Three Talks combined Be Surrendered to the Degree of
Beatitude
Devotee: I love You my Lord. Sri Gurudev: (Sri Gurudev hugs and kisses
devotee). That is the most directly devotional act you have
ever done in My Company. Not just the hug and the kiss, but
the feeling and the sounds that accompanied it. I Love you,
Never forget or act otherwise. To the degree you will not allow it you are not
simplified, you are not full of Grace, beatitude does not
characterize your face. Your are not murdered, not wounded
absolutely. Struggling to survive. You have that hard face,
that surviving look, and you are moving about to accomplish
it. There are some moments in life, obviously there is the
moment in death, in which you get this Grace with the
possible knowledge, though some may escape it or forget
about it. But it is the Secret, to be so vulnerable that you
are not performing your own act anymore. It is the secret of
life to be so given up, in life, not merely fearing death
because that is required of you then. But in life, to be so
given up, so surrendered. This is the secret of Beatitude,
the secret of Enlightenment. Devotee: Beloved Sri Gurudev, You put a book on
The Basket of Tolerance called The Dark Night of the Soul by
John of the Cross, and he talks about it not just a
catharsis, not necessarily as a single event, but as
surrender. Sri Gurudev: Surrender not done, surrender
accomplished by God. You have no option, all your options
over, so imposed upon that you are dead! That is prapati,
that is God-Realization, that is true surrender, that is
self forgetting. It is not merely crisis moments that may
provoke it or make it necessary - death and other difficult
moments you see. You are in that very moment now but you
have developed through this self-contraction means to avoid
it, to desensitize yourself to the imposition, the force of
this very moment. The force of My Company, the force
altogether of existence in this moment. You all know who is doing the really important work in
life among ordinary human beings. It is the people who are
dying. They are on the edge of having to deal with
everything which has to be dealt with and they have no
options. Our good friend Barry passed on from here a couple of
weeks ago after a long period of his suffering. You know
very well that that is where he really did his work. You
know very well that in that circumstance you will do that
work. Well sometimes death comes suddenly. You never know
whether you can do it as a process very much. But in your
feeling before it occurs, comes up for you, you know that
there is at least one time when you have to deal with
everything, when you know you will come to the point where
you have no options, no strategies that apply. The whole
mass of it will be so overwhelming, so complex the maya
cannot be figured out, and surrender will be accomplished,
not merely dying by you. Accomplished utterly, But it is not enough to do it on your death bed, you see.
That can be purifying. It is a necessity you know will be
imposed upon you, As I have said to you all, you are dying
while alive. Your life is about dying. You are enduring the
psychology of beings and have heard they are going to die
and are spending your life going through the mass of rounds
of anger, denial, bargaining, depression, acceptance --
every complex that could be described out it, you see. You
are living a death process while alive, but you are not
really accomplishing it, you are not really dealing with it
altogether. You are dealing with it piece meal and you are
all the time coming up with strategies to avoid your
sensitivity to it, to avoid the imposition of 1t, and that
is your whole life, that is the search. Because the
surrender is not accomplished the self-contraction remains
in tact. It is all reactivity, desire, seeking, objects,
others, drama! You allow your entire life to become just
that when you could, not just on your death bed but now, in
every moment of life, be so submitted as one in a terminal
state and go beyond all those illusions, all those
strategies you see. Be surrendered to the degree of Beatitude, beyond your
own effort, now! To take on the religious life in My
company, to do sadhana in My Company is about that. There
are not so many accomplishing it most profoundly yet, but
you are guided by it, you are focused in it. You are given
means to enhance that potential more and more profoundly.
