"Klik-Klak: The Pattern Patterning" From Adi Da Samraj's Divine Work at Quandramama Shikhara - January-April 1996 ADI DA SAMRAJ'S DIVINE WORK AT QUANDRAMAMA SHIKHARA: Discourse Klik-Klak: The Pattern Patterning A Gathering "Consideration" with Beloved Adi Da Samraj at Free Standing Man, Quandramama Shikhara January 25, 1996 The gatherings that began at the Mountain Of Attention Sanctuary continued when Adi Da Samraj arrived at Quandramama Shikhara. He gathered with those devotees who had traveled with Him from California, and a small group of devotees from Hawaii. The gatherings were held at Free Standing Man, His Residence at Quandramama. Beloved sat on a futon couch, surrounded by the Quandra Mai. Night blended into day, and hour after hour the Divine Lord Granted His direct and spontaneous Word to those gathered with Him. He sat cross-legged, His Body sometimes rocking slightly as He Spoke, drawing all present into the Sphere of His Samyama. Though He had begun to develop the "consideration" of klik-klak and the pattern patterning on previous nights, it was on the night of January 25st that He elaborated it fully. This gathering is printed here almost in its entirety. In His Masterful unraveling, Adi Da conveys the nature of conditional existence and the Truth of His Divine Revelation, entirely beyond the realm of all appearances. ADI DA SAMRAJ: There are some "considerations"? DEVOTEE: The main "consideration", Beloved, that we seemed to have most energy for, was the one where You asked us to "consider" our lives from when we were young to now, the "you" that is the same "you". William was looking for a section in Your Teaching where You talk about the two things that never change. And last night You talked about the "you" being a feeling being. ADI DA SAMRAJ: Yes. You are referring to the "you" and so forth, which immediately suggests maybe some sort of concepts are involved, or language of some kind, or language understanding. I remember early on, I think it was Craig when we were at the Mountain Of Attention one evening - he began recalling something or other, I don't remember the content of it exactly. We talked quite a bit, at least on that evening, I remember, about memory and how do you know its your past and so forth. So the "you" of memory is another thing entirely. And having a remembered "you" is important to the daily-life body-based personality. Retrieving memory is not just a matter of information that needs to be useful to you for one reason or another, but it is a way of meditating on your continuity, your conditional continuity, your conditional self as something lasting and that has an identity even, somehow, made up of those memories, because that "you" is a different "you" all the time in some sense. As time goes on, the "you", the acting "you", the body-mind personality and so forth, goes through changes. The associations change. The memories develop, then, just as the body changes over time. So the observed "you" as recorded memory is not the same all the time. Nonetheless, you feel that there is a thread between them that is the same identity. It is not the body because the body changed. In other words, the sense of a continuous "you" is not based on the body being something that continued through time. Nor does the remembered "you" remain the same. It changes like the body personality sign changes. And yet there is this sense of sameness, same person. Well, you can't find this sense of sameness in the objects of the person. You can't find it in memory. You can't see it in the body. All these are changing things, you see. If you looked in the mirror when you were ten and then looked in the mirror when you were seventy, you wouldn't, on the face of it, necessarily, know that they were the same person. There is nothing permanent in any of the objects. The body changes, passes. The mind, thoughts-they change, pass. Memories are different. They suggest a changing person. So the continuousness that you keep suggesting is not in the objects. The fact that you have some kind of a sequence of memories-pictures or whatever kind of composites they are of the senses-doesn't in itself mean that it is the same person in all those remembered Whatever they are. You grant it the feeling of continuousness, because it is not in any of the objects of body or mind. So the only "you" that is constant, constant in all the states, in fact-waking, dreaming, and sleeping-is the "you" that is trying to have a sense of identity, looking for a sense of continuousness or fixed person or whatever it may be, looking for it in the memories, concepts, photographs; this whole history, apparent history, that you keep examining-in this changing history, this thing, this body that keeps changing and so forth. You affirm this sense of sameness and yet everything you look at is not that. The "you" that is affirming this sameness is not finding it. It is what is looking for that sense of continuity and yet it is the only thing that is continuous-the conscious awareness, the persistent feeling of independent being, looks in the ever-changing pattern in which it feels some kind of identified, but of course, that is not absolute either, because there is never any fixed anything. It is all "klik-klak". It is constantly shifting. The different parts and functions of the body, the physical body, are always shifting, changing, moving, and in different timings and so forth. You have some sense that it is the same body as the one you were born in, yet it is all these shifts. It's a process. It is not a person, you see. But as a process you feel it is developmentally the same one. You've got some sort of observation of it. It's the same process. In other words, what you see now is the result of the process that was there when you observed it at ten years of age. But it is not the same body. In fact, isn't it true that the actual elemental's of the body itself literally change, over different periods of time-different parts of it at different periods of time, but over some odd number of years, up to a decade or whatever it takes, everything is replaced in terms of the so-called material aspects of the body? So that's not there anymore. The present body is a kind of offspring of the body you noticed when you were ten years old. It's the product of replications with minor modifications added-a pattern that is constantly patterning itself, and yet modifying the patterning. So you do not have the same body you had when you were ten. It is a totally different one. It's, many times over, a different one, depending on how old the body presently is. It's not the same body, its a product of the body, of a process that you acknowledge to be your body decades before. But it is definitely not the same body. It is somehow patterned in the context of the pattern in which that body appeared. But the pattern is not only patterning but shifting through various influences, including ones that are not only built into the body, but are in a patterning process that is prior to the physical. And yet you say "your body" as if you know it very well-its the one that you are always associated with and its been a long time. So you know very well what you mean when you say "your body". But it is not true, you see. It's a presumption. Truly, from one moment to the next, you don't have the same body-although it takes a long time for all the elemental's to be replaced. But it is in a changed condition. There have been shifts, just in a matter of moments, such that it is not the same body altogether that it was just moments before. So there is no such thing as "the body". It is a process. It's constantly self-replicating, and yet because it shifts on countless numbers of levels, its never exactly the same. And there is a pattern of cycling associated with it you observe-this aging process so called, all the changes that it goes through over time-in which it appears that the body itself is showing evidence, a pattern in evidence, of an intent or a patterning that, at any rate, already has established death for the organism. Although it is patterned by unfortunate circumstances, skillfully dealing with the body and so on, learning about how it works in the midst of its associations, you could perhaps extend the lifetime of the body to some degree-meaning you could extend the process that is the present apparent organism in time as you measure it. In which case you would gain a longer period in which to keep saying "I"-which is a constant with reference to something, an apparent something, that never achieves a permanent condition. Consciousness is always referring to a pattern that is patterning, and it is constantly changing therefore. Nothing is absolutely stable. There are very different timings of changes of one appearance to another and so on. Everything is changing. Nothing that appears in one moment is quite the same the next. And everything that appears, sooner or later, disappears-or goes through a pattern of transformations in which, effectively, what you might have called an object at one time is no longer existing, although the elemental's, the energy, all of it, still exists in some transformed version. So it is with the body, the so-called body you are associated with-although in its further transformations after the death of the body, you would no longer call it "I". You would only refer to it as yourself. What happened to the material, so-called, of which your body was composed at ten years of age? If you could somehow locate it again, would you call it "I"? [devotees chuckle] So you are not associated with a something at all-not in the case of your own so-called body, your "own", or anything else or anyone else. You are observing a constantly shifting pattern, very complex, very paradoxical, in terms of how it really works altogether. If you could see it with at least some largeness of view beyond the local one of the presumed body-identification, even in that position you could still observe a lot of patterns if you are sensitive, or if you use My "considerations" to serve the observation of things. It's all pattern. And it appears filled with the characteristic of replication, reproduction, repetition. And yet not repetition in the sense that its sameness forever, but a paradoxical, complexly self-replicating process of patterning in which sameness is paradoxically never achieved. It's about change, not sameness. But it achieves constant change through replication. But replication is always done with itself because everything is a part of a complex pattern. Re-replication, or every replica, is to some degree a modifying force, in some manner a modifying force-and not quite the same. We've talked about types, human types. We've been looking at what appeared to be some kind of types, same likenesse's and so on in different individuals. But, nonetheless, we don't look at identical people. When it comes to the human individuals there are all kinds of differences. There are samenesses as there are differences. This is what is observed. This is the nature of this pattern. So there is no "something" to call itself "I"-ever, because it is a pattern patterning with all kinds of changes. But the paradox in this patterning is that it generates patterns within patterns, samenesses with minor differences, or perhaps some major differences. So it is always becoming more and more complex, and yet it is always simple. It is always two-plus and minus, positive and negative, male and female, yang and yin. All complexities develop on the basis of two, of opposition. Then, like cells dividing and so forth, it becomes more complex. And yet complexity is always being undermined by simplicity and vice versa, endlessly folding, unfolding, not comprehensible, even. Time is not a constant. It is a constant from some point of view, in some respects, in some apparent sequence which changes relatively slowly, whatever it may be. But time, like pattern, or time as part of pattern, you see, is like space is part of pattern. These are all multi-dimensional, paradoxical, plastic, ultimately incomprehensible. It is only the assumption of "point of view", or "local view", that gives the sense of fixity. And yet if you observe the locale of the body for instance, you see it is never the same. It is in constant shift-replication, and yet shift. So the "I" is supposed to be a reference to a constant, a constant of self-awareness, you see. But it is not the body talking, because the body is all changes. There is no "point of view" that is the body, because that which is the body is constantly changing. It is part of a plastic, part of a pattern patterning. It has no absolutely separate identity. But it is a presumption of separate identity and of continuity. You are associated with that, moment to moment, constantly-this presumption. But if you observe, examine, the body, the body-mind, all conditions, you find no such fixed identity, fixed anything, fixed person in the form of anything psycho-physical-never. It is nowhere. There is never any "object" so-called, any complex of objects, any pattern in time and space. You find no permanence, just "klik-klak", just shift-replication and shift-and many different kinds of apparent timings and so forth. How it appears, how you judge it and so forth, depends on point of view, or how it seems from some point of view. So where is this presumption of continuity, of sameness, then? It is not in the context of the ever-changing, because no point of view exists. Everything is shift. So it is a notion-just that, a presumption . It is being superimposed on the body-mind. There is a presumption that is superimposing itself on the body-mind itself-because the body-mind is not communicating this message. In other words, you are superimposing your own uninspected characteristics prior to the body-mind, on the body-mind and the world. You are superimposing even the presumption of consciousness, or awareness, of the world on objects, because you are Consciousness. You superimpose the notion of permanence or continuity on conditions such as the body, and the body-mind altogether. But there is no permanence there. There is some kind of a process that could perhaps be followed, but how do you decide what the process is? Which part do you decide? Some overallness of something like a body process, yes-but then it comes to an end. It is not "I". It is not calling itself "I". It is a process within process, patterns, and patterns patterning, all inter-connected and all different-paradoxes. The organism uses memory for survival purposes that serve the pattern, that serve the participation in the pattern, that serve your part for the time. But you think they are about you in some "you-ness" sense that is perpetual. That is not the nature of the organism. The organism is all change-shift, shift, shift, replicating. It's shift, klik-klak. Consciousness Itself, Feeling-Awareness, has no relation to time. It neither begins nor ends. It is Prior, Constant. It has no content. It has no "itself", no object, no center, no bounds. It is not in the context of the body-mind, or of objects, because everything else is constant replicate and shift, klik-klak. Consciousness is none of that. So you have a sense that you have been the same all the while. But that's not the body talking. The "you" that has been the same all the while is just self-aware. It is not modified by events. It wasn't any different at the time of birth or at ten years old than it is now, at however many years "later", so called. It's not because it is ageless, like some golden embryo. There is nothing to observe about it. It has no parts to observe. It is just what it is, and it is of a different nature than anything observed. And that's not merely anything observed external to the body. It is the body, too, and all the contexts, psycho-physical altogether-mindforms, whatever it is. So there is this mechanism of attention which lies as if it were in a grid. But it never moves. It can appear at any point in that grid, but it cannot go from place to place. But it is the point of association with the domain of klik-klak, with replicate and shift, pattern patterning. All processes and everything changing, nothing permanent, modifications ad infinitum, complexity, but without comprehension. You don't know what even a single thing is . Therefore, you don't know what is. It is a stream of apparent necessities, and yet your presumptions about it do not correspond to its characteristics, because you superimpose your own generalized sense of your condition onto what you observe. You become what you meditate on, you see. By granting attention, you grant your own characteristics, so to speak, onto whatever is observed, whatever object appears. You become associated with the physical process, or the process of being identified with the body, and therefore the body-mind. Over time you grant it the characteristic of the feeling of perpetuity, of Consciousness, of Being. But it does not have that, itself, if you inspect it. Where is it, then? It is in the domain of the knower. But it is not any kind of knowing, because that's object, too-constantly changing, klik-klak. So its the one who knows the knowing, it seems. But it is not the act of knowing. It is just that awareness itself, in which there is perhaps the apparent process of knowledge and knowing. So in the awareness that is aware of the button of attention itself, to grant or superimpose presumptions that are about your own Nature-yet unexplored-onto objects, is to generate an illusion immediately, inherently. Your own characteristic is superimposed on the body through attention-identification, and then you say "I"-meaning Conscious Being. That's the essence, so to speak, or that's the position or the characteristic or the quality or the nature that is feeling "I", meaning the body-mind in that conjunction. And you seem to be doing this every moment. Yet if you examine the body or the body-mind, there is no "I" about it. It is all replicate and shift, klik-klak, no "point of view" in which to affirm "I". So "I" means the body-mind, but the body-mind has no "the" about it, ultimately. It is process. It is shift-not an "I". But that's what it means in the ego-consciousness, or body-identified consciousness. It is a meaning that is, at the same time, an illusion, because there is no such "I", no singleness, no changeless anything there. It's "Narcissus". Through the gaze of attention, you superimpose your own characteristic on klik-klak, and it becomes interesting to you, desirable to you-like the image of Narcissus in the pond. But you don't know that it is you. You don't know or notice that that pattern there-which you are regarding to be full of desirability, being, and so forth-is just klik-klak. And you are superimposing the feeling of your own Nature, uninspected, on it. That which you are seeing to be attractive is actually your own characteristic presumed to be there. But what is truly attractive is only in the Being-Position, the "you" looking at everything. The " it ", the everything, is klik-klak. You find it desirable because it is your own reflection. In other words, your characteristic, your presumption is being superimposed on it. You say that Narcissus as an image is desirable, that one there is desirable, like you say your body is "I", you. It's the same illusion that I use this story of Narcissus to characterize. But its not just some kind of "out here in the world" illusion. It is a fundamental illusion. It covers everything, every moment of existence is this illusion of the desirability, continuity, fullness, all the rest of it, of klik-klak. Whereas you are just reflected in it, by virtue of your own viewing of it. Consciousness becoming attention superimposes the sense of its own characteristic on klik-klak. And then you become bound in it because it is desirable-bound in it like Brer Rabbit gets stuck in the Tar Baby, or Narcissus at the pond. That's you. That's the attitude of conditional experiencing, the attitude of illusion, the attitude of egoity, the attitude of attention. What you are finding desirable in all of this is actually you , because it is your quality you are superimposing. That quality is not "out there". It is in the Consciousness Domain, the Domain of Being, Which you are forgetting by becoming this fruit-eating bird. [Here Beloved Bhagavan is referring to a metaphor from the Upanishads He used often during the ten-day gatherings at the Mountain Of Attention. The fruit-eating bird is the ordinary point of view of identification with the body-mind, in contrast to the Witness bird, standing as the Witness-Consciousness.] You think the deliciousness is in the fruit. What is becoming filled by that deliciousness? What is being served by it? What is looking for delight? The consciousness that is identified with that is not permanent, not inherently delightful. It seeks delight attached to the plastic, pursues the fruit in the plastic tree. It is pursuing delight because it has lost the sense of its own nature, and it superimposes it on the world. And then when the world configuration denies this or that which is presumed to be the golden egg, the delight, then you have to keep looking for it. But you are always looking for it anyway, because, at the root of it, you've become attention "moving into" the plastic, so to speak, then left the Domain of Satisfaction, superimposed its heart-remembered quality on the plastic, klik-klak domain. But having "left it behind", so to speak, and projected it onto the world unconsciously, you are always chasing the pattern for it. Whereas it is in the Always Already Existing Position, not in klik-klak. You can observe and understand, then, this whole matter. And this is an understanding which is more and more comprehensible with more and more maturity. But just examining it now, it seems straight forward, doesn't it? [Devotees agree.] You are looking in the world for That Which Is Where you Stand. Narcissus is looking in the pond desiring that which he already is. Not in his body the viewer, but that which is not even viewing, the Witness, the Consciousness Itself. It already has all the qualities in infinite form, which you superimpose on the world and seek there-because they are not in the world. The world is shift, shift, shift. It has no inherent anything. There is nothing but the shift. There is nothing behind it. So all that is Attractive, all that is Beautiful, all that is Full, all that is Satisfactory, all that is Constant, not threatened, all that is Love-Bliss, all that is Radiant, is Always Already the Case. It is presumed to be in klik-klak. But it is a false superimposition of the Feeling of your own Nature, an illusion generated by the heart-not noticing its own Nature, but projecting itself into the domain of changes. Understand this, notice this-then the illusion of Narcissus, and all the search built on it, disappears. It is not struggled with. The illusion is gone. And there is no longer the pursuit of attention and result, but the Native Stand Prior to attention. There is no longer this game of unconsciously superimposing the dualities of the Consciousness Domain onto klik-klak, via attention. So one day, Raymond Darling, in The Mummery , is sitting in his room. He gazes about. He looks at it all. What does he notice? There is no Consciousness in the room. He saw klik-klak. Consciousness is on the Raymond side, not on the object side. It requires Quandra-Energy is on the Consciousness side, not on the object side. Energy is not known on the object side. It is known on the Consciousness side. In other words, Union, Oneness with Energy, is there. Whereas the pursuit of Energy, the experiencing of It as object in the form of changes, is on the conditional, or psycho-physical, side. But Energy, as is not different from Consciousness, is on the Consciousness side. Truth is the Consciousness side. Klik-klak is the object side. This becomes the "Perfect Practice". When the "Perfect Practice" itself becomes Most Perfect or Realizes Most Perfect Realization, klik-klak is Recognized, Divinely Recognized, Recognized in the Divine-founded in hearing in the Divine, in that sense. Because of that, it loses all power of bondage, bondage-making. It is only "Bright", therefore, rather than dark, as it is on the attention side. So in that seventh stage Open-Eyed Awakening, the domain of attention is allowed. It is not refused. It is Radiated into. It is not entered. It is not sought. It is not clung to. It is not refused. It is not run away from. It is simply Recognized in every apparent moment of arising. It has no power to bind. It is simply Self-Radiant Consciousness Itself. And in any moment of apparent associations, then, it is clear what any thing is and what every thing is -and What Is , therefore. That Which was called "I"-which turned out not to be the body-mind, but Consciousness Itself-has Realized It's Nature, and thereby, Realized the Nature of objects, conditions, processes, patterns-all patterns-at last. Just that. You don't have to be at any point in the pattern to be in a position to Recognize it. You need to be in " the " Position in order to Recognize any point in the pattern-the Position in Which it is arising, as it appears. If you do not Recognize it, you become attention and project the illusions that klik-klak has the characteristics of What is Prior to it-Consciousness, Self-Existing and Self-Radiant. But Stand as Consciousness, Self-Existing and Self-Radiant, and Realize attention fully-you are What Is . Conditions allowed, you know what any thing is , then. You know what every thing is . It is "you" - not by you superimposing your characteristics on it, from the position of contraction, not knowing its Ultimate Nature, your own Ultimate Nature, but (rather) Prior to any such conditional identifications. Everything is simply Recognized, even attention in its first moment, then everything that follows-all the same. No klik-klak power. So, in some sense, the entire process of sadhana leading to the "Perfect Practice", the entire sadhana in the Way of the Heart until the "Perfect Practice", is something like "considering" the Argument I just put to you, until you lose all sympathy with the illusion-position of attention, and accept the Nature in Which you Stand Always Already, and do the sadhana of allowing the Revelation of What That Is altogether-What is Consciousness Itself. This was My "Consideration", even as I ended college. It is to have that be Revealed by Grace in the Well of the "Perfect Practice". You are always that Standing bird. You are merely the Witness in the tree at all times. It is always the case. So, in principle, then, at any moment, you could Stand As That. You have contrary sympathies, you have illusions that suggest, "This is desirable. This is interesting" - this is "you". There are all these thises-none of which exist except as a presumption, as a reflection of your nature, not a reflection of the world. Examine the world-it is patterns, klik-klak. Replicate, and change, shift. Just that. Ultimately, no more purpose in it than a wad of silly putty. [laughter] Yet within it, any purpose can be conceived. A drama is always purposed, the persona is played. Whereas if you Realize Happiness, it just plays the pattern of klik-klak until the local theatre closes. And what you like about it, what you like about life, and are concerned about, is this constant Self that you presume. Then its "Wake up, Narcissus!"