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Vital Shock - (November 9, 1972) - originally published in The Method of the Siddhas, published in 1973. This version was updated and published in "My "Bright" Word, June 2005

DEVOTEE: Beloved Lord, I wonder if You could expand on a discussion You had with some of us the other day regarding the vital center of the body-mind. You were telling us how people become obsessed with anger, fear, jealousy, and so forth, as a result of a contraction in the vital.

AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: Yes. I have talked about how Energy operates in life through a structure (or pattern) of "conductivity", a Circle of descending and ascending Force. The locus of gross-bodily life (or vitality) is a center in the middle of the body, in the general area of the navel-the lower-body area. This center, or this aspect of the larger Circle of Force, is located in the frontal (or descending) line of the body. It is very intimate to human experience.

It is at the level of life, of vitality, that people experience the nature of suffering most obviously, most directly. And, for the most part, it is at the level of vitality (or physicality, or grossness) that people are aware of existence. To the usual person, the dimension of ascending (or subtle) life is quite obscure, in comparison to vital (or gross) life. In fact, when people pursue what they regard to be Spirituality, it is (generally speaking) not because they are responding to something truly Spiritual. What makes people seek is not a Spiritual motivation-not even, as a general rule, a subtle motivation. Rather, what motivates people to seek is their own suffering-and, essentially, suffering in the vital, in the gross (or physical) dimension of life.

The usual person lives in the state that I call "vital shock". Ultimately, this shock includes more than the vital. Indeed, this shock operates even on a very subtle level. But its most obvious (and directly motivating) form is the sense of shock in the vital being. Ordinarily, the vital-at its chief center in the middle of the body-is contracted. You constantly feel that contraction, even physically. You may feel a kind of cramp, a tension in the middle of the body. And everyone constantly tries to relieve that tension through various experiences, various pleasures.

The vital center is like the shutter of a camera. It curls in on itself in order to close, and unfurls in order to open. It is like your hand. If you clench your fist as tightly as you can, it eventually becomes painful. Like your hand, the vital center is alive, sentient-and, like your hand, the vital, when it contracts, causes a painful sensation. Indeed, it causes not only a physical sensation, but also many other repercussions in life and conscious awareness. Therefore, when this contraction occurs in the vital, you not only get a cramp in the stomach-you have an entire life of suffering.

Every aspect of vital existence is controlled by this state, this vital shock. The patterns to which people become addicted are simply extensions of this contraction in the vital. For instance, in the course of your life in My Avataric Divine Company, you may experience periods of great difficulty, when you are continually obsessed with various kinds of desires, various feelings. At the beginning of such a period, something occurred. Something in life, somewhere, assaulted (or seemed to assault) the vital. All of the patterns, the rituals, the strategies that began to arise in you were reactions to that assault on the vital. The sensation (or perception) of that assault, that "blow" to the vital, is the form of vital shock that currently obsesses you. But, even before you began the present episode, vital shock was already your condition. There is a continuous vital contraction.

In fact, what people are suffering is not their distinctive life patterns (or strategies) in and of themselves, but this original shock, in the form of a primal reaction-the self-contraction. People seek, through all kinds of means, to become free of their various symptoms, their various strategies-including the cramped sensation in the region of the navel. But, if you observe and understand this contraction itself-this activity, this drama-in the present, then you do not have to deal with all the endless extensions of it.

To live True Spiritual life, you must deal with your fundamental, present activity, the self-contraction itself-rather than attempting to deal with the search that is an expression of the self-contraction. True Spiritual life in My Avataric Divine Company is not a matter of dealing with the symptoms or the strategies manifested by the activity of self-contraction, but of observing the activity itself, in present time. This fundamental ego-activity is the root and the support and the form of all the ordinary manifestations of suffering, all the patterns of life that people acknowledge to be their suffering. The self-contraction, the avoidance of relationship, is, fundamentally, everyone's continuous, present activity.

You can be thrown into an entire period of dramatizing your suffering by some simple event in life. A frustration of some kind, a threat, a loss-a vital shock. But release is not a matter of looking into your memory and discovering the various sources or incidents of these shocks in the past you know, the day your father hit you, the day your dog died, and all the rest. Those are only past instances of the same process. The process itself is always instant, present-time, spontaneous. It is a reaction to life itself.

Life is its own shock. The event of Consciousness itself becoming aware of Its apparent identification with a physical form is that shock. Birth is that shock-not merely the original physical event (the memory of which may, in some cases, be recovered), but every moment's awareness of being alive. The events within the course of life are nothing but extensions of that primal life-shock.

In The Knee Of Listening, I describe the experience in which I

remembered-even relived-My prenatal state, the awakening of conscious awareness as the body. There was a kind of gloriousness about it, a fantastic form of Energy-shaped, as I described it then, "like a seahorse". It was the original Yogic Arousal of the Kundalini, if you will. But, in the same instant, there was intense sorrow. The shock was the shock of life itself, the shock of embodiment.

The "seahorse" (or the bodily form) is already contraction. The spinal form is already this curve. The ordinary life is already this tendency, this compulsive qualification of Consciousness itself, this compulsive un-consciousness. After the event of birth, each human being develops a characteristic drama in response to this shock. Distinctive experiences occur in the course of every human life, and each individual develops a characteristic pattern of reaction to such experiences. Thus, each person is living the drama and strategy of suffering in a unique manner-a peculiarly complex, individual manner. But, in every case, there is one fundamental activity, one thing that is the suffering. It is an activity this activity, this contraction, this avoidance of relationship, this differentiation, this separation. Wherever it occurs, that is suffering.

All ordinary suffering is only a cramp. It is the self-contraction. Wherever there is self-contraction, there is obstruction to the flow of the life-force. And, wherever there is self-contraction, there is also the sense of separate existence.

If you cramp the hand together in a fist, there is a sensation in the hand, as the hand, that is different from the space around it. When the vital being is contracted in the same manner, the apparent "center" of that contraction is the ego, the "me", the separate-self-sense. The mind of this "me" - like its body-is separate, separative, compulsively differentiating.

Therefore, the entire drama of seeking that is a reaction to the self-contraction (or a reaction to life altogether) always begins with this "me". "Me" is the core of your self-contracting activity. "Me" is the center of the "fist". Every person seeks, by every possible means, to be relieved of his or her suffering-but the suffering cannot be relieved, the self-contraction cannot be uncoiled, unless the "me" (which is its center) dissolves.

At the level of life, of vitality, the Spiritual process in My Avataric Divine Company involves not only the dissolution of the life-drama, the dissolution of the physical manifestation of self contraction, but also the dissolution of all of the qualities, the characteristic psychology, the mentality, the presumptions, of self contraction. Thus, Real Spiritual life involves the undermining of the entire point of view of vital shock.

When the self-contraction unwinds, "conductivity" replaces obstruction. Then there is "conductivity" of the natural life-energy (and, in the case of My devotees who have been Spiritually Awakened by Me, of My Avatarically Self-Transmitted Divine Spirit-Energy). As long as this compulsive contraction (or shock) exists, there is no such "conductivity". There is only obstruction (or limitation and constriction) of the flow of life-force.

