DA LOVE-ANANDA - (ADI DA SAMRAJ) - 1986

This talk was recorded in 1986 when Avatar Adi Da Samraj made His first visit to the European community of His devotees. He travelled through England, France and Holland. During His stay in Holland He very much wanted a place where he could meet with all of His European devotees. Devotees looked for an appropriate place that could be acquired as an rural Ashram. In the South of Holland, in the village of Maria Hoop close to the German border, a former monastery was found which could be rented for a few weeks. The monastery was already empty for several years. Devotees quickly cleaned buildings and the grounds. Adi Da was invited to and He stayed in a specially prepared wing of the monastery for several days. In this period He granted Darshan and Question and Answer Occasions to German, English, Dutch, French and American devotees.

DOUBT IS NOT AN OBJECT - IT IS THE SELF-CONTRACTION

DEVOTEE: Master Da, I have a question about my practice and what happens to me. I seem to collapse with doubt from time to time and it doesn't seem to be connected with how good or how bad I practice. I was hoping you could make a comment on this.

DEVOTEE: Mmhm. Doubt is very interesting I think because, particularly our presumptions about doubt and doubting the whole process.

We tend to think that doubt is doubt of something because when we get into doubt it's always associated with something that seems doubtful. So we tend to associate getting into doubt, having doubt, we tend to associate doubt itself with something that doubt, something itself that we were wondering about, feeling negative about. Whereas actually doubt is a mechanism that doesn't have anything to do with any object or thing to be doubted. Doubt is just another form or sign of the self-contraction. It is the self-contraction itself.

What we call doubt is a rather and emotional way of noticing the self-contraction. And it's just that, self-contraction. It's not doubt of something. It's just self-contraction. The sensation of the self-contraction is doubt. But we think we're doubting something because whenever that collapse occurs something that we otherwise feel positive about when we're not contracted suddenly becomes something that we can't tolerate and don't feel happy about. And that's where doubt begins to bind you. Because then you start trying to figure out some way to feel good about that thing. Whereas that is not your proper business when you are collapsed into doubt. You must understand yourself sufficiently, you see, to realize that doubt is not about a something.

PHASING LIKE THE MOON

You didn't start going into doubt because suddenly the thing you now doubt was coming into doubt. You started to collapse into this doubt simply as a phase, a kind of even a biological phase, what is really a psycho-physical phasing of self-contraction. All kinds of influences cause one to do this, including just it's the mechanism itself is adapted to cycles of collapse and re-collapse and reopening, like the moon phasing.

There's this constant cycle of self-contraction occurring and when it occurs we read it mentally, emotionally, physically. We read it in terms of our energy and then we also read it in terms of our relations, all kinds of relations and objects, mental objects. Thought systems that we believe in suddenly we become dissociated from, you see. Things with which we are related emotionally suddenly become things we can't connect with. These include relationships or things that we may enjoy at other times. Our physical well-being, physical equanimity is lost when this self-contraction occurs, you see.

Instead of talking about doubt, you could just as well talk about emotional upset or physical disturbance or pain because these are all also signs of exactly the same mechanism, just the self-contraction itself, egoity itself. Now whatever you look at when the self-contraction has occurred is something from which you are dissociated now. The self-contraction dissociates you inevitably. So when self-contracted, no matter what you look at it is something you are now separated from, dissociated from. So if you look at a mental object or a thought process or a system of thinking, it is now something for which you have no sympathy. It is now something for which you do not have a thought that you can connect yourself to with. You are divorced from it, dissociated from it.

So you feel now because you're self-contracted that this whole system of thinking about things that seemed, when you were previously not contracted, to be whole and true and inviting and worth involving your life in is now bullshit. This is why that whole way of life may not be worth getting involved in at all. It may be nonsense. You start entertaining all such thoughts. And then because you are not quite willing to give all of that up so freely you start spending your doubting time trying to find some reason to believe in all of that thought process again, you see. Whereas, what should you really be doing?

You should be able to identify this symptom of doubt, just as you identify sinus congestion as a cold. You should be able to identify doubt as self-contraction and not identify it with some object that is now doubtful to you because you're contracted, you see.