But that is what it is about, you see, That is what
Enlightenment is! Not some glorious, smiling, healthy self
image you see. But that absolute murdered ego surrender. The
great Divine Imposition accepted without qualification. That
is what your life in. My company is about, that is what the
Way of the Heart is about, that is what your devotion to Me
is about, And all the time I am enhancing your capability,
working to enhance your capability for just this event. Devotee: I feel in my own case I am constantly
trying to console myself and avoid exactly what You are
talking about, Sri Gurudev: You know you are being killed. Devotee: I do not know that, Sri Gurudev: You do know that you are being killed,
everything is killing you. You are going to die, there are
no two ways about it. Andrea: I do not feel it. Sri Gurudev: But you know it do you not? Devotee: Not really. Sri Gurudev: You do not know that this is true? Devotee: Intellectually I know it. Sri Gurudev: Well that is enough. You know it, but you do
not want to feel it, you do not want to live as if it is so,
you are trying to avoid it, you are trying to survive in the
face of this great imposition that you know is so. That is
it, that is Narcissus, that is a reason for it. That is the
cause of the dreadful egoic life. And of course you are
trying to immunize yourself in every possible fashion --
physically, emotionally, mentally, socially, functionally,
practically, relationally, in every possible fashion you are
trying to immunize yourself against this imposition that you
know, absolutely, the best you can do is avoid it maybe for
a little while. You are avoiding the very fundamental nature
of existence by trying to survive. It is paradoxical but it
is true. All the dead wake up, all the living can. The thing you
think is an evil is a great source of Beatitude. Not the
common every day evil, not negativity merely in the normal
context, but the great one, the great matter, the great
event. The snuffing out of all your survival efforts, all
your self-possession, all your separateness, the utter
dissolution of it beyond any capability on your part toward
it. This is what you are avoiding. This is Narcissus, this
is the self-contraction. Devotee: Sri Gurudev, You say it is the
source of Beatitude because we have no option but
surrender? Sri Gurudev: It is not even an option, is what I am
saying. It is simply the Grace of Reality. Devotee: You talk about conditional existence is a
great force, As You were speaking I was feeling how I am
pressed in from all sides by this place, Sri Gurudev: I remember reading some book many years ago,
somebody was asked "What is God?" Pressure. You feel
pressured, imposed upon, intruded upon, it threatens your
survival separately, your separateness. It threatens it. You
are all the time threatened by it, you are all the time
under stress. There is that imposition and your refusal to
allow it. Your refusal to allow it is the self-contraction.
That is why you must find it out, so that you will come to
the point genius of allowance. It is the most fundamental
capability you have, this allowance. But you rehearse your
entire life as a dramatization of the avoidance of it. So
that is why it is said that all life is suffering. That is
why it becomes suffering, you see. In any moment, to the
quick, it can be Beatitude, but it is suffering because of
this contraction. SRI DA AVABHASA: (You all want things to work) out
to be perfect. Have utopia, or maybe you could have what has
been called the "Kingdom of God" Sort of fall on your head.
You think religion should not require this great exercise
from you, but you inn your "self-possessed", suffering state
must magically be served and relieved and kissed, you see.
And that's not how it works. I mentioned to you several weeks ago about how the
Tibetan tradition, a few fundamental communications made,
even to the common people, you see. And the most fundamental
communication made is that everything changes and everyone
dies. There's no permanence, and everyone's mortal,
everything you see arising in the natural domain is
changing, passing, nothing's permanent, everything passes,
everyone dies, that means you. That's among the principal,
most fundamental communications made in that tradition, and
also made in many other traditions. They then communicate to them, there is a dharma, a way,
beyond suffering. But that doesn't make any sense. That's
not the principal communication, you see? It's the principal
in the sense of being the greater communication, but the
communication you got to get straight with first is that
conditional existence is suffering, passing, changing,
impermanent, mortal. And what are the Tibetans called to do
then? To accept that firmly, fundamentally, in their daily
moment to moment consciousness, and never relinquish it. You all, in your disposition, you see, not governed by
such imperatives, want to maintain a state of existence
bereft of that understanding. And to do so, you out yourself
off, not only from conditional nature, but from the Divine.