The self-contraction may be experienced as intense stimulation of life-energy (or life-force) in the vital, felt as all of the various forms of desire. The fundamental forms of this intense cramp of energy-felt as the fire of desire in the vital-are the dramas of money, food, and sex. If the cramp of obstruction is severe, there is loss of vitality, desire, and function in these same areas of life. No vitality-no survival.

One who indulges in the exploitation of desire is no longer conducting the force of life. In that case, there is only the misuse of the life-force, the reversing of it, the emptying of it. People do this because the self-contraction is painful. You discover that, if the life-force itself is diminished, the pain goes away. If the hand goes to sleep, there is no pain from the clenching of the fist. If you empty the vital of its force, the cramp is not felt-even though the contraction remains.

One who is self-indulgent empties the vital constantly - and thereby feels relief, feels open, feels satisfied. But, as soon as strength returns, the pain is felt again-unless the person has exhausted and contracted the vital to the point of impotence. A person who is self-indulgent tries, by every possible means, to get satisfied, to be free of pain. But all such efforts are made from the point of view of the self-contraction, the avoidance of relationship. In that disposition, you will simply continue your efforts-until the entire process of the search fails, and you feel its failure. When you begin to really feel that failure, then Satsang with Me becomes possible, the life of "radical" self-understanding becomes possible.

One who is dramatizing (or living) this state of vital shock is not truly alive, not really enjoying life. Such a one is always self enclosed, always suffering, always unconscious, always obsessed, always seeking. Among human beings, there is always the same malady. Everybody is asleep, everybody is unconscious, everybody is self-obsessed, everybody wants to be satisfied. Everyone who comes to the Guru wants to be satisfied. "When will I become enlightened? When will I have this experience? What is happening to me? I am suffering."

Everyone wants to begin Spiritual life as a search. People want to carry on Spiritual life as an extension of the same thing they have always been doing. They want to be satisfied. They want to be emptied. They want to be free of this cramp. They want to be free of it-"me, me, me". But "me" is the center, the core, of the self-contraction.

If you go to the usual traditional sources of religious and Spiritual teaching, you are given forms of satisfaction, means to satisfy your inclination to be free of this cramp. You are given palliatives, seeming remedies, strategies of belief, and every kind of ego-consoling method designed to satisfy this search at various levels. All of these methods are responses to the painful cramp in the vital.

But those who come into My Avataric Divine Company in order to console the "me" are not satisfied. They are frustrated. The search for consolation is not the "Point of View" of Truth. The self-contraction and the consolations it seeks are not supported in Satsang with Me. Satsang with Me is the undermining of the self contraction, at every level-the undermining of the very point of view of self-contraction, the undermining of suffering, of seeking, of separative existence. Therefore, only those who have become sensitive to the failure of their search are able to tolerate the quality of Satsang with Me.

Satsang with Me is a paradox. For one thing, the self-contraction is the avoidance of the essential condition of life, the primary law (or form) of the cosmos: relationship. There is nothing conditional that arises on its own, or purely as its own "self". People come to Me dissociated from all "others", separating themselves from all conditions. But Satsang is the relationship to Me. Therefore, Satsang with Me is an offense to "Narcissus", an offense to the self-contraction-not a satisfaction of it. When you have become sensitive to your own failure, then (and only then) are you able to tolerate that offense.

Living in the condition of relationship stimulates tremendous resistance in people. The sadhana of Satsang with Me is to live the devotional and Spiritual relationship to Me at all times, and forever. Satsang with Me requires at least as much confrontation with resistance as the kind of effort Yogis and religious practitioners traditionally engage by putting themselves into caves and various other ascetic circumstances. In Truth, the most ascetic circumstance is relationship. The condition of relationship stimulates all of the reactivity, all of the "sinfulness", all of the impurity that is in a person. For My devotee, all of that is stimulated in the Condition and relationship that is Satsang with Me. Satsang with Me is an offense to the self-contraction, and It stirs up its content.

Satsang with Me is a connection, a form of "conductivity". The Force of Truth is Communicated through that connection. At the same time that the subconscious of buried reactions (and, indeed, the entire effort of the search) is being stimulated by the life of Satsang with Me, the Divine Force (or Pressure) of Satsang with Me is also stimulating and quickening the entire process. This provokes the crisis that is True sadhana in My Avataric Divine Company.

When this process has significantly loosened the vital, when functional ease is restored to vital (or gross physical) life, then once I have formally and directly Granted you My Spiritually Initiatory Avataric Divine Blessing-Transmission-the True (by Me-Awakened, and always newly by-Me-Activated) Spiritual process may begin to manifest itself in My devotee." But, in the beginning, it is at the level of vitality that this sadhana must be demonstrated-not at the level of visions and other subtle phenomena. In any case, such phenomena are not what is significant-because anyone (even people with absolutely no Spiritual qualifications whatsoever) may manifest the tendency to have subtle experiences.

Thus, at the beginning, there is this process that must occur relative to the vital, must deal with vital shock. The person who is just entering the life of Satsang with Me is like a patient coming to a hospital in shock. The Force and Condition of Satsang with

Me must unloose the condition of vital shock. When the unconscious, compulsive point of view of vital shock, and the strategies stimulated by its characteristic state, have been critically loosened in the individual by the practical living of the life-conditions of Satsang with Me, then most fundamental self-understanding can awaken.

Living always in heart-Communion with Me, while rightly functioning in the cooperative culture of My devotees (and in the world altogether), is the means to release vital shock. But the release is entirely My Activity-for My devotee cannot do what My Avataric Divine Spiritual Presence and Force Does. As My devotee, you simply live in that Presence and Force, conformed to the life-conditions I require. Such is the True Grace of Spiritual life in My Avataric Divine Company: Your vital shock is undermined by My Avataric Divine Spiritual Presence and Force-the Presence and Force of Reality Itself (or Truth Itself).

DEVOTEE: It seems that a person who is only seeking is never dealing fundamentally with the self-contraction, but is merely reacting to the shock of life.

AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: Yes. Such a person is merely reacting to the manifestations, the symptoms, of self-contraction. The secret cause of your suffering is not located in the past. It is not located in the universe-"out there". Your suffering is entirely your own. It is your own activity. What is more, your suffering is entirely your present, activity, not caused by something else. Therefore, the Real activity of Spiritual life is not generated from the point of view of this search, this reaction, this suffering. It is not a matter of discovering your "devils" (or whatever they are)-the key memories, the mortal and cosmic events. It is a matter of observing and understanding your own activity, your present activity.

There is a present activity-an absolutely present activity, an "only" activity-that everyone is performing all the time. Yes, there are conditions-and reactions to conditions-that build up patterns. But what is significant is the root, the support, the paradigm, of all ego-patterning. You can go on endlessly recalling the incidents and experiences that conditioned you-but, without self-observation in the present moment, you will have accomplished nothing except the reinforcement of your self-obsession.

Why are you conditionable? Why are you suffering these conditions? Your suffering is your own activity. When self contraction no longer occurs, then no conditioning occurs, no thought binds. Then there is only Love-Bliss-Happiness.

The approach of Truth to life is a direct (or "radical") one, not a roundabout (or revolutionary) one. It is not a matter of the search-which is inevitably undertaken from a point of view within the condition of suffering. Rather, it is a matter of the observation and understanding of your present activity. You are operating as the activity of self-contraction.

DEVOTEE: Beloved Master, can You clarify what You mean by "radical"?

AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: "Radical" self-understanding is an irreducible insight. There is not anything that can go behind it or beyond it. The "radical" point of view is not one of seeking (step by step, by means of experiences), but of penetrating the present condition (prior to any movement whatsoever).

You could take the point of view of the suffering, the symptom, the entire life-game that you (as an apparently separate individual) are playing, and make that the point of view of Spiritual life. And, indeed, that is (essentially) what people have always done. Traditionally, people begin from the point of view of their suffering. Instead of resorting to the Truth, they search for the Truth. They travel in a vast circle, or "great path of return". But every "point" on the circle is founded in the same point of view with which the "journey" was begun. Each "point" is simply a different condition or experience perceived from that same point of view. At some point, this begins to become clear-however far you have gone on this infinitely wide circle before you discover it.

When you begin to suspect or see-to observe and understand-the nature of the adventure you are living, then you are no longer traveling the circle, but you are at the center of the circle.

The moment you Know what this entire adventure is, you are already at the center. Therefore, the "great path of return" (endlessly revolving around the circle) is the nature of the search-but Truth is always already at the core, the center.

DEVOTEE: What is the nature of Paradise?

AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: Paradise! What is Paradise? What is that?

DEVOTEE: Paradise is where there is bliss.

AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: Where there is bliss?! Bliss is Paradise. All of this is Always Already Bliss. Love-Bliss-Happiness is the Very Nature of all of this. So-called "Paradise" is an hallucination about what it must be like where lots of blissful people are! But Love-Bliss-Happiness is the Very Nature of Reality Itself. Love Bliss - Happiness is the Very Nature of this present event.

There are lots of "someplace elses", but they will be no more blissful for you than this place if you are not already Blissful. For the usual person, the lokas (or Spiritual realms) of the Siddhas are just as dismal as the Earth. But the Siddhas are very smart. They find ways to keep the stupids out! If some being who is prey to ordinary distractions gets anywhere near, they say, "Psst! Have you been down to, uh-Earth?" And they really hard-sell it, so that everybody comes down here!

Love-Bliss-Happiness, Unqualified Enjoyment, is the Nature of Truth. The Nature of Consciousness, and the Nature of all of this the Nature of the cells of the body, the Nature of Light Itself-is Unqualified, Unconditional Openness.

DEVOTEE: Does that mean there is no separation between any of us?

AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: Do you see any? Do you feel there is? In Truth, there is no separation at all. But, from the point of view of the seeker, the one who suffers, there is only separation, at every level. When you Wake Up to Reality itself-when you understand your own adventure, your own state, in every form that it takes-then you cannot find separations anymore. You cannot discover them-and you go Divinely "Mad". That Divine "Madness" is True Intelligence.

DEVOTEE: One cannot go higher than that?

AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: Higher than that? It would not occur to you! It is the seeker who is always going someplace. The one who is already in trouble is always going "someplace else" because he or she is suffering the results of self-contraction. All of the chakras, all of the centers in the subtle body, the subtle life, exhibit the same form as the vital center, the gross body, the gross life. These chakras are contracted, closed, not conducting Energy in the descending and ascending arcs of the Circle of the body-mind.

When Satsang is lived with Me-such that the vital begins to open, and this "conductivity" begins to occur again-then movement also tends to begin in the subtle life as well. Then the higher chakras begin to open, and various Spiritual phenomena arise. Spontaneous physical movements, all the kinds of things that I have discussed with you, and that you have read about, may occur. But, as you should be able to see, they are not (in and of themselves) the Truth.

Whenever there is an opening of some sort, or a relaxation in any level (or center) of conscious awareness, there tend to be experiences that are associated with that level. These experiences can be movements, rushes of energy, physical or emotional blissfulness, various sensations, various kinds of psychic phenomena, visions, lights, sounds-but all of these are merely things that were stuck inside the "fist" of self-contraction. As the self contraction opens up, they sort of "klink" off. But the seeker, the one who endures the process of sadhana from the point of view of suffering, thinks that all of these things are "it". Your hand opens up, and you see the rings on your fingers, the lines on your hand. Everything becomes very fascinating, and you think of these experiences as Spiritual life. You think that your visions are Truth.

Traditional Yogic seekers imagine that the Kundalini Force actually ascends. If the Kundalini ever for one moment did not retain its connection with the sahasrar (the upper region of the brain and its subtle counterparts), you would be dead, from that moment. That ascending arc of the Circle always exists, just as the descending arc of the Circle always exists. It is just that, in the case of the traditional Yogic seeker, when the spinal line begins to come alive, and the contractions at certain points in the spinal line begin to loosen, then various experiences occur (corresponding to the various subtle centers), and people imagine that the Energy Itself is rising. What is actually occurring is that the subtle centers are opening in a kind of progress that seems "upward". Certainly, there are sensations that are like rising Energy. But, in fact, the Circle of Energy is always there, always continuous-except that It is obstructed by the tendency to contract, to be separate, to avoid relationship at the level of life.

Thought itself-simple thought, or mind-forms-is a form of suffering in the seeker. The simplest mind-form, any mind-form even an amused thought of Donald Duck!-is a condition of suffering, of self-contraction. If-in the very moment when you are distracted by, or happy with, this or that image or thought you examine yourself with any kind of sensitivity, you will realize that you are suffering. Distracted, perhaps-but suffering.

When, in Most Perfect Divine Self-Realization, all of this contraction, all of this life of avoidance, all of this identification with thinking is (by Means of My Avataric Divine Spiritual Grace) transcended, then there is only the Absolute "Conductivity" of Amrita Nadi (Which is the Perfect Form of Reality)-and That Perfect Form Lives only as Its Own Self-Existing, Self-Radiant, and Self Evidently Divine Nature.

The momentary (or otherwise temporary) and partial experience of the relaxation of the vital and subtle contraction is what the traditions of Yoga call "samadhi" - Yogic exaltation, meditative ecstasy. There are many kinds of such temporary (or conditional) Yogic samadhi. The traditional Yogic samadhis are experiences that take place when particular subtle events occur in the living circuitry I am describing to you. When certain forms of concentration are coupled with certain energy-movements within, people experience such conditional samadhis. But the Greatest and Only True Divine Samadhi Is Truth Itself, the Divine Self-Condition Itself, or Reality Itself. There are the temporary (or conditional) samadhis, and there is the Eternal Samadhi of Truth-the (only by - Me Revealed and Given) Most Ultimate and Final Samadhi, or seventh stage Sahaja Nirvikalpa Samadhi (Which is not dissociated from any of the states of conscious awareness, ordinary or extraordinary, and Which is not based on any movement or event in relation to any state of conscious awareness).

One who Enjoys That Eternal Samadhi is Always Already Full. When (by Means of My Avataric Divine Spiritual Grace) you are Established in My Divine Samadhi, you do not have to enter into any of the conditional Yogic samadhis in order to be living the Truth. At times, you may spontaneously enter into one or another of the conditional Yogic samadhis, but not as any kind of necessary demonstration of the Realization of Truth.

In True Divine Samadhi, you live the present condition Consciously-without bondage to vital shock, without self contraction, without the avoidance of relationship, without identification with the subtle forms of that avoidance (all of which are forms of thought, modifications of Consciousness Itself). When all of these modifications come to an end-not by means of your physical death, but because you are no longer bound to them as a compulsive activity-then there is already what may be called "Paradise", only Love-Bliss-Happiness Itself, only the Divine Self Condition, only the Divine Conscious Light, only Truth Itself, only Reality Itself.

AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: I began by speaking about the notion of vital shock. You create your own life-drama. Essentially, all of your dramas take place in the context of relationships of various kinds-because the avoidance of relationship, the contraction in relation to the life-force, is the activity to which human beings are compulsively bound. Where there is relationship at the level of life, there is the tendency to separate from it-and, if you cannot find any justification for separating from it, you manufacture reasons to separate from it. Every individual continually engineers the failure of relationship. Indeed, people become compulsively bound to their special methods for complicating and destroying relationship. Such strategies are the life-patterns that people are suffering-and their chosen forms of the search are the strategic methods by which people try to get free of the very limitations they are compulsively generating.

If you are experiencing something like that now-as My devotee, in Satsang with Me-then the symptoms, the feelings, the moods, the thoughts, the entire period of days or weeks (or however long it may be) of negativity and un-Happiness, of obsession-none of that has to be "bought". None of that has to be lived. All of that is merely a secondary affair. The disease has already occurred. What you are experiencing is simply the symptoms of the healing.

If you will look back at the beginning of any of these periods, there is usually some frustrating event to which all of this is the strategic reaction. Not that you should always be looking for these events in your past. All I mean to have you discover, by pointing this out to you, is what you do in reaction to the frustration of life, the suppression of life, the shock that is life. What are you doing about that? What does your life-drama consist of? It is always self contraction, the avoidance of relationship.

Relationship is the Real condition of life. If you are sitting in the house, weeping, screaming, feeling upset and negative about somebody you live with, then that activity is your suffering. But, if you feel that person, feel the relationship, live the relationship, let the force of life move again-then there is no suffering at all. You have obviated that entire "tour", the entire drama-including the making up and all the rest. None of it has to take place. All of those things are merely the particularities of your suffering.

But suffering itself is always the avoidance of relationship. Whenever you observe and understand your own activity, you see that that activity was the avoidance of relationship. When relationship is lived, then the self-contraction does not take place, and right "conductivity" of the life-force characterizes your life altogether. That "conductivity" is felt as pleasure-as free conscious awareness, without distraction by thought. It is loving, open, light, forceful.

Therefore, the key to True Spiritual life is not the life-force itself, not any particular activity, not the Kundalini, not any of the secondary manifestations that occur in Satsang with Me. Such are merely phenomena that are associated with True Spiritual life. The key to True Spiritual life is the observation, the understanding, and the transcending of your own activity of self-contraction-in the context of Satsang with Me.

In Satsang with Me, the mere fact of relationship to Me tends to stimulate everything I am describing. My Avataric Divine Self Transmission and Self-Revelation Is the Communication of the "Bright", the Divine Conscious Light Itself. Therefore, at the beginning of your sadhana in My Avataric Divine Company, everything tends to intensify and build up in you. You are given conditions at the level of life-simple conditions, practical ones, functional things for which you are to be appropriately responsible. Gradually, the stronger you become, the simpler you become, the more experienced you become in living this Satsang with Me, the more you begin to listen to Me with free attention such that you begin to observe yourself, to move toward this insight, this self-understanding.

Without such self-observation and self-understanding, the Real Event of Satsang with Me cannot occur. Without such self observation and self-understanding, you can have all the Spiritual phenomena you like, but they will be only more experience, more suffering. However, if you live from the point of view of Satsang with Me, these phenomena can arise and be of interest-and, like all other conditionally arising phenomena, they will inevitably generate conditions in which self-understanding must take place.

When most perfect "radical" self-understanding occurs, it will not be your Divine Enlightenment-because, when it occurs, there is no "one" left. I do not mean that you will be physically dead, that you will be unconscious, that you will be in oblivion but the entire principle which is the center of self-contracted life will have disappeared. When you open your hand, what happens to your fist? When you release the self-contraction, the "me" is gone, the search is gone, the entire principle of suffering is undermined. Satsang with Me is a process of growth and outgrowing, Given by My Avataric Divine Spiritual Grace-until, ultimately, heart-Communion with Me is most perfect (and, thereby, self-understanding is most perfect), such that you Realize Me Most Perfectly.

Until people enter into Satsang with Me, they are looking for release from their symptoms. They want to seek, they want relief. They are not prepared for Truth.

In every moment, this compulsive, selfward-turning curvature of self-contraction is being generated. Why do you think there are thoughts all of the time? Why is there one thought after the next? Why doesn't thought come to an end? The apparently objective (or broken) light of conditionally manifested existence is curving compulsively. Why is there suffering all the time? This activity of curving is compulsive. It is not Real life. That is not "how it is", in Real Spiritual terms. There is compulsive activity, automatic activity, unnecessary activity. There is compulsive curvature, bending, contraction at the causal root of conditionally manifested existence.

DEVOTEE: Why does it happen?

AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: Once you already have this shape, this human body, why is there such a strong tendency to walk around and talk and be a human being? Your human-being-ness has already occurred! The body is the shape of it. It is not that the body is wrong. It is not that you should make a judgment about the body. From a superficial standpoint, it is very easy to fall out of sympathy with your own craziness, and then start to resist it. But all of that is merely more of the same.

When your present activity is truly understood, the dilemma no longer exists. This does not mean that, from that moment, no more thinking goes on, no more life goes on. The activity that is your suffering is not life itself, nor has that activity generated life. The activity of self-contraction is merely the obstruction to life, an illusory pattern within life-but that activity is utter, fundamental, all inclusive. You cannot even pick your nose without doing the self contraction. You cannot look at anything without being involved in this self-contracting activity, this avoidance of relationship. You cannot think, feel, move, breathe, you do not live a single moment, without performing this activity and experiencing its results.

Therefore, from the point of view of the dilemma, everything is a form of this activity. To someone who is wedded to dilemma, the cosmic domain seems to be made out of nothing but suffering. That is why people become atheistic, insane, chronically depressed. To such people, the entire universe seems to justify despair-because everything seems to have become an extension of their own self-contracting activity. That activity has become the means and manner of their perception.

Therefore, self-understanding must take place at every level down to the cells, and penetrating even to the root-sense of separate self. On every level where self-contraction occurs, self understanding can also take place. When this activity, this contraction, this avoidance of relationship, is thoroughly undone, thoroughly undermined, and only Truth is lived, then something about the nature of life in the cosmic domain begins to become clear. From the "Point of View" of Truth, life is allowable and good. Perhaps one might have wished to choose another form of life-but the nature of your present form of existence (and, indeed, of all possible forms of conditionally manifested existence) becomes clear.

The avoidance of relationship is to be seen in the simple, practical observing of life, of "you alive in relationship". There is really no subtlety whatsoever to this self-observation. It is the crudest kind of self-knowledge. But, from the ordinary point of view, it is also the most unavailable-because what is to be understood is the ordinary point of view.

DEVOTEE: Is it possible, as some have said, for a person to die and then be reborn as an animal?

AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: The question of reincarnation can be approached from several points of view. In the West, the most common approach has been "experimental"-the investigation of the matter through the personal experience of individuals. Through various internal and psychic means, people recollect past lives, see images of other people's lives, see their destinies, and so on. These are the usual means, particularly among Westerners, whereby people have approached such phenomena, in order to discover whether they are true (or real).