Self-contraction could take the form of always takes the form of, always takes the form of emotional dissociation. Well, if you're feeling emotionally dissociated because of self-contraction and then all of the relations that you are emotionally connected to otherwise now are something from which you are dissociated.

So every time you fall into self-contraction you would tend to get divorced from your spouse if you're married, you'd quit your job, you'd send your children away and never see them again. You'd send all your friends a letter or make a fast remark and never have anything to do with them again. You would dissociate yourself from everything. Ultimately you might commit suicide. This is not reasonable obviously.

One day you're in love with someone. The next day, because you're contracted, you can't even connect with them emotionally. Is that believable? (Mild laughter.) It suggests, it most clearly suggests that there's something wrong with you. You're ill somehow. In some sense, you must be ill, you see. That's really what it's about. If you could just be relieved of this emotional disease that you're suffering at the moment, it would be obvious to you, because you know that you love that person, that something's just overcoming you. If only you could just get rid of this disease then, this upset, then you'd be naturally connected with that person, and have that relationship which you otherwise enjoy with them. Or so with anything you may think about that falls into doubt.

Once you notice that you're doubting something that you've otherwise thoroughly reviewed and know the truth of it you ought to identify the disease and realize that you're just ill. temporarily insane. (Laughter.) You're self-contracted, dissociated, that's all it is. You don't have to trouble yourself and mind at all to try and reconnect with that. Stop getting into the thought business at that moment and start paying attention to observing yourself and finding your way out of this contracted state, this disease, you see. That's your business. So people don't make it their business unless they understand themselves, you see.

People are always tending to get into the wrong business because they don't understand this chronic, rolling disease of self-contraction. It is chronic. It is more or less constant in most people and it is constantly taking on different forms, different signs. You read it mentally, emotionally, physically. In terms of your energies you read it socially. You read it in terms of relations of all kinds. You are constantly seeing the signs of this self-contraction, but you are identifying it with something wrong with this object or that relationship or this thought, you see, and that's not what it's about. Only self-knowledge will help you to get down to the right business of life in any moment. And if you don't have self-knowledge, then you'll always make error and always be up to the wrong thing.

WHAT CAN YOU DO ABOUT DOUBT

So when you feel doubt, instead of noticing it as disease and feeling yourself beyond self-contraction, instead you'll be reading all kinds of things and trying to think your way back into your previous system of belief or motivation, you see. Whereas if you get into doubt in that sense relative to something that you've already thoroughly inspected, you should just take a little vacation from thought stress for awhile and deal with the self-contraction as a totality. And how do you do that? Well, that's what I've been instructing people about for years, you see.

It's a matter of self-generating spiritual sadhana, spiritual practice. It's a matter of making use, first of all, of self-observation, but then making use of the practice of spiritual resort and meditation, spiritual exercise. This is what you should do instead of trying to think your way out of doubt or feel your way out of emotional distress or find your way out of a cramp or eat your way out of a cramp that is really originated (mild laughter) egoically.

You've got to, in other words, through self-observation, you've got to come to the point where you can identify your own dilemma and not, therefore, get sidetracked into all kinds of efforts that are nonsensical, that don't deal with what is really wrong with you. So doubt is not about anything, in other words. It only seems to be about something. And because you're constantly tending to get self-contracted, if you're a more or less solid type, you will always be tending to register self-contraction in terms of doubt. And, therefore, you will always be stressfully trying to think yourself into a better system of thinking that you will never doubt again. But you will always doubt any system of thinking as long as you are tending toward self-contraction.

Inevitably self-contraction leads to doubt. What you must realize is self-knowledge about that and not be led into struggling mentally when the sensation of doubt comes on. You must be able to relax that effort, know that doubt is not about anything; but only seems to be about something and is really just the self-contraction showing itself. Or you can observe and understand that self-contraction and then the freer you will become of this tendency and the things that you tend to do about it, that merely add to your stress and bewilder you further. And what will that self-knowledge lead you to, inevitably the spiritual process more and more profoundly.

