Chapter 7

My "Bright" Word
by Adi Da Samraj
The Divine Siddha-Method Of The Ruchira Avatar
Relationship and Association
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: I was talking to someone here the other day about
certain associations everyone has with people, with environments, and so
on. This person was wondering whether some of his old relationships would
continue, now that he had become involved in the practice in My Company.
He wanted to know if these friendships would necessarily come to an end, or
if they could still continue now that he is doing sadhana as My devotee.
I pointed out to him that many such involvements are not rightly to be
regarded as relationships. Rather, they are associations. They are
(essentially) forms of your own desire. Therefore, they are not true
friendships. Such associations with people, and even with environments and
objects, enable you to indulge certain qualities of experience at will. Even
though there seems to be something there-a person, a place, a thing-in fact,
you are not truly enjoying relationship. You simply have an association that
reflects your desire, and (thereby) gives you the opportunity to indulge it, to
satisfy it, to suffer it.
Associations come and go, just as desires come and go-but relationship is, in
the context of conditional existence, the living function and living condition
of Conscious Existence. And, truly, relationship has neither beginning nor
end. When there is genuine relationship with an individual, a place, a thing,
an environment, it is not subject to the quality of desire. Desire does not
generate the relationship. The end of desire or a change in desire does not
bring the relationship to an end.
When relationship is discovered and lived, it never comes to an end. Its
quality may change, and there may be apparent separations in time and
space-but the relationship itself is fundamental, continuous, real. Where
there is relationship, there tends to be apparent growth, intensification,
change-but the relationship itself does not come to an end.
Associations, however, come and go. Associations belong to periods of one's
life, stages in one's experience. They are functions of time, space, and
desire. Therefore, when some particular desire-or desire itself-ceases to be
the point of view of conscious awareness, then associations tend to fall
apart, disappear, come to an end. But, when (by Means of My Avataric Divine
Spiritual Grace) there is most perfect "radical" self-understanding, then there
are no longer any associations at all. There is only relationship, only
relatedness. There is no separation, no separateness. And relationship is
enjoyed under all circumstances, all conditions, with all beings, in all
environments.
Because people are identified with their own desires and live by the habit of
association rather than relationship, there is suffering. Because people do
not become more for one another than extensions of their own minds, their
own desires, there is no relationship.
Until there is "radical" self-understanding, there is the tendency to live mere
association through desire-even with those with whom you enjoy the quality
of relationship. Thus, until there is "radical" self-understanding, all your
relationships involve conflict. They are always threatened by mere desire,
mere association. You move in and out of them. You never truly enjoy them,
except in brief moments.
Where there are simply associations in the form of desire, your connections
tend to disappear, and certain relationships tend to become corrupted,
destroyed, impossible at times. But all separateness is an illusion. It is
impossible for there to be any separateness. There is no such thing. It has
never occurred. There is no separately existing thing anywhere. There is no
separately existing being anywhere. There is no separate anything!
Separateness is only an impression caused by disturbance, by this
compulsive contraction I have often described. When self contraction comes
to an end, when the avoidance of relationship comes to an end, there is no
"difference".
All separateness is an illusion, and all attainments are an illusion. There is no
separateness, and there is no attainment of union. The state of the
traditional Yogi is as much an illusion as the state of the ordinary person who
is suffering and dying. If you are an ordinary sufferer, you think you have
become absolutely small-whereas, if you are an expansive Yogi, you think
you have become absolutely great. But, when you think you have become
great, you truly suspect that you are small. In Truth, there is only the
penetration of your search, the understanding of it-and, then, existence
becomes capable of being lived Freely and Happily.
People are busy communicating their own mind-forms, their own contracted
perceptions, rather than living from the "Point of View" of Truth. Thus, people
are only, punishing one another. Everyone causes pain for everyone else.
Everyone reinforces the illusion of separate life. Therefore, everyone is
seeking. Everyone suspects "it" (whatever the presumed goal of anyone's life
may be) is somewhere else, or that "it" does not exist.
But, when there is the most perfect understanding of that entire search, then
there is only the Communication of Consciousness Itself-That Very Power,
That Condition, That Is Reality Itself-in relationship. And the ultimate form of
that Communication is Satsang with Me-the Communication, Condition, or
Company of Truth. When the Presence of Reality (or the "Bright" Conscious
Light Itself) is Communicated in Satsang with Me, you are Assumed by This
Presence, Acquired by It. This Communication undermines all ordinary
assumptions-until you cease to believe them, and you become intelligent
with Truth.
Apart from "radical" self-understanding, all human beings are distracted and
turned in on themselves. They appear to have been born, but they are still
bent. Every human individual, in fear of the born-condition, lives not-yet-
straightened from the curve of the womb. And all the people who surround
you, since they are also in the same state, only reinforce the fear that makes
you bend and curve inward.
I Am the Man of "Radical" Understanding. I Exist and Live as the
Communication of That Which makes it possible for people to open, uncurl,
be turned to relationship.
The process of restoration to Truth has been called "second birth". Until you
become capable of existence in this apparent (human) form, open in
relationship, you tend to reject the force of existence in a continuously
repeated ritual activity, like vomiting. The force of life is abandoned
constantly. Even laughter is a form of this ritual abandonment. Non-
regenerative sexual activity is a form of it. Ordinary perception is a form of it.
It is to throw off, to fail to conduct, the force of life. It is unconsciousness,
sleep, the refusal to be born. And its symptom is a life that is not in
relationship, that is not whole, that is full of dis-ease, confusion. Such a life
cannot function. It only forever seeks its own release as if release from life
were the goal of life.
In Satsang with Me, this rejection of the force of life, this rejection of birth,
tends to become quieted-such that, more and more, the life-form conducts
the force of life rather than rejecting it. The subtle form of the human
structure is something like a Sphere, in Which the Current of natural life-
energy (and also of the Divine Spirit-Energy) continually descends in the
frontal line, and. then turns at the bodily base and. ascends in the spinal line.
In Satsang with Me, that Current is not rejected-It is conducted.
The force of life rounds the heart, like the planets round the Sun. And the
True Divine Heart Is the "Sun" of the living human form. The Fullness that
people begin to feel in Satsang with Me is this Circle of natural life-force
(and, eventually, also My Avatarically Self-Transmitted Divine Spirit-Energy),
allowed to be conducted in descent (down the frontal line), and allowed to be
conducted in ascent (up the spinal line). When that Fullness is felt, there is
no more rejection (or "ritual vomiting") of the Current of Energy. Rather, by
means of spontaneous "conductivity", the Current (of natural life-energy and,
in the case of My by-Me Spiritually-Initiated devotees, of My Avatarically Self-
Transmitted Divine Spirit-Energy) is turned and re-turned-in a spherical Cycle
that is completely at ease, without dilemma.
When (by Means of My Avataric Divine Spiritual Grace) the "Sun", the Living
Heart of Reality, the Divine Conscious Light That Is the Self-Condition (and
Source-Condition) of all of this, is Most Perfectly Realized, That is most
perfect "radical" self-understanding, Most Perfect Divine Self-Realization.
From That "Point of View", all of this is Obvious.
The religious and Spiritual traditions communicate various aspects of this
phenomenon of "second birth". The religious search, particularly the form of
seeking that is characteristic of Westerners, is a strategic effort to receive
the Spirit, to receive the Power of the Divine, and to bring the Grace of this
Power down into life.
The traditional Eastern seeker-and, in general, the practitioner of Spirituality-
is sensitive to the ascending movement of Energy. Traditional Yoga is a
ritualization of this process of strategic ascent to the Divine just as traditional
religion is the strategic ritual means for becoming at ease, receptive, full of
the Divine.
But these two-East and West-are simply modes of exclusive (and ritualized)
attachment to one or the other of the two principal aspects of this Real
Process, or "second birth". Thus, the East is traditionally very busy with the
ascending Power, knowing little of descent-and the West is traditionally very
busy with the descending Power, knowing little of ascent. And both East and
West approach this "second birth" in the seeker's mode.
The "second birth" truly is a possibility. It is the only Real possibility for
human beings. And its Process is most perfectly enacted only in Satsang with
Me-in the living, present-time, devotional (and, in due course, Spiritual)
relationship to Me, the One Who Is the True Divine Heart Itself. Not someone
who only suggests the Heart Itself, who has (at some time) merely
experienced It, who merely envisions It, who only thinks about it, or who only
teaches about it-but the One Who Is the True (and Living) Divine Heart,
without any limitations whatsoever.
I Am That One. When My devotee lives the conditions Given by Me, in the
context of Satsang with Me, then the Circle of descent and ascent is
restored-in a very simple, natural manner. As My devotee, you need not
apply yourself methodically to the generation of that Circle, to the strategic
restoration of that pattern of Energy. As My devotee, living Satsang with Me
as the Condition of your very existence, you do not exercise any kind of
strategic approach, nor do you engage any of the remedial methods of
conventional religion and conventional Spirituality. My devotee's practice is
to live the Condition of this devotional (and, in due course, Spiritual)
relationship to Me.
My true devotee is not distracted. by any form of the religious or Spiritual
search-whether the search to "be filled" by the descending Spirit-Energy or
the search to "escape upward" by means of the ascending Spirit-Energy. My
true devotee turns simply to Me-and is (thereby) turned to the Real condition
of life, which is relationship. As My devotee, you pass through various forms
of crisis, until there is spontaneous insight into (or understanding of) the
ordinary pattern of your life, which is the avoidance of relationship. By Means
of My Avataric Divine Spiritual Grace, the direct observation of this pattern
becomes "radical" self-understanding. And Most Perfect Realization of such
"radical" self-understanding is Absolute Truth.
The Real Spiritual process alive in Satsang with Me involves no problematic
concern relative to the reception of My Avataric Divine Spirit-Baptism. The
process in My Avataric Divine Spiritual Company is generated and
maintained by the Spontaneous and Intelligent Siddhi (or Real Spiritual
Power) of the "Sun", the True Divine Heart-Which Is Reality Itself. My devotee
is not engaged in a strategic (or ego-based) process of (downward) reception
of Divine Blessing, or of (upward) return to the Divine Source, or of both. My
devotee abides simply in relationship with Me-and the Primary Intensity of
My Divine Heart-Light, the Conscious Spirit Power that proceeds in Satsang
with Me, is the entire Means for the crisis in consciousness (or self-
understanding) that must occur in My devotee.
In the meantime, there may be secondary phenomena associated with
Satsang with Me-and these are the effects of My Avatarically Self-Transmitted
Divine Spirit-Current, in Its Flow through the descending and ascending arcs
of the Circle. But all such phenomena are purely secondary. They are simply
conditional enjoyments. Like right diet, they are not (in and of themselves)
Truth. If you are distracted by such phenomena, then you contract (and
thereby separate yourself) from all forms of relationship.
Only relationship is appropriate. There is no need to be concerned with the
effects of the Descent or the Ascent of My Divine Spirit-Power. There is no
need to seek My Divine Spirit-Power or to grasp It. All such concerns are an
expression of the root-dilemma.
DEVOTEE: What is it about the experience of this Force (or Light) that causes
people to reject It? Is the experience itself painful? Or is it somehow
threatening?
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: It is not so much that the forms of rejection are an
effect of something else. They are the action. The rejection (or reaction) is
spontaneous. It is the self-contraction. But its basis is subtle-preceding life,
thought, and perception. The perceiver and the perception are already bent.
They are (themselves) this rejection. They are already forms of the root-
dilemma.
The true answer to any question is always prior to words, not able to be
spoken. Indeed, even the question itself (if it is true, or real) is prior to words.
The question that is phrased in the form of concepts is not the real question.
Your real question is the sensation of self-contraction that motivates your
thoughts and words. The answer, likewise, is not in the form of concepts. The
only true (or real) answer is the direct observation and understanding of the
root-activity that is your real question, your suffering, your dilemma, the
motivation of your search. Nothing else can satisfy. No explanation is equal
to this direct self-understanding.
There is a sense in which the entire process of rejection (or the avoidance of
relationship) is a spontaneous reaction to the action that is conditionally
manifested existence. Wherever there is an action, there is an equal and
opposite reaction. There is the True Divine Heart (or Reality Itself), there is
conditionally manifested appearance, and there is the self-contraction that is
the reaction to that appearance. People are living as that reaction. When My
devotees turn to Me, and (in that turning) observe and understand their own
activity (which is their suffering), then (by Means of My Avataric Divine
Spiritual Grace) they Realize the True Nature of Consciousness As the Living
Divine Heart Itself-Which is Always Already Open, Which is Prior to
conditional manifestation, Which is not any form of dilemma.
The genuine roots of your suffering, your disturbance, are not truly
explainable in any conceptual terms. They can only be undermined (or
obviated) by means of the self-understanding that becomes possible in
Satsang with Me. Therefore, moment to moment (whole bodily) turning to Me
(thereby allowing self-observation and self-understanding to take place) is
the root process of sadhana, the spontaneous and intelligent process of
Satsang with Me.
There is no "second birth" apart from Real Spiritual practice in My Avataric
Divine Company. There is no "second birth" apart from Satsang with Me,
actual moment to moment living of the heart-relationship to Me-the Divinely
Self-Realized Siddha Guru, the Avatarically Self-Manifested Incarnation of the
True Divine Heart Itself. The form and function Given (by Means of My
Avataric Divine Grace) to human beings for living this Satsang is the direct
relationship to Me-the One Who Lives As the Very Divine Heart Itself, the One
and Only (and Self Evidently Divine) Reality.
When people realize that they are suffering, that they are bent, that there is
a root-dilemma, then they begin to seek. The only places where it is possible
to seek are the gross, subtle, and causal dimensions of existence, which
account for the entire structure of conditionally manifested life. Therefore,
people go about the business of alternating between exploitation and
discipline-until they realize the failure of the search. When that realization
occurs, they have become capable of Satsang with Me.
DEVOTEE: Is it necessary for us to have a True and Conscious relationship
with You and with everyone we know if we want to live a True Spiritual life, a
life of understanding?
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: It would only be nicer! If it were necessary as a
precondition, then Satsang with Me could not take place. If this process
depended on people already enjoying the relationship with Me Consciously,
perfectly, then the process would never begin. it is certainly a positive sign
when the process becomes Conscious, when you begin to move into the
natural "conductivity" of Satsang with Me, when you begin to live Its True
quality, Its in-depth quality. But such is not required as a precondition.
There are no conditions for relationship. It is already the case. Some are
conscious of it, and some are not. In some cases, you may enjoy the Real
condition of relationship with another, while (to that other) you serve only as
a form of association (and, thus, an extension of desire). And the opposite
may also be true. When there is such an apparent discrepancy, you must
decide whether you have the strength or the interest to live that relationship,
whether you should release that relationship or (otherwise) change the
quality or the conditions of that relationship.
DEVOTEE: Do we have a responsibility to make the other person in a
relationship more conscious?
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: That responsibility is inherent in relationship itself.
The very fact of living in that direct, relational manner, rather than in the
usual self-contracted manner, is (itself) a means to serve the communication
of True intelligence. Therefore, that responsibility is already satisfied by the
simple fact of living the relationship itself. It is not necessary to add to that
relational force any secondary motivation to change the other person. When
such motivations appear, your relationships tend to become an extension of
your own search. To that degree, you fall back into association again. But,
when you live relationship with other beings, you even extend and serve the
form of Satsang with Me because that form is heart-relationship to Me.
CHAPTER 8
Meditation and Satsang
FRANKLIN: Spiritual life is Satsang. It is the company of Truth. It is a
relationship to one who lives as Truth. Satsang is also the very nature of life.
It is the form of existence. Relationship. Not independence, not separation,
but relationship. So the principle of true life is relationship.
All attempts to relieve the life of suffering by various means, remedies, do
not produce Truth. They may heal dis-ease. But only Truth produces Truth.
Sadhana or spiritual practice is to live Satsang as the condition of life forever.
Sadhana is not something you do temporarily until you get free. It is to live
Satsang forever. A lifetime of Truth.