So you're wandering in some strange soup of changes, but
trying to maintain a self-pleasurized state, immune. You're
like zombies. You're asleep. You're not experiencing
reality, conditional or unconditional. You're in a dream, an
illusion, "Narcissus", possessed by a misinterpretation of
reality, a state desensitized to reality. You're possessed
by an illusion -- not merely an illusion in the form of a
thought--it occurs in that farm too, you see--but an
illusion of experience, an illusion of presumption all over
the body-mind. You've desensitized yourself to reality. You
are actively doing s0 by divorcing yourself from
intelligence and wandering in a subjective state of relative
pleasure as much as you can manage it, you see. That's your
situation at the pond, that ordinary state of self-pleasure
which you are always serving, always trying to maintain. Devotee: [Inaudible] to feel the constant
stress of just what this place really is about. SRI DA AVABHASA: But then it's just stress, Devotee: Yeah, It's not
intelligent[ence!] SRI DA AVABHASA: Not a conclusion, not
intelligence. Devotee: That's right. SRI DA AVABHASA: Not knowing conditional existence
for what it is, but knowing the Divine is also, or the
Ultimate Conditional is also, and making a life on that
basis, exercising yourself intelligently toward Divine
Realization, So all you get is the stress of conditional
reality, but not any real understanding of it such that you
can change your way of life, Devotee: Da! You are absolutely dependent on the One who is this
Source of this horror you have made. You have every right to
be anxious and fearful, being separate from God. You are
making your own destiny instead of submitting to the One Who
Is, and being purified and having a better, or even
ultimate, destiny made by Grace. If you simply understood
your position and functioned on that basis, you see,
everything would be clarified. Devotee: I feel very grateful for tonight's
consideration that You have Given us, because I can bring
the will to that. I couldn't do it bringing the will to
trying to sort through my own body-mind, SRI DA AVABHASA: Mmm hmm, That is exactly so, and
that is what I have been telling you foe twenty-two years.
Nearly twenty-two. Just that. Narcissus is unillumined,
uninformed, self-possessed, and can't work it out. You must
respond to Me, turn up from the pond, exercise yourself in
this devotion to Me, and that is the Way. That is the traditional way also, that is the secret of
the entire Great Tradition of mankind. It has always been
so. It is the essential content of all the traditions,
although they get diverted from it and so forth, get
complicated and tend to move toward the lower-based or the
ego-matter, so there is lots of that too. But this is the
fundamental truth, the Great Truth, the Great Secret. And
you can see it in the traditions everywhere, variously
displayed. And it is a useful exercise to examine the
traditions and see that it is so. It is part of your study.
But it is not itself the way, to just be studying the
traditions and making equations or seeing likenesses and
talking it and quoting from the Great Tradition in your
lectures and remarks and writings, you see. Then you make it
non-useful to the degree that that is the only exercise you
are up to, you see, it is lust another useful sign or
intrusion, see it proven there too, you see. It is a
supportive exercise. If you make it into a thing in and of
itself, and try to somehow find the way just in the
traditions and the literature and the history. The way itself, as a whole and totally, and in its
ultimate demonstration is in the Great Traditions. You can
find there, by considering My Word, you will find there, if
you examine it, this key is there, this essential Truth is
there. It is the foundation of the entire tradition of
mankind, although most forget it or don't take it all that
seriously, or don't know how, really, to become involved in
it. That being the case, then also in the traditional
setting, people lust use books, metaphors, myths, and so
forth, to some how dummy up this process. It doesn't work
that way. There must be the direct revelation, not the myth
of the Realizer, but the Realizer in Person. And the Way
given by the Word emanating from that One who is Samadhi
itself. So that way is suggested metaphorically, and piecemeal,
and here and there, to one degree or another, manifested in
the Great Tradition, is here manifested whole in My own
Person, and given its full, right, non-mythological, true,
real basis, Devotee: Yes, Da. SRI DA AVABHASA: It should be a simple matter for
all, then, for all beings, all mankind, for all beings
altogether, a simple matter to redress the wrongs of this
now dark age. It requires this conversion one by one. Devotee: Well, I have also noticed in studying the
Great Tradition that there is a disposition of surrender,
but often it is not, so much of the time it is not to the
fullness of God, it is not what You have Given us, or shown
us. SRI DA AVABHASA: It is turned to various purposes,
generally egoic. The essential Yoga, Ishta-Guru-Bhakti Yoga
is also there. But then arguments laid on top of it, and
everything to bow to or make compromises about relative to
ordinary ego-based people in order to accommodate them in
the general fold of religion. And, after awhile, no
Realizers present, what is left! Just a call to believe in
Santa Claus, you see, and behave in a positive social
manner.
February 10, 1993 - December 17,1993
"The
perfect among the sages is identical with Me. There is
absolutely no difference between us"
Tripura
Rahasya,
Chap
XX, 128-133
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