "alone" somewhere. But I felt their "little resistance" very strongly. In one case the resistance of an individual communicated itself to Me as a kind of black witchcraft. The individual was not particularly aware of what he was doing, because it was on such a subtle level, and he had become insensitive to the effects of his own subtle activity as a result of a lifetime of random self-indulgence in the dramas of avoidance. When all of that finally got straight in Me, and I felt it dissolve in My meditating of this person, he suddenly returned, smiling and full of love! "Oh, I have been having a difficult period, but I feel better now." The symptoms were gone, but there had been no real experience, no responsibility, no Satsang, no sadhana. His relief was more like magic, Graceful medicine. But there was no relationship, no Wisdom, no True Condition lived or restored. Thus, over time, I have begun to require more and more of those who move into My Company. I require this process of understanding to be lived, awakened, and endured in them, and I do not merely relieve My devotees difficulties by some vicarious Yogic process in My Self, however extraordinary that may seem. Satsang with Me is an actual Condition. It is a relationship. It must be consciously lived. It must become a matter of responsibility, so that this dramatization of reluctance, of resistance, of arbitrary craziness, is set aside, undone with Real intelligence. It must not simply be resisted by My devotee or magically relieved by Me. It must be understood. It must be obviated in the force of life and intelligence. The Condition of Satsang, the Condition of relationship to Me, must be consciously and continually lived, so that this process of understanding can go on, simply, happily. Those who are not prepared to live It so directly, simply, with some kind of real responsibility, are those who leave on their own. They become very resistive, then angry, and they leave. People forget. They forget their own positive experiences. They forget what Satsang is and has been in their own experience. Temporarily, It becomes clear to them, It becomes intense, It becomes Real. But then as soon as their drama of tendencies erupts again, for whatever reasons, this cycle of negativity comes on them again and they want to indulge it freely. They want to go. They want to play all kinds of games, they want to be negative, they want to tell you "where its at", they want to get upset, they want to make their upsets known. They do not want to be responsible for all of that. They are moved to indulge these urges even though during that entire time when they were happily enjoying Satsang they heard Me speak again and again about this contraction, this activity that is suffering, this avoidance of relationship. Even if a person can begin to enjoy insight into his or her ordinary strategy, and live beyond it, live directly, live Satsang, these cycles of negativity and destructive, separative tendencies will absolutely occur, again and again. There will be repetition of urges, again and again, to break with Satsang, to feel all kinds of negative justifications for not being in Satsang, and to play all kinds of dramas in life as a result. Therefore, in spite of the tendency for this contraction to arise at all levels, Satsang with Me must be lived. My devotee must continue to live and enjoy the Condition of Satsang with Me, even though he or she may feel the rising tendencies, the negativity, the symptoms—physical, psychic, "internal", in the "external" conditions of life, everywhere. Even so, live this Satsang, enjoy this Satsang. It is the only principle that is free of all of that, and if you live the transformative conditions of Satsang with Me, Its intelligence replaces the unconscious activity of suffering. To live Satsang makes the search and its motivating dilemma obsolete. But you must live Satsang, and the living of Satsang, even under the ordinary conditions of suffering, apparent suffering, is sadhana, Real religious and Spiritual practice. There is no Satsang without sadhana. Satsang with Me is not just a pleasant, consoling experience that you have this week, and if It is not pleasurable next week then the entire thing deserves your contempt. Satsang with Me must be lived over time, under all the conditions that arise. It must become sadhana, the Way of life. It seems that talking about Satsang tends to make It appear a very complicated process. It is here! I am here. This relationship is a Real Condition. My human Form is very useful, because It Lives and Demonstrates the fundamental Condition as relationships with My devotees. Satsang with Me is Company, proximity, relationship, living Satsang rather than merely remembering It, listening to Me, so that Truth begins to become obvious, so that this understanding comes alive. But what is fundamentally important is the fact of this relationship as a condition, something that you must live from day to day. In that sense it is not something meditative, something ritualistic, something you must remember, concentrate on. It is something you must live. You may want to sit there thinking and picturing, but I