The beginnings of ones spiritual life are the coming into relationship with the
Guru-living in his company, which is Satsang, living the conditions created in
that relationship. Getting straight. There is a force, a Siddhi, or spiritual
power alive in Satsang. The earliest experiences of spiritual life are generally
the sensations of force or presence communicated in Satsang. These are
enjoyed as various feelings, peace, kriyas (spontaneous purifying
movements), bliss, a sense of presence, the qualities of energy. But, in truth,
spiritual life is not something that happens to you. It is not a process that
takes place independent of your conscious existence. If it did, all you would
need do would be to wait for it to come to an end in liberation, or some such
state. Spiritual life is conscious life. It doesn't really exist until your
consciousness comes into play, becomes active. Spiritual life is an intelligent
process. It is not a kind of mediumship, wherein you simply enjoy certain
experiences, certain energies, a certain shakti. The shakti or force aspect of
spiritual life has one purpose. It is to communicate to you the energy alive in
the Truth, to purify, harmonize and intensify your life, so this conscious
process can begin. All of the shakti experiences are simply means created to
strengthen and intensify your life so that you have the energy, the force with
which to live this conscious life. Sadhana is a process in consciousness. It is
intensity. It is force of consciousness. It is intelligent. It is not just energy that
you witness. Consciousness does not happen to you.
All of you here tonight have begun to live Satsang. To some degree, you are
committed to it. You have begun to live it as the condition of life. Some of
you have these experiences of force, of energy, of movement, internal
awarenesses, various kinds of purification. In some cases, Satsang appears
simply as a very practical influence. But now it is time to begin to use this
teaching which brought most of you here. I want to read you a couple of
pieces from The Knee of Listening , from the very beginning of that portion
called "The Process of Real Meditation." It is a long section. It gets into many
of the subtleties of this affair of "enquiry." I am only interested in getting into
the very beginnings of it here, because the beginnings of it are the practical
affair which is the foundation and unending circumstance of real or spiritual
life.
"The usual meditation" (traditional meditation, the motivated remedy) "is
only a consolation, an effect and a good feeling. It provides no radical
reversal of ordinary consciousness, and when situations arise out of
meditation the person has no control over the process of identification,
differentiation and desire."
I spent years with all kinds of people who were going through the
phenomena of yoga, of kundalini yoga, dealing with presence, force,
miraculous spiritual experiences. I have never seen anyone fundamentally
changed by these experiences. I was never thus changed by any of these
experiences. Their intention is not to change you. They are change. They are
phenomena only. They depend on the force, Guru-Shakti, the force aspect of
Satsang. The phenomena themselves are not the point. They are there only
to assist in the intensification of the quality of your life. You are not intended
forever to sit in them, bathe in them and watch them perform. These
phenomena, if they need to happen in you at all, will happen in any case.
They are a relatively minor aspect of spiritual life. Enjoy them. But see that
they are not themselves spiritual life. They will not lead to liberation. They
are not Truth. They will not affect the motivating character or source of your
peculiar life one iota. Thirty years of shakti experiences will occupy a fool,
but they will not awaken him. Increase of energy or experience does nothing
whatsoever to the fundamental quality of conscious life. At most it intensifies
it, providing the functional strength, so that conscious life can begin as a real
process.
"Only radical understanding avails." (In other words no motivated process, no
simple influence of energy does.) "Only radical understanding avails. It is the
viewpoint of reality itself. It is not attachment to some body, realm or
experience that is seen as the alternative, remedy, cure and source of
victory. It knows that every motive and action is made of avoidance. Thus, it
has no recourse except to understand. And understanding as well as the one
who understands, are Reality, the Self, the Bright.
"The yogic search only enjoys forms of shakti, the bliss of energy. Only
radical knowledge is real bliss, dependent on nothing.
"Understanding arises when there are true hearing and self-observation in
relationship."
"Relationship" here is, ultimately, a reference to Satsang. Satsang is the
relationship to the man of understanding, or the Guru, lived, made the
condition of life. A person begins to become stronger, straighter, under those
conditions. Perhaps some of these phenomena, this energy, this shakti,
become awake in him, perform certain purifying activities, intensify him. And
after a while he begins to listen . At first there is simply the contact with his
Guru. When he becomes strong, more intense, he begins to listen to what is
spoken in Satsang. And after a while he also begins to hear what is spoken.
At first he only listens, and what is said modifies his mentality in various
ways. But at some point he begins to hear. The communication takes place in
fact. And the sign of its having taken place is that it takes the form of
spontaneous self-observation. So, understanding arises when there are "true
hearing and self-observation in relationship."
"Therefore, make use of such teachings as this present one and observe
yourself in life. Observe yourself when you seek. Observe yourself when you
suffer to any degree. Observe your motives. Observe the activity of
identification. Observe the activity of differentiation. Observe the activity of
desire. Observe the patterns of your existence."
Self-observation under all conditions is the beginning of this process in
consciousness.
I was talking with one of you today, and it was asked whether it was
appropriate for someone simply to begin this enquiry "Avoiding relationship?"
as it is described in The Knee of Listening . Right now, reading the book, why
not just begin it? But this intelligence that is understanding is a form of
Satsang. It is Satsang in another peculiar form. This enquiry is Satsang. It is
that same condition that we enjoy in the relationship to the Guru, but only in
another form. Just so, there are subtle forms of this enquiry, in which no
mental enquiry takes place. But it is the same enquiry, and it is still Satsang.
And perfect understanding is itself Satsang, perfectly realized and enjoyed. It
never comes to an end. It is perfect enquiry-enquiry going on eternally,
absolutely. At some point this verbal or mental enquiry becomes appropriate.
But it is only one of the stages in a process. This form of enquiry is
necessarily preceded by insight. It must first be made alive as intelligence,
as real re-cognition in your own case. Then, instead of simply observing the
quality of your life, you will begin to enquire of the quality of your life. A
more or less passive quality in consciousness is replaced by a more or less
active quality. But that actual enquiry, asking of this question ("Avoiding
relationship?") in a more or less formal way, is not appropriate at the
beginning in most cases. Satsang must begin, the influence of Satsang, the
condition of Satsang must begin. You must begin to adapt to Satsang, make
it your sadhana, meet the conditions of spiritual life in a very simple way,
take on the qualities of an ordinary pleasurable life, assume responsibility for
the relationship that is Satsang. And begin to listen.
You will simply begin to listen, and you will simply begin to hear. When you
begin to hear, when this process in consciousness has begun, you will begin
to observe yourself, see yourself under the conditions of life. This process of
self-observation, carried on here in our discussions about this contraction or
avoidance of relationship, and in all your study, reading and living of this
work, at some point becomes communication received, real observation of
how, yes! this contraction, this avoidance is the quality of your life.
Therefore, this process of self-observation as the result of hearing in Satsang,
of living in Satsang, is the beginning of this process that becomes enquiry.
Enquiry is not a method any more than Satsang is a method. Enquiry at
some point is the natural, spontaneous, intelligent activity of one who is
living Satsang. But first he must hear and observe. Yes?
"When you see that you are always seeking, understanding is emerging.
When you see the pattern of Narcissus as all your motives, all your acts, all
your seeking, understanding is emerging. When you see you are always
suffering, understanding is emerging. When you see that every moment is a
process in dilemma, understanding is emerging. When you see that every
moment is a process of identification, differentiation and desire,
understanding is emerging. When you see that every moment, when you are
at your best as well as when you are at your worst, you are only avoiding
relationship, then you understand. When you see that which already is, apart
from the avoidance of relationship, which already absorbs consciousness
prior to the whole dilemma, motivation and activity of avoidance, then you
have finally understood."
So this process of self-observation in Satsang, which is a result of hearing in
relationship to the man of understanding, grows and becomes insight, actual
living intelligence.
"When you have understood" (when this insight has become real)
"understanding will become the natural response of your intelligence to any
experience, the total content of any moment. Then approach every moment
with understanding, and perceive the original truth within it. Devote some
time in the morning and evening to conscious understanding. Sit down, turn
to understanding, and enquire of yourself as thoughts, feelings, and
movements arise within to distract you. Enquire in the form of
understanding: Avoiding relationship?"
When this insight has developed as a result of self-observation, initiated
through hearing, under the conditions of Satsang, this enquiry, which is then
a form of the intelligence already alive in you, becomes appropriate. And a
practical way to enjoy this intelligent activity is simply to set aside some
time for it. Morning and evening is convenient. When you get up in the
morning, that is convenient. Just before bed, that is convenient. Any time is
all right. But such times are appropriate and convenient.
"Do this for a half hour or an hour in the morning and evening, when you rise
from sleep or just before retiring. Do it also briefly at any moment in the day
when strong distractions absorb you. Devote yourself to understanding in the
midst of all experience, instead of any kind of remedial action that arises as
a way to handle the problem of life at any moment.
"Make understanding and enquiry your radical approach to life. Become
more and more absorbed in understanding and the cognition of present
freedom. Understand and enquire, until these things become realized
permanently as your form. Enjoy and create according to the wisdom of your
own form."
The last two lines refer to the radical, most subtle forms of this process of
enquiry. Yes?
A number of people have asked me about this enquiry, "Avoiding
relationship?" Some of them want to use it immediately, simply because they
read about it in the book. Some started to use it and found it very
troublesome and problematic. Some started to use it as a "method." But the
only genuine use of it depends upon its having come into existence in you,
as your intelligence, which is a very different thing from reading it in a book.
The enquiry depends on Satsang. It depends on making Satsang into radical
spiritual practice, true sadhana, your way of life, the very condition of your
life.
Enjoy the quality of Satsang, the force of it, until you become free enough, so
alive with the intensity of that force that you begin to listen, which is to
become spontaneously available to the intelligence of Satsang. Then you will
begin to hear what is said or otherwise communicated. All of this will take
place in you and become self-observation. When this self-observation that is
spontaneously awakening in you continues under all conditions of life, you
will begin to observe this contraction of which I speak. You will begin to see
this avoidance of relationship. It will become clear to you in your living
experience. When it has become clear to you, when it takes place as a
certainty, as your very knowledge, then that very knowledge can be used
positively, directly. It becomes your approach to life. It is your intelligence. At
that point, this enquiry begins. Examine this chapter on meditation in The
Knee of Listening . See what is involved in the beginnings of it.
Our work is not the exclusive kundalini yoga. It is the all-inclusive, universal
and perfect way of God. Many of you have begun to become sensitive to the
energy, the force, the shakti of this work. And no doubt about it, there is a
living force in Satsang. This work is not simply an intellectual or mental
liberation. The force alive in Satsang is the very force of the Heart, the living
Reality. But it is not unconscious. It is conscious. And the way is conscious.
True sadhana is an intense, forceful way of consciousness. So it is not a
matter of forever receiving the blessing or darshan of shakti and allowing it
to do things to you. Begin to listen. Accept the conditions of this relationship.
Remove the ordinary obstacles. Abandon them. If you truly engage and use
this relationship from day to day, more obstacles and more demands will be
created for you than you could ever have imagined as a discipline for
yourself. The relationship will discipline you. You don't have to be concerned
with spiritual techniques, purifying methods, things to do to yourself, apart
from the responsibilities for practical maintenance of life which were
discussed with you when you entered the Ashram.
As you make Satsang the condition of your life in a very practical way, you
will begin to listen. You will begin to hear, and you will begin to observe your
own action, even your most subtle action. The real process of enquiry rests
upon all of that. Therefore, a great deal is required of a man before this
enquiry comes into play. It is not a method. It is not a form of morbid self-
analysis. It is a form of real, living, spontaneous intelligence. It is itself
already understanding, the force of Truth. So it simply does not arise as an
option for you, as something of use to you, until it has come alive. First there
must be Satsang and this activity in consciousness.
Listen! There is this contraction, this avoidance. All men are living this
avoidance of relationship. That is all anyone is doing. Nothing else is
happening. Only this contraction of living and subtle forms. It is suffering. It
creates by implication the notions men have about the very nature of life.
This contraction implies a separate self, separate from the world and all
other beings. The appearance of many, much and separate me is an
expression of our suffering, but the force, the intensity, the bliss of Reality
persists and is felt even under the conditions of ignorance. Therefore, it
appears as the drama of desire, the search for union between the separate
me and the manyness. Every mans life is the drama necessitated by this
fundamental contraction. Every mans life is the adventure he is playing on
this contraction. Every mans life is bullshit! The drama of an ordinary life is
without significance, or real intensity. It is deadly ignorance. No Truth, no
Satsang.
Satsang must begin. Satsang must be enjoyed as the condition of life. Then
the whole drama of which even traditional spirituality is a manifestation
comes to an end, dies. This contraction becomes flabby and opens. The real
force of conscious existence comes into play and becomes the way, the
sadhana itself.
Meditation is not something that takes place in the dilemma. Real meditation
is not a method to get rid of your suffering. It is not perpetual preoccupation
with your own thoughts, the content of your life, in order to get free of them,
get aside from them, make them be quiet. The you who does all that is itself
the dilemma. It knows nothing. It is itself the suffering. It is itself obsession
with the endless stream of its own thought. Therefore, the attempts by such
a one to do something about his "mind," to make it quiet, to make it see
visions, whatever, are within the form of this original motivating dilemma.
Such strategies are expressions of his separate life, attempts to fortify and
save his separate life, which is already an illusion.
Real meditation arises only in Satsang, only under the conditions of Truth,
already lived. There is force in such meditation. Real meditation is an intense
fire. It is a marvelous intelligence, a brilliance, a genius, a living force. It is
not a pious attempt to quiet your little thoughts. It blasts the hell out of these
thoughts! From the point of view of the Self, the Truth, the Real, there is no
concern for all of these thoughts, all of these dilemmas, all of this mediocrity
of suffering. It is nothing.
When Satsang lives as the principle of your life, and Truth becomes the form
of your meditation, it consumes thought. It is a presence under which
thoughts cannot survive. It is an intelligence that needs only to look at some
obstruction for it to dissolve. This is the process that comes awake in
Satsang, not some method, some remedy. The whole point of view of dis-
ease is false. Spiritual life is not a cure. Spiritual life is the life of Truth,
Satsang. One who is looking for a cure is obsessed with his disease.
The first true thing a man does when he comes into contact with his Guru is
to relax the obsession with his dis-ease, his trouble. Therefore, the original
activity a man enjoys in relation to his Guru is not this sophisticated
meditation, this enquiry. What he does is nothing very sophisticated at all. He
comes and relaxes his search. He begins to find himself in the condition of
Truth, in Satsang. He begins to enjoy that condition in a very practical way,
enjoying the force of it, the intensity of it, the beauty of it, the blissfulness
and happiness of it. Only then does he begin to hear, observe and become
intelligent, sophisticated. Yes? So the "beginnings" of Satsang may last for a
very long time.
The more a man persists in the drama of his resistance, the longer he
prevents Satsang. If a man comes into association with one who he suspects
might be alive, functioning as Guru, but spends the next forty years
wondering about it, he has never entered into Satsang. Satsang is not simply
coming into a room and sitting. Satsang is the relationship itself, the
relationship to the Heart, the Self, the Guru, the paradoxical person of the
man of understanding. The drama of the avoidance of relationship to the
Guru is the paradigm, the epitome, the archetype of all the dramas played in
all relationships. It is better if, upon meeting his Guru, a man surrenders his
search and enters suddenly into that relationship. But in most cases there is
a period of time, of drama, of wondering, of in and out, of yes and no, of
wondering again, of thinking, none of which is spiritual life. None of that has
anything to do with spiritual life. It is only the drama of suffering, resistance,
reluctance. Spiritual life begins for a man or woman when that relationship
openly becomes the condition of his life. Then he becomes willing to accept
the conditions it demands of him. He begins to enjoy the force of that
presence, that Satsang. He becomes alive, intense with that force. Then this
activity in consciousness begins to awaken.
Observe your connection here. Examine your relationship to this one. See the
drama you are playing in terms of this Satsang, and live this Satsang instead.