> What you presume to be desiring is really klik-klak. That Which is Constant, That Which is Self, is Consciousness-not klik-klak, not the objects. Up until the "Perfect Practice", this is basically the "consideration". It is a process, though also a sadhana, enacted in the pattern, always finding the Pleasure Dome in each moment of Ishta-Guru-Bhakti Yoga. But that itself is just a process of being relieved of the burden of the effects of the illusion you are constantly generating-the self-contraction, you see. It is generating a constant illusion. You are not directly aware of your own Condition, Always Already. But you, so to speak, "un-Consciously" superimpose It's characteristic on anything observed. Therefore, by "meditating on" anything, so to speak, fixing on anything, you become it. " You " become it. Your characteristics become identified with it. And this is the fruit-eating bird, in any moment. In the process of sadhana up to the "Perfect Practice", you become more and more sensitized to this. In effect, it is simply a "consideration", a serious "consideration", until the moment of clarity. But that "consideration" takes place in the form of yielding all the faculties, maintaining the disciplines, constantly entering into this devotional Communion with Me, and so on. That is how you conform your life to this disposition, this Contemplation, this "consideration". Ultimately, it is simply the spontaneous renunciation of klik-klak. You renounce it spontaneously. You are not that. You have superimposed your characteristic on it, and then sought yourself within it on top of that. And this quality that is constant is you . Hm? This Delight you seek, by superimposing it on klik-klak, is Inherent. But it is found only in the Yoga and Domain of Inherence, rather than movement of attention, a kind of movement of attention, and submission to change. It is by Inhering, not by moving and changing, that That Which is Constant, or Always Already the Case, is Realized. When this is understood most profoundly, such that there is a relinquishment, a spontaneous relinquishment, of the search and "bond" to attention and its process, then the "Perfect Practice" becomes spontaneously possible. It is a spontaneous renunciation-not effort-of the orientation toward conditional existence, or attention and its results, or the adventure of the first five stages of life, or the assumption of point of view, the assumption of body, the assumption of particularity by association with any kind of object at all. That inclination is relaxed, and there is simply the Standing As Is, As What Always Already Is. So you don't have to make any effort to be What Is already. But you are already making efforts, and you must be purified of that, such that you will relax it. But when that occurs, then the "Perfect Practice" can begin, because you are already then in the Native Position of What Is-Whatever That Is. Well, That is What is Realized in the "Perfect Practice" when its Position is Realized. When the first five stages of life are transcended, you Stand in the pre-klik-klak Position. So that is another way of summarizing the Way of the Heart-by looking at it in terms of a particular kind of an Argument. And it is all straightforward, and seems clear to you. But if I now went about traveling around the world giving lectures about it, just said basically these things, and then offered everybody Instruction and Initiation into the "Perfect Practice" as an exercise and so forth, nothing would come of it. Maybe I would get a so-called "working career" out of it or something. But the people who heard that convincing Argument and decided they were going to do this particular practice-the "Perfect Practice", the sixth stage practice-they would be doing something, but they would not be Realizing anything. You can't be established in that Position by simply listening to My reasonable Argument about it. And what I just summarized to you is completely True. But that does not mean that you are equipped to do the "Perfect Practice". It is not just an insight matter in the sense of following a verbal Argument and noticing things. That's good, that's instructive. But that does not mean that you are in the Position to do the "Perfect Practice", or that you could, by any number of readings of the transcript of what I just said to you, be equipped to do the "Perfect Practice". And yet it may seem completely reasonable to you that the "Perfect Practice" is right practice. And, of course, it is. So, if you want to know really how to do this, then you take up the practice of the Way of the Heart as I've Given it. That is how to really do it. It is not a matter of going to lectures and self-"guruing" yourself into the model of something that should be an Ultimate Practice, Prior to the body-mind. But it would certainly not be the case simply because you build it as a routine, somehow, into your daily life. You are, in fact, this fruit-eating bird. You are even attached to being so. You are "Narcissus". You project all kinds of things onto klik-klak to make it desirable to you, and thereby fail to notice all kinds of things about klik-klak. You superimpose all kinds of illusions on klik-klak, and so I have to Remind you, in various ways, through "consideration", but also sometimes through representations in a sacred setting. So this Temple of Laughing Mama is a means for Me to remind you of something very fundamental which you forget in your "Narcissistic" superimposition of the heart-presumption onto conditions. You think klik klak loves you somehow, or you expect it to love you, or care about you, or care about anything. You like the notion of the parent deity. You like the notion that that's what Reality is-that it is sort of built in, everything that is associated with the disposition about caring for you (that "you" you presume yourself to be, the body-mind person, the ego). Whereas, as I keep putting to you, the conditional domain, klik-klak, does not care in the slightest about ego. There is no real ego. Klik-klak just deals with the pattern. The ego is not an entity. It is just an action in the pattern, and from that patterns point of view, it is just more pattern. It is not something, in other words, to be allowed to be enshrined in permanence, just because you ultimately Are That Which is Permanent, but you are superimposing your sense of it, and seeking a monument of it, in klik-klak. Well, that's not klik-klaks business. It doesn't care about that concern of yours. You don't belong there anyway. You are from Consciousness-land. This is klik-klak-land. Klik-klak-land doesn't care about the illusions of those who wander from Consciousness-land, because all klik-klak deals with is the material of klik-klak. Consciousness is not the material of klik-klak. Your illusion about klik-klak is not material in klik-klak. That's your concern. So you can't expect klik-klak, or the endless pattern patterning, to be concerned about you and your illusions, or your notions of permanence. Klik-klak has no notion of permanence, has no permanence in itself-whatsoever. So your desire to be loved, to be permanent, to have your desires satisfied and so forth-that's your interest. Klik-klak doesn't give a shit about egos. You have no complaints. Hm? Your complaints are of no interest. They are not registered in the pattern. It keeps klik-klakking regardless of your pleas and your complaints. And, this is why that is the fundamental language indicated in the Laughing Mama Temple, the secret of klik-klak is:> DEVOTEE: The Laughing Mama says: "Your objections to any thing don't mean shit!"> FEMALE DEVOTEE: Beloved, how does the Devotional Prayer of Changes fit in? ADI DA SAMRAJ: The Devotional Prayer of Changes is associated with sadhana, the disposition to transcend conditional bondage in Communion with Me. The disposition of going beyond makes use of the psycho-physical mechanism in a different attitude than the one that is simply bound to the pattern as it is now appearing. Klik-klak is just plastic. The mind is just stuff. So mind is subtler than grosser pattern. Mind can affect grosser pattern. The presumptions in mind govern what happens in the grosser. This principle, generally speaking, holds true in the short round of the human life. So you can-by believing, relinquishing presumptions at the mind level, the deeper level that is governing, by what is outward-change the pattern at that subtle level. It is still just pattern patterning. But you can take advantage of klik-klak's own law of shift-replicating, shift-by not using that particular pattern, thought, or presumption. Just letting it go, breathing it away, exhaling and so on. Not picturing it, but instead, so to speak, "breathe away the bad stuff". At the mind level, the feeling level, presume a pattern that is as you would have it be in the gross vibratory appearance. In other words, you are associating with the realm of patterns there, prior to their congealing in the gross manner. And you are simply playing a trick on klik-klak. You're making use of klik-klak's own law of replication. And so it will start replicating on the basis of that pattern. Subtle moves towards gross. It's not that you've found paradise. It's that you've found out something about klik-klak-by Revelation, of course, because I am telling you this. But it is about this "consideration" of Consciousness and of Happiness. In the process, certain things are discovered, or may be Revealed to you. So what I am Revealing to you is a total Way. It includes the Devotional Prayer of Changes, and all kinds of other things, whereby you will-through the responsible exercise of all aspects of the body-mind, including discriminative intelligence and will, governed by the heart-disposition in devotion to Me-be purified, and (ultimately) understand, and feel beyond, the bondage of conditional existence. Or, I've told you and you've been listening to Me about it, this can be done through this metaphor of the Pleasure Dome-establishing the Yoga, Yogic conditions of Communion with Me moment to moment, whatever the conditions may be. This is again like the Devotional Prayer of Changes. It is, itself, the Devotional Prayer of Changes. It is to make use of the fact that a disposition can appear with in the realm of changes, and a different one can be presumed. And whatever the disposition is, it is associated with a certain orientation to the pattern that is patterning. So I have told you all of this total process. Ultimately, you can do the Perfect Sadhana-in other words, enter into the Domain of practice that is about Realizing That Which Is Prior to the illusions of conditional existence. Conditional existence itself is klik-klak-enmeshed in it in the manner of the fruit-eating bird. I have shown you not only how this can be transcended, to be Divinely Realized, but I have also pointed out to you that in all this meantime, That Which Is Always Already the Case Is Always Already the Case. Notice: No matter what's arising, you are basically the Witness. This is still the Case, even while there is involvement in klik-klak. That Which is Always Already the Case is still Always Already the Case. The Truth is Always Already the Case. Consciousness Always Already Is. Well, why aren't you then simply living that? As I said, you have assumed the disposition of the fruit-eating bird. You are enmeshed in klik-klak-land here. I Am Not. I know what I am talking about. So there is a way beyond it. And in the midst of it, you can't just "go out the door". So you have to Realize What Is Beyond this by a process that is, at the moment, enacted in the context of what was your bondage. You have to process out of your bondage, in other words. You can't just simply think your way out of it, or have a lecture magically relieve you of it, or any kind of examination in a moment. It requires a lifetime of reorientation, surrender, Communion, and Grace. So if you want to do it yourself, who are you talking about? FEMALE DEVOTEE: Beloved, when You were talking about the Devotional Prayer of Changes, it occurs to me that You are the Ultimate Expression, you could say, in a way, of the Devotional Prayer of Changes-by entering into this klik-klak realm, and changing the patterning in Your devotees, and ultimately all beings. ADI DA SAMRAJ: Mm-hm. DEVOTEE: But then it also struck me that it is different, because You are not just changing the pattern in this klik-klak conditional world, but You are breaking the whole spell that even is that pattern somehow, or all patterns. ADI DA SAMRAJ: Mm-hm. And once you have understood, really, the nature of pattern, the klik-klak nature of object, then it doesn't make any difference where you appear in any context of patterns. The pattern is pattern-it doesn't make any difference. In other words, you are always in the position to inspect the nature of what is arising and see that it is klik-klak. And you don't have to be in a special circumstance, or a particular stage of life, a particular samadhi. The conditions themselves make no difference. The pattern is patterning. The pattern is always of the same nature ultimately, whatever it appears to be in particular, in a moment or context. Hm? DEVOTEE: Several gatherings ago You asked us if sometimes when we are dreaming we appear to be other people. I was feeling something about that when You were talking. If you can do that, that is how you know it is just a presumption of "I". And there is a blending of that in our dreaming. I have had dreams where I appear to be other people. ADI DA SAMRAJ: Yes, its like The Mummery -all the secrets to be revealed at the end. All the female characters are Quandra. All the male characters are Raymond. And that's true of all that you observe. It's Consciousness and Energy. Or it is yang and yin. Fundamental principles, and once you understand what is going on in the pattern, you can see them everywhere. As you say, that is sometimes a particular outstanding characteristic of a dream-that you are some other character, or perhaps somebody else familiar to you-but shown in a dream in a form of a different kind of a character. You may have had a kind of a dream, for instance, where when you wake up. you know very well that it was about such and such a person that you know. But in the dream it could have been anybody. In fact, that may be what you remember about it. It didn't particularly look like that person, but you know that it was about something between you and some other person in daily life. Very often in dreams, in other words, others or even yourself can appear represented differently than they appear in daily life. So if you understand the principle of The Mummery as I've written it-if you understand its various principles, and how it is the pattern of existence, in existence itself altogether, being revealed in that liturgy-then "consider" this: Even then in the waking state, you, Patricia, are all the female characters. Raymond is all the male characters-whoever that Raymond is. That configuration has all of the associations of the other. So you are often seeing yourself in daily life, but it doesn't look like you. It seems to be independent of you. But it is you-as in dreams. There are only two people: You, and the other one. [laughter] MALE DEVOTEE: Beloved, relative to the pattern patterning itself, I was "considering" our own individual images of that, how we would describe the image of the pattern patterning itself. And I felt what You were saying earlier about how the only way we can . . . ADI DA SAMRAJ: It's not even the pattern patterning itself. It's just the pattern patterning. There is no itself about it. There is just pattern. It replicates, shifts, changes-that's it. It is built on a fundamental torque-in other words, two-and that's the basis for multiplicity. So, as there is torque, or two, there is everything. So that's the nature of the plastic of conditional existence. It is utterly indifferent to any other plan. It's force of shift is inexorable. It cannot be stopped. But the characteristic of the shift in any moment can be modified. The more you become involved in the modifications, the less aware you become of the nature of your own position. So if there is fullest examination of all this-discipline, Contemplation, examination of the Way and the fulfillment of it-it is like the simple process as described in the Vedantic tradition, Advaita Vedanta: Sravana, Manana, and Nididhyasana. In other words, it is all the action, the total life of the practice. Fundamentally it is a "consideration". Examine My Argument and "consider" all that it leads you to "consider", examine, and so forth. Then you enter deeply into it. These are technical terms for what seems like something almost trivial. To give it such technical terms, and break it down from big parts, and so forth, is a sort of way of making much of it-pointing to the fact that this process is what Realization is all about. On the other hand, listen to what? "Consider" what? And Realize what? Well, that depends on the teacher. And it is not a talking-school matter, as some might make it into. Effectively, you could break it down as a process of just looking at something carefully and realizing that that's so. It is just like that, if you want to give it a description, or the quickest outline you could in the moment. But that does not mean that that's a prescription for, "Now go and have someone make a transcription of this Talk and you get your copy and just sit in a room from now on, and read it over and over again." No, that's not how it works. But that's a way of picturing to you something about the fundamental nature of it as a process, as a pattern. This whole process can be quickened from the two primary directions-from the Divine direction, Grace; from the attention side, intensification. The "consideration" quickens the intensification of the total range of all the things that the practice is about, but also an intensification of its fundamental core-the attracted response to Me and the urge to Realize Me - an intensification of all, or any of the other aspects of the total sadhana. Whenever there is that intensification, the process is quickened because it is made more direct. You don't throw in anything to sludge it up. So as the pattern goes, it depends on how it works its power over the conditions of your existence, the conditions of existence altogether. Maintain your turning toward Me such that you are attracted by Me, moved by Me, heart-moved always to take your vow seriously, maintain the core thread of seriousness. And Commune with Me moment to moment-this quality, possibly summarized by any number of descriptions, because that Communion is comprehensive. In other words, it touches every aspect of your practice, but also is a root gesture-is the principle on the "you" side, or the attention side, that can quicken the process in any moment. So this ever-intensifying seriousness, heart-seriousness, practice seriousness, and allowance of My Grace to do whatever It has to do to make the process profound, to do what I have to do to make the process profound-these are the two advantages you have in any moment of practice. So this is a useful summary. In the course of this several-week "consideration", I've gradually developed some references to the point where they have become Dharma language, terms like "klik-klak", and "patterning", "Pleasure Dome"-a lot of references like this. And then, as My "consideration" developed with you, I elaborated on the meaning. In fact, usually the way that it has worked is that I enter into "consideration" over some extended period, and make references within it that accumulate a kind of enlarged meaning for something or other. And then this term remains. I also noticed it at various stages in this "consideration". It had even gotten to that point where I was using something as a simple reference for a rather extended, complex notion and so on. Then sometimes people who have entered into the "consideration" midstream have to ask, as one of you did the other day, "What do You mean by klik-klak?" [laughter] In other words, it can get to the point where, instead of using complex descriptions, you just use key words, "code words", so to speak. And your conversation can become just a long series of code phrases (more or less) that you use, presuming that whoever you're speaking to knows very well what you mean. And they may not mean very much at all to them. [laughter] DEVOTEE: Like nothing at all. ADI DA SAMRAJ: And that is something of a problem in the community at large at the present time-it seems to Me. There's the language of the Way, everyone sufficiently adept at it, such that you speak in this language readily by making short references to everything, code words relative to everything. Unless you sit down and you're talking about something at length, you're constantly using these shorter references for everything. "Ishta-Guru-Bhakti Yoga", for instance. Say Ishta-Guru-Bhakti Yoga to a devotee, presumably they know what you mean. But do they? What does it mean to them? They know what the code word is and they may have some just sort of general sense of it but that doesn't mean they're an exemplary practitioner of it or doing it rightly or even know what it is in any technical sense. [laughter] So this is one of the ways religion becomes a mummery. If just these code words or phrases were sufficient, I wouldn't have said all the rest of it. They were simply attempts to have a way to briefly refer to something so we can get on to elaborating further things. If I had to repeat, every time, the totality of what I mean by "klik-klak", Id never get on to say anything more about it. But nonetheless, before I start using it more or less routinely, I "consider" things with you to the point where this is an appropriate phrase or brief reference to something that is not only rather elaborate but that you will always have to study forever-not just use as a code word in your talk. You must constantly return to My Word and be associated with the elaborateness, fullness of Instruction behind all of the daily religion language you use. Otherwise it just becomes a superficial, smiley exchange of code words. DEVOTEE: I was just thinking, my Lord, of someone giving a presentation just based on the last week-Brian or Daniel or someone-videoing it, and sending it back to all the regions. With all these new terms, and everything, it would sound like a completely new Teaching! [laughter] I mean, it wouldn't if someone listened to it closely, but-> ADI DA SAMRAJ: Didn't I suggest that was what I might do? DEVOTEE: Yesterday, that is exactly what You said. DEVOTEE: Yes. ADI DA SAMRAJ: That I might, somehow, wander off, get involved with some other bunch of people, totally independent of everybody else, Instruct them, face to face in that unique context. [laughter] New Teaching. DEVOTEE: "Don't you understand? It's the klikity-klak in the midst of a Pleasure Dome, pattern patterning. My God! You don't understand this Teaching!" [Adi Da laughs.] ADI DA SAMRAJ: Well, this is a kind of "consideration" or pattern within the pattern of the larger gathering. Perhaps we could go on with it, examining it from a wide variety of different approaches until we got to the point where there was, in fact, a new form of the Way established-in which, after a rudimentary establishment of some basic requirements, you immediately took up the "Perfect Practice". DEVOTEES: Whoa. Yeah. Wow. [laughter] DEVOTEE: And prior to that, it would be "consideration". ADI DA SAMRAJ: No. You see, I've entered the pattern of the gathering in a particular unique fashion since having gone to California, while there in that particular place, associating with all devotees, including a large number in that region. There are patterns flowing all around there, and just sort of flowing along with it to observe it, I could see many things and therefore was in a position to relate to people in such a way that a variety of things gradually were corrected. And then, to do some more to correct it further, I associated with some relative few within the gathering, in order to generate this pattern within the pattern-a "consideration" in the midst of the pattern of the gathering in which what I am effectively doing is correcting everything about not only weak practice, but misconceptions about the practice or lack of understanding altogether of what its about. And, at some point, this group returns back into the flow of the gathering in general and this particular concentration of "consideration" has come to an end. And then that pattern I introduced by interacting with those for a while and having it recorded gets put into the stream of the entire gathering. In effect, I've entered into a "consideration" with everyone. But this is how it becomes extended-by this small side-pattern to begin with, and then a re-integration. Because I couldn't possibly have this kind of directness if I had everybody in the community come and sit-where? So the circumstance for My Serving, within the design you are all involved with, is up close to Me. And then it extends from there-through recordings and such, obviously, that are done there, but also through the individuals who were part of that "consideration", their Leela, their sign and changes altogether in practice and service. A few minutes ago I said, well, maybe, having gotten some basic notions down, we can now approach this whole "consideration" from any number of different angles. And what you would like to have happen as a result of that is, I was jokingly saying, a new religion in which you, after a few brief preliminaries, take up the "Perfect Practice". Well, in other words, through some kind of "consideration" process, wed come around to an understanding of how it may be possible for an individual who chooses to do so to directly take up this Way in the form of the "Perfect Practice" after some basics of some kind as a foundation-but not necessarily have to think of it in terms of all those hearing and seeing and everything else kind of phases. Well, in fact, I did propose to you all a way to take up the "Perfect Practice" directly after a relative few preliminaries-in . But those preliminaries amount to assuming a way of life that is not bound to conditional existence by act or orientation. So, at that time, one of those simple preliminaries for the "Perfect Practice" was celibate renunciation. Yes, just that. That was straightforward there. In the Advaitic tradition, in fact, in some of its principal books, like Vivekachudamani (I believe it appears there and in some of the other books in the Advaitic tradition), there's an indication of the preliminaries required to be given up to be instructed in this Advaitic sadhana. However they proposed it in the particular tradition I'm talking about now-sometimes in the form of six parts, or whatever-basically what it comes down to is its, as I've said, that you're not bound to the disposition, purposes, obligations, and all the rest of the first five stages of life. You are detached from all of that, disciplined (including celibacy), have no other obligations, are one-pointed, are here just for the sake of liberation (in other words, sixth stage