Instead of busying yourself with mental efforts to achieve and undoubtable thought system, you see, you'll be spending your time In meditation. Instead of reading endlessly, book to book, system to system, you'll give the mind appropriate time for study, true, but you won't be exhausting yourself in nonsensical mental efforts. And you'll be using a lot of your thinking and reading time in the meditation hall releasing this disease which ultimately doesn't even exist once you understand its principle and allow it to be mastered by Reality.

DEVOTEE: There's something about this possibility we are responsible for the contraction. On the other hand. I'm not the One that's living me now. so how come both can be true? (Mild laughter.)

DA LOVE-ANANDA: Well, the One who is living you now is not self-contracted. (Great laughter.) It's like the discussion I had earlier, you see. You tend to, being a thinker type, you see, human beings generally are, you tend to take two very extreme kinds of thought and believe that they exist on the same level. You have this system of observation, conventional observation and thinking, and conditional awareness that's aware of the body, the mind, the world, the self, all these dynamic processes.

These things are experienced or are just basically obvious experientially, but then there are other thoughts, forms of cognition or awareness, that have at least something to do with Transcendental Reality, the Divine Condition which transcends the ego, transcends the body-mind, is one and not many, and so on. You have those kinds of thoughts. To some degree they are beliefs for you.

And you tend to bring these two kinds of thinking into the same moment, the same places if they exist in the same plane of experience, as if you have actually realized that there is One living you now or that there is only one ultimate Transcendental Condition. Or that there is only God as if you had actually Realized that.

You have realized bodily existence, thinking processes emotional experience, pain and suffering, bewilderment, disease, and all the rest of it, you've realized that, but how much of this other bunch of thought have you realized. Realized?

How much of this One that lives and breathes you have you experienced? How much experience have you had of that compared to your experience of breathing, walking, of thinking of suffering? You have a lot of that kind of experience, but you really have no experience of this other that is not other, practically none whatsoever. And yet you talk about the two of them, this thing in place, as if you had, as if you were totally familiar with this great matter, you see. Whereas it's just another, it's just a thought process, it's just some stuff in your mind that you would like to be true, you see. But it's not experientially very true yet. So, in effect, it's not true.

It's fine to speak amusedly or ironically about this One that's supposed to be breathing you and then how come I'm suffering and so forth, you see, but that's just mind games again. It's just the self-contraction, it's this thing you called doubt a little while ago. You're manipulating yourself while self-contracted. That which you would like to have be true, this ultimate one Reality, and so forth, is not something you are at the moment experiencing because of this thing that you call doubt, which I call just self-contraction, independence. separateness, you see.

You can bring the One that transcends you into the moment through conversation by thinking a thought about it, but how do you bring the One that transcends you into this moment without thinking about it. How do you bring it into this moment really, where there's no more irony, no more doubt, no more nonexperiental blah-blah-blah about it, you see, but real, direct realization? How do you realize the One that transcends you just as profoundly as you now realize or experience being bodily present here?

In other words, when both of these dimensions of existence that you talk about are equally realized by you. then perhaps we can have a conversation about it. But as long as this great Reality is not within your experience, then why even bother to doubt it or talk ironically about it? When it's in the same room with you, then it can be discussed. Until then it's like talking about something that you only wish you had enough money to own, but will never have enough money to own, and you're talking about it as if you had it In the closet, when it was right there and you've been living with it all your life, you see.

It's not one of those Rembrandts in a museum down here, one of those Van Gogh's that I saw the other day. If you really wanted one of those, then probably it would cost you a million or two, big dollars, or big whatever kind of bucks there are in this country (mild laughter), you'd know you were never going to have enough money to buy that, you see, but you're obsessed with the idea of being able to live with that.