I am only interested in this Satsang as a real process. I have no interest
whatsoever in gathering an enormous organization of silly, fascinated
people. I am concerned that this real process begins in fact, in whomever it is
possible for it to begin. If there is no one, I will stay home. If there is only
one, I will deal with one. If there are fifty, it will be fifty. If there are fifteen
million, that is fine too. But I am not willing to do what is necessary to
acquire a following through promises, methods, consolations, illusions and
one-shot-liberation baloney.
Conditions are continually being created for you here. And these conditions
are always appropriate. They are the pure instruments of Self-knowledge. But
if you don't live this relationship, this Satsang, it will always be an offense to
you, it will always create an obstacle for you. Then Satsang will only make
you angry and uncomfortable. Live this Satsang, learn the real conditions of
spiritual life, observe your resistance to it, be purified of your seeking,
understand and surrender this search. Lead an ordinary, pleasurable life.
Remove exaggerated, self-toxifying practices in life, all the absurdities, the
forms of self-indulgence. Become more sophisticated with your desire. Come
here as often as you can. Simply sit in this relationship, enjoy the force of it,
begin to observe yourself. Ask me questions about your sadhana. Not the
usual questions: "Where is George Washington today?" or "What is the shape
of the next universe?" These are not your real questions. What do you care
about all of that? That is not the point. You are suffering only. If you have to
fly a rocket between here and Mars, then it becomes a practical necessity to
discuss what the conditions are between here and there. When you are
elsewhere it is appropriate to consider what it is like in other worlds. After
death it is appropriate to examine what it is like after death. If you are dying
this evening, then we can deal with the death process. But you are only
suffering. You are resisting Satsang.
Ultimately, all of this avoidance of relationship is only the resistance to
Satsang. It is the resistance to making Satsang the condition of life. It is
dramatized in relation to the Guru because, whatever he is in Reality, he
symbolizes Satsang or spiritual life. Therefore, people feel very free to
aggravate their relationship to the Guru. But they should be approaching
their own ignorance, their suffering. Come to Satsang with real need, not
with anything to defend.
The world is absolutely insane. But your spiritual life does not depend on the
world. You are not going to get up from Satsang today and suddenly find that
everything and everybody in the world is absolutely beautiful. You are not
going to find that all your suffering has been taken away by magic. The world
is going to create obstacles. The world does not want to function. People do
not want to function. They are not yet alive. If you are coming alive in
Satsang, you are going to have to be intelligent in your relationships,
intelligent in life.
Require Truth. Take yourself to Satsang, the company of Truth. Don't believe
the usual company of life, of resistance, of avoidance. The world will create
conditions that will awaken your own aggravation, your own ignorance, your
own game. It will demand your game of you. It will demand that you suffer it,
and that you live it as well. When a person is still weak, still beginning, the
world seems a vast alternative to his spiritual discipline and to Truth. The
patterns of sudden desire seem so much more pleasurable than this
sadhana. Therefore, especially in the beginning, a man must make good use
of the company of his Guru and his Ashram. When he becomes stronger he
will also make good use of the world.
The same thing you enjoy as Satsang is itself understanding. That
blissfulness of relationship is already realization, already Truth. The more
profoundly you enjoy it, the subtler its nature appears to you. Satsang does
not proceed toward a goal of Truth. Satsang is Truth. It is the life of Truth. It is
the force, the consciousness that is Truth. Over time Truth itself produces
change, apparent transformation. But Truth is the very condition of spiritual
life, not its end phenomenon. Therefore, from the moment Satsang begins,
the demand of Truth is put to a man in the form of an obstacle. If sadhana,
the practice of Satsang, were a method, some sort of means toward Truth,
there would be no conditions. Anyone could come for "initiation," regardless
of his state of preparation. Then I would give him a little technique of some
sort, and flatter him with promises. No, the way is Truth itself, the Tao is itself
the way. Truth is the way. So the "initiation" of spiritual life involves the
communication of this obstacle, this demand that is Truth. The first form of
that demand is the person of the Guru. Thus, the first form of a previous
spiritual encounter is generally the life drama of his association with the
Guru, the man of understanding. Even so, it is not the Gurus function to
destroy the resistance of the world by magic. If a man responds to the
teaching he must prepare himself, and make an appropriate approach to
Satsang.
The first obstacle, and the primary obstacle, to spiritual life is the
relationship to the Guru. It is also the fundamental condition, content and
source of spiritual or real life. If it were not for that, everybody could become
spiritual by the mere practice of some method or another. They would read
books, they would manipulate themselves with arbitrary beliefs. But spiritual
life is a relationship, a living demand. It creates an obstacle from the very
beginning. And that obstacle provokes the crisis and fundamental sacrifice
that real life requires.
Nothing is offered but Satsang. Nothing is given but that relationship,
because it is Truth. Those who finally live it as the condition of life receive
everything, because that relationship is the medium of Truth. Everything
rests on a mans ability to realize that relationship. I know very well who lives
it and who does not. It doesn't require any psychic powers to know it. If a
person lives Satsang, I live Satsang with him. With those who do not, I must
be involved to some degree in the drama of their resistance. Essentially, this
involves the application of conditions to their demands, so that the
resistance in them is set aside, broken down. Chastisement, or an apparently
negative approach to someone, as you may see in some cases here, or in
your own case, is not in fact "punishment." It is a form of Satsang, the
communication of Truth. It is only that the individual involved in such a case
is, for the time being, incapable of assuming the condition of Satsang, and
the responsibilities of Truth.
DEVOTEE: Could you define the "enquiry" that you mentioned in your book
The Knee of Listening ?
FRANKLIN: I have written in the section on meditation, "enquiry" is not
something for you to do. It is not a method to achieve anything. This enquiry
has no intrinsic value whatsoever. It has only a possible functional value. It is
true only when it is real, an extension of present understanding, when the
understanding of which I often speak is alive as your own intelligence. This
enquiry arises spontaneously and becomes usable entirely apart from the
search. Prior to understanding, it has no value of any kind. Until
understanding itself arises, it doesn't make any difference how you enquire,
whether you enquire, or when you enquire. It doesn't even make any
difference if you ask this question ("Avoiding relationship? ") and it seems to
be doing you some good. It is still some form of narcissistic, separative,
obsessive activity, a form of the search. It is functioning in dilemma. So there
is no need to define this enquiry for you, or in other words, to make it more
usable.
Understanding, the Heart, this re-cognition of avoidance and contraction, is
the necessary preliminary to the use of any kind of enquiry. Understanding is
a spontaneous intelligence, arising in Satsang, in the company of the Guru.
Satsang is a mans discovery, it is his meditation, it is his highest
responsibility. When the structure of Satsang, and the quality, form and word
of his Guru communicate themselves in their true form, what is called
understanding, this real intelligence, begins to grow in a very natural way.
Then it becomes appropriate to enquire, for the disciple is free of his search.
Prior to understanding, there is nothing to be perfected about the enquiry
itself. Prior to understanding, a mans only concern is Satsang. How he
responds to it, how he feels about it, all of the resistance, doubt, gravity, all
of the qualities in him that are stimulated in Satsang are his meditation. The
intelligence represented in the words of the Guru, or the Gurus approach, his
form, his energy, his shakti, whatever the communication of Satsang to
which the disciple is sensitive, is the only true or radical alternative to all that
the disciple finds reflected or stimulated in himself.
DEVOTEE: When the enquiry "Avoiding relationship?" is really effective in my
daily life, it arises spontaneously. Sometimes it takes the form of an internal
mentalization of the question "Avoiding relationship?" At other times it seems
to be only a process of intelligence or spontaneous movement of
consciousness itself. In other words, sometimes it arises as intelligence itself,
and at other times I find myself using the internal mentalization of the idea,
the mental enquiry. Why are there appearances of different qualities of
enquiry? I have an idea about this. Perhaps it is that, when I am distracted
more, the internal mentalization serves to bring me back to the present, to
what I am up to, and serves to dissolve the tendency to distraction of mind.
FRANKLIN: This enquiry ("Avoiding relationship?") is in the form of a re-
cognition or knowing again of ordinary activity, but its also an extension of
something much subtler than mind and life. Its an extension of that very
intelligence that already is re-cognition. So there is a form of this enquiry
that is speechless, mindless, thoughtless, imageless, and yet also an intense
form of activity. That is why I have said that enquiry rests on prior
understanding or intelligence. If understanding is not alive, enquiry is
nonsense. But when this intelligence is alive, then it is the enquiry. When you
are sensitive to this re-cognition, this force of intelligence, then you are free
to let it live, either as a mental enquiry at this moment, or as a silent re-
cognition of mind or mentalization itself.
Real meditation is begun by sitting in Satsang, here with me, at home alone,
or even while active under ordinary, functional conditions of life. In that
conscious condition that is Satsang a kind of quieting arises, and, at the
same time, an intensification of your self-awareness. Depending on the
peculiar quality of your state at that time, you will become attentive to forms
of desire, differentiation, or identification. Impulses are the form of desires.
Thought, or separation of things that arise, is the form of differentiation. The
various forms of separate and separative self sense are the form of
identification. Therefore, when various of these qualities begin to draw your
attention, this enquiry may begin. And, generally it begins as an internal or
mental verbalization. The enquiry ("Avoiding relationship?") is evoked
randomly, not repetitively, but as a real question, and followed until there is
a real answer. And the "answer" is not itself a thought, but a spontaneous re-
cognition of thought, of action, of the forms of identification, differentiation
and desire. When enquiry truly arises, founded in prior insight, then the very
forms and processes that have attracted attention tend to fall away. They
cease to distract you. And you simply, spontaneously fall into the condition
of relationship, which is always already the case, prior to the obscuring
activity of the avoidance of relationship. In this same sitting, you may
proceed through various forms. At first forms of desire, perception,
awareness of life-activity. Then the process may move into subtler forms.
Forms of thought, forms of impression, memory, images. Then it may move
into the various subtle senses of separation, the qualities of self sense. All
the time, this verbal enquiry, randomly activated, adapts to the various
qualities that are arising. But in the depth of consciousness, there begins to
arise a sense of what is always taking place at any and every moment of
enquiry. It appears as a kind of "shape" in consciousness. A subtle activity
begins to form an impression and then a direct comprehension in
consciousness. Then the mental form of enquiry tends to fall away. Instead of
mental enquiry, this other activity that has always taken place at every
moment of enquiry begins to move into every instant of awareness. It moves
in terms of the same processes that were arising before, including forms of
desire, thought, and separate self sense, but without mental verbalization.
Then, in each moment, these qualities vanish, as they did when enquiry was
mentalized.
At first, what is enjoyed in this whole process of enquiry is a kind of intensity
in relationship, a sense of relationship with great intensity. But the subtler
this process becomes, the more there tends to arise a re-cognition that the
only thing that is ever happening in every instant is a modification of the
very Reality that exists. Every impulse, every desire, every thought, every
sense, every sense of separate self, all of these begin to appear as one
activity, a continuous modification, a shaping of what is, of That which is also
ones own Nature or Condition. This is the subtlest form of re-cognition. And
no sense of limited or qualified relationship exists in this re-cognition at last.
The very point in space by which one approaches everything, this separate
self sense, is seen, felt and known to be a modification, an arbitrary shaping
of ones own existence. Wherever this "shape," this contraction, this
modification, this formation of awareness is re-cognized, it is obviated. It is
disappeared in the instant of re-cognition, until there is absolute, perfect
enjoyment of That which underlies all of this activity. At last only It is
enjoyed, only It is lived. And that is called Self-realization, Liberation,
Nirvana, all those names.
There are various traditional forms of dhyan, or meditation. But perfect,
absolute, radical understanding is the most intense, the endless or eternal
Form of meditation. When that meditation is itself perfect, radical, absolute,
when re-cognition has become total, when every thing has been re-cognized,
so that nothing arises in consciousness that is not at the very same instant
already re-cognized, when regardless of the condition that arises, regardless
of the activity that is performed, whether one is sitting as if in meditation, or
walking, or performing ordinary activity, the Real Form is only obvious, when
re-cognition is constant, this is the fundamental state. This is true Samadhi,
Sahaja Samadhi, constant realization of ones true state prior to all conditions
in the worlds. This true Samadhi or realization is not itself an experience, a
kind of trance or any kind of "yogic" state. It is only enjoyment of and as that
Reality which one has always been, and which all things are. One who simply
enjoys and lives this enjoyment is to be called a "man of understanding." In
him true spiritual life has begun . He lives in the Heart, at the "foot" of Amrita
Nadi, the Form of God. And when such a one moves into association with
other beings, he begins to speak in very strange ways about the nature of
life.
All men are only seeking, all are involved in this peculiar activity, the
avoidance of relationship, and all are pursuing an answer in the forms of
their present experience. Therefore, men want a truth that consoles their
humanity. But very Truth has nothing whatever to do with human identity,
limited to what presently appears. From the point of view of Truth, this birth
is an obsession, unnecessary, already non-existent. But men want to hear
about birth and reincarnation, experience and after-life, fulfillment and
fascinating creativity. Truth is the most radical penetration of this whole
event. And only at that moment is there happiness. Until then, every
thought, every thought, regard less of its content, is in the form of dilemma.
You can be thinking, "Ice Cream Cone," or, "Run Spot, run," and you may
imagine, because of the content of your thoughts, particularly if they are
"good" thoughts, that everything is all right. But all thought is in the form of
a dilemma for one who does not understand.
Observe the entire content of an instant of thinking. Not just its apparent
content, the "sentence," concept or image you have in mind, but the entire
event, including your involvement with the thought, your relationship to the
thought and the tendencies created by the thought, the tendencies created
by thinking itself. Apart from Truth all thought is dilemma. The quality of
thought is dilemma. The quality of ordinary life is dilemma. Apart from
radical understanding or real meditation, life is only suffering, search,
endless self-creation, endless qualification of the Force that is Reality. Every
thought is "shape."
DEVOTEE: Suppose you are sitting, looking at a very beautiful lake. You are
sitting by a lake, and you are looking at it, and you are thinking it is a very
beautiful lake. What would be the dilemma about that?
FRANKLIN: As I have said, the content of the experience is apparently only
delicious. But witness this entire event. No one has ever been utterly relieved
in the presence of a lake! If you were to become truly sensitive to the current
of your ordinary awareness, you would find yourself getting angry in
gardens, terrified on vacation! It is only that you are chronically unaware of
the nature of your own event.
What is occurring in this moment by the lake? Sitting, looking at the lake. It
seems to be very beautiful. But it seems only beautiful because you are
thinking of it in contrast to other experiences. You have been very busy,
harried, distracted, demanded, frustrated, and so you go and you sit in the
country. You create an interval, to eliminate the conditions of all these things
that ordinarily distract you. You sit in the country, and you relax. You feel a
little vital, psychosomatic peace. This sitting in the country by a lake, and all
things like it, are actually forms of traditional practice. This seemingly natural
repose is actually a sophisticated practice of meditation. There is a long and
ancient tradition for it. We could justifiably claim that "a lake in the country"
is as fixed and formal an object of meditation as the "Our Father," the "Name
of Ram," or "Om Mani Padme Hum." As you spend your several days in the
country, that first moment of ease into distraction begins to disappear in the
currents of usual awareness. And you begin to become sensitive to all kinds
of movements within. Thoughts, feelings, sensations, desires, demands,
frustrations. When the power to distract is lost, neither mantra, sexual
beauty nor country lake can remove from you the pain of ordinary existence.
It is the same with those who sit with me in Satsang. Nothing apparently is
going on. It is a nice room. It is very quiet here, generally attractive. But you
can sit here, in Satsang, and go through the most incredible internal drama.
And where does all of that come from? It is not created by the room.
Sometimes it is good, sometimes it is not so good. Good trip, bad trip. Just
so, in the country. In a matter of time we pass from rest and return to the
same internal self-revelation. If you were forced to remain in the country and
it became your condition rather than your distraction, you would find out that
you are disturbed, still disturbed. Then your search goes on in the country,
as everywhere else. You discover that the very condition of being someone
looking at a lake is a form of suffering. It is a symbol for Narcissus. Compared
to running away from a shotgun, perhaps it seems like pleasure. But if you
examine the content of experiencing itself, even at ease and pleasure, every
instant is this shaping or limitation of the fundamental sense of existence.