But there is another approach to this matter-and that is the Way of Divine Self-Realization, the Realization of Truth. When (by Means of My Avataric Divine Spiritual Grace), there is most perfect self-understanding, then you live only As Truth. Then you also Know what birth is, what mind is, what life is. You see that all of that is the result of tendencies subtly manifested as modifications of Conscious Light itself-which tendencies take form in (and as) the conditionally manifested worlds. You Know this with absolute certainty. You see this clearly. Therefore, Truth is the basis of your Knowledge of all phenomena, including reincarnation. Nevertheless, you may Enjoy this Realization without the least suggestion or recollection of reincarnation in your own case-without remembering, even vaguely in a dream, a single moment of any past life. This is because Divine Self-Realization is not dependent on anything to do with birth. When you are Self Identified with the Divine Self-Condition, you have no sense whatsoever of being born as a body, no sense whatsoever of containment-of being limited to your "own" mind, your "own" life.

If there is this kind of relationship to the apparent phenomena of your present existence, how could you possibly get involved with knowing anything at all about the past history of your dying personality? What could possibly interest you about it? How could you possibly discover anything about it? Every time you zero in on your "own" mind, you see billions of worlds and beings. How are you going to pick yourself out? Where is "you"? How do you find a destiny in the midst of the universes, when you cannot even discover your "own" life as a substantial and separate event?

Thus, in the Fullness of Truth, it is impossible for you to acquire definitive experiential knowledge about your own past or future as an apparent individual. But your Root-Awareness of the Very Structure of Existence Itself, Which Rises from the Living Divine Heart Itself, shows you clearly the inherent Nature of all patterns, without otherwise requiring experience of (so-called) "individual" recollection, on the plane of mind.

When you examine the nature and fundamental structure of life itself, it is clear that something like regression-or apparent rebirth, in animal form, after once having lived in human form is clearly possible, just as it can occur in dreams. In dreams, you can take on various forms in various worlds-and the same is true of birth in the waking realms of life. But, if you begin to become truly sensitive to your present situation, you may become terrified even of moving into this human condition again!

Having an affinity for plants and animals in this life is another thing altogether. The vital life of human beings is comprised of mechanisms that are also found elsewhere in conditional Nature, made of the same forces.

I have made an analogy between the human mechanism and someone walking a dog. You are like a mind walking a dog. The vital mechanism is an animal and vegetal level of conscious awareness-an intelligence like that which governs the organisms and compounds of conditional Nature below the human being in the scheme of processes. Therefore, at the level of the vital, human beings have a strong affinity with animals, plants, natural phenomena, conditional Nature. Because they partake of the same functional life, the same level of life-energy, as animals and plants, human beings recognize that energy in the environment and enjoy associating with it.

Someone once asked Ramana Maharshi about the practice of retiring to the forest, as that practice is described in certain traditional texts (such as the Bhagavan Gita). The traditional recommendation is to establish a seat in the wilderness, in a forest area-in congenial circumstances, with streams nearby, and so on. This person asked Ramana Maharshi's permission to do this-but Ramana Maharshi pointed out that, when people go out to do this sort of thing, to get away from humanity and all of the complications of ordinary life, they begin to become fascinated with animals instead-animal life, vital life. They sympathize with it, enjoy it, and gradually become like it. As a consequence, they wind up in a worse condition than before.

The truth of the matter is that the form of relationship you tend to assume with living beings, animals, plants, conditional Nature, is a direct indication of your relationship to the vital-and that is all. If you become very sympathetic with the vital movements in yourself, the forms of vital desire, you will also tend to be very sympathetic with animals. If you tend to exploit your own vital life, you will tend also to fail to manage animals, plant life, and the like. If you resist utterly, and are vitally contracting to the point of interference with your own vital life, even with life itself, you will tend to have the same effect on other life-forms.

No one, for instance, can tolerate being disliked by a friend's pet! If you go to visit a friend, it is very upsetting if the dog does not like you, if the cat does not like you. It is very upsetting if you cannot grow plants, if flowers die quickly when placed near your bed! But all of this-your relationships to plants, to animals, to life-forms-is a precise dramatization of your relationship to the vital in your own case.

In many people who live unconsciously, the vital takes over, absorbing their lives from birth to death, and they never exceed it. You must have at least seen photographs of people who are wedded to the earth, who live in isolated farmlands. Such people seem to be unconscious-from the point of view of someone who has been brought up in cities, or in sophisticated social circumstances. They appear to be asleep in the vital, without their minds very much engaged. They do not speak very much, they are quiet, they are slow-they seem dull and unconscious.

City people, however, tend to be contracted in relation to the vital. Westerners (and "Westernized" people, in general), having been influenced by urbanization, are typically very resistive to vital life. Americans, for example, are obsessed with sex-not really obsessed with the having of sex, but with the failure of sex, and the wanting of it. There is very little actual or successful having of it, because the sexual process is so obstructed.

In the West, participation in the life-force has been undermined by Western society's bondage to the symbols of its religious path. Not that everything about the symbols of Judeo-Christian religion was actually present in the work of Jesus of Nazareth and the Hebrew men of knowledge-but it is certainly present in the religious movements that have come down through the millennia to the present day. In Judeo-Christian culture, there is a strong suppression of the vital. Thus, people in the West are trained in "vital shock" from the beginning-trained to resist their vital life, their lifeline. In the West, money, food, and sex are problematic for everybody-in the sense that there is a chronic resistance, a chronic doubt as to whether or not you are supposed to have anything to do with such things.

DEVOTEE: Why is it that so many of the Eastern teachings seem to insist on celibacy as necessary for Spiritual life?

AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: In the East, it is often said that life can be about either sex or God, but not both. A choice must be made. And, in a fundamental sense, this is correct. Nevertheless, it is not fruitful to take on celibacy in a strategic manner.

The traditional Indian notion of Spiritual Realization is one in which vital life has been abandoned, and one's conscious existence has returned to a "higher" State, presumably never to be reborn. Therefore, the processes by which adherents of these paths seek Realization necessarily involve the reduction of the entire pattern of vital life (and even, in the case of the Transcendentalist schools,28 the pattern of subtle life) to the point of abandonment. Such is the precondition for Realization, in their terms.

Really, the problem of Spiritual life-for anyone, West or East is not whether to be celibate or not. Until you understand yourself, your choices relative to emotional-sexual life are always a manifestation of your dilemma-not a manifestation of discriminative intelligence. The observation and understanding of the contraction in the vital is an absolute prerequisite for Real Spiritual life.

For the most part, conventional celibate idealism is an attempted solution to the resistance to vitality, the chronic (socially generated and socially enforced) reaction to the vital condition, to life. Such strategic celibacy is, in fact, a form of de-vitalization. There can be no Spirituality without the life-force. If you suppress the life-force, you have gone back to zero. The True Spiritual process inherently makes use of the life-force and its "conductivity".

When the pattern of "conductivity" is restored, a person may, whether by tendency or by devotional impulse, be moved to become (or remain) celibate. In fact, when the circulation of energy is felt very intensely at the level of the life-vehicle, very often the sexual impulse simply disappears for various periods of time. And in the case of virtually all of My devotees, the impulse to be sexually active will (at some point) be freely and spontaneously relinquished, in the advancing course of the Way of Adidam. But the arbitrary demand to be celibate, as an absolute practice for all-in the sense of willfully enforced (and idealistic) avoidance of emotional sexual intimacy-is not useful or appropriate.