shake you on the shoulder and ask you to paint the Ashram wall. Hearing Me speak to you, and getting up and painting the wall—that is sadhana, that is Satsang with Me. All the merely mental things you might want to do to try to keep the relationship in place, to do something about it, to manufacture the relationship—all of that is your own insane ritual. But true Spiritual life, Satsang with Me, is much more practical than that, much more direct than that. It must be. I am here. The True "natural" State is completely without thought. It is prior to thought. It is free of thought, even while thinking occurs. There is no thought when I am speaking. There is no thinking going on apart from the speech. No thinking went into your birth. All conditional manifestation is a spontaneous, free, blissful activity, a "creative" event. Just so, Satsang is truly operative prior to the mind. So all those means of living Satsang that are purely mental and motivated are secondary. Satsang with Me is more practical than all of that. Know that you cannot figure It out. You cannot understand It. You do not understand It. That is the Truth. Here is Satsang. Live It. Be happy to have discovered that you cannot figure It out. Some cannot even bear the mental process. When the communication of understanding comes from without, it puts them to sleep. When it comes from within, it wakes them up. The more there is of all this mentality, all this conversation, all this thinking of Spiritual things, the more sleep there is, the more unconsciousness. Too much talk tends to obstruct the "internal", Real Force. But where the mind is not satisfied, where the search is not satisfied, Satsang becomes possible, sadhana becomes possible. People come to Me to have the search satisfied. If I simply do not satisfy the search, they get angry, and disappointed. Then they leave before the Condition of Satsang has had time even to begin to do Its work. As a compromise, I must continually explain, again and again, why it is that I am not satisfying the search. So this long conversation we have had this evening was only My attempt to explain why it is I do not say anything! But if I did not say anything in fact, everyone would leave. So it is very difficult to Teach. The more stable you all are, the less I will have to speak. DEVOTEE: I find my world, my universe, is becoming more and more oppressively one of loneliness. AVATARA ADI DA: Get out of it. Come into this one. DEVOTEE: I find myself doing a considerable amount of suffering, and at the same time I am trying to avoid the compulsive activities that I do to relieve it. I find myself trying to enter a relationship with another, or trying to find some support in another. I am trying to get something from another. When I sit in Satsang with You, occasionally I go through a great deal of physical pain. And most of the time my attention is all over the place. AVATARA ADI DA: You have got to rejoin the human race. Stop spending all this time contemplating yourself, sitting alone in your room by yourself. Function with human beings. Do things. That is all. That is all it will take. DEVOTEE: My impression is that human beings are not real. AVATARA ADI DA: Join up! You are not going to negate Me. DEVOTEE: I am caught in the "all one separate thing". AVATARA ADI DA: I do not care what you are caught in. We are all here. Your suffering is your own. If you want to play your suffering game, these are the results. Everybody is playing their own egoic game, and that is yours. I do not have any sympathy for it. You are turning it on. You want to do it. You like it, as a matter of fact. If you wanted to get out of that game, it would be a simple matter of turning in the other direction, from separation to Satsang. You must live the conditions of religious and Spiritual life. If you refuse the conditions of religious and Spiritual life and continually wander in your own dilemma, you will Realize nothing. You want to be your own "guru". You want to be already Realized without doing sadhana, without living the conditions of Truth. If you were doing sadhana, you would not have a moment to be occupied with your problems. If you were living the functional conditions of life, you would not have time to reflect on your craziness. You simply do not function. You find every kind of means to live in a universe of your own. But there is no universe of your own. "Universe" means "one". There is the universe. But you are only talking about your own mentality, your own mind-forms. You meditate on that all the time, instead of living the conditions I Give you. If you do live the conditions, there is also a crisis. Forms of apparent suffering arise. So what? Everyone must pass through that. Nobody patted Me on the head when I went through it. Nobody put you into your present state. No one is keeping you in it. It is a present activity. It is your own activity. It is not dependent on the past. It is this avoidance of relationship, this contraction. It is time to realize that you are obsessed. I have always known that you are obsessed. That in itself never bothered Me. We can begin from there. But you keep discovering it again