of life purposes, rather than karma, fulfillment of the potentialities of attention). So, as soon as you go through a very few preliminaries, you can take up the "Perfect Practice". And basically that's what I've told you. But first of all, you are not readily of that disposition, even as described in the Advaitic tradition. That's not your position. You are attached to and bound up in matters of the first five stages of life. Now if you can, with a glance, see its bullshit and drop it like a hot potato and make that clear to Me, you can take up the "Perfect Practice"-if all the other things are there, too. If that asana, that disposition, free of the search relative to the first five stages of life-not only affirming yourself free of it, not bound to it, your attention clear-is there, then you can take up the "Perfect Practice". So, yes, its just a matter of if you meet the qualifications you can take up the "Perfect Practice". It is as simple as that because the "Perfect Practice" is the Way I'm Giving you. But to actually fulfill those requirements is itself a sadhana. It's not just status or an attitude. It is equipment altogether. In other words, what you would have to be altogether in order to fulfill those requirements, in the general case requires you to do sadhana first, or as a basis for that. You can't just affirm those qualities. You can't simply affirm that you're free of the searches associated with the first five stages of life. To be in a position where that is true, unless you have extraordinary characteristics, sadhana is required. I view all that as preliminaries. You like to look at it as a way of life, or you like to even look at points along the line as a way of life, or even the goal, somehow. That's why you have no business "guruing" yourselves-its one of the reasons. That's a big reason. Total incompetence is the reason, in summary. [laughter] If you want to entertain "guruing" yourself, you should submit this application to Me . And, if I approve, then you can go and "guru" yourself. [laughter] I am the Chairman and the Board Itself, but if you make your application to Me-you'd like to function as guru, you're very humble, you only have one disciple, one devotee you have in mind, and you'll keep it to just that one. You're willing to make all kinds of agreements with Me: You'll just guru yourself . That's it. Nobody else. [laughter] Okay, so far it doesn't sound like its going to wreak havoc. But, okay, "Let Me see the qualifications." [Adi Da laughs.] Well, this might be amusing for you to "consider", sometime, relative to any tendency you have along these lines-of telling your guru what you're going to do rather than submitting and asking. Or just guru yourself altogether using some kind of source-books, or using your guru as some kind of a source-book, perhaps. But, in other words, doing the ego-based, motivated, self-manipulative, and so on, self-"guruing" game rather than practicing Ishta-Guru-Bhakti Yoga. Of course, this is the tendency in anyone-in everyone, in some sense, because everyone is functioning on the egoic basis in the pattern. So you must simply be responsible for this. But it might be interesting for you to do it something like an application for yourself. At least think of it this way. Yes, first of all think of how modest you are: You're only planning to do it with yourself. But just "consider" this. You really do do this sometimes and do have this orientation sometimes, as your egoic nature. And so, in effect, then, at those times you have accepted the application of someone to be your guru. You see? Effectively, its someone else. Look at the qualifications, in other words, that you have as a guru. DEVOTEE: Just read the confession written for the Feast of Water and Fire. ADI DA SAMRAJ: You're "guruing" yourself, thinking you're a guru-but why are you "guruing" yourself? You have found yourself. to be unsatisfactory in the Realization department. [laughter] And yet totally satisfactory in the "guruing" department. [Adi Da laughs.] One of the first things I asked Rudi when I met him, not in any offensive way at all-the exact language is in The Knee of Listening , you can check what it is there-but something to the effect, "Are you a Realizer of this Kundalini Yoga?" And He said, "You don't teach it if you can't do it."> Well, that was a good answer for Me. Because that's what it was always about from My point of view. I wasn't going there just looking for somebody to give Me some words I know I could get from the local bookstore-some kind of words about that kind of a thing. I wanted to make sure that He knew what He was talking about, that this was something He was actually involved in for real. DEVOTEE: You asked him if he was proficient at it. I think that is what You said. DEVOTEE: And he probably realized right then and there that this was no ordinary devotee!> ADI DA SAMRAJ: Mm-hm. I'm often amused when I hear a devotee, one devotee or another, telling Me about what they often refer to as their "Spiritual search", or something like that, before they came into My Company. Sarah [] was just telling Me a while ago, about some meditation practice-some organized, self-help, somehow religious kind of group. No great revelation or anything like that, just some therapeutically oriented, at the same time religiously oriented, somebody-reading, thinking, trying this and that, and make some sort of a church out of it. And people-wandering wherever toward finding whatever-come in, get involved in that, fall into that pattern there for a while. It frequently amazes Me why you would have done such a thing. [Adi Da laughs.] Only if it is amusing to yourselves. But the kind of things that at one time or another you found interesting, got involved in-it was, in other words, what you were all about. If I had walked into Rudi's store-and, of course, that wouldn't have been the place I walked into anyway, but if I had gone that far-and spoke to Him and when I asked Him that question, which was really trying to find out the position to which He was making Himself available as a teacher, if He had told Me He was really just an antique store man and He and His friends study the I Ching , throw the coins and then they all meditate on the passage and sometimes discuss it afterwards and they do this every Tuesday and Friday nights-and would I like to come and join them? [chuckling] Absolutely not! [Adi Da laughs.] I wouldn't have gone there. Of course, I didn't find Him at random. You know what led to that-so that was not the case there at all. I didn't bother, generally speaking at any rate-sometimes I investigated things intentionally, but I didn't find the kind of things that you all often have found satisfying to be satisfying at all. So it is revealing-what you did that had anything do with religion, including your childhood upbringing. But everything else, even some preoccupations devotees get into once they've already come into My Company-all of it is a pattern that should be useful to you, very revealing to you, especially revealing to you relative to other things that are similar to what you can observe that way. What's interesting and useful about noticing a pattern early in your life is to see that the pattern is right now . It's not that you have to struggle with something that happened early in your life, but if you see it there then you can see something about the pattern which you are enacting right now. And that's what you can change. This can be of interest to you, then, because its revealing about "you". When you talk about these things, often you're feeling, you know, "that was just years ago" and you're sort of in a position of dismissing it. Like Ritch was the other day, relative to Christianity-"never seemed interesting to him" kind of thing, something like that. But, rather than feel that way about that, look at it as a pattern that is revealing about what you are tending to be right now. Just look at it as a pattern and what it says about you, how you are being characterized relative to anything you've done, or anything you decide, or anything you've "considered", or anything you've believed in. What you tended to be satisfied with to any degree at all-for any period, in some previous kind of religious association, even though you may dismiss it now-you are very likely, somehow or other, demonstrating that same predilection, tendency, or fixation now , in the context of the Way of the Heart. Sort of a picking-and-choosing kind of participation in this Way, or stronger in some respects, weaker in others, or sort of applying the total Teaching at random to your present-moment kind of self-"guruing"-or whatever it may be. You see? Whatever would seem satisfactory to you, at least for some significan't period or reason in the past, its about something that youre probably up to now as well. In other words, very likely its still satisfactory to you. Something was satisfactory to you then, but you didnt find everything that was satisfactory, so maybe you kept on going. But what was satisfactory about it, at least for a moment, is still something you tend to find satisfactory. And you are just sort of perpetuating the pattern by dismissing the past. Whereas if you look at it as a representation of your own design, then you can feel it in the present moment more sensitively, perhaps, and grant yourself better clarity about what it is youre examining, and also create a clarity in your feeling beyond it in moment to moment practice. The more fully you are aware of the pattern in which you are apparently in motion, certainly the more intelligent, perhaps the more effective, your transcendence of it in every moment will be. One of the reasons is because you take into account more aspects of the binding characteristics of the moment. The more you know about the pattern altogether, the less you dismiss about it or fail to notice about it. The more total the awareness of the pattern is, the more comprehensive the practice is in any moment. In any case, all of that kind of "consideration" does not have the purpose of accumulating a massive verbal construction that you have to continue to reintroduce. No, its a way of becoming sensitized more and more profoundly to the conditions in which you are doing this Yoga from moment to moment. It gives you greater and greater clarity to examine My Word and My Instruction altogether and apply it. If you have a massive mind full of calculated argumentation to justify feeling good, then you've got to go through the whole rehearsal of all that in order to "get in" those few rare moments where it might feel some kind of good. You see? So those are just like My yellow pages years ago, before I burned them. They are all the leftovers of a "consideration" that sets you straight. It's the being set straight that's the important part, and then functioning in that straightness, directly, moment to moment, rather than with a lot of verbal instructions which you have to organize and rehearse every other moment. The sadhana must become straightforward. So its not about building up a massive structure of mental calculations. More importantly its a matter of freeing up the intelligence from confusion and bondage and uninspected entanglement. So because the process of being qualified for the "Perfect Practice" in general requires sadhana, and you cannot meet the qualification simply as an act of will in the present moment-generally speaking, or speaking of devotees generally-the offering I made in couldnt be accepted. It was done as a "consideration". Everyone was allowed the opportunity to actually approach it in this manner. And so everyone "considered it", or at least thought about it, talked about it, and a significant number of people actually-as real "consideration" must be-took it on as an actual condition of existence. Simply established, flat out, the requirements that would be met in the Advaitic tradition, as I described earlier, if somebody came to be instructed. If you meet these qualifications, then you can enter into this kind of a sixth stage practice, in that tradition. So we entered into it together, as a "consideration" in just that manner. Conditions like celibacy and such, then, were part of it; dietary disciplines, and so forth; a range of things, but very straightforward, simple renunciate. And the first communication of the now Lion Sutra was associated with this kind of "consideration". It occurred in the midst of that very "consideration", so it directed everybody in that "consideration". But, one by one, several at a time, gradually, people showed the signs that they couldnt maintain the asana of those qualifications. Or they didnt have the will to do so, but came up with arguments against it, or they weakened in their disposition or whatever, on and on. Everybody with their thiss and that's. And how much of Feeling-Enquiry were they doing? Anyway, it was like the smaller gathering at Charlies Place, with the "Ordeal of Being" retreats and so forth. A "consideration", a very direct, immediate-by immediate I mean in a very short term-entrance into the seventh stage Disposition, first sixth and then seventh. And it involved an intensive period in solitude, until (at some point) individuals began to come forward indicating that this Disposition that we had "considered"-this seventh stage Disposition-was true of them. Of course, just as if I ask you now, "Isnt it true, no matter what is arising, you are the Witness?", in the midst of such an intensive, in "consideration" with Me, something which was the direct "consideration" matter of their pondering seemed to be clearly so. There was no way they could deny it, somehow, in that samyama. So some felt, well, it must be so, then. They felt something about it was so. So then they would come back, and however many times it occurred there was a "consideration" that followed that. Again, very much the same thing, though. They couldnt hold to the Position. Just as any of you could say at any moment, if I directed you to "consider" it-yes, this is so, you are the Witness, no matter what arises. But, a few moments later, you reorganize with psycho-physical attention in some other specific way, and its no longer so from your point of view-youre not established in the Realization that you are not that but the Witness in that moment. You could recollect that it is so, but you don't exist as such. You become the fruit-eating bird, instantaneously. You can be one or the other but you can't hop as the Witness-bird into the fruit-bird position, or vice versa. So you don't hold to the Position. The Mudra isnt true. You haven't Realized It. You're still clinging to something else that puts you out of phase with this Realization of What is Always Already the Case. Ritch was pointing out how we had spoken to one another in Hermitage one time about how much he likes pondering the Ignorance "consideration" in one way or another. And weve talked about that, of course, but if you discovered that you don't know what even a single thing is (and this applies to every thing)-in other words, you don't know What Is -if you really pondered that, youd come up with some profound motivations to practice! [Adi Da laughs.] One of the characteristics of that "consideration" is it has got a humorous dimension to it-the absurdity that this is so. For such a thing to be so of everyone -and it has to be pointed out to everyone-seems absurd. Yes. So, yes, youre pondering, but you don't even notice, really, the import of what it is that youre noticing here. You've got all kinds of pattern and no knowledge, no grasp of Reality, no answers. Just a lot of questions. It's all question. This is not just true in this moment, wherein you enter into some sort of open disposition, rather meditative. But its true this moment and this moment and relative to everything altogether. Therefore, you don't even know What Is . You want to go to the office?! [Adi Da laughs.] You want to get laid? That sounds like a very leisurely life to Me. Smiling on TV and you don't even know what any thing is ? That ought to tell you which bags to pack. Not your attaché case. Travel light and keep on moving until you straighten this matter out. [Adi Da laughs.] So that's what I did. I mean, how could I consent to live an ordinary life without knowing this fundamental Truth? The fundamental Truth! Or anything fundamental-how could anybody do this? That's not the order of business. So unless the foundation was clear, how could you build a house? Maybe youre building it on a swamp. So, surely, you must find out. That doesn't mean you necessarily have to disregard all responsibilities. You cannot disregard all. But you can maintain them either simply or otherwise in such a way that you can really engage the process of finding out What Is . And What every thing Is . What the Truth Is. Why consent to just be pattern-robots? So, generally speaking, handle your responsibilities, those that pertain to such a serious disposition, and intensively engage the sadhana of this Realization. Well, that's what the non-humans "decide" immediately, so to speak. That's what they all do. Theyre convinced immediately of that course. Theyre not wound into klik-klak exactly like you humans. You have a wide variety of involvements, extensions, elaborations of the content associated with functions far beyond that of the non-humans. Look how much psyche you need to eat lunch. How much psyche you need to do anything. How much language, how much mind you require to put on a shirt: "Consider" everything about it-including the weather, the decorativeness, appropriateness for where youre going-everything about a shirt or about the body altogether, clothing. Look at all, everything that comes together, the complexity. Look what complexity it takes to get a passport, or a bank account, or whatever it takes to get anything these days-to get connected up these days, for your own mobility, or whatever, things you need to do to function. How complex everything is. And look with what ease the chameleons walk about-without so much as a knife and fork . . . or the first hat. [laughter] So complexly wound in such complex patterns, and the collective associated with it and all the rest, your simple bondage with the body, "Narcissus", is more like being the emperor of a kingdom than a guy with a knapsack leaning over a pool of fresh water. [pause] Actually, its not quite like being the emperor of a kingdom. The emperor is in the ultimate position in that structure-could, perhaps, have some kind of view or leisure in which to find out something great. It's probably more like being the sarvadhikari of the entire kingdom or empire of the emperor. [laughter] And the emperor insists on a life of total leisure given to Contemplation-not ever disturbed, therefore, by anything in the total domain of your ordinary life, your egoic life. Never disturb the emperor. That's all the destiny you've got. [Adi Da laughs.] You had all the destiny you were going to get. So the "consideration" I put to you when I first began to speak with you earlier this evening is, of course, in summary, a sufficient Argument for the "Perfect Practice". But in order to do the "Perfect Practice", you must be established (by Grace and Yogic disposition) Prior to the body-mind. The Yogic asana of the Witness must actually be true, not something fallen from, argued toward. And if, therefore, you followed that argument of "consideration"-from earlier this evening, when we first began-such that you got up from that "consideration" qualified for the "Perfect Practice" (in principle this is possible), all the qualifications that Ive said apply to the "Perfect Practice" would have had to been Realized by you in that "consideration". For you, generally speaking, the "consideration" is everything from student-novice to the "Perfect Practice". In other words, that "consideration" is accompanied by all of that practice, its still, nonetheless, constant "consideration" of the Argument relative to the "Perfect Practice". So you can do that sadhana most intensively. Or you can do it but not all that intensively, and with a lot of vacations and complaints and whatnot, only minimal directness or quickness. Or you can just sort of be peripheral with it and so forth and not do it all. In any case-what does it say? DEVOTEE: Laughing Mama? The Laughing Mama says: "Your objections to any thing don't mean shit! "> ADI DA SAMRAJ: So whatever you choose, Arjuna, just remember this. Klik-klak doesn't give a shit. Play it as you like. But this is the secret. You want to play it, that's your business. But you have nothing to complain about if you choose the fruit that's on that tree there. You've given up all right to complain as soon as you step through the attention doorway to the conditional domain. After that its the throw of the dice in some respects, you could say. But its not about Realizing Happiness, anyway. Happiness is not there. You superimpose it by your glance, alone. You superimpose the expectation of Happiness but never Realize it because you identify Happiness with this plastic youre animating by attention. And it is all changes, shifts-replication, shift, change. So it is utterly indifferent to your expectation of Happiness, in the realm of klik-klak. I mean, since the earliest moment of physical self-awareness you've been afraid of death. If the klik klak God were concerned about you-zip!-you know, a little magic, sort of whitish-colored, smiling ghosty boy says [in a really high-pitched enthusiastic voice] "Hi! Saw youre worried about death there. Dont you worry for one minute! Take a look at these ten rules here of Reality. You're taken care of, don't you worry. And I'm always by your side, buddy. You can always call on me." If klik-klak were the care for your interest in living forever and being happy, well, that would be built in. Klik-klak could make a sign of ghosty boy like that anytime. So if this was all built for your amusement and fulfillment because "love is here", then there would be those kinds of things all over the place. Yes, love is here, but its not here . You know what I mean? So the Call to the Divine is a Call Beyond . Not a justification for klik-klak-land. But that's how religion gets used in the common form. Ultimately all it is is a justification for klik-klak-land. You're all wound up in it. You say, "Is there a God?" If you get any notion there is, right away you start bringing in the requests. You can, by being responsible for the movements of mind, yes, do the Devotional Prayer of Changes, you can participate responsibly in the domain of changes. But that doesn't mean youre in paradise, and you just say the magic word and Uncle Carbuncle comes and gives you a kiss and a box full of everything you want. You see? That's not how it is. There is no Santa Claus. And there's no Santa-Claus God, either. There is the Divine, but Santa Claus is your own invention, and the Santa Claus God ideas are your own invention. Even if the disposition is positive and hopeful, and has all kinds of religious justifications for fullness of life and on and on, in some other klik-klak conjunction, all of a sudden youre garbage. You see? It doesn't mean there's no God. It means its not about that somehow. You depend on klik-klak, then no matter how hopeful you are, sooner or later youre going to get klakked. Because that's how the machine works. It's not even that that amounts to being punished for something. It's just that nobody, they or anybody else, knows what the hell is happening and is doing "all right". All this pattern patterning and patterning within and among human beings-inevitably they're going to be spirals rotating separate from one another. And patterns start intruding upon one another and creating disturbances. That's the nature of patterning existence. It never looks like unity in the world, between individuals or between groups of individuals or so-called nations-all these different spirals and patterns. There's no unity in that. DEVOTEE: The concept of evolution as it is talked about suggests a progress in the patterning. ADI DA SAMRAJ: I don't know if that's altogether true, really. That is an idea, but I don't know if that would be a notion that would be agreed upon by people who are theorists, scientists, so forth. In other words, I don't think they would necessarily say that the signs and the form-pattern, how forms change, suggest that its leading toward something better . It's more "adaptation under certain conditions" kind of thing. Conditions can change things dramatically, destroy species, or uphold some rather than others. They are certainly always changing based on conditions, but not necessarily getting better and better. The popular view generally is "everything started way back there with some slime and eventually, after a whole bunch of other forms appear and change into other forms, you get this human guy at the end of it and everything else is before it, less than it". In other words, everything is just sort of leftovers of a progress, the importance of which is Man. Man is sort of the idea of the egoic self in some way, so a lot of glamour is put on the Man-idea by human beings. Everything is seen, then, relative to it, like you see everything relative to your own body-mind position-generally speaking, people do this. So the idea that everything is getting better and better is a rather human idea then, that (for one thing) diminishes the significance of everything that is presumed to be just a preliminary to Man, including the whole Earth-world, then. But that's the pattern wherein Man gets this notion of taking over, of controlling everything from which it sprang-including the whole Earth-world itself, all of elemental existence. So that's the direction of Man-culture. Just looking within species developments, probably many would say the evidence "looks like" not necessarily "progress", but there is a lot of change-adaptation and change to varying conditions, and perhaps at some other time another form would be required, or change of form would be required, just to survive there. It doesn't make it any better, doesn't mean its any better. In fact, it might not work well under present conditions. So, in other words, they look in terms of it just being a material process. In some respects, current science is based on an aspect of Truth, you see. They've got this klik-klak idea somehow going. They don't have a philosophical understanding of it, rightly. But what they're arguing is that everything is klik-klak. And they're right. But they don't know What "Else" there is, or what other truths are. They don't know where My other Temples are, you see. They only know where the Laughing Mama is. They don't know how to get anything greater than that, also. But their general suggestion, the general point of view of science as it is done at the present time, is in the manner of what I generally refer to as scientific materialism. And basically such people who are involved in that discipline (or speak for it) are always saying "everything is klik-klak". No "God made it and all kinds of mysterious this and that you should feel happy about." No, "its all klik-klak". It's all "particles moving" kind of stuff. The most boring way of looking at reality-particles and lines of movement. It is an examination, something in the depth of appearances, but its