There is the creation in consciousness of the separate self sense (this "me"
watching the lake), of differentiating thought ("lake" is different from "city,"
different from "shotgun") and desire ("Oh my, this forever"). Consider all the
various desires awakened on vacation! What is disturbing men (and all men
are disturbed, regardless of their relative condition) is not simply their
external condition, or their present experience. What is disturbing is their
human condition, their birth. You are disturbed by the fact that you are
sitting here, that you are alive in some separate sense, in a world of
conditions. This is the disturbance. And as long as that condition exists in
consciousness, there is suffering. That is the suffering. You can change the
images, you can change the apparent conditions, you can "change" the
world. You can go from here to another world, another condition. You can go
into another state while alive, a drug state, a yogic state, a different house, a
different country, a place in the country. You can modify all the conditions,
external and internal, but you will never change the essential condition that
is your suffering. Only the man of understanding is always already free.
What are men like on vacation? What are people like who are sitting in the
country? Most of the time they are obnoxious! All these people on vacation,
who are all of a sudden so terribly "fulfilled." How do they treat one another?
What kind of capacity do you have for frustration on a vacation? Practically
none. There is no peculiar intelligence required to sit by a lake and feel quiet.
Any ding-dong can do that. There is no sighted person who cant feel pleasure
looking at a sunset. What is so extraordinary about that? People talk about
country, earth and vacation as if they were a real alternative to the demands
of Truth. Anybody can go down to the ocean and feel comforted. But what
has that got to do with your death? What has that got to do with your
genuine state? All it has done is distract you from your chronic state.
Temporarily, distractions make you insensitive to your common state.
Vacations are for that purpose, only to desensitize and rest you for a brief
period of time. They are sleep and refreshment in life. They are not a way of
life. And sitting by a lake, or any ordinary or extraordinary distraction and
pleasure, is not a way of life. Even traditional, motivated spiritual activity is
only a temporary distraction. Truth is not a matter of any of these
distractions. It is a matter of intelligence, the activity of real intelligence. If
there isn't this activity of real intelligence, you are only distracted, and you
are only suffering. Eventually, every individual begins to realize that he is
only suffering. Eventually, people realize they are fundamentally disturbed.
The more sensitive you are, the more obvious it is to you. The less sensitive
you are, the more experience you require before it becomes obvious. The
more force there is in intelligence, the more obvious things are, and the more
intense is your conscious life. The less sensitive, the more distracted you are,
the more in terms of time or experience you require. But the ultimate event
is the same in every case. This intelligence, this sensitivity, this real
observation of ordinary activity arises. And that is yoga, true yoga. That is
meditation. That is spiritual life. That is religion. That is the way of Truth.
Truly, there is no satisfaction in mere birth. Life is not a form of satisfaction.
Life is a form of modification and motivation. It is self-creating. It is also Self-
realizing. It is for the purpose of experiencing or dramatizing and elaborating
latent tendencies, and, by a process of radical understanding, to transcend
and transform the given drama by the grace of Truth.
People who get a little religious, or whatever, like to make all kinds of pious
statements about what this all is. But this is simply a realm of dramatized
desire. Of course, all things arise within the Truth, or within the Real, but as
soon as the Truth itself becomes obvious, "you" disappear. So this world is
not itself the Truth. Truth is that real activity, that real intelligence that is the
transcendent core of all manifestation. When Truth becomes active and alive,
when this real process takes place, the whole form of motion that demands
this limited and compulsive experience, this birth, is dissolved. Thereafter, if
anything arises, humor is not lost. Therefore, the man of understanding
continues to live, but with humor, and he dies with humor.
The peculiar quality of all such men is unique. Ramana Maharshi, from the
moment of his "realization," wanted to get out of here. From that moment,
he wanted nothing to do with life. There came a certain stage in his
continued existence when people surrounded him, asked him questions, and
wanted to serve him. He consented to live the function of Guru among them,
but he never wanted it to last particularly long. He was really very anxious
for his death. Not anxious in the sense of a neurotic need to die. But he was
more than happy for life to come to an end. And his death was very ordinary.
It was a lot of festering and pain and moaning and groaning. Because he
understood very well what this ordinary life and death was all about. His
death was a demonstration of the nature of this common pain, illusion,
suffering. There have also been other "saintly" people whose life appeared as
a kind of flowery, miraculous pleasure. Even so, you must remember that
these people also have all died! The quality all such beings have in common
is this "humor," this freedom in the midst of conditions. And all such men
demonstrated this "humor" by their lives, in different ways, in different times,
and for different people.
There is no moment of this usual birth that is not in the form of desire, of
thought, and of separate self sense. Nothing is going on but these, which are
the usual qualities of man. And none of these truly arises separately. They
are a complex event, a single event. And that event is the usual condition
and limit of man. If you begin to become aware of your activity, your state,
your condition from moment to moment, you see there is nothing but this.
Nothing but desire, thought and separate self sense. The ones who are
regarded by the various traditions to have been enlightened Sages, Siddhas
and Saints were those who had become extremely sensitive to this fact. At
some point, usually relatively early in life, they became incapable of
distraction and fell into their ordinary state, which is fear. When there is no
distraction, there is only fear. The great ones are those who have utterly
passed through their fear. They re- cognized it, knew it again. Other men are
of the same nature as these great ones. They are perhaps momentarily
insensitive. They are capable of distraction. And the differences between all
beings and all disciples are the differences in their capacity for distraction.
The kinds and degrees of distraction to which they are subject, and the
intensity of their distraction, these are the differences. These qualities create
the differences. And the experience of individuals in this great process of
Satsang is one in which their capacity to be distracted is undermined,
frustrated, turned about. Therefore, periodically, every individual passes
through a time of crisis, of great resistance and fear. Ultimately, every
disciple and devotee must go through the same process the Guru has
already gone through. Perhaps not precisely in the same apparent form, but,
within the pattern of his own conditions, that same process must occur.
Thus, spiritual life is this undermining and frustration of the capacity for
distraction. That is why spiritual life has often been described in harrowing
terms. That is why the disciple must be very responsible for the basic
quantities in his life, for his relationship to his Guru, and for the
dramatization that he is tending to create as a result of this spiritual process
in the world. Spiritual life is a crisis. Therefore, spiritual life does involve
discomfort at times. When discomforts of the crises occur, this does not
mean that spiritual life is failing, or that you are not good enough for it. Crisis
and discomfort must occur. The crisis or turnabout is what it is all about. It is
supposed to occur. You are supposed to suffer the purifying events. You are
supposed to encounter resistance in yourself. You are supposed to discover
all kinds of garbage in yourself. So why should there be any special
resistance to it when it occurs? There may be discomfort, and you may wish
you didn't have to go through it. But apart from that, there is no reason why
you should be overwhelmed or completely disenchanted by the fact that you
are witnessing a period of intense conflict, crisis, suffering, and disturbance.
The more time you waste identifying with all of that, the less sensitive you
become to the event. Therefore, Satsang, devotion to Guru, and a loving and
intelligent approach to all of life should naturally increase in the periods of
apparent discomfort.
All of these apparently disturbed or crisis episodes in this real process of
spiritual life are themselves very intelligent, very meaningful. They have a
great deal to show you. The more capacity you have for passing through
these times, the more useful they become. The man or woman who is really
using this process in himself can be passing through this crisis almost
continually, with great frequency and intensity, and yet, like a soldier on the
march, he never misses a step, he never reveals it in any peculiar, outward
way. He continues to function, and he apparently only enjoys his life. He
doesn't get involved in a whole drama of upset. But in the beginning, when a
man or woman is just beginning to pass through this kind of crisis in
consciousness, there tend to be reactions and breakdowns whenever this
crisis process begins. In the beginning there is very often an emotional
collapse, even a physical collapse. There are these episodes that have an
almost psychotic quality to them. And it is during those times that the guy is
wondering whether to come here or not and all of that. But as he passes
through these purifying episodes, he begins to realize how he must function
in terms of the real spiritual process.
When this event begins to arise in the mature disciple, there is always
already something familiar about it. He knows the signs, he knows what is
about to occur, and he knows the kinds of reactions that will build up. He
knows that, instead of clenching his teeth and resisting it, he should find
some more work to do during that time. Instead of planning a vacation or a
binge when he sees a crisis coming, he cancels all forms of entertainment or
distraction, every thing that he would normally use to distract himself from
his internal state. He plans a lot of work for the coming days. He plans on an
ordinary, functional life. He makes good use, really good use of these
episodes. The more intelligent he is, the better the use he makes of them.
The less intelligent he is, the more capable he is of distraction at that time,
the more he will look for ways to dramatize his state, and to distract himself
from the lesson that turns purification into transformation.
You must know that everything I am doing is a means to bring about this
crisis. I desire this crisis in you. I don't want it not to happen. I don't want to
console you. I don't want you to be happy in your unconsciousness. I want
you to become sensitive to your actual state. I want you to know very well
what you are always up to. I want you to become capable of seeing yourself
under all kinds of conditions. I want you to see the machine of your ordinary
activity. And I want it all to collapse. I want it to come to an end. I want the
death of all of that. If that death does not occur, there will be no release, no
real enjoyment for any of you. There will just be the continual round, the self-
creation of this unconscious event of life and death that is already distracting
you. I look to create the various means necessary to serve this crisis.
Because to serve this crisis is to serve understanding, to serve the joy and
true bliss of liberated realization, of radical understanding. Every instant in
Satsang is working to bring this about.
In the Buddhist tradition it is said there are three things to which the aspirant
must resort. In their language, these three are called the Buddha, the
Dharma, and the Sangha: the Siddha-Guru (or descended spiritual Master),
the Teaching (including the living spiritual Power and the discipline), and the
company or community of those who are living the Truth. The first event that
occurred in our work together was the meeting in which you and I
established a relationship. The next quality that began to be developed was
the understanding of what spiritual life is, what this relationship is, what this
process is, and what it demands. So the Guru, the Teaching, the discipline
and the communication of the spiritual power of Truth have been the things
that have held our attention in the early stages of our Ashram. In the last few
months you have seen me begin more and more to emphasize the Ashram
as a living process, an activity, a responsible activity of communion or
community. I have been creating various functions, first by bringing them to
life in myself, and then passing them on as responsibilities in others. So we
have been working in the last few months to create the Sangha, the
company, the community of this work.
The ordinary man is avoiding relationship in complex ways. Therefore, it is
necessary, in the midst of this work, wherein we re-cognize this avoidance,
for relationship to be the condition. There must be living, working, functional
relationship. So there must be the opportunity for those who are living Truth
to live it in relation to one another, to examine together the Teaching, and to
turn as a living community to the Guru. Community is the natural condition
of all true spiritual activity.
People who are moved to approach spiritual things are generally motivated
by their illusions. They use what they gather through reading and the usual
meditation to isolate themselves further, to console themselves, to create
forms of self-imagery, good feelings, immunity, various narcissistic qualities.
But I intend for this Teaching always to be displayed in relationship, because
it is only in relationship that it begins to make any sense, that it begins to
show itself. So there must be this functional confrontation between those
who are using it. That confrontation is the use of it.
Many of you have at one time or another expressed to me your feelings
about organized spirituality, organized religion, whatever. People commonly
have negative and resistive feelings toward all forms of community and
human relationships. And the reason, the ultimate root of these feelings, is
the tendency towards separation itself. In a certain way you can see that it is
completely justified. There is a great deal about organized spiritual and
common life worthy to be resisted! On the other hand, Truth is manifested
only in this relational condition, and it is perceived in relationship. It is a crisis
that occurs in relationship. Therefore, the community of Truth, the
community that lives this Teaching is absolutely necessary. But what makes it
a thing to resist is your lack of involvement in it, your separation from it, your
dramatized resistance to relational and community life. So the spiritual
community must be alive. Every one must be alive within it. Every one must
be active in relationship and function within it. So if you do become active,
responsible, alive, and intimate with others who are living this way, the
whole sensation of resistance to so-called "organized" spiritual life will
disappear, because you will be dealing with the problem of community only
as that which it truly is: an expression of your own avoidance of relationship.
But if you do not live it, if you do not move into functional relationship with
this work, you will only see it externally. Everywhere you will only see your
reasons for separating from the Guru, the Teaching, and the Community,
because you will have made it into something without life, something worth
resisting. Therefore, it is the responsibility of those in this work to live it, to
become active in it, to use it, and to become responsible for it.
CHAPTER 9
One-Pointedness
DEVOTEE: When in Satsang, Ive started to have this experience of being
drawn into some kind of trance, almost like a sleep, and Ive been trying to
deal with it, but I dont know whether I should hold back, hold onto it or let
go.
FRANKLIN: It makes no difference. Why does this experience seem to create
a question in you?
DEVOTEE: I wonder if a decision or will is required, or is it all you?
FRANKLIN: There are two things here. You have this experience that comes
on you in Satsang, and you have your search. The experience is not what
you are really asking about. What are you observing about yourself?
DEVOTEE: Well, Im trying to get the answer. Im trying to find out what to do.
Im still searching.
FRANKLIN: And what is this searching, this getting? What does this trying to
find the answer involve? What is it you are doing when you are asking these
questions and manipulating yourself? What are you up to all the time? What
are you doing? You are disturbed!
DEVOTEE: Yes!
FRANKLIN: That is the truth. Always disturbed. You come here disturbed, and
you go through some changes. Then you feel very restful. Then you start
wanting to wake up, but you also want to go back to sleep "Should I do this,
should I do that?" You are disturbed! You are asking questions. You have this
dilemma. That is true. That is the whole point.
The point is not the answer to this question, not whether you should allow
yourself to go into this trance state or not. Such answers are only a response
to this question. But this question is what you are all about! It is this chronic
disturbance, this dis-ease, this contraction, this avoidance of relationship,
this whole process in all its forms.
And all of this is going on while you are just sitting here! But "just sitting
here" is a potent means of making you gradually aware of your ordinary
activity. That is the point, not these experiences in themselves. The entire
process is to make you aware of your ordinary state, your ordinary activity,
to see it directly, to know it, to re-cognize it, to know it again. Understanding
is the point of all this. Since understanding is the point, the experiences
themselves are not what it is all about, nor your reactions to the experiences,
nor your questions about them, nor their content, nor their interpretation.
What you do about this particular experience is no more significant than the
interpretation of dreams. The having of dreams is significant. The fact that
they occur is already their meaning. That is their significance. Their very
activity, the fact that they occur—that is the process. Apart from the process
itself, it makes no difference what a dream "means." It is a process in
consciousness, having its own value. So also with the process of your
experiences in Satsang. But while this process is going on, you are disturbed.
And this disturbance manifests as endless changes in your state. You are
wandering, and wondering about it. So it begins to seem that even this
simple experience, just sitting here, has become a question! It is as if the sky
were a question! But in itself it is not a question. There is no question. "You"
are the question! Your state is the quality of dilemma, of dis-ease. Your state
is your question.
The force of Satsang produces phenomena at various levels. It represents
itself in many ways. But the value of it, the ultimate purpose of it, is for you
to see your own activity. If you were not always becoming a question, always
contracting, there would be nothing to ask about these phenomena. And
what is this process of becoming a question, a fundamental dilemma? You
must have listened to music through a pair of stereo speakers or
headphones. The sound appears to arise from some point in the middle of
your head. If you become very attentive to that process itself, the point of
hearing seems to be generated in the very midst of your head. If you
become even more attentive, this point of "hearing" will become the thing in
which you are interested, and you wont hear the details or even the sounds
of the music anymore. The psycho-physical organism as a whole operates in
very much the same way. The functional mechanisms of perception, such as
the ears, seem to "target" phenomena. When we are weak, when we have
suffered through not living these phenomena from the point of view of Truth,
we become obsessed with this point of awareness, the target itself. We begin
to identify with it. Perception or experience creates the self, the ego, and we
begin chronically to live in terms of this target as if it were the source and
center of life.