What if you went on talking all the time as if it were just in the other room, it was right there, and you could experience any day, do whatever you want with it, you see. Well, it would be obvious nonsense, and because it's a concrete something, then it's easy to tell whether you have it or don't have it. If you talk to your friends as if you have it, this great Rembrandt, perhaps the so-called Nightwatch or something, and then you see clearly you don't have the Nightwatch in your room there, they would think that you were rather disturbed, right? (Mild laughter.) They wouldn't think that their doubt that you own the Nightwatch was really a problem for them, or a product of some sickness or disturbance in them. They would know for certain that there was something wrong with you. In other words, the problem is not in the Nightwatch or in that painting that you don't own, the problem is in you, in your own delusion, your own suffering about it, and your own wanting it, and your endless obsessive thinking about it, talking about it almost as if it is actually there in your possession.

Well, people do the same thing with the Divine. It's a lot of whet people call religion even, this endless talking about something they haven't realized and only wished they own. And if only they can get some system of belief or some magic name or word or whatever, and then they will have power over God, pin that one down and use it to eliminate all their problems, you see. But, in fact, all these religious people are bereft of God. And it's the not having of God, or the realization of God that's making them religious. And that's not religion. Religion, true religion is God-Realization, not the absence of God. The absence of God is non-religion, it's not having religion.

Religion comes from the word religio (Latin: ligare) and means to bind again, to connect again. It's like the word yoga. It's about union with the Divine. To not have a religion means to not have a way, a means, or have access to the Divine. Merely thinking about God without realizing God then is to be without religion. It is to be separated from God. To think about God without realizing God is the same as doubt then. It's separation from God. You can think about God all your life all you like and think about all the propositions or affirmations made by Me or anyone else about the realization of God. You can think about all those propositions all you like, it doesn't make it true for you.

So then if that's so, if it's not true in your experience, then it's nonsensical to you to be talking all the time as if this One that lives and breathes and transcends you as if it is factually true. The reason you doubt it is because it's not experientially true for you. Why isn't it experientially true for you, because you are self-contracted, you're dissociated from the total reality and are just experiencing your own knot, your own separate characteristics, and reflecting on reality, contemplating reality through that self of stress, of separation and bondage.

I was a chaplain one time in a mental hospital. And people in mental hospitals are notorious for talking about God. They're all prophets and saints and ministers and great Realizers according to them, you see. In all that talk about God what they're reflecting is their separation from God, their non-experience of God. And they go through all kinds of dramatizations that make them unbearable in public so they're out in mental hospitals and called crazy.

But there are all kinds of people who just think about God, think endlessly, obsessively about God, talk endlessly and obsessively about God, or even become very religious, involved in some system of thinking about God, but they have no experience of God whatsoever. But we don't call these people crazy because at the same time they are obsessively thinking and talking about God, they are performing what are called morally acts, socially acceptable acts. Their religion is basically making them socially acceptable. And that makes them acceptable as religious people. It's not that they have realized God, but they are socially acceptable.

If you talk and think about God obsessively like ordinary religious people, but don't function in a socially acceptable way, then you're called crazy. In terms of religion, there's not the slightest difference between psychotics and well-meaning religious people downtown because both of them are bereft of the experience of the Divine. It's just that one is socially acceptable and the other is not. So all this talk about the Divine is just utter nonsense and an expression of self-contraction.

Whatever thinking you do about the Divine must be fruitful, must take the form of true hearing, real self-understanding so that you're no longer in bondage to this primitive effort of the body-mind which is to contract and then release and contract and then release it. And more and more in this process becoming chronically contracted and dissociated. You must observe and understand this, so that you can break the cycle and realize that perception, that intuition, direct perception and intuition that is only possible when the self-contraction is transcended.

When there is no self-contraction, everything that I communicate to you in My ecstatic Realization will be totally obvious. The only reason it is not obvious in your own case is because of this contraction that is the self, the contraction of the body-mind. It's a shell, an enclosure, an illusion. The spiritual process is simply the transcendence of that. It's not a matter of making any effort to believe in the Divine or that which is Great and proclaimed by Realizers. It's a matter of self-understanding to the point where this contraction releases.

That which all Realizers have proclaimed then will be equally obvious to you. And it is not obvious otherwise. As long as there is the self-contraction. it doesn't make any difference how many Realizers you line up and have prattle at you, what they say will not make its mark in you because it is the self-contraction that makes all of that not obvious to you, not the absence of somebody to tell you their experience of it. The self-contraction must be released.