not the same as being in the pattern and observing without any limitations. DEVOTEE: My Lord, my question is about the non-scientific concepts of evolution-like with Sri Aurobindo-the patterning in higher planes of manifestation. You've been making clear to us that everything within the first five stages of life is klik-klak. And I remember You once saying that to the degree that there are higher evolutionary worlds, there is the same degree of warfare within those worlds. I don't know if I understood You rightly or not. ADI DA SAMRAJ: Well, yes, warfare in various planes. But that doesn't necessarily mean there's warfare in all planes, even the highest of the highest. But there is inherent torque, two-ness. If it is in the realm of conditional manifestation, it inherently has that association-egoity also, then. So the same fundamental struggle is there inherent in every dimension, however subtle and so on. And it still has all the characteristics of klik-klak: replicate, shift, change. It's still the same kind of place shown in a particular fashion in the rainbow display. It's one of the possibilities. From the point of view of a more grossly struggling condition, it seems, by comparison, heaven or very desirable. But from its position, with the sensitivities involved in being in that position, its a struggle with the same conditions. So whether it appears as warfare or not is just a matter of how the pattern gets displayed in certain domains of possibility. But even if it isnt warfare, it is warfare. It's the same fundamental "consideration", fundamental struggle, same fundamental egoity to be transcended. What about it? DEVOTEE: You're talking about scientific materialism as a dark vision? ADI DA SAMRAJ: Mm-hm. Well, a dark vision because it is constantly suggesting something, and, generally speaking, everyone rather casually believes what has been suggested-that, in effect (in the language I have been using with you), everything is klik-klak, and therefore indifferent. Ultimately its just a pattern. They emphasize this, what basically amounts to a doctrine, rather than a discovery, over and over again, and are not telling any other truth at all. In other words, in terms of philosophy, this is the only truth they tell, and it is not a sufficient truth. It is true . Everything is klik-klak. Anything arising conditionally is klik-klak. But that's not the only thing I have to say to you about it all. [laughter] Whereas the scientific communication process game is more like an endless affirming of a doctrine over and over again, which each new tidbit of description of the universe kind of advances, as if-you know, after a long, long, long, long time of this-at the end of it, finally some body of authoritative scientists is going to just stand up and flat say, "Everything is klik-klak, and that's that." [laughter] [chuckling] And hopefully, if it is that way, and it doesn't take that long, then maybe they'll quote from My Teaching when they say this. And will say that, as I pointed out, that's not all there is to it. Because that's what I'm saying to you. You must clearly understand though, that everything is klik-klak. It is true. There's no point in holding your breath and hoping and being anxious about whether the scientists are right. They are completely right, with respect to what they are observing and how they're observing it. Everything is klik-klak. It is just a material pattern and so forth. There's very much an angle on religion inherent in the scientific materialist doctrine. And it is specifically counter-religious, and came out of a situation historically of exactly that nature, in the West, in which you had Galileo and the Catholic church and similar things. Eventually, when science becomes the establishment, you have a science that is counter-religious and also specifically counter to the dominant religion of the time, in which new science or "infant science" got suppressed. It's a little bit like the Christian anti-Semitism. Do you understand what I mean about how its like that? There is a similar pattern. You see the Christians emerged from an establishment and also along with all their history and mythology have this thing about a Jewish circumstance in which their Teacher was persecuted. And then when it becomes the official doctrine, its inherent disposition and all the rest starts working historically, politically, against Judaism-as has been seen in the Western tradition. In other words, World War II and all the things that preceded it, and the holocaust among the Jews and others-a massive number of whom were, by the way, gypsies, I believe. It is interesting what Christians felt to be threatening. Perhaps in both cases (just examining it for the moment), both the Jews and gypsies are characterized by this sort of movement to leaving what may be presumed to be your homeland or whatever it is, and wandering-around-in-the-midst-of-everybody-else kind of diaspora [refers usually to the dispersal of the Jews from Palestine to many parts of Europe, Africa, and Asia in c.e.] kind of flowing. Whereas everyone else is trying to stay in place and be whatever they are there. And so this sort of pattern of exclusiveness, this one spiral in there-at one point, those in that disposition decided they wanted to keep their region clean of all this flowing in. So the Jews were among those targeted in that circumstance. In the case of science, we see something like how Christianity emerged from its position, where it was perhaps suppressed or felt it was suppressed somehow or another-politically, within the religious context, whatever, at the time. Just as Christianity emerged from that and eventually became "official", and then its patterns became magnified on a political scale relative to Judaism and so on, so with science. It emerged within-well, there are many elements of its emerging, of course, but in terms of becoming the dominant point of view, as it has become in Western civilization, it emerged out of the Catholic Christian tradition. Of course, Islam, as much as Christianity, is behind science, and much of the ancient West also. Greece, and so forth, is a source of Western education notions and many matters relative to science. There are many sources, but the struggle in which it became politicized and became dominant by association with the state is particularly in the line of Western civilization, dominated by Christianity at the time. So the classic story about it is something like the myth. The origin of science is the "Galileo versus the Catholic hierarchy" story. Sort of the "Adam and Eve in the garden" story of science. That's if you look at it in terms of the Jewish tradition. Or, if you look at it in terms of the Christian tradition, its like Galileo is sort of a crucified savior, punished without cause, without there being a reason for his punishment in his doings, it would seem. Hes the pure knower and finder-outer who suffers under the oppressive, ignorant, massive, cultural, and political institutions-but emerges somehow victorious, in the right, and then science dissociates itself gradually from being something within the church and becomes secularized and associated with the state. And it, rather than the Catholic church, then becomes the center of the propaganda of Western civilization. And so the inherent anti-religiosity, or critical disposition in scientific materialism relative to religion, is essentially toward the religion characterized as Western civilization, dominantly meaning the Christian, especially Catholic Christian, then. So there is constantly an edge that may be seen in scientific discourse, even on television. It's always suggesting something that is a direct criticism of some primary proposition, especially of Western religion and as it was way back then-it was Catholic at the time. That's what "Christian" was at that time-the religion of Rome. Not as it is today, with Christianity broken up into many forms, itself a kind of diaspora. So the language of public communication associated with science, particularly its popularization language, is filled with suggestions that Christianity is not true. By extension, a lot of other religions arent true, then, too, but this is the dominant consciousness, religious-style, that's being addressed. You find more congeniality in scientific discourse with the language and philosophical points of view of Asian traditions, generally speaking, than the Christian tradition. So to, in effect, say everything is klik-klak over and over and over again is to say there is no God. Meaning specifically, no God of the kind Christians believe in, who is the God of this world, somehow controlling it and controlling it benignly, controlling it through time toward some great purpose-made everything, made all according to some pattern that's somehow shown in old books and so forth. So when scientific materialists say everything is klik-klak, they are saying that, from their point of view, Christianity is untrue. And that is what is being said. It's not that there's a lot of discrimination in scientific materialist language, about religion itself or about Reality ultimately. There's just this one fixation on the aspect of conditional experiencing-call it "material", whatever you want-that is just a plastic. And because of that concentration, and because of the historical origins of this whole cultural orientation called "science", and its secularization and bond with the state everywhere and with culture even, there is a message constantly being communicated to the traditional mind of Western culture. That mind is not , at root, founded on the notion that all there is is material reality and nothing greater. Quite the contrary. But a bit of the tradition was spun off angry. It's not really looking at religion anymore-just sort of throwing in its nasty shouts. And that's one of the ways whereby scientific materialism has become wedded to its materialist dogma-because of this historical association, this kind of renegade adolescent kind of quality, you see, coming out of the historical situation in the West. And it needs to be purified of that, just as Christianity needs to be purified of its anti-Semitism. And so does everybody else need to be purified of everything. As "The Lady" says: DEVOTEE: Laughing Mama says: "Your objections to any thing don't mean shit!" ADI DA SAMRAJ: Exactly. DEVOTEE: Beloved, having practiced scientific materialism myself, I remember it was almost presented as a religion in science education. ADI DA SAMRAJ: Yes, its just basic doctrine. DEVOTEE: Right. And the main hook, or at least where it hooked me in a certain way, is it became a way to inspect and examine klik-klak, in greatest detail that you seemingly could. It's funny that its hook in a certain way is this fascination with klik-klak and never moves beyond that. ADI DA SAMRAJ: The more you examine the phenomenal itself the more klik-klakkish it gets. You see, weve been talking about the Pleasure Dome-the Yogic principle, the God-Realizing principle in the midst of this, and how it works as a process, until it becomes the "Perfect Practice", beyond the conditional reference. If you observe, understand, establish the disciplines that "trick" klik-klak (so to speak), that enable you to maintain the zone of transcendence and Yoga and some kinds of order and so on-then klik-klak is used to your advantage, so to speak. But its a constant art. And when klik-klak is used to such advantage, it is just pattern, so it will show signs that overall you would say are positive-Pleasure-Dome signs. It doesn't mean you stay there, it means this is the process moment to moment in which, ultimately, all this is transcended. But if you don't introduce the heart-disposition, then, the going-beyond disposition, the Pleasure-Dome disposition, into klik-klak, then youre just going to see klik-klak, klik-klak, klik-klak. You're just going to see the thing itself, and its not a thing in itself-but it may be viewed as such. So by the emphasis of point of view and process (or method) and propaganda current to science, it is inherently reductionistic. It doesn't see klik-klak in any other terms but klik-klakking-no greater process. Right, it is just klik-klak. It is just plastic. So you can either just be klik-klakked into nothingness, or there's another process, somehow, to "consider"-that is not only benign, but absolutely Satisfying, ultimately. Well, you don't find any such discourse in the context of science, because they don't have any wideness, broadness, or point of view of multiplicity of possible points of view that are standard to the discipline. There's only the one-assume the identification with the gross point of view. No other asana is permitted. And that becomes the doctrine about Reality, then. That point of view determines the doctrine about Reality. You do the same thing when you identify with the body, in individual terms. That, then, becomes the basis for your presumption about Reality. It should be self-evidently clear that youre not going to find out about Reality in any ultimate terms by doing such a thing. In fact, the least directly revealing aspect of the pattern that's patterning is the effect level, the gross level. Weve talked about how some people belonged to the same pattern-in our discussions referring to them even by a number. But you see that when its a matter of a physically existing human being, there are all kinds of differences, all kinds of individualities-unlike any other when it comes down to the full individuation and physical form. But where are they still identical, then? Well, its in this pattern level, prior to that level of particularity. Pattern is particularizing, but it is not at the level of particularity yet-the place where the pattern is patterning altogether. It's not at that same level of particularity and complication as the gross. So to be really scientific, to really find out about the pattern and how its patterning and everything else, the physical or gross would not be the position to assume if you are practicing science based on real discriminative intelligence and want to really "consider" these matters. You wouldnt take up the position of the physical, youd take up the position of the pattern that's patterning. That is already a leap into what scientists might call metaphysics, although they're not prepared to do that. No, according to science, you have to be the physical-just like Freud said there has to be this sexual principle, you see, or Darwin said whatever he said about the laws of evolution, you know. Doctrine may be an interesting principle to establish for the sake of some kind of "consideration"-go into an experiment or look at things as if this were so and see what it shows you. That's interesting, perhaps. But to establish it once and for all, and you never take up any other position in order to see what other possibility there may be-that's not science. That's not true religion, either. It's a doctrine-based structure for thinking and acting and all of life altogether, ultimately. So it is false. Hm? DEVOTEE: Beloved, You said earlier that there are two things that can't be taken into account in klik-klak, are not part of klik-klak-and that is Consciousness and Energy. ADI DA SAMRAJ: You can't reduce either one of those to anything further. DEVOTEE: Right. ADI DA SAMRAJ: They can seem to be separate, because there's torque, two-ness in klik-klak. But you can examine anything, any object-break it down to all its parts, getting deeper and deeper behind it all, you know, going from sheer, grossest of gross to molecular and atomic, break everything down to all of its different parts and levels-eventually you get to Energy, or Light. And you can't get any further. There's no further anything to break It down into. Light It'self doesn't break down into anything next, and there's nothing on the other side of It. Well, the same thing with examining anything associated with Consciousness, any so-called "subjective" matter. There's the body, but the mind is aware of the body. Well, then, behind the mind there is discriminative intelligence. You go back farther and farther, there's attention, then attention is arising in the view of Consciousness It'self. So then what, you see? It can't be reduced any further. You can't break It down to any parts. There's nothing behind It. So by investigating the subjective, you get to its irreducible base, which is Consciousness. By "considering" or analyzing the objective, you come to its irreducible base or constant, which is Light, or Energy-Shakti, if you will. So there are these two fundamental elementals evident in klik-klak. And, however, another aspect of klik-klak is that these two are always different, it seems, somehow. You're unable to find an irreducible "something" that is both of those, because then there would be no difference between Consciousness and Light, between subject and object. There would be no torque left. So Consciousness and Light can only be Identical, Non-"Different", Prior to torque, Prior to attention. So in the Domain of the "Perfect Practice", its not subject-object. It's the practice of Non-"Difference". And there's no "difference", then, between Shakti and Awareness, Energy and Awareness, or Energy or attention. There's no attention there at all. Attention is what makes the division to begin with. Because there is attention, everything in klik-klak is in twos, or multiples beyond that. So, what were you saying? DEVOTEE: It seems that when you look at science and scientific materialism, and then in examining, say, human beings, that science can pretty much figure out a crude explanation for everything except for the matter of Consciousness and the matter of Light. ADI DA SAMRAJ: Well, that may or may not be so, but it could just be that at the present moment there's not enough investigation that's been done and so forth. Scientists haven't gotten around to making their explanation in a final form that they think (generally) has enough in it to last. So an explanation for Consciousness, and whatever else, may yet come about. But the explanation for it, that accounts for it, will be in the context of klik-klak. You can't reduce Consciousness to klik-klak, but you can examine it, account for it, in the context of klik-klak. And that's what you do all the time. That's why you think Consciousness is conditional. You do. It's not just that science does, you think that science could come up with some way, perhaps somewhere along the line, to explain it. But you already make this presumption, act as if its so. So science someday will be able to come up with an explanation for Consciousness. But it will be in the context of klik-klak as an element in the service of the pattern patterning, or some functional this or whatever. But it will not be the Truth. It will just be true. True, in other words, with reference to the characteristics of klik-klak. But it will not satisfy, or be the end of the "consideration" of Consciousness. But since the discipline of science currently does not allow for the presumption of anything but the standpoint of the physical or the gross or the material and so on (unless the discipline changes its view), that will be that. So it is looking now toward a day when a description can be given that accounts for Consciousness. And it wont be total bullshit. It just wont be the Truth. And that's one of the problems with the language of science, its communications-it often is telling true things. What its saying is true. It's just not the Truth . It's just divorced from a fundamental element that cannot be investigated or affirmed. And so it is reductionistic in its communication. It makes everything seem klik-klak. That's it. Everything is klik-klak, then. It's not true that everything is klik-klak. Everything objective, everything conditional-that's klik-klak, yes. But that's not all that there is. But if you believe a reductionistic argument that Consciousness is nothing but klik-klak-end of the investigation. Then there is nothing that is not klik-klak-and that is a lie. "Everything is klik-klak" is true somehow, but it is not true that there is not anything that is not klik-klak. Because if they asked Gautama this, traditionally (its that kind of paradox), "Is there Consciousness Prior to and apart from consciousness in association with phenomenal awareness?", some question like that, any answer carries within it the potential (if you use that structure of language as a base for responding) to be interpreted in a way that is itself klik-klak and, therefore, not the Truth. So, according to the traditional story, Gautama had a lot of reluctance there to make affirmations or give descriptions or yess, even, in response to primal questions about, "Does such-and-such exist?" Because even using words to begin with, and therefore the dualistically based mind, there is always this tendency, this pattern patterning tendency, to turn any answer into klik-klak. Or anything given in answer can be turned to klik-klak. I mean, to believe that Consciousness is only klik-klak to begin with is klik-klakness. [laughter] There's no greater view. So that person, then, asking a question, in klik-klak language, wants Gautama, or whomever, to affirm the Great Matter. And Gautama, or whoever, knows that, no matter what he says, its in klik-klak, and this guys going to interpret it according to his pattern. If I say as much as say, "Yes! There is Consciousness, Prior to the body-mind," from the view of that guy asking the question-already klik-klakked-its klik-klak. It means the opposite of something else. It's not an answer that grasping it will move the guy out of klik-klak. It's a dilemma even to talk to the man. [laughter] So this is what is suggested in the traditional histories of Gautama and his responses to great questions. Because in some sense he was aware of klik-klak-in the manner he was. He didnt, in other words, use My Words and so forth. Basically that's what he noticed-that everything phenomenal is klik-klak. It's all unsatisfactory. It changes. There's no permanent anything or anyone. These are very basic klik-klak descriptions, or klik-klak noticings-noticing of the pattern of phenomenal existence or what its really about. And its not what you want to believe about it-that it is, or can be, satisfactory ultimately, or there is something, someone, even you, that never changes. These are associated with your basic klik-klak presumptions. And he was noticing that that's just bullshit. You're saying klik-klak isnt klik-klak because you are investing it with the glow of your own uninspected realm-having fastened your eye to attention. DEVOTEE: It reminds me, Beloved, in , You, seeing a statue of Gautama, a great big gold statue on one side of the river, and on the other side a big smile button painted on the wall. And You turned around to everybody and said, "Life is suffering, have a nice day." [laughter] ADI DA SAMRAJ: Created a whole new button. DEVOTEE: Those two points of view, right there. ADI DA SAMRAJ: Yeah, right there, across-either side of-where were we? In London? DEVOTEE: Yes, it was London. ADI DA SAMRAJ: One was a monument, shrine, statue, and the other was a sign on the wall or something on the opposite side of the river. Those two messages came together. Amazingly contrary. And yet, somehow, together they do make sense, if you understand it. [Adi Da laughs.] FEMALE DEVOTEE: It is like the left and right. Life is suffering, and then there is God. ADI DA SAMRAJ: That is one way of putting it, in your humble one-liner fashion. DEVOTEE: Uh-huh. ADI DA SAMRAJ: Humble one-liners are sufficient for most people to generate in them a sense of feeling consoled. They are like teddy bears. And so a lot of people reduce the religious life to something like one-liners that they pull out to snuggle with. [laughter] But how can one settle for that couple of sentences worth of comprehension as the attitude of ones existence? It is a profound matter. The only way to save yourselves from the destiny of religious one-linerism is to constantly and directly study My Word . Stay in the process of this great "consideration", instead of just sitting around on your official "Adidam pillows", constantly consoling yourselves with another teddy bear piece of the Way. DEVOTEE: We must truly enter into the Way in our diaries, so that they become like Water and Narcissus . ADI DA SAMRAJ: What about that? DEVOTEE: Today, Beloved, I was reading Water and Narcissus , and throughout the evening and while I was reading it, I was "considering" Your "consideration", and what that looked like. ADI DA SAMRAJ: You mean as compared to your diary? [laughter] DEVOTEE: Yeah. Exactly. ADI DA SAMRAJ: What if you did your diary every night here as My devotee, and it turned out to be Water and Narcissus ? [Adi Da chuckles.] Yes, it is a good example of a way in which a kind of diary- or journal-means of making use of the observations of the process are written, and as a sign that the process was profound. And so it should be in your case. Of course, in your diaries, you are called to "consider" very specific things. You have a form of questions that you make use of in order to constantly address all of the matters that belong to your appropriate and necessary "consideration" from day to day, and so on. You are called to address it in specific terms, questions that particularly pertain to the practice that you have embraced and the details of it are as they are at this very moment, and so forth. So that is a different kind of a journal, more rightly called a diary, than in My Case. I didnt have a daily diary, an obligatory "sit-down" with it. I wrote in it a lot more than once a day. It was continuous and random, but many times a day, particularly in the early years of My Sadhana. In the writing Sadhana, as we usually refer to it, it was a matter of writing twenty-four hours a day. And not a diary every night, or even as during the period in which that group of things now called Water and Narcissus was written. There was no obligatory form to it, or frequency for writing in it, or presumption of what I should write in it. But it didnt have to cover all kinds of practical and cultural details as you all do. There was no such a thing. Water and Narcissus makes it possible for you to do those things. It is not something for you to measure up to, but to use for instruction. But also at the time, it was not as the years in which I was doing the so-called "writing Sadhana". Because in the Water and Narcissus years, I was doing Sadhana in all kinds of other terms, and then at random would write-not in the daily diary form, or anything like that. I would just have something to write in, verbalize the moment of "consideration" as it kept going on and on. The writing Sadhana years, though, were a literally writing twenty-four hours a day spontaneously generated Sadhana. The writing, then, was an element of a total Contemplation, if you will, or "consideration" process, in which I was constantly focused, twenty-four hours a day. Even in so-called "sleep", it was a thread of "consideration", a pressure, a pressing forward, breaking through, that constantly went on. And I always kept what we now call My "slate" right at arms reach. It was always right there. I could just reach over in the dark, even-either on the nightstand or, if