In the earlier stages of the Way of Adidam, it is not necessary for My devotees to be celibate. However, it is absolutely necessary, from the Spiritual point of view, for the dilemma in the vital to break down-and it is not just in terms of sexuality that this dilemma is manifested. It is manifested in terms of money (or exchange of life-force), food, and sex-in terms of vital life altogether.

My "Perfect Practice" devotees live from the "Point of View" of Consciousness Itself. They no longer live from the point of view of the body-mind-and, therefore, they no longer live in dilemma. Because they are no longer identified with the body-mind, and because they experience the profound Yogic Sublimity of constant devotional and Spiritual Communion with Me, they are (in virtually all cases) celibate-not as a matter of necessity, but as a matter of inevitability."

Many people have what they regard to be a functional sex-life, one that is enjoyable and seems to work fine for them. But their relationship to the force of life may itself be very mediocre. They may have functional problems in other areas-diet, work (or money), relationship to the environment.

In the East, particularly in the culture of India, there is a tendency to de-vitalize, to separate from the vital. In the West, there is a tendency to exploit the vital-and, on top of that, a vast system of taboos against the vital. Thus, in relation to the vital, the West has its characteristic problem, while the East has a different characteristic problem. In the East, there is an orientation to what is beyond the vital-whereas, in the West, the orientation is to the vital. In the East, it is said that you are here for the wrong reasons-because you are suffering from illusion, you have abandoned the Truth, you have abandoned Real God. In the West, it is said that you are here because God sent you. In each case, there are characteristically different dramas at the level of ordinary life and vitality. But, from the point of view of the Real process of conscious life, responsibility for the vital is the indispensable practical foundation for the potential development of Real Spiritual life.

From day to day, human beings feel, see, experience their suffering essentially in vital terms. Therefore, the best "cave" is an ordinary life, a relational life, a functional life. That is where you find your discipline, where you become strong, where you become truly responsible for yourself. Relatedness is the necessary circumstance of Spiritual practice.

Anyone can be apparently "religious", anyone can be apparently "Spiritual"-but anyone who becomes My devotee knows how difficult and demanding True Spiritual life really is. It is easy to play imaginary games about religious and Spiritual things, but to live Spiritual life as the condition of relationship is a very difficult task. To merely think about sexual experiences, to merely think about men, women, pornography, and so on, to merely have sexual desires and images, is one thing-but to live sexuality as relationship is very difficult.

Just so, it is also very difficult to live Real Spirituality as relationship-the devotional relationship to Me. Just as there is no real sexuality without relationship, there is no Real Spirituality without relationship. There is no fulfillment of Spiritual life without the True Guru, and without life-conditions for sadhana.

In all traditional religious cultures, you will find people who are "professional" ascetics. They are not necessarily living Spiritual life any more than anyone else. In most cases, such asceticism is a form of self-indulgence. It is an expression of the failure of life. It is an expression of the contraction from life. A vital shock is the origin of all ordinary religious and Spiritual efforts. But, under the Real conditions of Spiritual life, intelligence begins to arise in relation to sexuality. The individual becomes very sensitive to the emotional-sexual process and its true nature.

Simple exploitation of sexuality is another method of trying to exhaust the contracted vital. Most people use sexuality as a means of "letting off steam", as a form of release. They are attached to the goal of conventional (or degenerative) orgasm. They manage to achieve temporary physical stasis by the expulsion (or shedding) of life-force. But My rightly practicing devotee is always conducting Energy through the Circle, with its descending and ascending arcs. My rightly practicing devotee lives all functions both the descending (or vital) functions and the ascending (or subtle) functions-appropriately, in relationship.

When you exercise sexual energy out of relationship (or purely for the sake of degenerative orgasm), when you simply exploit it, then you only empty yourself-and you discover that you suffer as a result. Thus, My rightly practicing devotee has simply become intelligent. When you become thus intelligent, your way of life is not a result of strategic preferences to be lifeless or sexless. You become capable of relationship, capable of the real use of the vital functions. You know when not to use them, and how not to indulge or exploit them. You allow the force of life to conduct itself fully. You are free of the impulse (caused by the contraction in the vital) to merely waste the life force by vital means. You are not compelled to enjoy the life-force exclusively in the belly or exclusively in the sex organs. You can enjoy it in the top of the head. You can enjoy it in the face. You can enjoy it in the spine. There are all kinds of places where you can enjoy it. The more you advance in the Real Spiritual process, the more you become capable of enjoyment. You discover the source of life-energy-such that you do not weaken yourself, you do not become involved in a pattern that only empties you, that weakens and (ultimately) kills you.

At some point in the maturing stages of the Spiritual process, there is a spontaneous Yogic process that can be felt in the sex organs, in which the life-force that normally becomes sex stimulation is felt going in the opposite direction, upwards (rather than downwards) in the spinal line." Instead of seeking release in the sex-function by going "down and out", that energy can be felt pulling (or drawing) upwards in the spinal line. When that particular process is intensely active, there is a kind of natural (or motiveless) celibacy. Then, even in the context of intimate emotional-sexual relationship, the event of sexual activity is spontaneously relinquished, and the relational force of love and shared pleasure is greatly intensified.

As it is traditionally understood, the Kundalini process is closely associated with what is otherwise felt as sex-energy. However, the Kundalini does not, in fact, originate from the sex organs and is not (itself) literally or exclusively sex-energy. The traditional (and, as I have Revealed,34 incomplete) understanding of the Kundalini is as a process of ascending Energy-and, as such, the Kundalini is to be understood as the ascending aspect (or spinal line) of the Circle. That ascending current of Energy is a continuation of the "conductivity" of the descending Force. The bodily base (or muladhar) is the turning point, the point at which Energy completes its descent down the frontal line of the bodymind and begins to ascend through the spinal line. But, contrary to the traditional point of view, the bodily base is not the origin of the Kundalini Energy Itself.

The intense Yogic phenomena that may be experienced in My Avataric Divine Company are, in some cases, associated with the ascent of Energy-but, as a general rule, they are more often associated with the Descent of My Spirit-Force (or Ruchira Shakti). A person who is experiencing a period of strong kriyas, or some such episode of intense Yogic activity, will often (quite naturally) be celibate during that time. Or the person will discover that, while going through this process, indulgence in degenerative orgasm gives rise to certain unpleasant conditions, physiologically and psychically.

Therefore, in the process of Satsang with Me, you learn, through your study of My Wisdom-Teaching relative to (and your own direct experience with) processes of this kind, how to deal with (and, in due course, transcend) your emotional-sexual bondage. Whether or not to engage (or to continue engaging) a sexually active intimate relationship is a decision that should take into account not only one's own qualities but also the qualities of one's (potential or actual) partner (as well as the potential or actual qualities of the intimacy itself). For My devotees, that decision should not be merely a matter of the ordinary preference to indulge in the pleasures of sexual activity-nor should it be a matter of attempting to fulfill a conventional ascetical ideal of "how it is supposed to be if you are getting Spiritual".