No matter what phenomena arise, you habitually manipulate them in such a
way that this target becomes the focus and apparent source or origin of your
attention. This target becomes the chronic implication of all experience. Just
so, this "trance" experience arose in your case. As usual, there was the
attempt to return to the point of view of this target, to give it all
"significance," until the experience itself was lost in the dilemma. The target
became the obsession. In this way, the intensity or potency of all experience
is used to reinforce Narcissus, the sense of separate, independent self.
That target is "me," ego, but it is also a question. It is always in the form of a
dilemma. Because it is a form of contraction, a point, it is always separate,
even from the phenomena that create it! When this target becomes the
obsession in consciousness, the living phenomena of our spontaneous
existence are no longer clear. If you are focused compulsively upon the
target of the sound, you cant differentiate the patterns of music any longer,
you cant enjoy the sound, you cant turn to the source of sound, you contract
from it continually. So the sense of existence as this contracted point is the
dilemma. When we speak from the point of view of self, it is always as
dilemma. And when we begin to perceive, to turn back to the spontaneous
world from this point of view, everything seems mysterious, threatening.
Then every thing assumes the form or quality of a question. And there is a
continual return, folding back in on that target or point again and again, until
this activity is re-cognized, known again.
When re-cognition takes place, this "point" is seen to have no fundamental
and fixed or necessary reality. It is simply a functional means of organizing
phenomena. The apparent implication, the self, the ego, that "point," is
unreal, a temporary and dependent event. It is a secondary creation. It
doesnt actually and presently exist as the form of consciousness. It is purely
a functional phenomenon, a psycho-physical habit. But this habit persists,
until there is a turnabout in consciousness, from compulsive orientation upon
this point, this target, to what is prior to that.
What is the nature of sound and of hearing prior to that target? Before there
is the avoidance of relationship, before there is this contraction, with its
sensation of self, what is the nature of consciousness? The whole psycho-
physical mechanism is a mass of these targeting agencies. From top to
bottom, inside and out, the whole life-process amounts to this sense of a
point, a target, and men identify compulsively with that, so that they begin
to live from its point of view, forgetting entirely the origin of this point.
Now, Satsang is like the origination of sound. It is received by men in the
ordinary way, through this targeting mechanism, and they compulsively try
to manipulate or orient themselves in relation to the experiences of Satsang,
so that they can continually regain the sense of this point, this target, this
ego. As if that were the significance of these experiences! But when they
remember they are in Satsang, when they turn to the origin of this
phenomenon of Satsang rather than upon this target of experience,
something happens quite naturally in consciousness. It is not at once
illumination or perfect knowledge. It is a spontaneous and momentary
release of the separate point of view. It allows the force that is being
communicated to fill this mechanism, to harmonize it without the compulsive
contraction, the compulsive creation of this point of view. Over time, this
fullness begins to become a kind of intelligence, an effortless receptivity, a
new event in consciousness that begins to see this activity perfectly, to see
this contraction as it is, as contraction.
The avoidance of relationship is a purely secondary activity that is suffering,
that is dilemma, that is not real, not itself Reality or the present and true
condition. It has only a conventional value, but no ultimate reality. One who
understands begins to fall from this compulsive activity into openness, no-
contraction, and such is true Self-Knowledge. The true "Self" or Reality is not
a point, it is not the implication of experience, it has no significance in time,
it is not limited to any visible form, any form of energy or light, it is not
located in space, it has no center, and no bounds. So, Satsang is the
communication of that Truth, the force of that Truth, to those who are still
living this contraction.
The virtue of Satsang is that it communicates its own nature. It makes this
activity of contraction obsolete by various means. It begins by creating in the
devotee a gradual re-cognition of his own activity, in the midst of Satsang, in
the midst of the force of life, of Truth. Therefore, temporarily, this activity
goes on, this questioning, this wondering, this self-manipulation, even while
some other things are going on that are in themselves quite natural,
intelligent, or extraordinary.
What you do in Satsang is a ritual duplication of what you are always doing.
You come here already hung-up, already disturbed. This avoidance of
relationship, this contraction is what is always going on. And, we buy it! We
continually buy it. I often make a fist out of my hand to indicate this activity
to you, because it shows very clearly what happens when there is this
contraction. If you curl your hand in upon itself, a sensation is created at the
center of the hand that concentrates attention. This sensation in the hand is
differentiated from every possible thing that is outside it. It becomes the
center of concentration. The same process, generated in the psycho-physical
life as a whole, becomes the point of view toward all of this, whereas it is
only a functional reflection of various forces. At every level of consciousness,
the entire psycho-physical mechanism is devoted to this activity, this curling
in upon itself. This is Narcissus. And all the searches of men, all the
traditional approaches men have taken to Truth, are from this point of view,
the point of view of this dilemma, this contraction, this "ego."
Men want to know what happens after death. What happens after this
sensation is released? Nothing! They want this sensation of independent
existence to survive. They become frightened. All questions are from this
"point" of view, because this is the archetype of questions. This is the only
question, this is the dilemma! This is our fundamental experience from
moment to moment. So men are suffering, they are afraid, they are self-
obsessed, they are distracted, they are unconscious, they are turned in upon
themselves. They are always turning, curling. What do you do?
I was looking at some people here earlier, while we were sitting quietly
together. Some of you are always doing something when you are only sitting.
It would be amusing to put it on rapid film. It is an incredible ritual, an
endless dance, touching and examining your bodies, creating this sensation
of separate existence by every kind of nervous perception. There are
numberless tiny adjustments of the physical position, endless touching of
various parts of the body, moving of the body, creasing the body, creating
little tensions in the nervous system that concentrate attention. It is going on
internally as well, with every form of perception and thought, every possible
kind of communication from the environment and the internal functions of
the psycho-physical life. This same targeting, this compulsive contraction,
goes on and on and on and on. And what do you think you do when you get
up to leave this room? Do you think that the strategy of your activity
changes when you say good morning to someone or when you walk down
the street or when you go to work? This same thing is always going on. Its an
endless contraction, endless self-sensation.
Sit quietly in a chair sometime. You will observe how every moment of
perception is combined with a symbol in consciousness, a thought, an image,
an interpretation, a contraction of the field of consciousness. Always, this
target is created. So men are always "meditating," men are always tending
to be "one-pointed." Every moment of life is devoted to the creation of this
"point." And this contraction ultimately becomes terminal. It becomes
psycho-physical death, because it is endlessly intensified, to the point of
absolute contraction, so there is no longer any flow of force. If I hold my hand
clenched tightly in a fist, increasing the tension, so that no blood will flow, it
will eventually wither. So men are dying of this one activity. All physical pain
is a contraction. Fear is a contraction. All emotions are contraction. All
thought is a contraction of the force-field of consciousness. All that a man
ever experiences are the forms of his own contraction, this avoidance of
relationship.
So all men are like Narcissus, who sought to escape from all conditions by
separating himself from all relationships, all confrontation, who removed
himself to the wilderness of absolute isolation, so that he was left sitting
nowhere by the side of a pond. What is more, he spent the rest of his life
looking into the pond, gazing at his own image, and supposing it to be his
loved-one, some other that he loved. Not only is Narcissus separate, isolated,
but he is conscious only of an illusion, perpetually. All men are just like that.
There is this avoidance of relationship, this continual contraction and
meditation only upon the internal reflection of events, this endless thinking,
this endless motivation from the point of view of the ego, the assumed
"place" of perception and cognition, so that there is no real perception, no
real knowledge.
When a man looks with eyes, he sees this point. When he hears, he
concentrates on this target. When he acts, he acts from the point of view of
this targeted center. He never deals with the source of these perceptions, he
never communicates with the nature of events. He never realizes that he is
not the point of perception, that he is always already one with perception
itself and all that is perceived. The origin or the "Self" of every man is not
this ego, this target, this sensation. The Self is the origin of all these
sensations. The body arises within the Self. Sound arises within the Self. Light
arises within It. All things arise within It, but the Self is not qualified, nor is
there any separately existing self or thing.
In Satsang the force of this Self, this Reality, is communicated. Just as you
function on many levels, including the solid physical being, the vital energy
of life, the psychic life, the emotive or emotional life, the processes of
thought and subtle cognition, just so, Satsang, the communication of Truth,
manifests on many levels. It manifests as physical, human relationship with
the man of understanding and his friends, as a force, which manifests in
many ways, vital, emotional, psychic, and the rest, as a radical condition of
life, as the communication of verbal concepts, and more. But while this
communication goes on over time, the individual begins to perceive his own
activity in Satsang. Satsang does not simply remove that activity as if by
magic. It reveals that activity. So Satsang, the living of Satsang, which is
spiritual life, involves a crisis in consciousness, the crisis of consciousness.
Therefore, the activity that is our suffering is not removed by magical,
external and willful methods, but it is shown, demonstrated, eventually
perceived, and finally, perfectly understood.
Even while in Satsang, there is a kind of warfare going on in the disciple or
devotee. There is this contraction. But he is continually being drawn out of
that, by the force and very condition of Satsang, into the company of Truth.
The Truth draws him, even though he continues to contract. And the result of
that tension is a dredging up in him of the perception of his own activity, on
many, many levels. It must take place on every level.
While talking with one of you today, I used the simile of a well. When a man
first comes to Satsang, he is like a dark, deep well. Way up at the top, the
light comes in around the edges, but it is black, unconscious below! When
the light of the Truth shines down into it, all of these weirdo, slithering things
come climbing up the sides. All the hidden, slimy activity begins to be
disturbed, awakened, and moved into the light. Just so, every moment in
Satsang increases the necessity for responsibility in the disciple, because the
force of Satsang isnt merely a good feeling, a consolation, something
smiling, happy and pleasant. It is not magic. It is a living force, the force of
Truth. This force moves into the "well," into the human function, this circuit of
descending and ascending life, and brings up the chronic patterns of ordinary
and unconscious life, revealing them at the level of the actual conditions of
life. In the midst of this real process the subtle tendencies of life are revealed
as desires, as incredible compulsions, which, even if they were known before,
now seem to become worse. The intensification of everything is the activity
of Satsang. And what is there to be intensified in the usual man, except this
negative pattern, this contraction? So, of course, there are difficulties. Real
spiritual life requires everything of a person. Spiritual life is a crisis!
One who lives in Satsang experiences many revelations of his state. Dreams
become intensified. There may be spontaneous physical movements,
changes in the physical body. Life may become burdensome at times,
thoughts seem to become endless. The individual may become disgusted
with his own game. But the whole effect of this communication of Truth over
against his own tendencies is to bring about a consciousness of his own
activity or contraction on every level. Where this begins to occur, all of the
hidden qualities can escape into the light and be merged in the light of
consciousness. If a man maintains himself in Satsang through the intense
and perhaps protracted periods of crisis, this whole process appearing in him
will begin to become interesting. He will cease to react to it, to resist it, to
attempt mastery over it, to do anything about it. He will live Satsang. He will
simply live this relationship and condition that is Satsang. Self-indulgence or
outward dramatization of these patterns will cease to be his motivation,
because he will understand this activity to be a purifying event.
So the true devotee lives this Satsang, enjoys this communication of Truth,
sees his own activity, and begins to know what it is. An intelligence begins to
awaken in which he re-cognizes this perfectly. But none of it is a form of
magic. It is a miracle. It is a grace. It is an absolute activity, practically
unknown in the world, because the world is devoted to this ordinary action of
contraction, the avoidance of relationship. Neither the process nor the force
of Satsang is magical. It doesnt simply "come on" to you, so that you feel
good, ready to smile at everyone, as if you were on a drug. No wisdom is
gained by that magic. You are required to go through the purifying event, so
that when you arrive at the point of intelligence, where you can live these
human functions from the point of view of Truth, you have the wisdom by
which to do that. If the negative effects of life were simply removed, as if by
magic, without any of your real participation, you would gradually and
unconsciously move back into the same condition. However, in general, the
participation that you are required to have in this process tends, by the force
of Satsang, to be made more of an internal than an external one. For the
most part, instead of having to live through the latent patterns of karmas of
your life in the form of massive and unyielding disasters, you are brought to
live through them in ways that can at least be handled, perhaps with
difficulty, but they can be handled. Much of it takes place in dreams, in self-
purifying kriyas, in various yogic processes.
Spiritual life is a demand, it is a confrontation, it is a relationship. It is not a
method you apply to yourself. Your "self" is this contraction, and this
contraction is what must be undermined in spiritual life. Therefore, the Guru
comes in human form, in living form, to confront you and take you by the
neck. He doesnt merely send down a grinning photograph, to be reproduced
with a few fairy comments for everybody to believe. The traditional images
and records of past help serve very little. At best they may help a person
move into a position where he can actually begin spiritual life. But Truth must
come in a living form, absolutely. Truth must confront a man, live him, and
meditate him. It is not your meditation that matters. Truth must meditate
you. And that is the Siddhi or marvelous process of Satsang. Even while Truth
is meditating you in Satsang, you are busy doing more of the usual to
yourself, waking yourself up, putting yourself to sleep, reacting in every
possible and unconscious way to the force of Satsang, but you are being
meditated.
You cannot be "meditated" by one who is not alive. Even if you believe in one
who is no longer alive in human form, you cannot provide the necessary,
living means for this meditation. Truth must come in living form, usually in
the human vehicle of the Guru, the true man of understanding. Spiritual life
involves this marvelous process, this Siddhi, this Satsang. If this Siddhi or
living spiritual process is not activated, it doesnt make a damn bit of
difference what exotic or humble spiritual methods you apply to yourself, for
it will always be of the same nature. It will always amount to a form of this
contraction. All of your methods, all mantras, all yogic methods, all beliefs,
all paths, all religions are extensions of this contraction. Truth itself must
become the process of life and communicate itself, create conditions in life,
and make demands, restoring the conscious participation of the individual.
Dead Gurus cant kick ass!
At the beginning, the position of the individual in relation to Satsang is
relatively passive, apparently passive. The fullness of Satsang is given to him
as a grace. When this process begins in him, it acts as an intensifier of his
various internal and external activities. A practical relationship is established
with him, conditions are applied to his life, demands are made of him. The
force, the energy aspect of Satsang intensifies, wakens and fills him. His
vitality, his health, his relations with the environment, his life condition,
these are the things that are confronted first. Essentially, during that early
period, he is responsible for being in Satsang, responsible for maintaining
that connection, and fulfilling the practical demands given to him through
that relationship. He is also responsible not to indulge or dramatize
externally, in life, the phenomena that are arising in him as a result of
Satsang.
People dont begin to believe any of this, really, until they begin to have the
experience. They experience Satsang and the quality of spiritual life here as
something very enjoyable, profound, whatever. Then, all of a sudden, they
come to that first point of crisis in this work. An insane compulsion, almost
like possession, overcomes them and seems to demand they leave this work.
They wake up one morning: "Franklin is no good, the Ashram is no good,
spiritual life is no good, none of this has anything to do with me, I should
leave and return to my previous relatively happy existence." If they are able
to hold on through one or two of these episodes, they begin to see it as their
own activity, not anything that truly reflects on this work, and they become
stable again in Satsang. When this form of the crisis is thus overcome, a new
one develops, just as suddenly, and with equal force. Then they think: "The
work is good, Franklin is good, the Ashram is good, Truth is good, spiritual life
is good, but Im no good, Im not ready for it yet, Im not an old enough soul
yet, Im still full of desires, I guess Im still supposed to seek for a while." This
is the crisis of self-doubt. It is often topped off with the "observation" that
"Franklin hates me." And so they want to leave, if only for that reason!
Narcissus is always a form of contraction, of separation, of leaving. But if
they are able to pass through this one, still holding on to Satsang, still
maintaining a responsible refusal to exploit this internal movement in a life
drama, they begin to settle stably into the real self-recognition that is
spiritual life.