the bed was really low, Id have it right on the floor there, with a pen on it. And I would write randomly throughout the night, or whatever was observed. A moment of "consideration" would go on during the night. I didnt just do it in the waking hours. I would proceed with it always. I got to the point where I would just write in the dark. And then, if necessary, the next day, I would improve it slightly so I could read it clearly. After a while, I didnt even do that. It didnt make any difference. It was the act of participation that was associated with My also coincidently writing that was the point of usefulness. Eventually I just burned it all. So it was a means, very similar in some respects then to the use of a mala as a physical touch-point, associated with the rest of the totality of the Contemplation. It is how I gave the body in Ishta-Guru-Bhakti Yoga. I kept it involved through this. I also do this in My painting, then, as I have described to you recently-eye-to-the-object orientation, rather than eye-to-the-hand. But nonetheless, the hand is controlled by that process. After a while, though, that ceased to be necessary-writing that way, that twenty-four-hour occupation as it was, and even writing down descriptions of walking down the beach, of the objects and so forth as they go along, just to be constantly participating in this kind of focus. Perhaps, then, this is the reason why, when I was at Seminary, when that event began (it happened while I was in a classroom in a lecture situation), that I immediately began to write everything the teacher was saying. It was a way of keeping the body focused in this disposition of feeling beyond the phenomena that are generating here, which could be chaotic. It was a way of not allowing it to become chaotic altogether. It was an immediate form, asana, or mudra, that I made use of in that moment. The writing Sadhana years were like that. But then, as I said, although writing continued from then, even today-although I rarely do now ever write-weeks could pass, maybe months, before I write anything down anymore. So this is not going on at all really, anymore. And what I write down is usually just something I want to talk to somebody about or something like that-because if I had anything really important to write down, Id have to put it in a book or something. [Devotees laugh.] In fact, I did, recently. Something occurred, as it does, and I wrote it, and there it was. What do I do with things I write these days? I can't add them to some book I'm writing, because I am not writing any books, unless it is something for The Basket of Tolerance . But I was, however long after that-that very day, I think I was, in fact-sent the Manuscript of The Adi Da Samraj Upanishad with the things Id asked to be added for Me to "consider" for it. So I began to work on this thing that I had written immediately. I saw it was useful for the Prologue, so I added it to the beginning of that. But then , in the writing Sadhana, it was writing constantly, twenty-four hours a day. DEVOTEE: Beloved, the other night You asked how would things be different if You hadn't burnt the Manuscripts of Your writing period. And I was just feeling, if You hadn't burnt them, would they have been made available to devotees just to study? ADI DA SAMRAJ: Well, they'd be in the archives. There is a lot of material in the archives now of just random this and that, that hasn't been published yet. It is not that it necessarily has any reason to be published-a lot of it, perhaps. Or at most, down the line, some specialized guy goes through the archives and links up everything of a certain kind, finds these thiss and that's and "blah-blahs" about it. So My writing from that period would just have been more of that kind of thing and from that early period. So it would simply be examined in terms of everything that is in it, and all the different kinds of uses it could be put to. That would be done. It wouldn't be just the whole thing from page one to the last, printed in a book and just passed out. [chuckling] Who the hell would be interested in that, anyway? Except somebody with a very elaborate interest, if you look at all that, just that way. DEVOTEE: I was just very curious about what you were actually observing. ADI DA SAMRAJ: Everything! Everything was in that, all kinds of things. But you could say, it basically had fulfilled something of its basic purpose. And then, thereafter, was starting to wind down. It was starting to become something other than that Sadhana. And instead I began doing some other kind of Sadhana, and this just became an element of putting My "consideration" on paper over time, here and there. And so that was basically the conjunction of events that occurred at the time of leaving California: The dream of the three boys, and then there is the Jungian text about a person having an out-of-body experience, and the visions of Rudis store, and the Great Storm. There was a whole sequence of signs around that time. But the root of the pattern-showing all those different signs, and then moving on to New York-was on that deep level on which I was constantly engaged in that "consideration", twenty-four hours a day, that had preceded that move. I, by that process, had entered into the pattern-level, consciously entered into it, was functioning with awareness at the pattern level, and not simply at the gross level, or any functional level itself. I was being aware, sensitive, noticing, allowing things to be observed and to be written in such a way, so freely, that I was just observing the pattern. I wasn't introducing anything whatsoever, or anything that made any difference. In other words, in that process, the entire pattern that is patterning, whether it is internal or external, in its gross sphere of demonstration, is, at some level, just one pattern. There is just a pattern that then gets, so to speak, spread out in psycho-physical terms. But at the point of the pattern itself, which is the root of all of that, there is just pattern. And there is no difference at that point between inside and outside. There is no reference to inside, no reference to outside. There is just pattern. So that was the nature of how My Samyama developed. It became a profound Contemplation-in which I was constantly established, then, such that it didnt even require the writing concentration as before-of direct participatory awareness in the pattern that is patterning, the ability to observe it, and feel, function, notice, and so forth, in that profound Yogic manner. And one of the inherent noticings associated with it is that there is no difference between inside and outside. You experience them as you do, of course, but there is one pattern. If you truly are attentive then, to what is arising, without making differences-something gross, external or perceptual arises, psychic thought, whatever it is, you don't pay any attention to evaluating inside/outside or anything else, it is just whatever it is right now-you begin to observe (this is what I did observe), that there was a kind of similar story, so to speak, in the flow of patterning from day to day, including all the little incidentals of life, but also principal dramas and whatnot. And that is the pattern. It has the insides going on with that, and the outsides going on with that, both. And there are constant correspondences, then, between so-called "inside" and "outside". Sometimes something outside comes first, and then the inside. Sometimes something inside comes first, and then the outside. Or they complement one another. Something happens outside, then something inside, then something outside, and it is only the combination of those three that are the sequence. There is something seen on the street, then a flash of vision or a dream, and then something else happens on the street. It is only the dream that connects those two incidents on the street. They are otherwise, at best, somehow similar. But the reason why they are associated is not known. It is the inner one that connected them. Sometimes it is the inner events that are the other side. Something dreamed, something happens in the daytime, another dream, and those two dreams are connected and are flowed to one another because of something external. I observed also that all the so-called "external" things, if I would just observe what would happen from day to day, I would see the correspondences with internal matters. Knowings in advance, for instance. It becomes even trivial things. But you notice the inside/outside-I was noticing the inside/outside correspondences. A thought of a cat-a second later, dead cat on the road as you drive. A revery, and then something external, so to speak, that continues it, a pattern like it. Just all this pattern patterning was clear. DEVOTEE: It was clearly so? ADI DA SAMRAJ: Yes, so that was the basis, then, on which all these other things occurred, these breakthroughs to the physical domain of these noticings coming out in dreams, visions of the store, and on and on. All the movements of the time. They all suddenly began to happen. And this motion to find a teacher. All of these things. Being given this occult literature by some guy at a party-a sacramental fashion party. [laughter] The whole mass of things themselves corresponded to a pattern prior to the physical events in which I had become fully and directly established through this spontaneous Yoga of the writing period. And so that was the foundation for going on from there. The one-liner view of what I was up to would be something like, I walked around the beach, wrote a bunch of things, burned them up, and got involved with a Greenwich Village Spiritual cult leader. [laughter] But it wasn't that. The ridiculousness of such a reference to My writing Sadhana and My Sadhana with Rudi is so obvious as to be absurd. There is no one-linerism about it. You have to understand what a profound matter all of it was, and remains. I really did mean it when I said earlier, being in the position as I was-having thoroughly made this submission to the point of identification with the body-mind in this world, not knowing what Consciousness Is , not knowing what any thing is , all that-I could not smile on TV. There is no way I could live the usual life. And I absolutely did not do so. So, I am not just talking about-like My father, "someday I am going to have a cattle ranch" kind of thing, you know? Always said he was going to have one someday. So I am not talking through My hat when I talk to you about prapatti and all those things. This was a profound and constantly focused matter. Never has been otherwise. DEVOTEE: It is interesting, Beloved, all that observation that began on the beach of seeing how things that You would see in visions and so on would then correspond, and then, after the Vedanta Temple Event, seeing Your devotees, bringing Your Teaching to all of them. ADI DA SAMRAJ: Yes. All kinds of events happened then that are about this same getting to the depth of the pattern patterning. Ive mentioned one to you recently, but "consider" how remarkable it is, again: I decided to get a motorcycle - this is when Nina and I lived on Tunitas beach-and went to get it. I'd never driven a motorcycle in my life. The guy took me around the block for minutes. So then I drove the motorcycle for, I don't know, a couple or three hours-across main bridges, highways, through the city, back woods, down trails, main highway, beach highway, all of this. And you could imagine the physical stress, exhaustion, all those circumstances, [chuckling] weaving around the middle of highways on bridges and all this-the kind of exhilaration, exhaustion, focus in on that for all those hours out there, physical condition, just as I came in to the dirt roadway to go to the cabin at Tunitas beach. So I am in this sort of ball of energy of that concentration for three hours, and I drive in the gates, slow down-at that very instant, or actually the slowing down itself, just as I entered, was due to two dogs running at Me, in addition to the fact that I was coming to the head of the roadway. So I particularly had to be slowing down, but I was slowing down from quite a fast speed. The two dogs yapping, barking, leaping up-each of them sets their teeth in My calf, just above My boots, and are hanging off My legs. And I could feel the blood trickling down My legs. You know what you would normally would do next-stop the bike and get the dogs off you and so forth. But just at that same moment when I would be about to do that, three people came walking toward Me, each of them separated by a space of maybe to feet or so. But none of them had been aware that the others were there until that very moment when they all saw Me. One of them was there to see Me-had tracked Me down somehow, and had come there to see Me, as I recall. The other two, though, just happened to be there and were looking at the beach, or something or other. These were all three people that I'd known in the past, and all in the same place-when we were in summer stock in New York. DEVOTEE: And they were there in California? ADI DA SAMRAJ: None had seen one another since. Except this one person who had come there to look for Me, they didnt have any reason to be there at the same time. And only one of them had any expectation of seeing Me at all. I stopped short. The dogs are hanging off My legs, the blood flowing down, all that pain, all that thing of the concentration of the hours, these three people, sudden recognition of them, they suddenly recognizing Me, suddenly recognizing one another. [laughter] All of the thiss and that's that have to happen-it just shows you how strong the pattern patterns-brought about this remarkable coincidence. So that was another thing that happened in that time. There were lots of these remarkable coincident moments of the pattern somehow breaking through stronger than the usual way things run. It would be like if you went out and sat in the carport now, and everybody whom you've ever known in any intimate way suddenly appeared there-all your relatives, whatever. Suddenly, right there in front of you, you saw them all, just for a moment, and they were actually there, and then they disappeared. And you came back in. [laughter] Events don't work that way usually. So when you see some extraordinary combination of things-I mean it is one thing to bump into somebody you used to know. But see what a complex matter, how the pattern is revealing itself, to have four people independent of one another, who knew one another previously, meet coincidently-not on the street even. You have to really do some driving to get to the spot that we were in. [Adi Da laughs.] Not like we bumped into another among a mass of people on the street. So this is extraordinary-just that itself. Many such things started happening. In other words, a kind of eruption of all kinds of things demonstrating remarkable coincidence between inside and outside began to appear. And so also then, the visions of the art store in New York where I would find a teacher. FEMALE DEVOTEE: Beloved, what happened to the dogs? ADI DA SAMRAJ: Oh, nothing happened to them. [chuckling] I shook them off My legs and put peroxide on it, or whatever it was. They were the caretakers dogs there. There was a dog incident later, though. I was driving down a road up in the hills and a man there, turns out, trained dogs. I guess he had been in the German army or something. The implication was World War II, or who knows who he did it for. I don't know, didnt really look into it a lot. It was just a couple of rumors. But I was driving on the country road, and there was a large property with fence along it, and dogs were barking loudly. He trained Great Danes as attack dogs and such. It was a huge property, I guess. So as I am going by on the motorcycle, they are starting to bark. They are annoyed by bikes, I guess. And luckily I could see the tail light of a car that was way up ahead of Me, showing it was slowing down, so I slowed down a little more than I would have usually. This guy had left his gate open. So the dogs ran out into the road, and one of them, an immense powerful dog, came curving around toward me-top speed, mouth wide open with its teeth flashing out at Me, roaring at Me practically, and there was the roar of the motorcycle, too. But luckily I must have had it down to something like miles an hour or something- or whatever it was. But not full speed. And this dog just wouldnt quit, you know. But it all happened in a flash [Adi Da snaps His fingers], just like that. He was so huge, he actually did grip the front tire of My bike. He was so aggressive, and he was so massive, that the bike stopped short, like on a dime-just like that. And broke the dogs back as I flew over the top of it, apparently wheeling through the air, I don't know how many times-Evel Knievel style. [Exclamations from devotees.] And the dog must have gone yelping off, pulling itself on its front legs briefly. I don't know. I didnt see it after that. But I did hear that it died. But then I was sprawled out on the road there. But as it turned out, I was totally undamaged. [Adi Da chuckles.] Almost totally. A little abrasion on My shoulder or something. There was probably something lasting about it. Something mechanical in the shoulder slightly affected by it. But I have no outstanding injuries or anything. And they were very happy for Me to sign to have My bike completely fixed. And I settled for it. But we could have made a big deal out of it, I guess. I preferred to lie low. I wasn't there for that kind of game. I didnt want to go down and get back at people. Very unfortunate for the dog. It wasn't an avoidable situation. It was just an instant. I discovered touring around the hills on a motorcycle, that dogs are very much activated by motorcycles. I thought, well, this was going to be so great to go around in the countryside and so forth. [laughter] And it is exactly there that you find so many dogs. I was chased by dogs, run at by dogs, howled at by dogs, these endless dog sounds wherever you go. I thought I would get out to hear some quiet!> The last time I did it, I took Nina on the back, right on Highway , right straight down the Highway. I wanted to see how fast we could go. And then I slowed down, and I took her slowly back to the house and sold it. [Adi Da chuckles.] Because I knew-the bike had rolled over in just pebbles and so forth-it was very unstable, really. It was generally stable on a flat highway, so you would just sort of want to feel the speed, you dare to do it. You feel you have some control over it. But there could have been something. So I saw that there was just nothing rational about it. When it came down to it, the pleasure that was there to be taken required putting people in danger, including this Body here. I never drove it again. Called some guy, called people, people would come to look at it to buy it. I think the most I did was drive reasonably slowly to show somebody. [pause] So what were we talking about before, then? DEVOTEE: We were talking about the writing of Water and Narcissus . ADI DA SAMRAJ: The coincidence of inner and outer was basically the matter, right? DEVOTEE: Beloved, I have a coincidence from something that happened back in the s. I read a book, and then contacted the area study group. I was living in Vancouver at the time, and they directed me to a study group in north Vancouver. I went there. I remember I wasn't too impressed about the guy who was running the study group. I sort of shrugged my shoulders about whether or not I was impressed by the event. ADI DA SAMRAJ: This is a Way of the Heart event, Brian? [laughter] DEVOTEE: There was one guy . . . ADI DA SAMRAJ: Well, first of all, I was talking earlier about the things that you all found interesting, or find satisfying, in your search. If you were serious, yourself, and this was the first point of contact you were able to make or manage relative to something or other that you thought could be interesting, what difference would it make what kind of an event it was? Or how good the lecturer was? Or how impressed you were by anybody ? DEVOTEE: It didnt. ADI DA SAMRAJ: Well, right. But just to emphasize the point. I mean, you were talking as if one should expect it to be such and such a way, and if it isnt, you go on to the next organization. As if that has anything to do with it. It may have something to do with some kinds of doings in life, but when it comes down to this Great Matter, it hasn't got anything to do with anything. And what does She say? DEVOTEE: The Laughing Mama? The Laughing Mama says, "Your objections to any thing don't mean shi-it!"> ADI DA SAMRAJ: You see? Well, this is a Great Matter. You could raise an objection and not be satisfied by the event. It doesn't mean shit. It is not about anything related to the Great Matter. So if that is what you are interested in you think there is maybe something associated with it, your only contact point with which is some kind of an organization. What do you care what its about, what you find when you get there in your first superficial lookings? Why should that turn you away, if you are serious? You know about klik-klak, and you know about people, and you know something about your own game, and you press until you really find out. FEMALE DEVOTEE: Beloved, memory colors it. ADI DA SAMRAJ: Yes. Tcha. It makes you prefigure expectations and then you use them to measure what is going on in front of you. And in some sense that is just all a matter of taste, or reaction, or not, and so forth. But even so, that's neither here nor there. If you are there for a serious purpose, whether the event was good or bad-or lets say even if it was good-that doesn't mean that it has answered anything that you are there to be serious about. You still have to get on with it, if you are serious. Do it all profoundly. DEVOTEE: Well, I went running. [laughter] ADI DA SAMRAJ: [in an affected Irish accent:] "Oh dear, we almost lost you! Is that it, Brian-y?" [laughter] "Could have been swallowed up in the streets. We all have been fretting ever since!" [Adi Da laughs.] No, no, of course not. And so? DEVOTEE: Well, anyway, there was one guy at the event who I remembered being impressed by. The following day I went to take my car to be repaired. I went to this place about miles south of where I lived to get my car repaired. And while my car was being repaired, I went into the mechanics living room. And this person who had been at the study group the night before was sitting there. He had apparently made an appointment for his car also. ADI DA SAMRAJ: Ah, tcha. DEVOTEE: It was miles away. And so I spent an hour talking to him about You and Your Work. It was a key event in drawing me to the Way of the Heart. ADI DA SAMRAJ: That's good. DEVOTEE: I could see that pattern. ADI DA SAMRAJ: Good. [long pause] Also, if you observe the characteristics of the Siddhis associated with My Manifestation, perhaps now you can understand a little something better about how it works, so to speak. In "considering" this sign of the writing Sadhana, and what I just said about it, and have said before of course-not only this matter of the coincidence of inner and outer, but what I said about this matter of being established at the pattern level, this most direct focusing, even prior, then, to the gross level of appearance and functioning, and such. So many aspects of the uncommon signs, generally called siddhis, function from the pattern level, rather than from the outside, the gross level, in. When you want to do something ordinarily to change something, you do something physical, or something in the realm of your functional, psycho-physical existence. Of course, you see this Body functioning in that context of Doings, but with respect to what is called "Siddhi". Whatever other Signs may appear to accompany the fundamental "Gestures" (if you will) and all of that, it is a Work at the pattern level, a Glance at the pattern level, whatever it may be according to the Sign that arises. But it is an Ability to be effective at that level. So that is the level which you try to reach when you do the Devotional Prayer of Changes-that is what you are trying to affect, the pattern that precedes all the gross events. At that level, whatever pictures, thoughts, or feelings, are associated with generating that, or making the pattern (whatever it is) there. You want it to be straight, so that whatever comes out in the gross plane is as you would have it. So, in the Devotional Prayer of Changes, effectively, then, you are reaching to the pattern level, or at least trying to affect it, through (let us say) a visualization. So that is the level on which I was already focused long ago. You see, that's "previous Sadhana in the Body to conform it to My Self" activity. And why did it result in that particular focus and begin to start showing remarkable signs, after which remarkable signs always were happening, and even now? Of course, it is more and more magnified, complex, and all the rest of it, as it unfolds. But, for the Vehicle with which I am associated to function as extension of Me, it had to be Conformed to Me in all kinds of ways, which required a Great Process, "Bright" Yoga-and struggle with the gross level to Conform it. So that itself was the Ground of Siddhi, as well as the Ground of the Process being able to continue. It is this capability to function effectively in the context of the pattern that is patterning. It is the Pleasure Dome capability, ultimately. So it spontaneously manifested in the course of the "Sadhana Years" in My own Case, and had its purpose there for that. But then, as I told you, as soon as that Yoga was done, to Conform that Body-Mind to Me-that would be the context of My Fully Awakened Emergence. Just at that same time, when the "Machine", so to speak, had done It's Work, the Machine It'self-Which is a kind of pattern-persisted, such that what I noticed immediately next is that I am "Meditating" others. I noticed that the field of My "Meditation" is, in fact, expanding, and the conscious associations, or the associations altogether, of My Samadhi, now Realized, extend to all. I was exercising exactly the same functions already developed in the course of the ordeal of My Sadhana. Those, continuing as a pattern for Me, remained, in the Awakened Condition in all the years following. Why would you then expect, necessarily, to Awaken to the seventh stage of life as My devotee, and all of a sudden have a lot of siddhis? What does that Awakening have to do with having a lot of siddhis? Well, because of Spiritual Fullness and so forth, there may be some. But basically it is, as I said, a Transfigured existence of Divine Recognition that becomes Indifference. It is not about developing any kind of siddhis, you see. So why would any appear, if any did? Why would anything unusual at all appear? Well, there would have to have been the process of conforming the body-mind to Me, in your relationship to Me, such that there was this clear Awakening at the pattern level, a course in which that Awakening begins to display remarkable signs in the more grossly patterning dimension. There are a great many things that become self-evident from the pattern point of view. That is Wisdom, you see. And likewise there are, in a glance from there into the daily life, spontaneous noticings that you are effective, more remarkably, because your gesture is made from the pattern level rather than at the gross level. It is a much more direct way of being positively effective in the context of all aspects of conditional existence. I actually can see the pattern, the pattern itself. Through the ordinary natural features of this Body, I see what you see, generally speaking, as you describe it-the sense-perceptions and all of that. But My Sensibility is at the pattern level as well, and primarily there in terms of functioning in this context. I don't function from the Body in. I function from Me to you. [Devotees murmur.] So I Am not the Body first. I Am Appearing through this Body. I Am Appearing through this Body. Body covers everything-everything gross, subtle, causal. Therefore, all kinds of associations in the plastic ether. So, you all know something about this as it goes on in Me, as Me, around Me, and so on. So it becomes rather routine, then. If there is anything going on in the weather, everybody always tells Me about it. But not only do they tell Me about it, they send Me detailed reports that may be useful as points of contact for Me in My Regard of it-just so that I will basically just get the feeling of it, what it is, what that structure is, and simply intend positively about it. FEMALE DEVOTEE: Beloved, is that part of why You listen to the news every day? ADI DA SAMRAJ: That is part of why I do everything. This Body is Yogi. It conformed to What I am here to Do. It is Conformed to My Constant Resolution in terms of Associating here, in the pattern level. So you sense something about this, because you show Me these weather reports. Not because you think I then go to My room, [slow and dramatic] close the curtains, take off My dhoti, revealing a solid gold body [laughter] (say it is a hurricane approaching Naitauba or somewhere, from some direction), and then I fly, in this gold body-or I run out the back somewhere [laughter], when I get someplace that I am not seen, then I fly-and I go out, over the ocean in the South Pacific somewhere, and blo-o-ow My exhalations really big, and affect the storm very directly, physically, that way [laughter], and then fly back, somehow creep back in unobserved, put My dhoti and shawl on again, and walk out and say, [shouting] "Do you have that weather report yet?!" You don't think that is how I do it. [laughter] [tongue in cheek] Yes, that is precisely how I do it!