and again, always as if it were some new realization. And then you forget it again. That is the problem. You always forget the very thing of which you are certain. You begin religious and Spiritual life only when you have already discovered the "terrible truth". Then you can live the conditions of religious and Spiritual life instead. But your entire being is still devoted to this separativeness, this compulsive self-meditation. And that is suffering. See that this is so. Live the Condition of Satsang in a very practical manner. Then Satsang with Me will become your meditation. Satsang will become the "method" of your Realization. In fact, Satsang is nothing that you can do to yourself. It is a Condition. It is a Condition that must be Given to you, Revealed and made available to you by Grace. It is a process that becomes awakened in your life spontaneously. You simply must live It in a much more practical manner. Spend no time whatsoever analyzing yourself. No time. I mean no time! I really mean it. I do not mean just a little time, reading a few books, collecting conceptual insights. I mean spend no time whatsoever analyzing yourself. That is the very activity that you are suffering, that self-meditation. Pull yourself into functional existence. Make everything very practical, very functional. Then you will give room to this Real process. Then you will see that you are always resorting to yourself, always resorting to this separate self sense. Realize that and it becomes much simpler to resort to Satsang. You cannot resort to Satsang in some sort of mediocre mental fashion, unconscious and believing. You must live It. As a child you did not "believe" in your mother. You lived with your mother. You lived that condition. You lived all the things that arose in that relationship from day to day. You lived all the things that were demanded. It is the same with Satsang, or Real religious and Spiritual life, the living relationship to Me, which also requires the living of the functional conditions of existence in the universe. DEVOTEE: I seem to be having many contrasting experiences lately. Sometimes I have near-ecstasies of intuitive knowledge flowing over me, and my body will become very relaxed. Then, almost within the very next moment, regular impulses and patterns of everyday life seem to become really increased, or else I seem to notice them much more concentratedly than before. What is the significance of this? Is something loosening up in me? Even relationships with people get very easy and spontaneous, then at other times they get harder than they were before. AVATARA ADI DA: There are cycles in the living consciousness. Some of the cycles of experience are very difficult to observe, and people are not aware of them. Generally, you are all aware of the seasons. You are commonly aware of the cycle of climate. You are aware of the cycle of night and day. You are at least vaguely aware of the phases of the moon. You are made aware of social cycles, such as elections, holidays, weekends. But there are also subtle cycles in the process of consciousness and conscious life. The "internal" patterns may seem random, but everyone is aware that they go through "phases", or periods of "bad days" and "good days". Individuals know they do this. They know they have different kinds of characteristic states. But they do not commonly see a pattern to these states. In fact, there is such a pattern. There is a characteristic pattern of conscious experience in everyone, as regular as the seasons. But it is essentially an individual pattern, like fingerprints. The Force that Manifests in Satsang tends to intensify the characteristic cycles of the living consciousness. One of the first things I began to observe in this process, as I lived in Satsang with One Who was Guru to Me, was how the cycle of My own experience varied between "light" and "heavy". The "good day-bad day" sort of thing. I did not map it out on a calendar, but I began to become aware that I was moving through patterns of state and life-consciousness that manifested as "pulses", phases, or cycles, like the heartbeat. It was not that under certain "external" circumstances I would react with a "bad" mood, or, under others, with a "good" mood There was a certain underlying heaviness characteristic of My state at times, and a lightness at others, regardless of circumstances. As this process continued to reveal itself, I began to observe there was a certain regularity to its patterns. And I also began to observe how the patterns were modified by this process of Satsang. At first I spent long periods of time in a kind of negative and mediocre condition. I commonly approached My Guru in such states. And, occasionally, I would suddenly feel good, or released. In time, I began to discover that these periods of release, or of no contraction, were becoming a little more frequent, a little more intense, a little more absorbing. The negative pattern, the lower end of this curve, was becoming less intense, more bearable. These crisis periods began to become interesting to Me. Thus, various changes began to occur in the cycle of consciousness when it was brought into the