The ultimate result of the traditional effort to separate from vital life (including the right "conductivity" of sexual energy) is physical death. The goal of traditional Yogic practice is to cause the life-force to ascend up the spinal line, draw up completely into the sahasrar, and never come down again. That is precisely what the traditional Yogi-whose point of view is willful (or strategic, or life-negative) celibacy-is trying to do. Thus, the traditional Yogi is trying to die consciously-and literally.

Now, the Yogic process of "Spiritual death" will take place in any case, whether you have literal separation from life as your particular goal or not. True celibacy is Yogic (or Spiritual) "death" not physical death. Yogic "death" is a characteristic of formal renunciation in the Way of Adidam,35 but it does not (in and of itself) imply the literal end of life or the diminution of life involvement. Continued living of an ordinary, functional life on

every level is entirely compatible with the Realized State, because life itself is an expression of Reality. Life itself is a manifestation of the Divine Conscious Light. In any particular case, life has taken on its particular manifestation because of certain tendencies (which are all simply modifications of Conscious Light)-but, in and of itself, life is not false. Only its presumed complications are false. The Life of Truth is entirely compatible with an appropriately conservative and disciplined functional life.

The bellies of the Yogic Siddhas are often full, soft, and round. The Siddhas are not devitalized beings, even if they are celibate. That swelling of the abdomen is a Yogic manifestation. When the Spiritual Energy is fully conducted, the abdomen becomes Yogically full of Energy. Bhagavan Nityananda of Ganeshpuri was such a Yogi. He spent His days sitting and lying around, letting this Spiritual Current circle about. He rarely allowed It to turn outwards. That is why He did not speak much.

Speech is a form of sacrifice. Speech is a sacrifice of the life force-not a form of entertainment. People generally talk in order to empty themselves. Such speech is another form of throwing the life-force out of the vital contraction so that the self-contraction is not suffered so strongly. Whenever there is speech, whenever there is communication with the environment, whenever there is the enactment of relationship, whenever there is use of the life force, there is sacrifice.

Sexuality is a form of sacrifice. It does tend to make you empty, unless you fully know how to conduct its energy regeneratively. If I sat here and talked endlessly, occasionally going to sleep and taking food here, the talking alone would eventually kill Me. I would die from speech! Any exploitation of the life-force will kill a person-and people are, in fact, dying from such abuse of themselves. People are dying from their own complex exploitation of the life-force. They do not conduct it. They only use it. They do not refresh themselves. They do not live this Circuit of Energy even a little bit.

Some Yogis have devoted themselves entirely to living this Circuit-and that required them to leave human society. Others continued to be communicative at the level of life, in various ways-knowing the consequences, knowing what they needed to do in order to remain fresh.

My Own Current of Divine Spirit-Energy is Flowing Continuously in This Body-Mind-and, as It Flows, even the cells are Transformed.

AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: The death of a Great Siddha (of whatever Real degree) does not really represent that one's separation from anyone or anything. The Siddha-Guru is simply disappeared into Samadhi. After death, Samadhi itself has become the "body" of the Siddha-Guru. The Siddha-Guru's devotees continue to have access to their Guru through meditation, because Samadhi Itself is the Siddha-Guru's True Form. At death, the Siddha-Guru simply abandons bodily function, outward movement, and psycho-physical Play-remaining Present as his or her most profound State of Realization. The Siddha-Guru was already in that State previously-but, at death, the peripheral functions that were attached to that State are abandoned (at least, those functions which were the manifestation of the Siddha-Guru's present lifetime).

This is why the samadhi site (or burial site) of the Siddha-Guru is prized-because, both while alive and at death, the Siddha Guru has entered into meditation in its most intense form while associated with that body. Indeed, many people find that the Force Communicated from the Siddha-Guru seems to become even stronger after the Siddha-Guru's physical death, because that Force is now completely free of the complications involved in associating with the life-form. Therefore, at death, the Siddha-Guru has moved into the most intense manifestation of his or her characteristic Realization.

It is said that Saint Jnaneshwar consciously took mahasamadhi. He was a young man, only about twenty years old. He had a tomb built for himself, and he went down inside it and sat in his chair. The tomb was sealed, and he never came out. It is also said that, about three hundred years later, another Indian Saint somehow got into Jnaneshwar's tomb and approached the body. He reported that the body was apparently still alive. It had a certain heat to it, and it was not the least decomposed-because the Yogic activity going on in the body was perpetual.

The site of Jnaneshwar's tomb is a very potent one-not that Jnaneshwar himself is conscious of associating with that body anymore. When I visited Ganeshpuri in the years 1968 through 1970, Bhagavan Nityananda's tomb was also like that-very strong.

DEVOTEE: Can a Guru who has died still be Guru for the living?

AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: After physical death, the only limitation on the Guru's Function is at the level of life. Obviously, the Guru cannot, after death, function in any manner that requires a physical presence.

The Current of Spiritual Force continues to be emanated by such great beings after physical death. At times, people appear to experience contact, on a subtle level, with great beings who are no longer physically alive. In My own experience, there have been very concrete and complex experiences of the subtle influence of Bhagavan Nityananda, Ramana Maharshi, Sai Baba of Shirdi, and others. Similarly, because My visits with Baba Muktananda were only occasional, My experiences of Him were most often of a subtle (although perfectly concrete) variety, arising entirely apart from the gross physical medium. Just so, My Own Work with My devotees occurs fundamentally at a subtle level, even while I am alive in physical Form.

DEVOTEE: You have said that all people are suffering. I have the feeling that You and the Gurus of Your Lineage and all the Great Siddhas are the only people who are not suffering.

AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: The only beings who are not suffering are those who are living the Truth. Truth Is Reality Itself. Truth Is the Ultimate Nature of all beings and the Very Nature of all life. Truth already Is all human beings. When I see people in the world, I do not see them as all screwed up, simply insane, as some kind of "nothingness" that I am supposed (for some reason or other) to turn into Divinity. I see everyone as already that same Reality.

But I also see that people are suffering. Even while they are (in Reality) only being Truth, I see them suffering. The fact that they are suffering does not make them any less the Truth, any less the Same "Thing" That Is all beings, all things. It simply means that they are suffering. If you look at all beings from the "Point of View" of Truth, there is only Truth.

From the point of view of human beings, all this seems very serious-because their point of view is the point of view of limitation. But once you yourself begin to see things from the "Point of View" of Truth, you see that every thing and every one is Always Already Truth. To Realize that you already inhere in Truth does not make you greater than anyone else. It makes you the same as everyone else. That Sameness is the Sameness of Very Truth, the Sameness out of Which all the functional inequalities of relative, conditional existence arise.

DEVOTEE: It seems that, from the "Point of View" of Truth, the process of being born eventually causes an automatic reaction that is death.

AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: "For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction." The action of being born produces the reaction of living, even to the point of death.

DEVOTEE: It seems that we are born with three strikes against us.

AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: Yes. That is why you have to get smart down here! A living being arising in the midst of life is automatically the reaction to the preceding action, which is life itself. It is entirely a natural mechanism. If reaction is the only principle of life, it realizes only death. The automatic tendency of organic life is to contract-to become more and more solid, to the point of lifelessness. Whatever is alive begins to die from the moment it makes its appearance. And there are more than three strikes against you. You are already "out"-already, before the strikes.