> No, you don't tell Me the weather report, of a hurricane coming or whatever it might be, because you expect I will do something like that. You don't know quite how it works altogether, but you know that it does work. I assume people are generally sure it doesn't happen the way I just described it, but that there is something else, something on what doesn't look like the physical plane kind of level of activity. But if it is a matter of some effectiveness required in the gross, then there has to be association with the pattern within which everything gross appears. In other words, it can't be a matter of some activity somewhere, somewhere "beyond, beyond, beyond", that affects this. The pattern has to be affected at some level. You don't presume that it is likely I go out there in some physical form, impervious like Superman or something, and actually physically blow the winds around and so forth, and that that is how the weather gets affected positively when you tell Me about the weather beforehand. So you don't really presume that I do anything physical about the storm in that sense. So you must be presuming I am doing something else on a level that is subtler than the physical storm. And it is something like that people would generally say is about as much as they know about it. Something like that. So that is why you tell Me. And then if there is something significan't, I may ask for frequent reports or updates whenever they occur. Over and over again this exercise has been gone through, and it has been actually documented in the Archives. And then all these positive weather changes happen. And then, it is remarkable, with this hurricane here [Adi Da is referring to Hurricane Iniki, which hit Kauai in ], I wasn't told about it until it was so huge and close that the gross pattern is happening faster than the patterning level of patterning can affect it within the space of how things happen in the usual conjunction of gross events. So this is why I had to criticize how it was done. I should have been told in advance-if this is ever possible. Sometimes, maybe its not. But if it is possible, obviously, and you want Me to somehow have My Regard relative to this, you should be telling Me beforehand, because the pattern that is patterning has to be affected. You presume I am going to affect it at the pattern level, because you don't think I am going to go fly down into the ocean. So, right, it is a matter of regarding the pattern directly. It is a very complex matter altogether, but it is basically that: being able to affect the pattern level directly by Regard. You do the Devotional Prayer of Changes based on the same principle. This is the technical side of it. The pattern side of everything that is grossly appearing can itself be concentrated upon and affected even by various means without going there directly. As I said, you can picture, as in the Devotional Prayer of Changes, and affect the pattern. That's how it works. If it works that way, you can use the principles of the plastic to work for you that way. And you don't have to go directly to the pattern level itself, but you can affect it very directly. And it is not all black and white magic, either-like "snicker-snack", and be in charge of the world, merely by My Intention. No, it is not possible. It is not that kind of a thing at all. Yes, to Bless all, fine. Be able to do the Work that I Do, yes. But it is not about being able to become klik-klak, you know? It has nothing to do with that, at all-any more than you can make everything perfect, according to your will, by doing the Devotional Prayer of Changes in your position. DEVOTEE: Beloved, a year after that big hurricane, we had another one coming towards us. And it got really close-in fact in a high stage of alert. That one we did inform You about. You probably remember, You made it turn around. ADI DA SAMRAJ: Tcha. Ive told you about the grid-hm? That is an aspect of the pattern level. So to be functioning at the pattern level is something like that. It is possible to be anywhere in that context merely by intending it. Likewise, if you are in My Position, it is possible to Bless every thing and every one, simply by that Gesture-and be felt by every thing and every one. So it is the capability to exercise such Siddhi in the Enlightened Disposition that is the import of this. It is not an ability to "take over the world" kind of-[in a dramatic voice] "Suddenly I discovered I was klik-klak! [laughter] And I'm back! Bigger than ever, folks! You've got a God now!" [Adi Da makes an "evil" laugh.] DEVOTEE: Ohh! Scary. [laughter] ADI DA SAMRAJ: [Adi Da laughs hard and long.] Well, that is the face on Steeplechase Park. [Beloved Adi Da is referring to George C. Tilyous Steeplechase Park in Coney Island when He was a boy-there was a large, laughing clown face at the entrance.] But you see, that is not Me. That is klik-klak. The one you always imagine when you get religious, the one you always think must exist-that's klik-klak! [Adi Da laughs.] Because that is the one who is in charge of the world, who creates the world, right? He is everything about the world, and justifying and blessing the world as world in and of itself for its own sake, somehow, as long as it serves a purpose in the pattern on into the future. Klik-klak. Of course, this commonly created, or conceived, deity is not just a vision of evil. Because there is the heart-disposition associated with it, so it is also benign. But it is ego-based. It is not utterly I'lluminated. It is bound in the body, so it doesn't see that what it is gesturing toward is a kind of deification of klik-klak. If you don't watch out, if you don't wake up, if you don't find the Wise Man, you don't find the Way. Then youll be worshipping not the God Who is ultimately Beyond the world, but the God who is the world, the God you can't have without having the world. That is klik-klak. That God is just teddy-bear to console you in the world. Why does it seem so strange, if you've ever seen in movies where dolls of little children suddenly become evil-with kniving, gnashing teeth and that sort of thing? It looks especially evil in the form of something that has otherwise been associated with something so innocent. DEVOTEE: Beloved? It is interesting to feel the difference that associates with the God of klik-klak, and the God of the Prior Condition, of Consciousness. And to see how it is actually attention that does that. It seems that attention suddenly becomes the God of klik-klak, or klik-klak itself. ADI DA SAMRAJ: Mm-hm. You become what you meditate on, what you've invested with your presence of being, and the characteristics that are inherent only in your own position. So you in effect worship everything to which you grant attention. It is just that you have so many things that you give attention to, that truly what you worship is what you give maximum attention to. What are the outstanding uses of your attention? You are effectively worshipping that, or meditating on it, holding it steady, holding yourself steady in that condition, disposition, relationship-whatever it is. So, whatever the attention holds, whatever configuration, in your presence of being-the sign of feeling of That Which is only in the Prior Place is superimposed (in your disposition) on everything, and everything is measured in a play about that. But when you are not investing yourself in whatever in particular, then you are outside it and it is sort of comic, in some ways. Or you may be sympathetic with it, but it is not you . You can sit and read the obituaries night and day, and maybe you ponder death and this and that and everything else, but after a while it doesn't affect you profoundly to know that whoever passed. You know: everybody does. It doesn't affect you. But, if you receive the news, of course, of someone you know, are intimate with, or whatever else, then it affects you directly. Then you are in the picture. And there is nothing comic about it because you are inside it. And you are not free to make the gesture of being sympathetic with it. You are stuck with it. It's not cool! You are not cool in that. And you are not supposed to be. It is your conjunction with a pattern that is your initiation or test or whatever it is. In other words, the means of how all these conjunctions happen, whereby you are going to have to deal with this thing that everybody does have to deal with. So there is no reason to be cool or detached from it. When it occurs, then you have to exercise everything you've got. DEVOTEE: It feels when someone is dying, that its in effect a part of you dying. ADI DA SAMRAJ: You are in the pattern with them. DEVOTEE: We were "considering" earlier tonight what you associate with yourself. We were talking about, you know, its your body, then begins to become relations, and then daily events. All this immediate association is associated with "you". ADI DA SAMRAJ: Yes. With that presumption, that persistence, and all the rest of it that you call "you", but in doing so are referring to your body-mind, and don't notice that that is an error. Having made that first error, what else is the Truth about you? It is already false. What could be true from there? It can be actual, factual, but it can't be True in the sense of about Truth anymore. So you are not going to be finding any Truth in all your seeking, whatever else you may get temporarily, or be seeing temporarily. The matter of getting at Truth, or What Is , means the first thing you have to do is get beyond the limit you have established by presuming an illusion, or presuming something in error as the basis for everything else. So, in some sense, what I am suggesting is that you shouldnt do any sadhana but the "Perfect Practice". How can I argue for doing anything less than that? Because if you "consider" anything thus, thus, and thus, there is no justification for doing anything else! [laughter] Right? That is what I am arguing. That is so. But you are not in the position to not do what precedes the "Perfect Practice". That's the paradox. DEVOTEE: It's a paradox, Beloved, because when You say to us "Isnt it true that no matter what arises you are merely the Witness?", suddenly, by activating attention in that "consideration", we can Stand as that. ADI DA SAMRAJ: Yes, but youd have to persist in that Stand to do the second stage of the "Perfect Practice". It has to be always already the case. The second stage of the "Perfect Practice" isnt constantly reminding yourself, "Isnt it true that I am always already the Witness?" and then you get that far and then you ask again, "Isnt it true . . ." [laughter] No. The second stage of the "Perfect Practice" is the one you do when you plain old are in the Prior Position of Consciousness It'self, the Witness. That Which is otherwise the Witness is Consciousness It'self. You can't do the second stage of the "Perfect Practice" unless you are Consciousness It'self. It is done as such. It is entirely about devotion to Me and Shakti Yoga and all the rest, as well. All in one simultaneity. So there is no argument to do anything but that, but you can't do that ! [Devotees moan.] That is what you keep telling Me, you fools! You are so wound up in Coney Island, that you say "Yes, the Witness", but the next minute I say, "Lets go on and Contemplate from here", and you tell Me, "I can't get there from here!" Because you are already on that limb out there nipping on those fruits before I get enough time to explain the second stage of the "Perfect Practice". You've already gone back to the fruits. In other words, just to have enough thought-mind to "consider" what the next step is, you have to stop being the Witness already. So, it is not enough to be able to locate, somehow or other, the sense of the Witness-Position. I have given you all kinds of ways you can do that, as a matter of this locating it in this moment. And you are capable of doing that, because that bird is always in the tree. But that is not the "Perfect Practice". And you can't do anything more than that if that is all you can do. So, you are not equipped to do the "Perfect Practice" until you are in a position where you are not in the fruit-eating-bird position, but in the Witness-bird position. So, when you actually are plain old That, then you can do the "Perfect Practice". In the fruit-eating-bird position, you can turn attention any way you like so you can "consider" this question of Mine, "Isnt it true, no matter what is arising now, you are in the Witness-Position?" Fruit-eating bird says, "Absolutely, that other bird is right over here, where I am." All of a sudden he is Witness-bird, before he finishes his sentence. The sentence, in fact, leads him to it, or is the means of him being established in it. It is like a previous sentence he said, but he is telling it in reverse, and winds up in the Position Where he said it. [laughter] DEVOTEE: But then you ask another question. ADI DA SAMRAJ: Do you understand what I just said? DEVOTEE: Yes, Beloved. ADI DA SAMRAJ: Well, that's what it is. As Ramana Maharshi said, focus on the "I" thought and locate its source, since "I" is the basis of any other sentence you say. "I want to walk to the grocery store." Well, say it backwards. "Blah-blah-blah-blah-blah-blah I." You see? You just keep staying on that-instead of going on to the rest of the sentence. It actually is Mind-Dharma in some sense then, and not directness, or something done from the responsibility-position. But it is a curious way of going about this locating the Witness. But you've got to do it over and over and over again. The sadhana is the sadhana you do as the Witness, or once there is the establishment as just that. It is not the Witness "witnessing"-it is not the observer-position. The Witness is just Consciousness. It is not even attention. It has no content. It is just Consciousness It'self. So the Domain of Consciousness It'self is the Asana. That is the Asana in which I am found, My Spiritual Blessing is found, in this Domain of No-"Difference", Consciousness It'self. So it is only when you are just that, plain old-now, now, now, now, now, now, now, non-stop-that you can do the second stage of the "Perfect Practice". So it is not about any exercise, any trick to get you to locate yourself as Consciousness Prior to any object or even attention. That is just a useful exercise to locate it now and yet at another time. Like right now: Isnt it true, no matter what is arising, you are the Witness, even Prior to attention? Consciousness? DEVOTEE: Beloved, why wouldnt it be useful for us to practice the first stage of the "Perfect Practice"? ADI DA SAMRAJ: It is useful, as exactly what you do by using My Word in the context of the "consideration" of My Teaching about this matter. Weve talked about this-I guess it was mainly at the Mountain Of Attention we discussed it at length-about how My "Perfect Practice" Teaching is to be used by all devotees from the beginning. You already use it regularly in the form of recitations around Pujas even and such. It is supposed to be studied by devotees from the beginning, not kept in a vault and shown only to those who get to a certain stage. DEVOTEE: Right, but not as a formal practice. ADI DA SAMRAJ: A formal practice in the sense that you "consider" My Word, and My Word includes all of this that can bring you into the sense of the Witness. Including conversations like this one, which will be used as part of the "Perfect Practice" "consideration" by all devotees in the future wherein, as weve done even here this evening, and in a concentrated way again and again and again during the first couple of weeks, all those in the "consideration", and then anybody who studies it in transcript, or whatever, actually did this locating. Because that second bird is always in the tree, you see? And then persisted in it, from there to further "consideration", from there and around that and back and forth about everything. But the fact that you can notice that there is the other bird, the Witness-bird, in the tree, doesn't mean that you are prepared to live as the other bird in the tree. Your fruit-eating-bird position can be abandoned. You can be established in the Witness by a certain "consideration" in the moment, but you do not remain there. It is some sort of special gesturing that the mechanism of that fruit-eating bird allows you to somehow be Prior to it. It is just a moment-it is kind of magical, even. But it has to be done again and again because you are always in this fruit-eating-bird position otherwise. Yes, you are supposed to enter into My "considerations" even from the beginning-not as your formal moment to moment practice, but as regular "consideration" as a practitioner, even from the beginning. And more fully doing what your present stage of practice is. Nonetheless, this is among the things that are supposed to be intensively studied, or studied with regularity as part of the regular cultural process. And then it gets intensified in practicing stage three. Like in the final . phase and the . phase itself, listening is concentrating on My Word about hearing. So it is a direct "consideration" of that that leads, ultimately, to the confession of hearing-the reality, the capability that is hearing. Same thing with the transition to the "Perfect Practice". It wouldnt just happen, as I have Given it, out of the blue. The practice itself is all oriented in that "consideration" of the "Perfect Practice". Even all the stages of practice are, because they all must be felt to be really, truly preliminary to this "Perfect Practice". So what was I talking about in particular with you? DEVOTEE: Well, just about how all devotees should "consider" the "Perfect Practice" as part of their regular study. ADI DA SAMRAJ: Yes. And so exercise this "consideration". The pondering, for instance, that might be engaged from the beginning, "making use of the Ten Questions" kind of practice, contains this. So it is there as a pondering matter, if practiced as I have Given it with everything else that is there, as a dimension of the "conscious process" associated with Ishta-Guru-Bhakti Yoga. Any one of those Ten Questions could, if fully just engaged, felt, function as one of these pointers to the Witness-Position. Some seem to suggest something or other more specifically than others. So, of course, this is a part of the practice. The "Perfect Practice" is what you are preparing for, because you have heard My Word about the "Perfect Practice", so your preparations are all associated with it, and that "consideration" must be there, including this "locating the Witness" kind of "consideration"-exercise. But you wouldnt do it in meditation. It is generally done in conjunction with going to My Word and studying it, and that is the "consideration" there and this is how you locate it. We talked also about regular cultural incidents being built into the structure throughout the year, which are-some day, or whatever it may be, a period or whatever-devoted precisely to this "consideration" by the entire community. So, in other words, extending this very fundamental aspect of everything into some kind of expected cultural form. That is what we discussed, and that should be happening. So, certainly, yes, you should "consider" the "Perfect Practice". Obviously-just as I am doing it with you now. If it werent appropriate to be discussing this matter with any but those who had Realized it, then none of you would have been invited. [laughter] No. This is something that I am "considering", and must "consider" with those who haven't realized it yet, but who are devotees of Mine. This is what it is about. And even those who have come to these gatherings are relative beginners, at any rate, in this Way. There is still the second bird in your tree and it is so right now. And I am pointing it out to you. And yes, that was worth doing, then. So it should be a regular part of the culture for you to be reminded and reminding yourselves of this, with some appropriate frequency. The study of My existing Word on everything relating to the matter of the "Perfect Practice", and now everything that has been being summarized in this several-week period here so far, will become a body of study and made use of in various ways culturally and so on-a body of My Teaching-Word that will be used by everyone much more profoundly than ever before.   SECTION VII> The "consideration" that I have been having for several weeks with a few is the Way of the Heart. All of this profundity-that is what it is. Not "Ugly Church, Incorporated". [laughter] DEVOTEE: That is what You meant by "new", "new religion". ADI DA SAMRAJ: Yes. In some sense, I am generating a new religion here, because, even during My Lifetime, with everything straight out Given to you, you were turning it into something else. Not that that fact was remarkable-you know, that is how you all do it in the tooth of klik-klak. DEVOTEE: The Laughing Mama entered. ADI DA SAMRAJ: Yes. Laughing Man Institute. Well, that is the guy on George C. Tilyous amusement park. DEVOTEE: That's right. ADI DA SAMRAJ: You just used a picture of Me laughing for the logo of the Laughing Man Institute. I don't know if that suggested klik-klak-did it? DEVOTEE: No, it was just about Your "Crazy" Wisdom. ADI DA SAMRAJ: But that's "Laughing Man", in fact. Those smiling people on TV I'm talking to you about when I was a boy. That was klik-klak. You could still do the Laughing Man Institute, meaning klik-klak. Not that we are promoting klik-klak, but its "That's what we are going to be telling you about in here" kind of a thing, you see, "we are going to cover this and deal with this business here, right off the bat" kind of thing. You know, this, just like the secrets that have to be revealed at the end of The Mummery , is one of the secrets of the world. One of the most profound secrets of the world-also, in and of itself, profoundly negative. That is why people get disheartened when they read scientific discourse. Because, yes, this does seem to be true, something about this is true. "But is there nothing else?"> [in a matter-of-fact tone] "No, absolutely not, this is all there is."