All of the great Siddhas, the realized ones, who have taught in the world,
have given Satsang to their disciples as grace. That was their essential
activity and gift. They didnt come to give a method, to give a conceptual
teaching only, to create a myth, a structure for the mind, some sort of
mentality. They brought themselves. They entered into relationship with the
world, with their disciples. That relationship is the very structure and outward
sign of the process I have described. That is spiritual life. That process is
spiritual life. The Siddha "lives" his disciples. The Truth "meditates" those in
Satsang, through a period of relative passivity, until there is more experience
of this actual process, more responsibility, more consciousness. Then, at
some point in time, when this insight into the usual pattern of activity is
developed and has become real, has become the actual intelligence of the
disciple, then perhaps this form of enquiry described in The Knee of Listening
will develop. But, apart from understanding, prior to the time when the real
process of Satsang has actually come alive in a man, for him to enquire of
himself "Avoiding relationship?" is neither valuable nor intelligent. You can
ask yourself any question, recite any mantra, carry on any sort of deliberate
internal activity or form of concentration, and it will have neither more nor
less value than this "Avoiding relationship?" But when this Satsang has
become fruitful in you, when this intelligence is alive, when understanding
already exists, then this apparently more deliberate activity of enquiry in the
form "Avoiding relationship?" may become appropriate. Even so, as you will
see, it is just an extension of the thing that the individual is beginning to see
in himself as a consequence of every moment in Satsang. The more there is
of Satsang, the more a person sees his own activity, his disturbance, until he
begins to re-cognize it, to see that there is the avoidance of relationship, this
contraction. When he knows this utterly, when this contraction is undermined
in real knowledge, that very insight is what I have called "understanding."
And when that understanding is alive, it may approach experience moment
to moment as enquiry, as the conscious enforcement of this insight itself.
So Satsang is this condition, the relationship or condition of relationship to
the man of understanding. Truth itself is communicated in Satsang. And the
life of Satsang is simply to live this relationship. It is simple enough in
concept, but when you live it from day to day, it becomes complicated. It
becomes a question, a dilemma. This is because you dont in fact or simply
abide in Satsang, you dont live the condition of Satsang without qualification.
You continue to live this contraction, this avoidance of relationship. You still
tend to separate yourself from the condition of Satsang. There is this tension,
this drama, this warfare in Satsang. Periodically you see again what youve
been up to, and quite spontaneously, you fall out of this contraction into the
condition of Satsang again. Periodically you catch yourself running,
contracting, moving into your own forms, so that you see it all again and
return to Satsang.
One of the earliest manifestations of Satsang in certain people are these
kriyas, these spontaneous movements of body, posture, attitude and breath.
As a way of understanding the difference between the force of Satsang and
the usual state of human activity, look at the difference between these kriyas
and the kind of nervous activity that men are always performing. Examine
the usual man at "ease," with his constant picking and grabbing and self-
conscious posturing, his endless attempts to become comfortable while still
maintaining an inner feeling of confinement or entrapment. All of that is re-
action to outside or generalized forces. Such actions are always in the form
of reflexive, self-directed movements. But genuine kriyas are internally and
spontaneously generated. They are movements from within outward, not a
curling inward from without. That is why these kriyas are themselves a kind
of purifier, because they tend to break or reverse compulsive contraction.
But these kriyas are not themselves profound. They are not Truth. They are
active at the level of the psycho-physical body only. There is nothing "out in
the cosmos" about them. They are evidence of a process which is restoring
the nervous system to its natural harmony and intensity.
Whatever arises as experience in the course of Satsang and its meditation is
not itself the point. Visions, subtle phenomena of all kinds are themselves
only images of this "target." They are themselves forms of contraction. They
come in order to disappear! As I have said, the man of understanding is not
endlessly engaged in all kinds of occult phenomena, or even simple internal
phenomena. That whole affair has come to rest, and the force that contains
and supports all such phenomena is consciously alive in the man of
understanding. The "Light" of which all visions are only a modification is
consciousness itself. The man of understanding no longer lives from the point
of view of the target in any sense. Not this gross body, not the vital body, not
the subtle body, not the subtle mind, not the mind at all, not any form of
subtlety, not any center, not any "light" body, not any eternal body, no body!
The point of view of Truth is alive in the man of understanding. It is no longer
separate. It only manifests or appears to manifest as all of these points, all of
these functions. Therefore, such a one also appears in all the ordinary forms.
But wherever the "target" tends to arise, it vanishes in him. He doesnt buy it.
He doesnt act from its point of view. He doesnt dramatize it. He doesnt
believe it. He never becomes it. For him, there is never the loss, under any
conditions, of profound, direct awareness of his true nature, his real and
actual condition.
Whenever the man of understanding appears, a new function has appeared
in life. The man of understanding is not another thing to be made into a
target, he is not an other ego that has appeared to be worshipped, glorified,
contained and fitted into a cult. When he appears, a new function, a living
process has become possible, which is Satsang. But, paradoxically, it is very
difficult to get anyone interested in Satsang, because men are devoted to
this process of contraction. From the point of view of the world, of the search,
Truth and Satsang are always rejected. Satsang always has only a
paradoxical presence in the world, because it always works to undermine the
search. Those who truly become interested and are capable of enduring the
activity of this Satsang are those in whom the whole process of seeking in all
its forms has begun to fail in a critical way. In such people the options of the
search have begun to subside, to die. Such people have become immobile,
truly desperate. They are not necessarily about to go into a psychotic state!
It can be a very "natural" and non-clinical despair. But it is a critical failure.
Such people become capable of Satsang, and Satsang may also become
their opportunity.
DEVOTEE: You have said that those who live in Satsang must be responsible
not to dramatize or act out the tendencies that are awakened and revealed
in them. But I dont think you mean they should be repressed. Would you
explain it?
FRANKLIN: We are speaking of these things as they occur under the
conditions of Satsang, not in life without conscious benefit of Satsang. Prior
to Satsang, an emotion, an impulse would develop, and, under certain
circumstances, you just plain did it. The point of view of Satsang never
entered into your decision or your reaction. But when you begin to live the
condition of Satsang, you have an entirely different principle of life from
which to view these phenomena. When Satsang truly becomes the condition
of your life, then, as tendencies arise, it is not a matter of repressing or
suppressing them, or of doing anything to them. They are mechanical,
internal phenomena, patterns reflecting themselves in the force of
consciousness and in the body. The more a person lives Satsang and begins
to understand the activity that creates these phenomena or causes them to
rush up in him, the less he tends to identify with the phenomena themselves.
Then the activity and the patterns become only interesting to him, rather
than sources of motivation. He begins to acknowledge them to be patterns
only, not "me," not something "I" must suppress, but patterns arising, and
which he is observing. The true disciple simply lives Satsang during that
time. He doesnt even become concerned with the patterns. He enjoys
Satsang. If some episode is causing him particular distress, mental or
physical, he doesnt suppress it, he does nothing to it. He scrubs a floor,
washes a window, types some letters, goes to work, has a sandwich, goes to
the seashore! He doesnt get involved in that drama, either by suppressing it
or exploiting it. He does nothing about it. He enjoys Satsang! This thing that
is arising in him is only a form of contraction. It is always a form of
contraction. To "buy" it, perform it, or to suppress it is to contract further, to
take on the form and point of view of contraction, to reinforce it. But the
point of view of Satsang is relationship, not avoidance. So one who lives the
condition of Satsang is already free of the stress of this contraction. He lives
and is aware beyond it, living another condition. He is already not living this
contraction, and so he has neither to exploit it nor suppress it. He is living
Satsang. Therefore, he sees this is a phenomenon only, a phenomenon that
arises in Satsang, a purifying event.
One who lives in Satsang allows the revelation of tendencies to occur as a
subliminal activity, as a display of impressions, as a sensation, but not a
necessary motivation. Regardless of the form in which it arises in him at the
time, he carries on his practical activity. He doesnt sit alone in his room,
trying to keep from going out and indulging all his desires to the point of
bewilderment. No, he stands up, he goes down to the Ashram, he sits in
Satsang, he sees some friends, he goes to work, he takes himself to lifes
functions, its functional responsibilities. He can permit this thing to arise in
him, without distress, without identification, because of present Satsang.
When Satsang becomes real, the actual and present condition of your life,
your relationship to these self-revealing tendencies begins spontaneously to
change. The more a man lives Satsang, the more he begins to see how his
relationship to this process is changing, how it is unnecessary to dramatize
or live the latent tendencies. Indeed, he sees that to live the arising
tendencies, even the apparently pleasurable ones, is the very strategy of
suffering.
At the beginning of a persons life in this Satsang, I simply require, as a
condition, that people be responsible in certain functional and practical
levels of life. There must be a foundation for this process. Thus, when you
first arrived, various practical matters were discussed with you, including
diet, your work and responsibilities, your environment and living conditions,
the relationships in your life, and the like. This is to be certain you are willing
to assume practical responsibility for an endlessly dramatized life. Those in
Satsang must be essentially responsible for the processes of money, food
and sex. I do not mean that one who enters Satsang must become a sudden
saint! But when he lives it all with some sort of practical intelligence, there is
a living firmness, a foundation for this process. If there is nothing but a hole
out the bottom, every time something is thrown in, it goes out the bottom. If
you are only ready to indulge what arises in you, Satsang will only give you
more energy for it. Such people need a parent, not the Guru.
So I require people to take on real responsibilities at the practical level of life.
You do not require the absolute perception of Truth in order to moderate your
diet. It is simply a practical affair. A supportive, enjoyable diet that gives
strength, keeps the body vital, keeps the life vital, is simply a matter of
intelligence. To be intelligent, you need not first realize absolute Truth. But no
one can realize Truth absolutely who has not first become intelligent. If a
person moderates and purifies his diet, then, in the primary activity of taking
food, dramatization is not taking place. If a person is carrying on some sort of
insanity, some gross craziness, in the forms of sexual indulgence, I require
him to understand something about the relational necessities of his sexual
life and his creative communication of force into the world. Then he will have
some practical hold on the use of this primary function. All of this is not in
itself for ultimate reasons, but for purely practical reasons, for the sake of the
spiritual process, to prevent exhaustion of the vital life, and the distractions
of unconsciousness, weakness, disease. Just so, at the level of money and
general conditions of life, for purely practical reasons, I want each of those in
Satsang to be fundamentally responsible for his income, and the quality of
his environment. All of this for purely practical reasons, not for any idealistic
reasons.
Every single thing that could possibly be dramatized is a form of contraction,
of separation. And what are these things you are concerned about
"repressing"? You dont worry about repressing or exploiting your tendency to
love people, to share life with them, and help them! There is no danger
represented by that, so there is no problem about having to repress or
exploit it. What are the things you are wondering about exploiting and
repressing? They are all negative, destructive, separative tendencies.
Therefore, from the beginning, a little of that knowledge which is the
principle of Satsang must be clear. A person must have seen something
about his ordinary activity, his suffering, his usual state. When he sees that,
fundamentally, his usual state is his suffering, he falls into that relationship
that is Satsang. Then all of these forms of contraction begin to lose their
force. They are undermined by relationship, whereas they are reinforced by
exploitation, suppression or repression. The more there is this intensity of
relationship in Satsang, the less force these impulses have. They begin to
wind down; the clenching of the "fist" weakens. So dont repress it. Live
Satsang. And carry on a practical order of life. It is only when you have the
point of view of this contraction, this dramatization of tendencies, that you
have to be concerned with repression or exploitation. If your point of view is
Satsang, all of this is only a secondary affair, only an impulse. If you are not
identical to its center, it is not necessary to do anything about it.
Replace concern and worrying about your tendencies with some practical
activity or some pleasurable activity in the ordinary way. You must become
intelligent in how you live this life while you are busy being responsible for it.
Sadhana or spiritual practice is not a matter of living "uptight" all the time,
preventing all of your craziness. You must learn how to treat this psycho-
physical entity from the point of view of real enjoyment, of relationship, of
Satsang. You must increase life-pleasure in subtle ways, through the practical
enjoyment of functional activities in relationship. This also serves to
undermine that whole process of suffering and bewilderment.
CHAPTER 10
The Path of the Great Form
DEVOTEE: Does proximity to you, closeness to your body, have any relation
to the intensity or the effects of Satsang?
FRANKLIN: What is your experience?
DEVOTEE: It doesn't seem to have that much to do with the body. It seems
more to be how much I am in felt contact with you and how open I am to
you.
FRANKLIN: It all depends on the quality of your relationship. Everything is its
medium, because everything is it. The body seems to be a very potent
source for some, whereas for others the process seems to take place mainly
or only in very subtle ways. Neither one is superior to the other. A person
must discover the quality of Satsang for himself.
DEVOTEE: I have two feelings or ideas about what is happening that I would
like to discuss. I have had the feeling that you were receiving uptight or bad
karma and transforming it inside yourself.
FRANKLIN: What do you think?
DEVOTEE: That's what I see, that's what I experience, but I'm not certain.
FRANKLIN: Why do you doubt it?
DEVOTEE: The other thing, after sitting with you for a little while, I seem to
be observing a pattern in myself in Satsang, and tonight I had the feeling
that maybe there is a specific way that it happens. It is somehow different
every time, but there seems to be a continuity in terms of a pattern. At least
I experience it in terms of a movement up through the chakras. Is there
some sort of non-verbal instruction being communicated?
FRANKLIN: In you?
DEVOTEE: In myself, yes. Something you do and, therefore, I am also
learning to do, because I am sitting in your presence.
FRANKLIN: Many structures are used in the subtle process of Satsang, and it
appears different all the time, the experience is different from person to
person, and the quality of Satsang seems to change in the same individual
from time to time. The reason there are differences, apparent differences, is
because different aspects of the mechanism are animated or become a focus
of attention at different times. In different individuals, the obstructions, the
qualities of the mechanism, are different, and so different things must occur.
If you have a head cold, you must clear out your head. If you've got an ulcer,
you must heal your stomach. In each individual there is a different structural
dis-ease, and these structures are physical, psycho-physical, psychic, subtle.
Each person may observe a characteristic activity in himself in Satsang. A
particular kind of process may be characteristic over a certain period of time,
then it may change. But these experiences in themselves are only purifying
movements. Like that time when you blow your nose and your head finally
gets clear. You don't go around pointing to your sinuses for the rest of your
life, saying they are the center of Truth!
At various times, we have discussed the qualities of this structure in which
we live. In describing its various levels, I have spoken of the three primary
centers. One is the region of the solar-plexus, or the soft region of the lower
body, which is the epitome of the psycho-physical organism. It is the center
or point of view of all religious activity in men, and it is the center of all
ordinary human activity. The current of the force or light of Truth moves down
into life by a process of descent into this region. But that same force or light
also ascends. The structures through which the current ascends have been
described in various traditions. The yogic traditions of India, in particular,
describe the pattern of ascent through chakras, the wheels, lotuses or
centers which are the etheric and subtle counterparts of various vital and
strategic locations in the spinal structures of the physical body. The epitome
or fundamental "goal" of the ascending life is the sahasrar, that massive area
at the crown of the head, or, more properly, just above the head. It is the
primary center of all subtle activity, all "spiritual" activity.
"Spirit" means breath in the Latin. In Sanskrit the word is prana, usually
translated as life, breath or vital force. Spiritual life is the aspiring life of the
vital force. The kundalini is prana. The kundalini shakti is prana-shakti, the
subtle or ascending activity of the life-force. In the practical activity or yoga
of spiritual life, the vital force ascends or is made to ascend (by the methods
of the yogi or the initiatory grace of his Guru) toward the sahasrar, the point
or region above. The yogi attempts to merge his manifest vital-force with its
subtle source above. This produces the trance or samadhi states of yoga.
There are many types of yogic meditation or contemplation, but they are all
meditations of this same subtle process. All spiritual life is simply an
exploitation or realization of the ascending, aspiring aspect of the life-force.
Just as all religion is essentially a surrendering or waiting on the descending
power, whose source or nature is called "God," all yoga or spiritual life, all
spiritual method, is a contemplation, concentration, or exploitation of this
subtle mechanism of the ascending activity of that same power or vital force.