I have no taste for the usual life. Not that I cannot enjoy some of the qualities of life, but I simply have no taste for this entire affair of suffering and compulsive existence. I see perfectly well what it depends on. I would not choose, on the merits of the experience itself, ever to be born in this human condition again. There is no advantage in it. It does not gain anything. It is just a period of time in which to understand. Apart from that, it has no ultimate value. It never becomes anything more than that.

Human life is not particularly delightful. It is an endless concern, from birth until death. Every minute is suffering of the limited state, or an attempt to break out of it through various kinds of activity, trying to find the answer. From the first moment of born awareness, this life is a question. It seems absurd to be actually existing and, yet, not know what actually existing is, and to spend the entire period of actually existing trying to discover what actually existing is!

This is an insane condition! It is a compulsive tour of unconscious activity-for the most part. If Truth begins to Manifest in life, as life, then it Glorifies life to some degree. But the Glory that Enters life is not that of life itself. It is the Glory of the Fullness of Truth-Which is Manifested as life, Whose modifications are life.

The more the life of Truth grows, the more taste for Truth you acquire-not for life apart from (or other than) Truth. When Truth is Most Perfectly Enjoyed, life becomes secondary-perhaps profound, but unnecessary. Your "death" in Truth should precede your physical death by at least a few moments! Otherwise, the tendency to regain this same condition is automatically there.

The Condition That Is Truth is far superior to the limitation that is conditionally manifested existence. Those who live Truth while alive are not glorifying life in and of itself. They are glorifying Truth. When you Enjoy Truth, you are already Free. And if you are Free, what does all of this compulsive limitation have to do with you? If you are Free, you simply live Truth until the moment of death-and beyond.

To be Divinely Outshined in Truth is the ultimate destiny of all who resort to Me most profoundly. I already Know Who you Are. I am already Living with you in another sense-as Real Life, as Love, as Truth. I Know that there is far more to reality than mere physical existence. I look forward to your Most Perfect Divine Enlightenment. But I see that those who are living in the Earth plane are not clear about all of this, not certain of it rather confused. So I Communicate Truth in as many forms as I can. My Single Impulse is to Relieve you of your presumed life of separateness, to draw you out of darkness into Light.

The process of meditation in Satsang with Me is not unlike the death process. The same process goes on in the spontaneous meditation that happens in death. The difference is that, in death, the life-force permanently moves out of the vital mechanism, whereas, in meditation, and (ultimately) in Most Perfect Divine Enlightenment (or seventh stage Sahaja Nirvikalpa Samadhi), the life-force continues to conduct itself in the physical body. When you have lived the entire process and Know it, you Know very well that you are not merely physically alive. You Know absolutely well that the fact of being physically alive is not any kind of real limitation. This is absolutely clear. It is not merely something you believe, something you think. When the entire process has been fulfilled, then you are already "dead", presently "dead"-in other words, no longer presuming to be identified with the limitation that is the psycho-physical life, the body. One who lives as that limitation is still afraid. If you presume that you are alive as the limitation of life, then you are busy hysterically doing all the things that occupy seekers.

When (by Means of My Avataric Divine Spiritual Grace) ego "death" occurs, such that Truth is the only "Point of View", then there is no more of the search. Then there is only the creative living of this process in relation to other beings-and that Activity is continuous, most perfect. No identification with embodiment, no identification with the life-force, no identification with the subtle forms of existence, no identification with the levels of mind, with thoughts, with visions, with lights, with phenomena of any kind none of that is lived.

Such is the paradox of My Divinely Enlightened devotee. Such a one is as if asleep even while awake. While awake-while the conditionally manifested forms are flying around, while the body hangs out and all the feelings and sensations are there, while the thoughts are running along-My Divinely Enlightened devotee has no sense at all of any containment, any limitation. My Divinely Enlightened devotee does not have to stop the thought-process in order to be free of thoughts. The Samadhi of My Divinely Enlightened devotee is Most Perfect, never-ending. The entire life phenomenon takes on a kind of indefinite, fluid, non-differentiated quality, a paradoxical form, a kind of brilliance-such that life loses its apparent capability to define existence, to define even Consciousness Itself.

When (by Means of My Avataric Divine Spiritual Grace) you most perfectly understand, then everything conditional is Divinely Self-Recognized as a modification of the Divine Conscious Light. Then you have nothing left but True Humor while alive, and that Humor is of a "radical" kind. This does not mean that you are necessarily always laughing. Rather, your True Humor is of the nature of no-identification with all of this.

When (by Means of My Avataric Divine Spiritual Grace) you most perfectly understand, then your Freedom is extreme-so far beyond the point of wildness that you are no longer wild. Then your extremes are manifested as ordinariness. Your extremes are in your natural appearance. From the point of view of Divine Enlightenment, simply to walk into a room is a maddening extreme. It is odd. It is wildly imaginative!

When (by Means of My Avataric Divine Spiritual Grace) you most perfectly understand, the Contemplation of Consciousness Itself (as your Inherent, and Inherently egoless, Self-Identity) may tend to draw you into the Love-Bliss-Full Obliviousness of body, mind, and world. Therefore, in order to maintain a life in the world, you look at people, you talk, you do ordinary things-because everything has become insubstantial and unnecessary for you.

When (by Means of My Avataric Divine Spiritual Grace) you most perfectly understand, then your Love-Bliss-Fullness exceeds all of the conditional Yogic states, all of the phenomena of Spirituality-because even those states are limited conditions, strategically induced modifications of your subjectivity.

When (by Means of My Avataric Divine Spiritual Grace) you most perfectly understand, then you have lost the taste, the motive, for mere experiencing. Then you live only from the "Point of View" of the Unmodified Reality, without attachment to lights, sounds, forms, or qualities of any kind-and, yet, without strategically excluding any of these potential forms of phenomenal experience-because (by Means of My Avataric Divine Spiritual Grace) you have Most Perfectly Realized that everything is merely a modification of that Same Unmodified Reality.

Therefore, when (by Means of My Avataric Divine Spiritual Grace) you most perfectly understand, it is in your living the True Humor of Formlessness-the qualityless characteristic of Existence Itself-that you, paradoxically, Live. Then all life is paradox-and life is no longer a question. Then there is not the least trace of dilemma left in the universe. Then you have no question, and no answer. Then you are only Humorous.

In many traditional cultures, certain individuals (of one or another degree of actual religious or Spiritual advancement) would take on the role of the fool. They would act "crazy", so that people would not burden them with demands for wisdom. Indeed, in their true depth, these "fools" really did not have anything to say. They just enjoyed bubbling in the street.

Truly, "Bubbling" is, ultimately, what even My Own Avataric Divine Work is all about. Working with people at the life-level, the vital level, tends to become very humorless-because people are very serious about their life-problems. People are always obsessed with their current crisis, their "revolution" this week, their game. From their point of view, all of that is very serious, very disturbing and rightfully so. But to humorlessly "deal with it", to manufacture seriousness relative to all of that, has none of the beauty of "Bubbling". Therefore, I Act in forms that Freely express My Own Divinely Self-"Bright" State.

Traditionally, those who play the "fool" become (from the conventional point of view) very "odd"-and everything they do becomes a symbol for their own Realized State. Just so, everything that anyone does symbolizes his or her own state. Therefore, fundamentally, I simply Manifest My Own Inherently Free State, as a Playful Activity.