> "Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!" [laughter] How these scientists just rap: [in a low, matter-of-fact tone] "Everything is just material or bizarre", however they say it. They are the people on TV I saw as a boy. Smiling such that it looked like they had great understanding, had answered all questions, were living the Divine Life, all that. And nothing of the kind was true. DEVOTEE: A mummery. ADI DA SAMRAJ: Yes. So these guys are like salesmen. They can't wait to tell you one more reason why there is nothing but plastic. DEVOTEE: My Lord, You've mentioned it now several times in the last few days-the smiling people on TV. ADI DA SAMRAJ: Yes. You all know what I am referring to when I say that, right? DEVOTEES: Yes. Oh, yes. ADI DA SAMRAJ: The particular thing I told you about from when I was a boy. DEVOTEE: Like Quiz Show . ADI DA SAMRAJ: So, to be very clear about it, I am talking about a particular kind of program that I just have a generalized memory of. There was the one host who was on TV over and over again in the area where I watched TV (we only got it when I was around ). So there was this omnipresent television host. Even at night, when there was almost nothing on but wrestling, this guy announced the wrestling at ringside. I even saw him one time. My father took me to see wrestling, and you could see him over on the other side blah-blah-blah-ing. But then hed be on everything else, too. He was like a kind of TV deity of a kind. He was the host of everything. And so that is the kind of the quality he had with my limited experiencing of TV, then. But he was on all kinds of things, including a morning program, which, now that I am thinking about it, "considering" it, I think that is what I am referring to. And I would just sit there just amazed, really, at what I was seeing. [laughter] Because-it really wasn't there was any mystery to Me, like I had to wait until I grew up to find this out-I knew about klik-klak. I could see, these people are not like Me, either. This was another noticing, like I noticed about My mother and father, and on and on. Heres another noticing, here it is on TV. And this is My first experience of seeing people being like this. See, My parents are just a couple of people walking down the street, arguing or whatever, daily "blah-blah-blah". These are people on TV, these are the stars . These are something like the heads of the world, or something. They are the happiest people in the world, the best people in the world to be on TV-otherwise somebody else would be on there. [laughter] Anyway, TV human is right there, all of a sudden, out of the blue. I had never seen anything like it before. And it was just remarkable to Me. Of course, I saw it elsewhere, too, but, you know, TV is a whole other frame in which to even see it. I was just looking at total bullshit ! [laughter] At ten or twelve, whatever year it was, it was a vision of life in toto-"That was the world, folks!" [Adi Da laughs.] That was a grand confirmation of a certain kind, tacitly-that people could even do the whole thing, they are up in big-time now, they don't have the usual problems to deal with, they have something else, whatever it is, but this is as good as it gets. And they are doing the same thing as your mother and father in the kitchen. It is just that they are selling it. They don't know what a single thing is . "Bright"? You know, they don't want to hear anything about the "Bright"? "What in the world you talkin about, Frank? [Adi Da laughs.] Just wait for Jesus, and go to school, and be good! Be nice to your mom!" [laughter] So I saw that they were bullshitting. DEVOTEE: Beloved, it was just occurring to me, just now as You were talking about all that, that in my early childhood, definitely until the time I met You, I always had the assumption that I didnt know what I was talking about. ADI DA SAMRAJ: Until what age? DEVOTEE: Until I met You. So I was relatively quiet around people, because I always thought if I said anything they would know I didnt know what I was talking about. [laughter] ADI DA SAMRAJ: Is that about anything at all? DEVOTEE: I think that was. I wasn't totally sure about a lot of things. ADI DA SAMRAJ: And you must have thought then that other people did generally know about the things that you didnt know anything about. DEVOTEE: I was hoping they did, but I was suspicious. ADI DA SAMRAJ: Well, I found out that nobody was like Me. [Adi Da chuckles.] So, in other words, watching how the pattern is patterning and so forth, I located My own Position in this context. But what we began to address at the beginning of this is this whole matter of Siddhis operating from the pattern position. That's the position toward which you are gesturing, but always from the physical position on toward it, because its not known to you, you don't know what it is. If you were to get just to the pattern level, there's a possibility of confusions and illusions in that same context because youre reaching ego-based, from the gross position, toward it. That Which is the Truth is beyond the pattern anyway. So in all your gesturing toward, left to your self-"guruing" for as many lifetimes as it took, youd get to klik-klak-land. [Adi Da laughs.] DEVOTEE: I was thinking, when You were describing that TV personality, Lord . . . ADI DA SAMRAJ: For Me, he was the perfect image of klik-klak. DEVOTEE: Yes. ADI DA SAMRAJ: Well, he is certainly not as a human being individually, but having seen him as being the one that was on the screen as I noticed this, he is, therefore, the best image to fill it out, fill out that archetype, fill out the picture of it. You know? Or one of the good ones. He is like George C. Tilyous clown face. Go on. DEVOTEE: Beloved, I was feeling how TV is the modern icon of klik-klak. ADI DA SAMRAJ: Yes, there are a lot of images everywhere, put in the public face constantly, that have that klik-klak quality. Even gets more so as the style of visualization becomes more computerized. Computer-made everything is very klik-klakkish, because it is empty of anything but plastic "considerations". It is even made of these little klik-klakky things, you see! [laughter] You want your world in "high resolution". You don't want to see those little klik-klakky things lined up there, you know? They look beautiful on the surface. You don't want to see this room klik-klakky. You want to keep it Pleasure Dome-ish. Your brain takes care of a lot of that for you, by controlling how it appears for you. But if you could see it in its origin, at the actual place where you become associated with perception, it is just klik-klak. It is the temple of klik-klak. You see how good klik-klak is to you? [laughter] He gives you a brain, a body there, that smoooooothes off the edges of that klik-klak, gives you high resolution human lifetimes. Very high percentage of the time. See what a good Uncle Klik-Klak that klik-klak is? So you must really be in a very nice place that loves you. [laughter] You may remember, some nights back, we were talking about how, in the future, the community might make Murtis in a unique fashion-by using evidence of one kind or another, something usable with future technology, to make virtually real forms of whatever, such that they could make a virtually real Murti of Me somehow. But based fully on, during My physical Lifetime, information somehow that makes it completely, virtually real. So we talked about that as a way to make a Murti in a truly sacred place set aside for great Puja and such, you see-not something to hang on your mirror in your automobile. But it tends rather immediately to become klik-klakkish even to do it just in one position in a Hall with all sacred association focused there. It still tends to be klik-klakkish a bit. I think, feeling it now, this might be one of the reasons why, in the aesthetic of India, they paint temples and the images in them so gaudily. Perhaps it is klik-klakkish, or perhaps it is a way to avoid being klik-klakkish, since there is something inherently klik-klakkish about a stone figure, whatever it is. And so something about the klik-klakkishness of it is exaggerated-these bright colors, and so forth. Somehow the exaggerating of it slightly serves to keep it sacred at the same time, perhaps. But any kind of a Murti form, apart from this Form of it, any replica beyond My bodily Form here, is klik-klakkish somehow, potentially. Because it is a duplicate. Wherever there is a duplicate, there is a slight shift. Any more duplicates, something gets changed about it. And then that change gets official. And then it gets klik-klakked. It becomes a sequence of changes rather than sameness after all. So only the thing itself, so to speak, is whatever that is altogether. As soon as you get into replicas, you get klik-klakkish inherently. And therefore to make a super-technical Murti-not just a photograph, something more complicated-is even more klik-klakkish, inherently, for plastic reasons, because of the exploitation of that. There must be great artfulness in it. The closest impression, the most direct impression, is the best Murti, or first replica, which should be the standard, then. Photographs work well as a servant of the manner people perceived in this time. Anything else has got a little klik-klak in it inherently, and wed have to be very artful, then, to keep it from becoming that, to keep it from becoming a mummery. Why do you think I call it The Mummery ? The mummery is life. Something like that is going to be said at the end of each performance of The Mummery . Life is a mummery unless you make it not so. Life is klik-klak, unless you magnify the heart-principle. FEMALE DEVOTEE: Beloved, I was thinking about the impressions of Your Body that we have made in plaster. Even though they are more solid in a certain way, because they are a direct impression of Your actual physical Form, there is a certain way in which that breaks the klik-klakkishness of an otherwise gross material form. ADI DA SAMRAJ: Yes. Some have chosen, in making a sculpture, sculpted objects, to leave a lot of signs of the sculpturalness of it in their working-the slightly unfinished dab here and there and so forth-for that reason, to get out of the klik-klakkish surface quality that it would tend to get as soon as it is cast. They usually work in a softer material when making the mold, in other words, and then it is eventually made into a bronze. Metal is even more klik-klakkish than clay. So they leave all these impressions all over it of something organic, something touched by the human hand, and all that. It becomes part of the aesthetic in it, especially in a time like this where things are more and more machine-like. In the classic Greek era, th century B.C., the aesthetic was super-clean. Very often, at any rate, this is the style of the aesthetic there. But it wasn't a "de-humanizing" world, so to speak, as you would say in comparison to the modern era. These people were out in the country, in clean air, and people would go to these places-these temples and whatnot-the people would have some kind of means and so forth. So their world was hands-on enough that, when they made sculpture, they could develop an aesthetic that was so refined it made even the human body look like it was Divine somehow-it is plastic, so Divine as might be imagined from some point of view of some aesthetic notion. In that case, it was very physical, very much showing the features, the physicality of figures, not generalizing them like Mickey and Minnie Mouse legs and such. They were very much defining the physicality, the musculature and so forth. A lot of the nude, then, especially, is shown, but in a very refined way. Like Raphael is very refined in painting. All kinds of aesthetic. Then, as the modern era begins, I was thinking of sculptors like Rodin, for instance. In Rodin we see this very tactile surface rather than a refined classical one. It is because, perhaps, something was in danger of being lost and had to be especially emphasized. It was losing touch. He tried to be touch-impressive on whatever he was showing you. You didnt see any objects, any person, without seeing Rodins hands all over it somehow. It was a kind of affirmation of tactility, of touch, that particular sense. But you can see that in many sculptors before. Any sculptor has to do that. But in this case it was done in a mode that shows the hand that worked, rather than the hand being so clever that it can actually duplicate something that looks like a human leg. You've got a human leg, yes, in all respects it is clearly that. But it has all kinds of impression of Rodins touch all over it. So there is a lot of that in certain aspects of the modern period of art. And not in other periods, especially. It didnt seem that they were concerned about losing touch. They wanted to magnify, perhaps, something else-something about sight, something about this, that, and the other thing. They didnt like being held down to earth, to "touch", in the earth sense. Somehow that wasn't their thing to affirm. They wanted to gesture beyond that, somehow. So Rodins is, in some sense, a rather gross aesthetic. An interesting one, nonetheless. But that is its sign. It is far away from Raphael in some sense, or Phidias, the sculptor at the time of the Parthenon. I once said something, in a history class sometime, that was really surprising to people there, but to Me seemed perfectly obvious. We were, in effect, supposed to do samyama-or at least I did anyway-on the Parthenon, the Greek temple remnant. "Parthenon" means "the place of the temple of the virgin, or Athena", right? DEVOTEES: Yes. ADI DA SAMRAJ: A Greek Devi-figure, you see. And you all must have seen pictures, or maybe you have even been to the site. You know something about the Parthenon visually, right? There are huge pillars and massive essentially white marble. Very massive-that is what impresses you when you go there, how huge it is compared to your own physical size trying to move about in it. But what was this place for? It was a temple. It was made to house, therefore, a murti-form, a deity-figure. And there was a gigantic one in there-made of gold, or covered in gold, whatever. There is historical record that confirms its existence. So that is what was there, this gigantic gold female deity-figure, Shakti-figure, Quandra-figure, Devi-figure, Ma-figure-but huge. And that's Her house. Everything is huge: Huge pillars, huge walls, huge surfaces. So anyway, they are describing all of this even in the circumstance of the history class "consideration". And they go on in a lot of detail, in all kinds of endless thiss and that's, slides and pictures, and talk and reading, and on and on. And it comes to the temple, showing the approach up to it, and the steps to the place, that you have to walk up to get into the temple, are bigger than a person can step up on. And the professor is saying that nobody has come up with a satisfactory explanation for this yet. [laughter] I already suggested to you what it is. What could be more obvious? This is Her house, you see. So the steps are for Her "convenience", so to speak. It is in Her scale, in other words. She is the Queen. You don't get your steps to Her doorway! You get Her steps to Her doorway, and She lets you in. I mean, the whole form of the building clearly indicates why those steps are bigger than human beings naturally step. And you particularly feel this if you are on the site. Ive been there. And you really physically feel how much bigger they are than would be comfortable for human beings to use as the steps of approach to this place. It is an initial reminder of the deity. It humbles you, and puts you in Her scale so you feel where you are at. It seems to Me a straightforward architectural device. Seemed to be some mystery, however, still, to people at that time. Why would it become unclear? All of a sudden, because you are at the entrance to the temple, it is supposed to be your territory? DEVOTEES: No. ADI DA SAMRAJ: [Laughs] It didnt even occur to him that these are the steps of the deity-which is the most obvious thing to say that it is at first. If somebody proves it had some other purpose, too, fine. But I don't see why there would be any mystery about it. This would be an obvious thing to say first. And when I mentioned it, it seemed to Me like he was completely surprised and it was so obvious, but that he really didnt want to acknowledge that I had said it. [laughter] And maybe he, if the opinion has changed, got credit for it somehow along the line. I don't know. But he was kind of trying to make nothing of it, while at the same time what I was saying was perfectly obvious, as if it was a slide on the screen right in front of our eyes right at that moment. [Adi Da laughs.] But that was just what felt to Me an obvious remark. Well, what were we talking about? DEVOTEE: The difference of modern art, trying to keep the human in art by making the viewer aware of the artists themselves. ADI DA SAMRAJ: Well, I wouldnt say modern art tries to keep the human in the art, exactly. But there is a struggle in it, which you can see in Rodin. He was rather early on in this industrial-revolution modernization of everything-and lasted well into it, actually, as well. He was showing something about the tension that existed then. Everything was becoming slick everywhere else-slick as steam engines or whatever. Slick, smooth sculptural surface seemed to suggest "everything is getting machine-made" kind of feeling, "loss of touch" kind of thing in the world in general. So, "gotta leave your mark in this place" where you are doing your hands-on touch work. The trend he was suggesting a tension about has continued. And modernism in general is not so much a matter of keeping the human in it-as you might suspect anyway, if that were said to be its purpose. It is very much also a reflection of a klik-klak world. Just a direct reflection of it, made decorative. Sometimes not even much of an attempt to make it decorative. Even better to give you the Polaroid in art form. So much of modern art, then, or modernism altogether in any form, is this klik-klak vision. Instead of showing a mountain, its klik-klak: It's an I-beam sticking out at a slight angle, bent slightly at the tip. I may have seen something like that, I don't know. But that is a typical kind of modernist, and might then be titled "Mountain". A steel I-beam-at lets say a degree angle from vertical, or a little slightly more-going up let us say feet, and then bends at a rather sharp angle for another couple of feet and then stops. And the whole thing is, let us say, painted red like the San Francisco Golden Gate bridge. Sitting on the floor at a museum. Bit of modern art there. And the title is "Mountain". Well, what about what you would call a real mountain, then, over there? Relative to that, this art-form is klik-klak, in some sense, maybe. It is not just, as might be done in the Japanese tradition, a single stroke and it somehow suggests everything about mountain. It is that, plus I-beam construction from making buildings downtown and all of that. Nothing tactile about it even at all. Not Rodinish at all, in that sense. Anti-Rodinish. But it is like somebody took that quick brushstroke of the Japanese calligrapher and then tried to duplicate it with a bit of steel I-beam. You've got to klik-klak it, because you can't do steel I-beam like you do spontaneous brush stroke. And the making of forms like that is very typical of modernism. DEVOTEE: Beloved, You have talked about how science is kind of the religion of klik-klak. ADI DA SAMRAJ: Mm-hm. Klik-klakism. Scientific klik-klakism. [laughter] DEVOTEE: The priests of that religion continually like to suggest that by practicing that religion some cathartic event will eventually happen, or something. ADI DA SAMRAJ: You should study nuclear physics next. [Adi Da laughs.] DEVOTEE: Sometimes they even seem to be getting into the domain that is rightly just the domain of the Adepts. Like this last few months, the big thing in the scientific community has been they finally feel like they are going to discover whether there is just one universe or many universes. I remember when I read that article, I just felt, well, that's only a question an Adept can truly even talk about, really. ADI DA SAMRAJ: I actually discussed the matter at some length at Naitauba earlier last year in response to a devotee. This man asked Me about this and I responded at such length, I exhausted all of My interest in talking about it. [laughter] But I definitely did this conversation. If I was walking down the street, in the city somewhere, by My Self-if that could remarkably be occurring, and it certainly has occurred in the past-if I was walking down the street there and saw an elderly woman seeming somewhat confused about where she was going or where she was located, in terms of trying to find someplace somewhere in the city, and she, in her whirling around distress, sees Me-just happened to be walking by there-and asks Me, "Where am I?" [laughter] . . . DEVOTEE: Got a minute? ADI DA SAMRAJ: . . . and I took that totally seriously and devoted My Self utterly to satisfy everything required-not merely to say something to her, but for her to be utterly answered to the point of Realizing everything in the answer by My Response, even if it had to continue from then forever! [laughter] DEVOTEES: Wow!> ADI DA SAMRAJ: Just to answer Ritchs question, all that I would have to get into, plus cover everything that was said that evening last year-I couldnt do that, because I don't give lectures. I have to do the whole thing sort of from scratch. I do all "considerations" straight on. So just "consider" what would have to be "considered" for Me to answer Ritchs suggested question there. If I just really did that, it would be as I suggested with the elderly lady on the street. It is an invitation to klikity-klak-that kind of vague "I am not even ready yet to use one tenth of one percent of what You would really tell me if I asked You this." [laughter] It was well-intended. So what if I took him seriously about it? DEVOTEE: Beloved, I just wanted to bring up that it was remarkable that scientists feel that this is a proper domain for themselves. ADI DA SAMRAJ: Yes. But they might be looking at patterns, and maybe something is suggestive about some kind of patterns they are looking at. As I have said to you, as even shown to you here, in the "consideration" of photographs-not here but when we used to meet in the other room and you could see them laid out on the bed there. You could see these likenesses and so forth. Yet they, at a physical level, they are totally different people. Not totally, there is this pattern still. There is just this pattern patterning-many paradoxical levels, everything is happening simultaneously. You can be anywhere you like, but you can't get there from anywhere-rules, all that kind of stuff. Of course, there are infinities upon infinities of infinite numbers of infinities of worlds. And, of course, there is only one world. There is only klik-klak, and it is all one. And because of klik-klak, there are potential variations, or patternings within the pattern that is patterning, they can become so various, there is no end to possibilities. As soon as there is torque, there is everything. You can't have torque and only get what you want. Torque makes everything. Torque makes klik-klak. Discrimination, heart-disposition-faculties that reflect the Beyond Disposition and that ultimately are used to serve the Realization of the Beyond Position-are means for this going beyond klik-klak. Pleasure-Dome creativity or manifestation ultimately becomes the base, or asana, of, so to speak, "moving" into the Perfect Disposition. [to Ritch] Relative to your question then, you can see-just by referring to this pattern patterning that I have been making reference to and pointing at aspects of all along, and that you have observed in that context-it is self-evident that it is one, and it is also everything, every possibility. Hm? Isnt that self-evident, in the nature of the klik-klak I have been describing to you? DEVOTEE: Yes. ADI DA SAMRAJ: It is just klik-klak. That is all one. But there are infinite possibilities in space-time and this paradox of pattern that has no ultimate rule, but "replicate, shift, change", in varying intervals. And Ritch, what were you contending? DEVOTEE: Well, I was just trying to feel the paradox of there being many universes and then only one. ADI DA SAMRAJ: Oh, it is absolutely a paradox. But you can see, based on what sense you must have of this klik-klak by now, how that would allow for both, simultaneously. After all, you show an immense paradox yourself at any moment! [laughter] These two birds we have been "considering"-what could be more paradoxical than that? That is the ultimate paradox. Hm? So, that indefinable plastic principle, the characteristic of which is change, can, on the one hand, looked at as a whole, be said to be one. But in any context within it, it can be felt to be anything different at all. So if you want an infinite number of universes, "You got it!" klik-klak says. "You want one, you got it! However many you want-twenty-four, or whatever you like." It is perfectly amenable, this "Plastic Man"-in that sense, perfectly amenable. That is why he is always smiling in his icon. I don't mean smiling the smile of heart. I mean the heartless smile that doesn't give a shit. He is like a salesman. Or like the TV host as he appeared to be through that TV conjunction when I was watching as a boy. It is that that was klik-klak to Me. Empty of wisdom, knowledge, certainty-all the things that would have to be there to justify looking like that mask. Empty of it and the mask is still there-that is klik-klak. So at the same time materialists want to tell you that there is nothing but material, they want you to keep smiling! It is part of a sales job, it looks like. "Certainly not going to leave you with that, folks! Here comes the good news. Youll love it! HA-HA! Come on in, folks. [Adi Da laughs.] Come into totally material klik-klak world and be amused."> Look at all those children in the Disney Pinocchio movie-turned into donkeys in that amusement park. You never know what is going to happen to you in there, on the human pool table! [laughter] DEVOTEE: Beloved, something about klik-klak could almost be used as a form of the "conscious process". ADI DA SAMRAJ: In what form? DEVOTEE: Well, since weve been "considering" this whole thing, its so much a part of me now that I'll think "klik-klak", and it is immediate remembrance that "I'm back" if I submit to that. ADI DA SAMRAJ: You are suggesting that there be some sort of a pondering question or a form of enquiry about this that I add to The Dawn Horse Testament ?! [laughter] ROZANNE: Yes, in a sense. ADI DA SAMRAJ: I'll just toss one of those suckers right in there! [laughter] I mean, there are any number of "considerations" I have, and have had, with devotees that could be put in the form of some kind of a question that would be useful for somebody to ponder. And it is there, in fact, to ponder in your study of My Word, if you do it constantly and with fullness and detail. There are all kinds of ponderings, "considerations", enquiries, pointers to locate the Witness-all kinds of things, over and over again. That does not mean that every time there was something of interest perhaps not quite exactly covered by the ten now in the Book, that it ought to be added to a list of optional questions. So we can't just have these arbitrary exceptions. But if you can propose to Me some sort of a whopper made of My own Word, that I feel is so consequential I cannot let it go dry in the midst of a thick book of Talks-all alone unnoticed, and not done in neon-I'll have editorial working on it within the next five minutes. [laughter] I'll have them show Me the place where it would go along with the other Questions, and any other reference mentioned and so forth. They can pick it all out of the computer so they can show it to Me. And I'll absorb My Self in it for months on end-or however many days or weeks-just to munch out every detail that could be in the slightest bit affected, or that perhaps suggesting something of this, that, or the other thing be magnified some other place. Do you realize what an immense pattern The Dawn Horse Testament is? And so, what is the question that you suggest be added? DEVOTEE: Well, actually, I was just asking You, Beloved, if You felt . . . ADI DA SAMRAJ: What is the question precisely? DEVOTEE: Could it be used as part of the conscious practice? ADI DA SAMRAJ: You mean made a regularly used something as an alternative to one of the Ten Questions? Or do you mean a sometimes "consideration", because you study My Word regularly and this is, as I am now Revealing to you and no one has ever done before, going to be studied and part of the cultural language and "consideration"-and in that sense becomes everyones practice. But if you are saying instead of one of those Ten Questions, should you do a klik-klak question, what are you suggesting? What do you think the purpose of the pondering that is given in The Dawn Horse Testament is? Is it to ask every question that would relate in any way to some kind of relaxed meditative kind of state? What is the purpose of those particular kind of questions, then? In other words, there must be some sort of rule going on there, it couldnt be just Ten Questions-of all the questions you could ask! Ten?! [Adi Da laughs] You've got a lot more questions than that!