The yogi may do various things to control and harmonize the breathing
process in order to go inward and upward. To the same end, he may add
strict control of sex-force, diet, thought processes, etc. There are also various
forms of concentration on the subtle centers or chakras. Some yoga's involve
the contemplation of internal, subtle sounds, or concentration on the internal
"lights" of the life-force. There are many forms of traditional yoga that
contemplate the various qualities of our subtle mechanism. The highest form
of yoga or the ascent of life is the spontaneous kundalini manifestation, in
which all the classic "spiritual" events arise spontaneously by the grace of
the Guru. But the entire affair of the ascending yoga is only one of the
possible major events in this activity that is real Satsang. The activities of
descent are also a primary form of the purifying operations of Satsang.
Some who live in Satsang begin to have kriyas, spontaneous physical
movements. Breathing activity or automatic pranayama may appear in the
form of sudden breathing, fast breathing, quieting or even cessation of the
breath. Internalization may come quite naturally, then concentration, inward
experiences of centers, visions, lights, sounds, experiences of the merging of
bliss. Some people may have these experiences. Others may not have those
kinds of experiences, or they may have them only occasionally, or they may
only have certain of them. These other people may experience more of the
calming descent of that same bliss and force that purifies the mind and the
life of the yogi by ascent. Where the obstructions or limiting tendencies of a
man are essentially in this descending path, then we have awakening or
opening of the descended, human life, the "purification of the navel." Where
the obstructions and the tendencies lie more in the subtle or ascending path
of the same mechanism, then we have the yogic manifestations, the spiritual
manifestations. The pattern of descent and ascent is the circle or circuit of
the life-force, the true "round dance." And in the man of understanding, the
conductivity of that full circle is re-established and full, whatever
stimulation's of descending and ascending activity arise in the stages of
purification.
So far we have covered two of the three major centers. There are many
chakras, and there are also many points within the descending parts of the
total mechanism. The epitome of descent is the belly, and the epitome of
ascent is a point above the head. But there is a third "place" or epitome of
conscious life. It is described in the tradition of jnana or Self-knowledge,
represented by Ramana Maharshi and others. The religious traditions speak
from the point of view of "life." The esoteric, spiritual and yogic traditions
speak from the point of view of subtle "planes" of existence or "light." But
the philosophical traditions of the jnani speak from the point of view of the
"causal" being or body, the seat of deep sleep, and also of the formless
state, whose epitome is in the heart, on the right side of the chest. The
physical heart of the waking and descending life is felt to the left, and the
"heart chakra" of the subtle or "dreaming" life of ascent is in the middle, but
the "causal" center or heart is on the right. The "causal" center is without
light, without sound, without form, without movement. The seat of the causal
body, the formless "body" of deep sleep, is also, when opened and
conscious, the seat of the "fourth state" (beyond waking, dreaming or
sleeping) called turiya, which transcends all modification.
The yogi seeks to merge in the sahasrar, or the highest, subtlest place of
light. The religious man seeks to be full, to receive and be full of truth, life,
the descending grace of God. But the jnani, the man who resorts only to the
intuitive process of Self-knowledge, tends toward this "causal" center beyond
the mind, beyond form, beyond visions, experiences. When this causal
center opens, beyond the apparent unconsciousness of sleep, the state
called turiya arises. It is a conscious state which, like a witness, transcends
the three ordinary states of waking, dreaming and sleeping.
All of the traditions that have arisen in the great search of mankind have
been communicated, whether consciously or unconsciously, from the point of
view of one of these three primary centers of conscious existence. One or
more. Read the traditional texts. Where the jnani speaks in terms of identity
with the Self, the yogi, the spiritual man, speaks in terms of union with Truth,
Light, God. And the religious man, the one who surrenders to God and serves
God among men, talks about his relationship to God and his creatures. But all
three of these centers are only portions of one great mechanism that all men
share, all living beings share, all worlds share. This mechanism is duplicated
in all forms, including this manifest universe. The manifest cosmos is
structured in the same manner as our own tripartite mechanism.
But Truth itself contains and is prior to all of that. And Satsang is the
company of Truth. Satsang is not simply, then, the attempt of seekers to do
various things with these three centers or functions of manifest existence to
which the traditions have paid so much attention. The traditions always start
from a low position and seek to attain their goal, which is fullness, union, or
identity. But the point of view of true spiritual life is already that of Truth
itself, not of the search, but of the enjoyment of Truth, the living of it, the
present enjoyment of it as our real condition. All real transformation that
occurs within the form of life at any level, is a manifestation of Truth, of
Satsang, not of the search. When a person moves into that association that
is Satsang, and lives it as the condition of his life, he may begin to
experience curious manifestations in any of these three great or traditional
forms. So, as in the case of the questioner, there may be these experiences
of the chakras, the phenomena of the "subtle body." In others there may be
another kind of experience, more of opening, and fullness. In another it may
tend to take the form of intuitive directness. Some speak of their spiritual life
in terms of "life," others speak of it in terms of "spirit" and "light," others
speak of it in terms of unqualified "being," "consciousness," or "Reality."
Even so, each of those points of view is a limitation, expressing only a
portion of the structure that is within the possibility of Truth. This is because
your experiences occur only in the areas where purification is stimulated by
the obstructive presence of your peculiar tendencies. Therefore, Satsang is
the true resort of all men, regardless of their peculiar tendencies. And very
Truth and radical understanding is the necessity of all men regardless of their
experiences. Now, exactly how this mechanism of Satsang works is not clear
at the outset. Prior to its perfect realization, it cannot be grasped. It is
elusive. So, as you say, you are trying to get down to it. But if you try to
discover or perform it yourself, your blood vessels will burst. It wont happen.
If you don't already live the point of view of the heart, vital, subtle or causal,
how are you going to move into it? Your point of view is in your head, or your
legs, wherever. Satsang, the company and condition of Truth, is your true
resort, and in Satsang you will find yourself falling spontaneously into the
"Heart," the Heart of Truth, which transcends the manifest realizations.
There is no real contraction. There is only that enjoyment that is Truth, what
is always already the case. The body is a process of conductivity in which the
force of life moves in a circle, descending and ascending. The center or
epitome of the life aspect of this force is the vital center in the general region
of the navel. The epitome of the subtle "body" is in the regions of the head,
above the eyes, even above the head. It manifests not as life or vitality, but
as Light, unqualified Conscious Light. The modifications of most subtle, pre-
cosmic Light are everything we know as Life. The center or epitome of the
prior, "causal" or transcendent existence is the region of the "Heart," on the
right side of the chest. It manifests as very consciousness, absolute space,
formless, unqualified existence, the vast bliss. Nothing is being
communicated but That which includes these three. There is nothing but
That. That is Amrita Nadi, the Great Form, the conscious, moveless spire
which extends from the Heart to the Light.
I called the most subtle region the "Bright," because it is only Light. All of life
descends from it, and returns to it in a continuous cycle, conducting it as
force, becoming movement and form. But even this Light is a reflection of
the Heart, unqualified existence, just as the moon reflects the sun. This
Heart, which is the source of all light and life, and of which every thing is the
reflection, is itself without quality. But the Heart, the Light and the Life are all
included and transcended in that which is very Truth, the Great Form.
Therefore, those who come to Satsang, where the Truth, this Living Reality, is
communicated, see it manifested in them in three characteristic ways. One is
in the form of movement or of life: kriyas (spontaneous vital and physical
movements), changes in the life-pattern, experiences and circumstances at
the level of life, waking phenomena. Others experience it more in terms of
subtle or dreamlike manifestations: lights, visions, dreams, sounds, patterns
internal to consciousness. Others move into the intuitive or "causal"
awareness, falling into a profound sleep at times, even moving into turiya,
the "fourth state" which transcends waking, dreaming and sleeping. But all of
those phenomena are manifestations at particular levels of the greater
process that is Satsang.
Satsang is communicated from the point of view of Turiyatita. It is the
ascended life of the Heart. It is Amrita Nadi, the Form of Reality. Satsang is
the very point of view of Truth, in which all things arise as a modification.
Truth, Satsang, simply manifests as these three qualities I have described,
and Truth itself, the point of view which generates the processes of Satsang,
may be said to exist as a fourth and a fifth quality. The two qualities of Truth
are transcendent and unqualified. The first and foundation quality is the
Heart. It is the very Self of Reality, enjoyed when the mind falls into its
source, and the gross, subtle and causal qualities are purified of obstruction
and contraction. This is Turiya in its Perfect State. And the fifth quality is
Perfect Form, Turiyatita, beyond the fourth, ascended from the fourth. It is
the Eternal Form of the Heart, the Form of Guru, Self and God. When the
Guru speaks ecstatically of his Divine and All-Pervasive Nature he is not
speaking of some egoic magnificence, but of That which is all that is and
which stands out when ego is dead.
The Truth, which is Satsang, and living the Truth, which is sadhana or real
practice, make possible the entire event of the transformation and revelation
of this great mechanism. It is alive. It is not a structure that can be
blueprinted and then prescribed. Something can be said about it, but the
saying is not equivalent to the sadhana or life of Satsang. It is alive. Just as it
is very hard to control the breath once it leaves the body, just so, this
incredibly subtle mechanism, whose source and very condition is the Truth, is
infinitely elusive, absolutely elusive, paradoxical. That is why the image of
the Mother Shakti and the images of Deity in general, particularly in the
Orient, have a paradoxical quality. They are almost comical at times, and at
other times they are treacherous, violent. Krishna is beautiful and blue. But
he teases those who desire him. He eludes them. He runs away, and he says
"Yes, I'm coming, I'm coming." But you wait and you wait and you wait, and
he doesn't come.
The Mother Shakti appears in all kinds of forms. The holy yogi bathes his
mind with repetition of mantra until it is pure of desires, and then he walks
down to bathe his body in the Ganges. But when he gets out of the water,
without his bathing suit, this fantastic woman is standing on the beach with a
basket of fruit, with chicken sandwiches, and a little wine. The next day he
has to turn in his mantra and his robe! He goes to tell his Guru how he broke
his vows. His Guru asks, "With whom?" "With that beautiful chick over there!"
says the penitent. And his Guru says, "That is the Mother Shakti. She got
you!"
The image of this great process of conscious life has been symbolized as all
of the paradoxical deities, and the symbols themselves have a life. In my
own experience, the Mother Shakti has appeared like anyone else, then
different, as all kinds of forms, very strange, then beautiful, then wise. But
what is being communicated through the imageries of these experiences is
this great process, only a piece at a time. It is perfectly glimpsed only when
there is resort to Truth absolutely. Otherwise a person will buy the experience
to which his tendencies gravitate. So, if you are willing to buy a little foggy
light between your eyes, then that is where you will be. Whatever you are
willing to buy, you will be given. That is why the deities are pictured in such
paradoxical ways. They will give you a little pink fruit, if you will come and
take it. The dog comes for his bone, he gets the bone, and he leaves. Thus, if
you begin to get very interested in the process that is awakening in Satsang,
you may become attached to the experiences themselves. Perhaps, at some
point, you will buy it. You are already buying it. That is why this question was
asked. You may even become very angry, and reject Satsang, because of the
position you are put into by craving your own internal life. Narcissus is
addicted to looking at himself. It is the only thing he will defend.
DEVOTEE: Will you say something about how the Shakti relates to Truth?
FRANKLIN: What is called Shakti, the Divine Creative Power, is not a separate
thing, not a special force. It is the same that is meant by the Self, Reality,
Truth, Guru, or God. The name Shakti is simply used to describe that aspect
of the Truth that is movement in manifestation. Siva-Shakti is perhaps a more
appropriate or complete designation of the Truth. In other words, the Real is
moving-creative, but it is also static-perfect-untouched. The true Shakti is the
Conscious Force in and as which every thing exists. It is the present nature of
every thing, of all beings, and it is also the cause, substance, support and
end of all that arises.
Now as it pertains to practical spiritual life, there are those in whom the way
of understanding or Satsang with the Guru involves a pronounced subtle
purification or transformation. The peculiar qualities of their spiritual
experiences tend to arise in the "subtle body" as opposed to the "physical,
gross body," or to what is called the "causal body," the deep well of being in
which there is no form, no modification. The subtle body is actually the range
of internal functions, of inward-directed energy and awareness, of dreams,
visions and thoughts. There are many who are sensitive in that range of
functions, and whose view of the cosmic process is essentially through the
subtle media. The apparent process of their conscious life is more obviously
like internal yoga and meditation than the austere intuitions of Buddhism or
Advaita Vedanta, or even the continuous practical orientations of those in
whom human activity in the world is the center of sadhana and experience.
Such people witness the specific, yogic activity of the universal conscious
force.
The force alive in yoga is called prana-shakti. It is an aspect of the universal
life, the subtle life of the Self of Truth. The Shakti in this form has a specific
involvement with the internal processes of living beings, particularly human
beings. If the internal energy can be stimulated, or if its source and path can
be concentrated upon, there are internal awarenesses and transformations of
a subtle kind that arise. Ordinarily, this process is not something over which
a person has the least control. He doesn't "awaken" it himself. It is always
already there. It is just unconscious and subdued. It feeds the outward
tendencies of life. The actual process of the spontaneous kriya yoga, which I
have described in The Knee of Listening, is stimulated by contact with a
living Siddha-Yogi in whom this force is unobstructed and functioning very
consciously. The contact with such a person stimulates this energy and
breaks down or purifies the inner functions of their obstructions. By virtue of
that contact, this internal process, this subtle process, becomes conscious,
awakened, and manifests itself through a series of purifying events, both
internal and external. The obstructions are broken down, perhaps on an
apparently gross level at first, then always subtler and subtler.
The first experiences such a person might have are various bodily
sensations. He may feel a certain energy, a certain heat or cold, a certain
tendency to move, little jerking, spontaneous movements, a feeling of
discomfort, an intense, even erotic feeling all over the body, or in specific
regions of the body, such as the head. These purifying movements are an
automatic hatha yoga. Sometimes such a person does yogic postures
spontaneously. He cant help but do it at times. He might perform postures of
which he would be physically incapable were this force or yoga-shakti not
active in him. He may perform automatic pranayama or vigorous and curious
exercises of the breathing functions. The whole process of all that can be
called "yoga," including all the types of yoga, may arise spontaneously in
that person, beginning with the more physical forms of yoga, then moving on
to the subtler purification's and the qualities of meditation. There may be
times when the mind becomes rapid, when there is endless thinking, without
apparent cause, and then, just as spontaneously, it breaks down, breaks
apart, slows down. Such a one may begin to have visions at times, and to
perceive internal forms, colors, smells, tastes, sounds. He may hear the
nada, the sounds which are always vibrating within. There may be visions,
symbolic experiences, dramatic mudras or poses of hands and body,
movements of all kinds, shaking of the body, ecstasies, spontaneous
devotion, love, bliss, and profound concentration in the various psycho-
physical centers, always moving toward and culminating in the primary
region of the subtle life in the crown of the head. The movement is always
upward. And since the yogic centers are subtle, not limited to the physical
form, the highest subtle centers are actually above the physical head, but
the process is sensed as a concentration in the general area of the crown.
This region is called the sahasrar.
This subtle, ascending, yogic process is that which most people would
identify with "Shakti." But in fact it is a demonstration of only one path or
one aspect of the greater path of the universal and absolute activity of the
true Shakti. There are essentially three paths, forms or qualities of spiritual
life, based on the three primary functional points of view. The classic texts
talk about the "knots" that need to be opened. "Liberation" is the opening of
these "knots."
There is a knot associated with the region of the navel, including the entire
solar plexus and the soft organs which extend above it (including the heart,
lungs, tongue and parts of the brain) and below it (to the anus). Some
indicate its center to be just below the navel. That entire region is the gross-
vital center, the life center. There is a tradition of practice related to this
center. If you are centered or stable there, you are strong, upright, direct,
straight, active in proper relationship to things, in the proper harmony. The
purification of the "navel" or of the life itself is the imminent goal of religious
devotion, and the various harmonizing practices which are applied to life.