My service to you is not merely to communicate to you My Realization, but to show you the Way to realize it, to serve your process of sadhana to help you in that inevitable ordeal that releases the self-contract ion whereby that which is Transcendent and Divine is allowed to be seen as the obvious. So I'm not here merely to give you something to believe in.

That doesn't work. I'm here to serve this insight into your own process of bewilderment and self-bondage so that you may link up with the spiritual process which is the relinquishment of self-contraction and to nurture that in you. And all of that is basically My Teaching Work. And I've fundamentally done ail of that, you see, established all kinds of help, means, agency for devotees now and in the future to use to help them link up with this spiritual process.

The other aspect of My Work is, simply to be Present, to make that Transmission to you that only comes from the Transcendental Position itself. And it doesn't require Me then to speak, to Teach, to identify with the human state, to identify with you, to consider these matters with you, you see. That's the other side of My Work, you see. One side of My Work is to become exactly as you are and consider this Great Way with you and that's my Teaching Work. The other is to stand as I am prior even to this body-mind and this world, available to you as you do this sadhana simply to be in your company while you do this sadhana to establish this Radiance in your company, to draw you into it. You see, to give you that which the ordeal of self-transcendence grants by Grace.

So it is my Plan recently just to do that kind of thing, you see, just to be available for those who are doing this sadhana who, through the various agencies I've established, are involved in practice. This was my intention. And to not Teach any longer in the fashion I've had to do in the past. But this is a very difficult proposition because people are not doing their sadhana very well yet and they keep wanting he to Teach. Where to get involved with them, people think if they make enough mistakes, or fail enough that maybe that's going to instigate a whole new Teaching epoch. (Laughter.) They're going to get Me involved again, maybe I'll stay here in the Netherlands and get down toe to toe with you about this thing, just like I did with all the dumb Americans for all those years. (Laughter. ) And I've got to resist this intention in you all and basically be available to you as your practice justifies.

That's why there is so much drama in this young yajna because there's still so much immaturity and lack of preparation that it tends to draw Me into the teacher's participation with you ail. And I fundamentally will not do that any longer. So I have to struggle with you all every day and keep a kind of distance that you'll take care of this business that aren't taking care of and then associate with you when you're taking care enough of that to justify My coming into your company, you see. It's s kind of a theatrical struggle between us all right now.

This isn't much of a yajna, at least as it was originally planned or proposed. I'm just getting in a little bit of it here and there and doing a lot of waiting. It probably won't be too much longer and I'll go back to Hermitage and then try again next year. Hopefully then I'll come through here again and I'll see better signs, than I did this year. My basic impulse is just to sit with you when I come through here. Like today I'm sitting here and answering your questions. I didn't do that in California. I haven't done it anywhere for years I think.

I just decided today. Because if I don't do some talking at this point the only people who are going to be doing any talking are all these other people around here and I just want to make sure there are no heresies creeping in. (Laughter.)

It should be like I could open my own mouth every now and then just to balance them out, keep the record straight, and stay with you all in a way that is appropriate, you see. If you just have the waiting and all I do is wait, then too much detachment or separation between us will seem to be the case. This, is why I took off the orange because you weren't ready for Me there. It seemed as if we were too dissociated from one another and if you all came running to Me in My Swami mode and practiced that proposed Feeling-Inquiry as I proposed it a couple of months ago, then there wouldn't have been any apparent dissociation between us, but you didn't come.

Even those who suggested to Me when I was in California that they were ready for such practice, such renunciation, but one by one they returned to the progressive practice. After awhile I began to observe there was hardly anybody around who had anything to do with this kind of renunciation. And I was therefore becoming too distant from everyone.

Now I'm not going to get a lot closer than taking off orange and putting on blue, however. I'm not going to resume My Teaching Work. But it has always been, there's always been my quality to be closely related to my devotees. And if you become a renunciate in that sense, then I'll become a renunciate in your sense perhaps, more in your likeness, just so that I can maintain a relationship with you.