> So there must be some sort of rule operative there, you see. Because not only am I not a fool-I am a graduate of Columbia! [laughter] So, you can be sure I have "considered" the matter rather fully, in deciding on ten, and just didnt get to ten and couldnt think up any more. [Adi Da laughs.] You understand, you have to look at all of this along the lines of it being really a Divine Revelation-that there is some great something or other behind the choice of those ten questions, just as they are . And just as I am the One who is Revealing even this klik-klak matter to you now, I am the One who placed those questions there. The point of telling you about this klik-klak was not in order for Me to have to rewrite any of the Source-Texts. [laughter] These weeks of "consideration" are the esotericism within the esotericism. It is the re-establishment of the esotericism of this Way, in the midst of a now somewhat downtown developed form of the Way that appears as it does because it is accommodating everything associated with entering into the domain of the public. It has an institutionalized, exoteric characteristic that has been patterned on there. And yet it is this same Way. The time has come now. That level of it is patterning along, and has great work to do, but even then within that context I have to show you what the esotericism is, because it can become, if not klik-klak, or mummery, at least mediocre and superficial. There needed to be a Revelation within the Revelation. So this is what this period is-even adding on to what was supposed to have been the "Completion Year" []. Yes, the Completion relative to all of that, within which now I am speaking in terms that reveal the esoteric depth of all of that-so that it can be used to righten everything that is established, and be the pattern in which everything else is "considered". Study My Word about everything about klik-klak and so forth-in other words, this Revelation-within-Revelation time-and that will be the context in which you notice this "pondering" about klik-klak. If it stands out in your disposition or your mind, having "considered" it there, then it just comes up as often as it comes up, but it is not to replace your formal obligations otherwise. You can't just get sort of experimental about your fundamental discipline. No. If you don't know what any thing is , you are in klik-klak-land in the moment in which you are aware of that. DEVOTEE: Beloved, You just said, "If you don't know what any thing is ", and I thought You were going to finish "don't ask". ADI DA SAMRAJ: [chuckling] You can't afford it. FEMALE DEVOTEE: Beloved, You take care of Your devotees perfectly by not allowing them to make these errors. You are constantly caring for us, aligning us perfectly to Truth. It's the sign of Your Love. ADI DA SAMRAJ: Yes. Why should that surprise you? DEVOTEE: It shouldnt. ADI DA SAMRAJ: Absolutely. [pause] Somebody had to Be Love. Nobody else wanted the job. [Devotees murmur.] [as if at an interview] Just making a living, doing what I love best-Loving. [laughter] "Tune in tomorrow for-Hello, Mom! [laughs superficially] See you tomorrow everybody-har, har, har!" Brought to you by your "less work for Mom" retail shop. When My father would go to do sales work on people, his general mode would be really happy to be there -you know what I am talking about? And then he'd play all the roles-like Raymond plays lots of roles in The Mummery -plays all of the male roles, along the way, somehow. But the basic thing is to be the TV personality, klik-klak, somehow. Wear the mask of the smiling man, who is there to allow you to do anything . That is the face of klik-klak. That's the face of the salesman, or the eternally smiling TV host. But when My father wasn't "on the job", so to speak, he wasn't like that. In fact, that seemed to be the principal disturbance of his life. He was always so incredibly invested in the salesman klik-klak that he had no reason to be smiling when he came home. [Adi Da laughs.] He was generally disturbed there. He was all [in a "salesman" voice] "Right in here, howdy, folks!" And suddenly he was a grim angry guy shaping an ear in smoke. Hustled by his own intention into living a life pretending to be klik-klak himself. It's not just a face. It is a lot of energy in that face. You look at that smiling clown face at Coney Island, it is radiating. You can feel it-just "shining" out there. And yet it is dark, there is something empty. It is not a heart-smile. It's the smile of "Whatever you want to do, I'm your man!" It's like a hustler or a pimps face-or a whorehouse madames face maybe, also, in a womans manner. Perhaps even a whores face. But the male figure seems to suggest this very well. Yang face. It's a pimps face. It is a radiant face. It is not merely a look or a mask. It has this quality of really pressing out there, really yang. Not attractive, yin, feminine kind of style, but very yang, radiant, empty of the feminine somehow. But it is supposed to be a happy, smiling face. A sort of "Come on kids, come on here, and do everything you've ever thought of ever doing, that you ever wanted to do-eat anything, jump up and down, do anything you want." It is like that scene in Pinnochio where they turn into donkeys, jackasses-stupid, in other words. That is what that is supposed to be about. The message of the Disney film is you turn into jack-asses, you are stupid, if you do this-just give yourself up self-indulgently, to the "you can come in here and do anything here" look on klik-klaks face. There's a klik-klak kind of character that leads to that boys island thing, right? DEVOTEE: Yes. ADI DA SAMRAJ: So why do people put that face on? It is always to sell you something. To make something seem attractive to you, but in the manner of a "giving you what you want" kind of look. Rather than someone who loves you gives you a gift. It is not the face of somebody who loves you giving you a gift, that toothy-town clown grin. You know the kind of face I am talking about there? DEVOTEES: Yes. ADI DA SAMRAJ: But it resembles it somehow at the same time. So when somebody is trying to sell you something, they put this face on. Theyre putting it on, but it is resembling something that you would find congenial. It is a "welcome to pleasure" kind of "no holds barred" and "no judgements made" kind of face. "Weve got all the plastic you need, here. How many worlds do you want? However many worlds do you insist there have to be? You got it!"> Whatever your "consideration" is, it doesn't make any damn bit of difference to the klik-klak. Just move into the pattern, and you can have any pursuit you like, any presumption you like. It doesn't mean you can have any destiny you like, necessarily. But you can have your destiny be structured along the lines of any search or any presumption you like-it works perfectly well anywhere in klik-klak. So it does not discriminate between the right presumption and all the other ones which are wrong. It allows for any. All the wrong ones are just as real in klik-klak as the only real one. But there is no "one" in klik-klak anyway. All you have to do is resemble it, and it can be the Absolute Truth. But what is the Absolute Truth? What is happening? This is the profound "consideration"-not just trying to bullshit yourself into a feeling of consolation. No. Really getting down to what it is all about, to the rock-bottom, no-bullshit level of everything. That's the Way of the Heart. If you really want to know what it is all about, that's what this "consideration" has been all about. What else is there to "consider"? DEVOTEE: Earlier this evening we were talking a lot about scientific materialism, scientific klik-klakism . . . ADI DA SAMRAJ: Mm-hm. Scien-klikik. DEVOTEE: Beloved, it seems like people commonly come to a point where they recognize that they don't know what any thing is , or they have this intuition or some kind of feeling that everything is just klik-klakking. They just look at the television and realize that is bullshit. ADI DA SAMRAJ: Mm-hm. DEVOTEE: And it seems like the common strategy, or technique, or the only place to go once you've had that realization, tends to be inside. ADI DA SAMRAJ: The orientation tends to go inward, you are saying? DEVOTEE: Yes. The orientation tends to go inward when noticing that everything outward, everything object-> ADI DA SAMRAJ: That is becoming "yin". The reaction becomes withdrawal. To be in the "in" position and withdrawing inward is "yinnish". This is regarded to be a fault among males in traditional societies. They are given, in the male education line, all kinds of training so that they wont do that, so they wont recoil from the world and become what is regarded to be effeminate. On the other hand, women are supposed to do that, the view is, you see. They are not supposed to be "up to the world, not recoil no matter what happens". That is not supposed to be what they do at all. Therefore, they have to be in a protected circumstance, in some sense. They have to be in the Pleasure Dome in order to flourish. And the males do the training to be always ready to do the "protective no matter what arises" kind of confrontation. And the women are supposed to preserve something else which is valued, by not being required to do that adaptation. What were we talking about otherwise? DEVOTEE: My Lord, You have been talking about the Pleasure Dome and Islam. Would You like to see the Pleasure Dome of Sufi saints? It is on the cover of this book from the library. [William comes forward to show Adi Da the book.] I thought the descriptions were quite amusing. It is not a great example of some of the more extraordinary Islamic architecture-but it has the dome in it and so forth. [Adi Da Samraj and William spend a few minutes having some conversation about the specific pictures in the book.] ADI DA SAMRAJ: There is this basic notion here of an exterior wall that controls access and entry, and just entering into it is made much of. It is a sacred place. There is this basic wall around, it looks like a garden inside here, perhaps gardens elsewhere, a dome in the center suggesting that there is something of great value deep within this, but it is not immediately accessible. It is protected. All these kinds of qualities stand out in this kind of architecture-Mogul architecture, Islamic architecture generally. But they don't have a lot of humor about this "one and many" stuff. [NOTE: Adi Da had told a story about a debate He had with His Columbia professor about why there was "one", why there couldnt be "two" or "three".] DEVOTEE: They don't account for the many. ADI DA SAMRAJ: Well, this "one in the exclusive sense" disposition in it, as in Judaism, excludes certain presumptions from happening. So there is an intolerance relative to this "one versus many" kind of question relative to the Divine, or the approaches to the Divine, and so on. When it comes down to it, who would affirm more than one, anyway?-apart from maybe that professor at Columbia who wanted to just talk about it as an intellectual question. But ultimately what would a monotheistic religion have, if it was all really seriously "considered", what would it have to complain about about an apparently polytheistic religion? It would be evident that its about the same thing. Hinduism is not affirming many, Hinduism is affirming one . There is a language for affirming it, and a way of suggesting how the approach is made, how the approach may be served, how that Pleasure Dome may be served in another particular kind of way. But it is about the same thing. The general disposition in orthodox Islam seems to be rather opposed to that kind of acceptance of any kind of pluralistic notion at all-whether it is three in Christianity, or countless in Hinduism. It is just fundamentally different kind of doctrine. But what it came to, in the Mogul period in India, where Islam came into the setting of what was generally Hinduism before, there was some contacts, even in the court where there were these gatherings of the wise of all kinds, the learned. At times there was genuine disappearance of the feeling of difference relative to all of that, a great tolerance, then, for varieties of all kinds relative to the matter of religion, and That Which religion is purposed to Realize. There were "considerations" of that kind. So Islam in India in that context certainly showed some sort of a sign of even a kind of synthesis with Hinduism. It is reflected in the architecture, also, at some sort of level where the patterns were coinciding rather harmoniously in some respects-not altogether, of course. So the pattern does allow for complete tolerance for the view that there is absolutely only one world, and absolutely whatever any other number youd like to say, including infinite. The way the pattern is allows, paradoxically, for all of them not only to be affirmed, but to be true, real. They can be actually experienced, and be actual or real to the reality of conditional reality. In other words, it is not merely a fabrication that denies some aspect of reality, in a conditional sense, but something that applies altogether to it-as factual as a physical thing. Just as factual as that-infinite number, and only one, or any number. DEVOTEE: In about five years, some scientists, based on a measurement, are going to make their own proclamation on whether there is one universe or many universes. [laughter] ADI DA SAMRAJ: Yes, there was also some group of Nobel Prize-winning scientists in the s or the s, that they mentioned in Trivial Pursuit games that Ive played as having given the final word on the fact that astrology has nothing to do with anything. That was not based on them, or a whole mass of other scientists, actually entering into an examination of what that is as a totality. Astrology is one of the principal ancient disciplines and presumptions, and is seen everywhere. It is still practiced seriously, way beyond your daily newspapers. And is certainly worth more than an anathema without examination, beyond that casual glance. They objected when all the popes and bishops, or whoever, all the cardinals lined up and said that Galileo was wrong. For the same reason it is objectionable when they make pronouncements without having studied it and given evidence and accounted for everything, all the aspects altogether. They just want to say that it is false. They don't want to take the time to prove whether it is or not, in all respects, false. They are busy telling everybody that the common religious view is false. So they are always insisting on saying that. It is like a TV host smilingly saying, "Oh, astrology is bullshit, and billion Nobel Prize-winners can't be wrong about that!" Not a single one of them knows a thing about it! Except that it is the religion-like competitor. DEVOTEE: A friend of mine (we both studied astrology in college together) wrote a letter-he had more energy for it-to send to a lot of the Nobel Prize-winners there. ADI DA SAMRAJ: Oh, you know about this particular anathematization of astrology? DEVOTEE: Oh yeah. Because I used to study it. ADI DA SAMRAJ: Oh, good. What do you know about it, then? DEVOTEE: Well, the university that I was going to had some of these Nobel Prize-winning types . . . ADI DA SAMRAJ: How did I happen to bring this up, then, to Ritch in particular? [laughter] You see how the pattern coincided there? I go on blapping about this, and you turn out to have some very direct personal awareness of this-which for Me was just a card in a Trivial Pursuit game. [laughter] DEVOTEE: You mentioned this when I was down in Fiji. ADI DA SAMRAJ: And here Ive mentioned it again. And no reason to do so, because you didnt respond last time. [laughter] Well, it is obviously a form of the pattern revealing itself to you. There was some kind of psychic-cross-over between inside and outside, or time and space-thing there that seemed to be revealing itself as having happened. It just came up out of the blue and it had something to do with you. So something about the pattern just showed itself to you. But you were going to pass right by it and not notice that it has significance that that is so. Go on. DEVOTEE: Well, the other thing, in terms of astrology, two nights ago in a gathering You had mentioned how the pattern patterning shows itself in all sorts of forms. I felt that astrology is just the patterning itself, showing forms related to what you are seeing there. ADI DA SAMRAJ: Well, as I was saying earlier, once you understand what pattern is all about, and what the pattern patterning is all about, you don't have to go anywhere else in the pattern to know that. It is the same everywhere. So you can take a somehow local presumed pattern appearance, and-if it is large enough, or whatever it takes to be in the field of something else that you might be "considering"-you can say something about the other by looking at the pattern of this one. I mean, if I could bring this matter up-this card and so forth, and it has something to do with you-you see how that is clearly suggesting a connection, and foreknowing implications, all that kind of business? You have this experience just as you are about to tell Me something about astrology. You just had this experience, before you say your first sentence about astrology, of seeing this coincidence and this whole reference coming up to begin with. If you can see that that is so, anything can be true about astrology! Hm? And why would it be untrue all of a sudden? It is just an observed pattern, and things can be said about that pattern itself. But it is a pattern in relation to another pattern that can also be observed. And if you see something in one pattern, and then look to see if you see something corresponding, and you do that enough times, it is like acupuncture. That is all part of the whole system that produced acupuncture, in fact. Acupuncture is part of astrology, and on and on. It is noticing patterns, correspondences, by long-term observations and sometimes fortuitous or accidental (or whatever it may be) circumstances-just keep noting the pattern, and over a long period of time an actual pattern is observed. A pattern of correspondences that could justify something like the I-Ching , or astrology, otherwise. Having observed a pattern that makes it somehow reasonable, although not (in the conventional sense) rational, to say that when you throw these coins down and count them up in the kind of numbers we show here, you are seeing a resemblance of the present moment that is necessarily meaningful-such observation of pattern, as is done with the I-Ching (or astrology) is part of that same culture-in this case, the traditional culture of China-that you like when it comes to something like acupuncture, which can at least seem to fit reasonably well with the Western scientific materialist point of view. But what about everything else in Chinese culture that went along with acupuncture?! Are you just going to toss it all out? Acupuncture came out of that same whole milieu as astrology-astrology perhaps even being senior to it in some sense. Acupuncture is based on showing a design of correspondences that relate to the physical body. Astrology is doing exactly the same procedure to find out its "acupuncture points in the sky", so to speak, to generate patterns that are useful tools for looking at the ground plan "below" it, so to speak-the total world, big picture things-anything, really. There is nothing unreasonable about it at all. It is a profound system based on the observation of patterns-simply, patterns correspond to one another. And if you see something in a small one, there are correspondences in the big one. So it is just about noting very much in detail how that works out-not merely for the sake of prediction, but for the sake of, in the process, noticing this design, more observing and noting of the pattern that is patterning, with clarity about everything. When it gets down to the kind of stuff you see in the daily newspaper astrology columns-well, I haven't seen any in a long time, but any I ever saw in the past were just some little ditty there-that is not astrology. You think that is what the emperors did when they called for the astrologer? No, they really meant business. They didnt call for Amy Dogwoods latest prediction. Whoever she is-is there an "Amy Dogwood"? I don't know. [laughter] DEVOTEES: There probably is. ADI DA SAMRAJ: True astrology is an immense measuring accomplishment that persists in having relevance if you are interested in looking at those kind of patterns. Not absoluteness, though. And to know what it is all about and be able to use it properly takes a lot of knowledge and all kinds of other things. The ones who do it best are those who can function from the pattern level, or close to it. It is just another way of looking at patterns, really-not to predict what is going to happen to your Aunt Minnie, or whoever, or to you. It is not really about prediction. It is a kind of getting cured by noticing that there are correspondences, that there are patterns. You throw coins, and the numbers stuck up just this way. And yes, those words do relate to this somehow. It is about noticing that that is so, not that "Oh, this means then that I should go on a vacation to the moon!" [laughter] No. It is noticing that there is a correspondence. That is the remarkable thing. Notice that there is a pattern, in other words, and it can take the form of some structure in your present moment of experience of the pattern. Or it can take a form in some coins that you happened to throw out on the floor at that moment. They are different at the physical level, but they are the same pattern at another level. And you can look at the coins, and following a system relative to numbers, see your own pattern in another picture form, somehow. And that is remarkable. How did it get that way? It just is that way. And it is not arbitrary. There are all kinds of complex and centuries-long observation procedures behind it. Real labor-intensive, very much like a lot of current-day science is practiced relative to some things. Like astronomy is now-long-term, night after night, year after year after year, plotting, getting data. The people who developed these systems werent fools. They were up to some very serious observing and just seeing if there are correspondences. Of course, they were looking just at one position in klik-klak. So it is not a means of absolute Truth, but it is a way of looking at patterning-that there are patterns, there are correspondences, there are likenesses. And for the pattern that is patterning, likenesses are enough. In some sense, it doesn't care if it is a real cookie, or "cookie" in your mind. If it is in your mind, it will be a real cookie somehow. And for there to be a real cookie there, it had to be on your mind first. The pattern doesn't care. It functions in all levels simultaneously. So if you are seeking to figure it out, and then think the knowledge will be Ultimate Happiness, there is absolutely no way to do it. That is not the way of Ultimate Happiness. At the end of that is just klik-klak. Truly, in the pattern patterning, all paths, all roads lead to klik-klak. DEVOTEE: Right!> ADI DA SAMRAJ: And it is not that they all take the same amount of time, either. Some go very quickly. Some can take an immense long time. Some can take all of time-and still not have begun it. DEVOTEE: Beloved, that is why I found it useful to have astrology done by a person who knows Your Teaching already, because that person can decipher the patterns more according to Your Pattern. ADI DA SAMRAJ: Yes, good. I never look at this sort of thing My Self. I don't read books, either, generally speaking. But for the sake of archival record, this is done regularly, with all kinds of astrological measuring. I don't look at it My Self. It may be an interesting measure for you all to have there as a record against things after they've happened. Whatever you may use it for. But it doesn't have a function for Me at all of prediction. I already know what pattern is all about, so I don't need any more lessons. For Me, it is nothing but another form of patterning, klik-klak. As prediction it is a kind of klik-klak inherently. And therefore if it is not used in a profound manner and right disposition, then it is a way of klik-klakking yourself like any other kind of search for cure, or heaven. An inherent function of Consciousness It'self is its capacity to ignore utterly. So why do you think Consciousness-land is concerned about you? Tell them what the lady said. DEVOTEE: The Laughing Mama says, "Your objections to any thing don't mean shit."> ADI DA SAMRAJ: Well, that holds for Consciousness It'self, then. It is not founded on concern for the body-mind, for klik-klak, and so on. What makes you think Consciousness is going to take care of you while you take your trip to klik-klak-land and try to use It as your identification card? It is just a trick you are playing, exploiting the congeniality of Love-Bliss It'self. But it is not in the position to be concerned about you as you step through the hole in the egg, take on the form of attention and wheel through klik-klak, as Pleasure Dome-ish as you can make it. Consciousness is not there boo-hooing behind like your mommy, and full of caring and concern for your continuation as a presumed ego on the other side of the egg-hole. You know, that tiny little egg with the hole in the end of it exists as just a tiny little thing in the midst of the Infinite Space of Consciousness. Yes. Well, there is far more "out Here" than there is there, and yet what is in there is infinite beyond counting. Klik-klak-a world in itself, infinite numbers of worlds in itself. All it is, is possibility. That within which klik-klak appears is a speck, such that it can even be ignored. It is vaster yet, beyond even mentioning the word "counting". There is no measure there, whatsoever. So Consciousness, or the other bird there, is not concerned about the fruit-eating bird. And if the fruit-eating bird gets eaten by the cat, he will have gotten no help from that Witness-bird-not cruelty, just another place entirely. So you imagine somehow that Consciousness is reeking with concern, and well all be all right inside the egg of infinity. But no. This holds as well for Consciousness It'self, when you are inside the world of klik-klak . . . DEVOTEE: The Laughing Mama says, . . . ADI DA SAMRAJ: Consciousness says, so to speak . . . DEVOTEE: Consciousness says, "Your objections to any thing don't mean shit!" You are between a rock and a hard place. ADI DA SAMRAJ: Yep. You look on either side, nobody gives a shit. [laughter] It is only in the heartcore of it all-not out there in the anywhere-that there is anything like that. That is the Domain of the Self-Existing and Self-Radiant Divine Self-Condition, Perfectly Subjective. DEVOTEE: Beloved, it is interesting to "consider", in this line "Your objections to any thing don't mean shit", the word "objections". Because You mentioned earlier tonight how Consciousness superimposes this sense of permanence on klikity-klak. ADI DA SAMRAJ: Lets try and stick to the one reference-"klik-klak"-so we always know what we are meaning. Sometimes people vary it, and I want to make sure that we have a sense of what is the standard one. "Klik-klak" is better. Klikity-klak. Klik-klak. "Clickety-clack" is a sound used for the sounds of hooves or whatever sometimes. "Klik-klak" is a term which I am using to somehow give you a symbol for the sound that is there in the whirring core, the replicate-shift-change cycle that is constantly happening. That cycle literally makes a sound like "klik-klak". I remember saying something like that, observing and trying to feel the sound as I might say it to you. I have said "klik-klak". And it seems to say it somehow.

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