Condition of Satsang. In meditation, when I was sitting in Satsang, sitting with My Guru, the so-called "internal" processes, the subtle psycho-physical processes, were intensified. This is the Work of the Force of God in Satsang. I noticed that when the Force of Satsang was most intense, these highs and lows were most intense. And as that Force continued to intensify, the alternations of these highs and lows became more rapid. What you are describing is just such a development of sensitivity to this cycle of consciousness. The pattern is intensified and revealed in Satsang, so that, without apparent cause, experience appears to alternate arbitrarily between different and opposite values, or qualities. There is a distinctive mood which is attained when this process of intensified alternation becomes perfectly rapid. This is the Yogic "ananda", or "bliss", which arises whenever the speed of the cycle of high and low becomes absolute. The Saint or Sage is one in whom these alternations have become so rapid that he or she is always already essentially Happy. The Most Perfectly Realized individual, the one who understands most perfectly, is one in whom the cycle of consciousness has attained the speed of light. Therefore, as this process of Satsang continues in you, you will observe the movement of the pattern of your existence. Its cycles are as much a functional manifestation as your breathing. The "internal" life of the usual individual is not the sort of carefree, aesthetic, spontaneous sublimity that people like to imagine. The "internal" life is as ordered, as regular, as mechanistic, as organic, as the "external" universe. There is nothing arbitrary about your experience. It is simply that you have not learned to observe your experience, you have not become subtle in your ability to observe what is arising. But the more subtle you become in your capability to observe, the more you see the patterns, "internal" and "external". The arising of this subtlety, or sensitivity, is a good sign. You observe your tendency to identify with the stream of your own consciousness, your tendency to believe you are your own "think" apparatus. When this sensitivity arises, the "internal" pattern is already ceasing to be so much a compulsive activity. Then it is showing itself to you. It demonstrates itself to be something as functionally "external" as a hand. It is not something with which you are identical, but a process that is arising spontaneously, much the same as your hand. So the compulsive tendency to identify with the movement of ordinary consciousness is beginning to ease just at the moment you seem to suffer it most. DEVOTEE: The other day I heard You say something that suddenly seemed to take on a lot of meaning for me. It seemed to bring about a revelation. It seemed to be a combination of the Force I feel in Satsang with You and listening to what You were saying. AVATARA ADI DA: There are many means generated in the Way of the Heart. All the events that are necessary occur, and they all occur appropriately. That is why I do speak at times. There is a function for it—something is served by My speaking in Satsang. But I do not always speak. Then Satsang continues wordlessly, as a subtle process. Just so, I do not only speak or else sit in silence. I also do things with people. And apart from what I apparently do in a personal manner with you, you all have different kinds of contact with the Influence and effects of My Work, different experiences, different exposures to all My forms of operation. Although the complex of these things may seem to you to be somewhat arbitrary, it is actually a manifested and exquisitely intelligent design. It is not arbitrary. Nothing happens arbitrarily to those who live Truth. Your dreams are not arbitrary. Your dreams are a very intelligent process. But if you think of them while in the waking state, you cannot make real sense out of them. All experience is of that same nature. It is all a subtle design, a spontaneous, paradoxical process. You were brought to consider what I said, just as you were brought to Satsang Itself. Many things combined at that moment to produce this "revelation". I believe it is said in the New Testament: "Everything works together for the good of those who love God." This bit of Biblical wisdom pertains also to the process, or quality, of Satsang. Everything happens appropriately, even for those who live in ignorance of Truth. It is just that, apart from Satsang, apart from the life of Truth, the appropriate thing that happens is suffering and death! When Satsang begins as a Real process, you may begin to observe the appropriateness of all experience. Not a breath is spent outside of Satsang once It begins. And all of the possible ranges of events, from the gross, apparently "external" world to your reactions to it, including your thoughts, and all things that happen to you within the world, within the waking state, in dreams, while sleeping—everywhere everything combines for the sake of the Truth. Until this begins to become obvious to you, you can believe it or not. It really has no importance until you begin to observe it. And people do begin to