Study of Hearing in the The Life of Understanding








“Hearing”

“Its like the
original ‘hearing’ – understanding, because you suddenly
grasp it – the self-contraction and the ability to feel
beyond it.

 

Hearing

In 1957, Adi Da begins a course of study at Columbia
College in New York. During this period, Adi Da Samraj
engages an intentional experiment with all forms of human
experience.


“So the beginnings of the process of understanding in
every case is one of attention, listening, concentration and
this listening becomes hearing, comprehension in various
ways, self observation.”

The
Life of Understanding – Week 5


The Right Practice Depends on ‘Hearing’ – Low,
Middle and Higher Self
The Evolution of Understanding

Adi
Da Samraj – 1987


The Knot of ‘I’ – The Self-Contraction

Beezone
Compliation


“I remember noticing this very spontaneously and
particularly noting it as this process of My “Sadhana Years”
began when I was at Columbia. I remember scribbling on
something about it. It just spontaneously occurred to Me
when I was, it must have been in a class or something. It
was a profound noticing, because at first one would be
making a distinction between subjective and objective. And
you feel somehow the subjective is inside you and the
objective is outside you. But actually all the subjective
parts are objective to you, as well.

Of course, this became the Realization of the Witness in
My Case, the restoration, just in these beginning
observations very early on, as I went to Columbia,
culminating in the event in the junior year.”

Paradox
of Entanglement


During His junior year at Columbia College, Adi Da Samraj
had a sudden, profound experience that revealed to Him this
depth structure of self-contraction and the Condition that
is Prior to it.

The context for this experience was a bold experiment
that Adi Da Samraj had been engaging for the previous two
years. Out of utter despair at finding Truth in any
traditional source, and certainly not in the university
ethos in which He was living, He had chosen an extreme
course.

Radical
Understanding of the Ego
– Carolyn Lee


“You are involved in the conventional acculturation of
existence, which is about coping with egoity, coping with
the results of egoity, coping with conditions, coping with
this thing that is suffering, just concerned about it. You
certainly would like to feel better, but, on the other hand,
your suffering does not seem to represent a profound puzzle
to you. A profound urge to transcend it does not seem to be
there in you, not a profound urge. It is as if you would
like to feel better, but, on the other hand, the great
impulse for Realization does not seem to be profoundly
there. You would just as soon have a smiling conversation
about God with somebody, because such talk makes you feel a
little better and it is not very difficult. It is not great
Realization, but, on the other hand, you do not seem to be
profoundly impulsed to God-Realization.”

Are
You Just Coping

Adi Da Samraj – 1993


“That is the art of spiritual life granting attention and
following it with total psycho-physical submission to the
Spiritual Reality. People are not tending to do that, of
course, and so attention is constantly getting locked into
problems, conceptions that are problematic, states that are
uncomfortable and problematic. The art of spiritual life,
once you have, heard and, seen, is this capacity to be
re-devoted in any moment to the Living Spiritual Reality. To
do that, you must be equipped with hearing and seeing, you
must be, able to observe and understand yourself, and
primarily, what there is to observe is how attention is
functioning.”

The
Art of Spiritual Life


“You must go through this hard school here. It was
Columbia for me, but for you it is this hard school of
consideration. There is no easy way to go through it. You
all want to be calm and congratulate yourselves into the
ultimate Realization of existence! It is absolutely
impossible to do it that way! You must be refined and
hardened, polished, brightened, awakened, quickened,
transcended, perfected, or else you can be a level 1.1
practitioner or something just a little bit beyond it for
the rest of your life. That is the way it is. There is not a
damn thing I can do about it. Cult be damned! The cult
cannot enlighten you.”

Study
the Great Traditions


The
Knee of Listening and Study Chapters – Table of
Contents