observe it in Satsang with Me. There was a time in My own Life when I began to see there was no difference whatsoever between My "internal" life and My "external" life: There is but one process going on everywhere and always. The world is the psyche The world is founded in the psyche, or the root of the world is essentially of the same nature as the psyche. The entire process is a single event. Everything is moving together as a single design with a single intent. Nothing happens to you that is not appropriate. All events serve Truth. It is only that when you begin consciously to serve Truth, events themselves take on more and more the quality of Truth. You will begin to experience the coincidence, or simultaneity, of "within" and "without". You will begin to observe that this Satsang is actually Alive, that It has somehow taken over the universe. Of course, people are ordinarily attached to their subjective identity, that force they separately identify as themselves. And they have all kinds of bad relations with the world. The seeker typically likes the concept that appears in many of the worlds Scriptures which says that Truth is within you, God is within you, all Power is within you. But this idea just reinforces the tendency of Narcissus, this subjective tendency, this inward-turning, this self-contraction. The Truth is no more within you than It is in the lamp shade. The Truth is everywhere and no "where". It is not especially within you, nor is It especially without. There is Truth. DEVOTEE: It would seem that except for the fact of fear my life would have everything it could possibly want. It appears to me that fear is the underlying fabric that is shot through my entire life. It is almost omnipresent, and it is representative to me of all of the selfishness, all of the self-obsession, and all of the self-seeking that exists. I make such desperate demands upon life. It is a continual, desperate demand. It is as if I am continually dying moment by moment. And when those demands are not met, or if I am afraid that what I already have will be taken away, it is always one form or another of that fear. I am going through a period when all of this has been more active. It seems to me that there is some kind of pernicious bullshit going on, and that I actually want it. I go through all the self-torture games, and when I come out the other side I say: "What was that all about?" And then it starts all over again. AVATARA ADI DA: This "I" that you have mentioned several times just now is a sort of post on which you hang all these experiences. It seems to be in the center of it somehow. "Ego" means "I"—the self-reference, the implied self, this separate-self concept. One could call that self-reference, or self-image, the "ego". But "ego" is not essentially an entity or a concept. "Ego" is an activity. It is the activity of the avoidance of relationship. Just as the separate "I", the self-concept, the self-image, is an expression of this activity that is the ego, fear is also the ego. Fear is the very mood, the "nature", of the ego. It is said in the Upanishads: "It is from an other that fear arises." As soon as there is an other, as soon as this separative act has taken place in any sense whatsoever, from that instant there is fear. Then life is fear. Conscious awareness is fear. It is not that you are afraid. Fear is your necessary attribute, your very "body". Fear is the ego. As long as you persist in your present ego-bound condition and drama, fear will continually be the mood that you discover. Whenever you fail to be distracted, you will fall into this chronic state, this sense of your separate self, which is fear. Where there is separation, there can only be fear. You have broken the Current of life, of Real and Original Existence, the Process of the Heart. You have contracted the Field of Consciousness. You have made it impossible for the Force of Existence to flow between this process of contraction, this "ego", and everything from which it differentiates itself. Therefore, everything outside this apparently separate "self" becomes fearful, frightening, other. And when you are being afraid, you are simply meditating on the quality of your separated existence. If you try to get rid of fear, it is impossible. Because the "you" trying to get rid of this thing is that fear. So the search is futile. At some point you fall into your chronic state, this fear, this avoidance of relationship. And when you have fallen into it under the conditions of Satsang with Me, this quickening, this insight, awakens. And this insight, this understanding, this re-cognition of which I speak, is the obviation of "ego", the separate self sense, which is fear. Only understanding is without fear. Only one who understands is fearless. Only one who understands is selfless. Only such a one lives always prior to fear. Until then you are dramatizing the form of the separate self, you are living it, and so you are suffering its very condition. You must become sensitive. You must become essentially aware of the conditions that you bring about through the activity that is the ego. When your life begins to fail, you begin to become aware of the condition that is the ego. Therefore, there must necessarily be a crisis. Spiritual life must involve this falling into the chronic state, and "radically" comprehending it. The Force of Satsang with Me makes this passage possible, because if you simply fell into your fear, you would go mad. The random tastes of fear are what constantly disturb the form of life. But Satsang is the Condition of Truth. The Force of Satsang, the Consciousness and Intelligence of Satsang, the Condition of Satsang, is already Free of this contraction, this separate self, this fear. The greatest of the Hindu traditions aspire to "turiya, the "fourth State"—beyond waking, dreaming, and deep sleep, and beyond fear—wherein they may feel that Fullness, that Ease, that Enjoyment, and all of the Spiritual qualities, all the Spiritual events, generated as a spontaneous happening in the Company of the Guru. Just so, those who live Satsang with Me already live this Condition that is without fear, without separated self, without the function of ego, the chronic avoidance of relationship. They Enjoy that unreasonable Happiness, that Love-Blissfulness, that is the "mood" of Truth. But those who do not resort to Satsang with Me, who only resort continually to the state they suffer apart from Satsang, find their fear only intensified in My Company. They find that "ego" is intensified, that the dilemma, the problems, and the search are intensified, that their egoic ignorance is intensified, and that all of it becomes frightening, and unbearable. That is why periodically you see people storming out of the community of My devotees, without any apparent reason. Nothing has "happened" to them. I have not done anything to them. Nothing has really occurred except the process of Satsang Itself. That is what disturbs these angry, self-obsessed ones who renounce My Company and My Teaching. Those who have not suffered their own condition enough, and who have not seen its perfect failure, are wise to avoid Satsang with Me. Because Satsang is a fire! This Ashram is not a place where we talk "philosophy". There is a Living Force enacted here. It is the Living Force of Consciousness Itself. That is What Satsang is all about. And those who arbitrarily pile on, not mindful of the conditions, wind up having to separate themselves very aggressively, with all kinds of righteousness. The Force of Satsang with Me simply acts to intensify their separativeness. But one who has really seen the failure of his or her search, who can somehow spontaneously resort to the Condition of Satsang, experiences that unreasonable Happiness. Thus, Satsang becomes the Condition wherein the form of suffering, this contraction, this fear, this ego, all of the elements of suffering and dilemma, are dissolved in a spontaneous, natural, appropriate order. Certainly one must also suffer the intensity of this process of ego-dissolution, including periods of apparent crisis, but it will always be somehow bearable, always intelligent with Truth, always something for which one has the capability. That is why many who have found a Guru have said that, at some point, they gave up all interest in salvation. They were no longer concerned for liberation, heaven, and healing, or even moved to go through any special "Spiritual" processes or the classic round of Spiritual experiences. They lost their interest in all of that. They became unreasonably happy only, and they forgot to seek beyond the Gurus Feet. The living Guru is a specific Function that arises again and again in the worlds. People can indulge any kind of illusion with a dead Guru, Master, or Savior, or with a symbolic image, a God they only believe in. People are very willing to do anything they like, and then forgive themselves with the same liberal attitude. They want God, or Truth, to stay in Its own Place. But the living Guru is a Condition to be lived with. The living Guru establishes conditions in the world. Such a one remains continuously mindful of the devotee and of the process that the devotee is going through. And the Guru uses every kind of ordinary and extraordinary means to always re-establish the connection. Real religious and Spiritual life involves a Great Condition Given to you and many conditions demanded of you. The Great Condition and the real conditions of religious and Spiritual life are never anything that you particularly want to assume on your own. People are capable of believing all kinds of things on their own, and of arbitrarily generating what they think is sadhana, or the religious and Spiritual life. But it is always just another expression of their ordinary or usual state. It does nothing, fundamentally, to their ego-bound condition. The matter of Truth is entirely academic until the Truth Communicates Itself to you, until the Truth takes you over, until the Truth does the sadhana and "creates" the conditions for transformation. So the Truth must find some means to Communicate Itself as a Function in specific relationship to you. Therefore, the human Guru is the appropriate Means, and that is why the human Guru exists, that is why I have Come. DEVOTEE: Why and how did we fall into this condition, this miserable condition? AVATARA ADI DA: People like to fabricate mythologies. You would like to hear some sort of "creation" myth about this suffering, or some sort of philosophy that explains why it came about. When something is "explained", when its "name" is known, then you feel free to forget or exploit it. But it did not "come about". It is presently happening. It is not a matter of something that happened. There is nothing hidden in time or space that is making this affair of suffering occur. It is not happening as a result of anything. It is a spontaneous, present activity for which you are entirely responsible. So, truly, it does not make any sense to try to describe some means or other by which it might have come about. I have said, however, that there is a sense in which this specific activity that is your suffering, this contraction, is a reaction to life, to conditionally manifested existence. For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. The entire event of the manifested, or conditional, cosmos arises as a spontaneous event, a single event. The universe is the original action. But for every action there is necessarily an equal and opposite reaction. So this process of which I have been speaking is, in a sense, the reaction to conditionally manifested life. A baby is not born with a concrete sense of a separate life in the world. A baby is not able even to differentiate its body from the other movements around it. Everything is all one massive sensation. A baby does not differentiate. A baby does not, for all practical purposes, differentiate itself as an entity from any other individual, or even from the world itself. Only when the baby learns to react to life does it begin to "create" an identity that functions in life. And if the baby has no capability to react, it will have no capability for individual life. A human organism that has no capability to react is catatonic,. a vegetable", or else dead. A catatonic has many of the apparent attributes that are assigned to the Realized individual. The catatonic is selfless, fearless, but he or she is obviously not "alive", not conscious, functioning, and sane. Therefore, simply to go about trying to discover how not to react is obviously not the cure. To try not to react to your conditionally manifested existence at this moment is not the Way of Truth. Yet people have elaborated vast traditional methods of "realization" that are fundamentally only attempts not to react. They try to de-condition themselves, to become detached, to become self-less. But the Truth is not a matter of compulsively and strategically suppressing any form of action, even if that action is the re-action to something else. Truth is in the spontaneous re-cognition, or knowing again, of an activity in the midst of that activity. Therefore, one who understands is not in a catatonic state. Understanding is not itself characterized by any trance or any conditional Yogic state. Understanding is not itself an other state. The state of one who understands may appear to be extra-ordinary from the point of view of the usual man or woman. But actually one who understands is entirely ordinary, conformed to the realm of the conditionally manifested. While living in this ordinary manner, he or she Enjoys the Perfect Condition That Is Real God, or Truth. Therefore, the life of one who understands is a paradox. But the seeker and the attainments of the seeker are not paradoxical. They are always dimensionless and winded to a point. The seeker is always turned to specific goals, specific states. They may be complex and incomprehensible, but they are always as specific and mind-based as a bowling trophy. Truth Itself is not identified with a state, with an experience, nor with the avoidance of any state or any experience, neither with the dissociation or forceful separation from any state or experience, nor with the suppression of it. Truth is not even identical to the suppression of thought. In one who understands, everything continues to arise, but coincident with everything that arises there is Perfect Intuition of the Real. One who understands perpetually, spontaneously, under all conditions, intuits the Real. Such a one intuits the Real in the most "radical" sense, without separation. Such a one requires no special condition for Realization. The Realization of such a one does not only exist when that one is in certain meditative moods, only when that one is quiet, only when that one is performing certain Spiritual functions, or only when that one is talking about certain Spiritual things. The Realization of such a one is spontaneous, absolute, continuous. Therefore, religious and Spiritual life in the form it is lived in My Company is a span of Conscious adventure, generated in the relationship to Me as the Divinely Self-Realized Siddha-Guru, and summed up in the Perfect Enjoyment of Which I am the Evidence, the Demonstration, and the Very Form.   Back to Method of the Siddhas index

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"The perfect among the sages is identical with Me. There is absolutely no difference between us"
Tripura Rahasya, Chap XX, 128-133