Religion essentially looks toward life-purification, life-stabilization, life-
opening. And the life-center is its point of view. This is the first of the three
paths.
The second path is the subtle path. Such is the point of view of yoga and the
various processes that are very similar to yoga. Such are the various paths
that exploit the internal qualities rather than abandon them. The "subtle
body" is conceived in terms of various chakras or centers through which the
subtle force moves. These centers culminate in the sahasrar, the primary
center of subtle life. Several of these subtle centers are described as primary
"knots" in the traditional texts. The sahasrar itself is not included among
these knots, but a primary one is just below the crown, in the midbrain,
behind the eyes. When all of these subtle centers are open, in other words
when the living, inward-directed energy moves and merges in the sahasrar
(the "thousand petalled lotus"), that is the highest realization from the point
of view of the traditional ascending yoga.
The third path is one we see represented in such men as Ramana Maharshi
and in the monistic Hindu traditions, such as Advaita Vedanta. In such cases,
the path is generated from the point of view of the "causal being," the
conscious seat analogous to our deep sleep state. The gross path is
analogous to our waking state, the subtle path is analogous to our dream
state, and the causal path is analogous to our deep sleep state. The paths
associated with the formlessness of the Divine or ultimate Reality are
essentially forms of this causal path. And the "knot" of the causal heart, on
the right side of the chest, is the center from which these causal paths are
generated, and toward which they move by various critical and intuitive
means. When this center or knot is open, waking, dreaming and sleeping no
longer limit the primary enjoyment that is the Self or true and prior state of
consciousness.
Now all three paths necessarily involve force, the Shakti or Conscious Force
and Power of the Divine, the living Reality. Christianity, an example of the
religious or life path, is very concerned with the "Holy Spirit." That is the
Force, the Shakti, conceived from the point of view of the life-knot, the vital
center of the descending force, the conductor of the descending Power of
God. "Prayer," the most characteristic religious appliance, is always looking
for this descent of Power. And "fasting," the ancient companion of prayer, is
the means of purifying or preparing the "place" for the descent of Gods
Grace and Power. The worship of the Mother-Shakti in the cults of Hinduism is
expressed yearning for Her to descend, to send Her gifts downward. All
religious points of view want Power to come down. Western occultism is the
worshipping of the descending Power. That is the descent of Shakti. All
movements, all of this visible world is Shakti.
The subtle path is also concerned with Shakti in a peculiar way. The subtle
yoga's exploit the capacity of prana-shakti to ascend. They do not hope for
the descent of Power, but they seek to become involved with and ultimately
identified with the ascending functions of that same Power. In that case we
have the subtle process of internal movement, generated in an inward and
upward direction, toward concentration and merger in the subtle regions
above.
In the causal path there is also force. The formless Divine, the Self, Brahman,
is absolute, unqualified Force. It is only that this particular path is not
associated with the kind of "movements," this kundalini process, that are
talked about from the yogic point of view. But it is the same Force.
Ultimately, the teaching that is Truth is not generated from the point of view
of any of these three knots, or these three dilemmas, and the paths created
to open or solve them. The descending (life, gross), the ascending (subtle),
and the moveless original (causal) Force are there in all men. And each
individual will tend to go through a characteristic purifying process,
according to his particular tendencies in relation to these three qualities,
when he moves into Satsang with the Siddha-Guru. The point of view of Truth
is not the point of view of dilemma, or any of the three traditional qualities of
Force, or their primary centers, or any secondary centers associated with
them. No particular process of experience is equal or identical to Truth, the
Heart, the Self, or Real God.
What is necessary is the absence of obstruction, of the ego, of contraction,
the avoidance of relationship. Then only Truth stands out. Therefore, Truth is
the communication from the point of view of the true Teaching. The true
Guru always turns his disciple toward Truth, Reality, not to his experiences,
not to the possibility of experiences, not to any psycho-physical state. The
gross, the subtle, and the causal, as I have spoken of them here, are psycho-
physical and temporary in nature. They are equal to the three states, waking,
dreaming, and sleeping, into which experience is analyzed in the classic
texts. The higher state than these, all the texts declare, is turiya, the fourth
state. In other words, the more fundamental state is the witness to those
three states. The "witness" is not the religious man, not the yogi, not the
intuitive philosopher, but turiya, the fourth, prior to all that, witnessing it all.
And even higher than that is perfect realization, turiyatita, beyond the fourth,
unspeakable, neither formless nor formed. It is Amrita Nadi, the form of
Reality, whose Foundation and very Nature is the Heart. Therefore, Truth is
not identified with any process, any knot, any opened knot, any dilemma,
any solved dilemma.
Everyone's experience in relation to the Guru is different, depending on the
quality or tendency of his conscious life. But all experience the single force of
the Guru and of God as Shaktipat, the transmission of Divine Conscious
Power, the Power of Consciousness. Some tend toward association with the
descending force. The life-center and life-functions tend to be the dimension
in which they feel both obstruction and opening. Their sadhana tends to be a
life-level activity, and they become aware of the force of the Guru and of
Truth as a descending blessing, originating extremely above. Others tend
more toward the internally-directed, ascending process. Their experience is
more like that of the kundalini yogis. Others tend more toward the causal,
intuitive level of spiritual knowledge. Instead of the yogic processes or the
apparently life-active, religious and devotional processes, theirs is more a
process of intuitive understanding, without special inclination to visions and
the various forms of mystical cognition.
The true Guru must live the conscious Force of Truth at all of these
fundamental levels. He must necessarily be Guru in all of them. He must be
fully aware in all three paths. In him there must be no obstruction in the
descending path, no obstruction in the ascending path, no obstruction in the
moveless or intuitive path. These three "knots" are open in him. He sees
from the point of view of the Heart, unobstructed. There must be in him no
obstruction to the whole path, the complex Force of the Heart, the presence
of Amrita Nadi
There are many that are called Teacher or Guru simply because they perform
a consoling or apparently beneficial function of a peculiar kind. But such are
not living the great function of Guru. They are not what I call "the man of
understanding." They are teaching from the point of view of dilemma, the
knots and their paths. Generally, they teach those who are by tendency
oriented to the same quality of dilemma to which they themselves are
tending. The practical-religious-devotional type teaches those who are
sensitive in this way. The yogi type teaches those who are sensitive on a
subtle level. The more philosophical or intuitive type teaches those who are
similarly inclined. But the point of view of Truth is not dilemma, not the
knots. It is not equal to any kind of experience, solution or form of perception
and cognition. Therefore, the true Guru teaches Truth as Truth, from the point
of view of Truth. Then, only secondarily, the purification or opening of the
knots occurs in the ways peculiar to individual tendencies.
So you see, spiritual life in Satsang with such a Guru manifests as many
different qualities and types of experiences. From the point of view of the
Heart and the understanding of the processes of manifest existence which I
have just described, the variations are easy to comprehend. Only when the
spiritual experiences of men are looked at from the outside and from a
limited point of view do they seem disorderly. Then it seems as if there is too
much difference between people and traditions, and no single,
comprehensible process stands out. Truly, the great spiritual process is not
understandable from any point of view that is not already the Perfect Heart.
Spiritual things seem confused from a point of view that is not the Heart, just
as the world seems confused from the limited point of view of experience
and circumstance.
The "Shakti" that most people have heard or read about is that force
manifested and used in the subtle process associated with what we call
yoga. But the true or perfect Shakti is the Conscious Force that is the Self,
that is the Heart, that is Truth, Amrita Nadi, or very God. And this Shakti is
manifesting as all that arises or does not arise. It is the Truth, the
fundamental Reality. It is That which manifests on all levels, as the
descending power, the ascending power, the moveless power. One and the
same Shakti is all of that. Therefore, in Truth, Shakti is not limited to the
subtle process with which people generally identify it. It is greater than that,
not limited to that. It does not necessarily tend to manifest the dramatic
course of the subtle process in the case of some individuals. It is the Heart
Itself. It is Truth Itself. It is Real-God, God-alive. When there is the Realization
of the Self or Truth, Perfect Understanding, there is also perfect manifestation
of Shakti, perfect communication of Shakti, because the Heart is Shakti, it is
Conscious Force, it is the Fire that is Reality.
Wherever there is any sort of an opening, there is the flow of Shakti. Any
person who is open on any level, to any significant degree, is very attractive.
People like to be around such a person, because there is movement there.
There is not solidity, fixation. There is a certain energy, a liveliness with
which we like to be associated. It is only that the usual liveliness of men
tends to be limited. The easiest to identify is the person who is open on a
very human, vital level. But there is also the liveliness of a subtle variety, to
which we are, individually, more or less consciously sensitive. Ultimately, we
are also sensitive to the liveliness that is Reality itself. So, there can be a
man, a great saint, stone dead, whose "liveliness" remains in the world. The
burial shrine of Swami Nityananda is one of the most lively places to which I
have ever been in my life. Ultimately, our conscious sensitivity must awaken
to the real, eternal liveliness that is the very Heart or Real God. And it is
perfect movement, not limited movement.
The liveliness or Shakti of the Heart is communicated by the living Siddha-
Guru. Whatever the tendencies of the individual, it is the Satsang, or
relationship with the Siddha, with the true Guru, that is the simple condition
under which the utter and complete process of Truth may take place. All that
exists is relationship. All that appears as suffering and dilemma is contact or
conscious relationship, relatively obstructed. The less obstructed any
condition or function is, the more it is a path, a flow of force. The path of
Truth is the relationship to the Siddha-Guru. It is that course or functional
path established between a man and his Guru. That is the path. The path is
not the methods and strategies a man applies to himself. Satsang, the living,
active, functional relationship itself, is the "current," the "wiring" in which the
Conscious Force, the Truth, flows and manifests its activities at every level.
So the simple relationship to the man of understanding is the path. It is the
place where the search comes to an end, where the obstructions are
abandoned.
There are also various activities internal to the Siddha-Guru and the realms
of his awareness, but they are not spoken. There is no point in talking about
them, unless, in the progress of Satsang, the Guru sees fit to instruct his
disciple. These processes are subtler than the mind and require equal
subtlety to be understood. Even so, certain activities are eventually observed
by the disciple in contact with his Guru. There are various things the disciple
observes his Guru to do which he associates with his own awakening and
with the arising of certain experiences in him. Those activities of the Guru
are not utterly comprehended by the disciple at the time. The traditions
describe these activities in terms of effects and appearances. In India, these
activities of the Guru are called Shaktipat or Guru-kripa, the transference of
the Conscious Force of the Heart or God. The effects of this transference are
observed in various enlivening activities, gross, subtle and causal. The Guru
is observed to be apparently involved in this in several possible ways: by
looking at the person, by touching him, by speaking to him, or simply by
thinking of him in some way. And the highest form of that "initiation" is
where the Guru simply and silently abides as the Self, or very Truth. Then his
continuous existence as the living Reality initiates everything that lives to
Truth. All that turns to the Guru in appropriate ways is enlivened by him. And
that is initiation, that is movement, that is the beginning of the whole
process of spiritual life.
Naturally, it is on the level of life that the relationship to the Guru is
perceived by the disciple. He observes the occasional looks, occasional
things said, occasional touches, the effects of the Gurus occasional
remembrance of him. When he is with his Guru he may suddenly feel his
Guru is thinking of him. Or he may simply and continuously resort to his
Gurus Presence, whether or not his Guru is considering him in particular at
any moment. These various sensations of the activity of the Guru are the
apparent means, from the disciples point of view, of the transference of the
Light, the Truth, the Shakti of the living Self or Real God. The disciple may
tend, as a result of some enlivening experience generated by his Gurus
grace, to look again and again for that particular experience or that
particular form of "initiation" to be repeated. He may tend to associate some
peculiar experience or some particular activity of his Guru with Truth itself.
But in fact any specific experience in the disciple, or any specific activity of
the Guru, such as looking, talking, thinking, touching, whatever, is generated
in a particular moment when it is appropriate. It is thus not a necessary
experience or action that must be repeated again and again. Different forms
of the action of initiation may be used, or no apparent action may be used.
The Guru always remains unpredictable, in order to test and mature his
disciple. And, at last, simply abiding as the Self, as the Heart, as Truth, is
essentially what the Guru does for all beings. Just so, the quality of the
relationship that the disciple is living to his Guru is what determines the
nature of his present experience. The Guru does not withhold. He always
lives Truth openly. He always communicates it on many levels, to transform
the expectations, the obstructions, the tendencies, the limitations that the
disciple is living to him. So the "drama" of this relationship or Satsang is at
the level of the disciple. It is he that must understand obstructions. The Guru
does not create obstructions. He only lives the Heart of Truth. But he may
dramatize or intensify the obstructions already in the disciple, in order to
make him aware of them, to draw his attention to them, so that this flow of
Life can move through, unobstructed by any particular tendency. The Guru
always works so that awareness can be lived on a more profound level.
Many things can be said about this activity to which I have been referring. It
is the greatest mystery, how the Heart lives in the world, how it functions
among apparently separate, living beings. The whole process that occurs is
as complicated as the cosmos itself, and what is beyond it. It cannot be
described perfectly. Only certain things can be said about it. Essentially, it is
the very Life, the Self, very Existence, Reality, God manifesting under these
conditions, under all conditions. All the traditions, taken together, are
essentially a way of retracing the structure of manifest life back to its source.
Each particular incident or tradition does it in a limited way, from the point of
view of a particular dilemma, a particular center, a particular viewpoint of
experience or consciousness. Those in whom this drama of realization is
essentially a life-process are concerned with the descending force and the
opening of life to it. They are tracing the current of descent, from the highest
to the lowest. The processes of yoga and the like, the subtle processes, trace
the current of ascent, from the lowest to the highest. These two taken
together, the gross and the subtle, form a circle. They trace that portion of
the circuit of existence which descends to life and ascends or returns again
from life to its structural source. Therefore, life is always descending-
ascending. It is a circle. Then there is also the "causal" aspect or portion of
this circuit. Ramana Maharshi talks about the path that leads and even
begins beyond yoga, and which is prior to subtle and gross existence. He
points to the place of the Heart, on the right side, which is the causal center.
And this center is connected to the subtle center, the Sahasrar, by that
transcendent portion of the circuit called Amrita Nadi. Thus, if the three
centers or portions of the circuit are taken together with the Form which
includes them we see the great path, the circuit of manifest and unmanifest
life, the secret path of all spiritual processes, all traditions.
The "shape" of man is like a fruit. His core is the causal being, untouched,
unborn, like waiting seed. When the fruit falls into the earth (when the mind
falls into the Heart), there springs up an inconceivable thread, of the same
substance as the seed of being, which rises above, becoming a great tree
and extending even into the heights, into the sky and cosmos of very God.
This is Amrita Nadi.
Until the seed is ready for life, it is concealed in the form of the fruit. This
fruit is the dependent and not conscious form of man. It is the condition of
suffering, and also of sadhana in Satsang with the Guru. The stem of the fruit
is the route of the Light and Life which descends into the fruit from places
above, from the parent tree, and at last passes down through the sahasrar,
the crown of this body or fruit. That Light and Life descends into the fruit and
makes it full and ripe below. Just so, it also ascends, thus keeping the circuit
or circle, until the fruit falls and its seed is eaten in the earth. Such is
ordinary death and in the mature devotee, also "ego" death. Ordinary death
is the termination of a phase of the outer life of the individual, but also the
beginning of a new phase of the manifestation or expansion and revelation of
what he is inwardly and ultimately. Just so, a man becomes perfectly
"fruitful" only in Satsang with the Guru, who is himself the process, the goal,
the means, the Power and the very Life. Therefore, in Satsang the fruit ripens
and falls into the "earth," the foundation, and opens. Such is the Heart.
When discipleship to the Siddha-Guru is perfected, the whole circuitry is
known and understood. It is seen to be within your own real Nature or
Condition, rather than to contain you or limit you. And this is what is truly
called Self-Realization, the Heart of Truth, Nirvana, God-union. It is perpetual
freedom to enjoy Satsang with the Perfect Guru. And one who understands,
even one whose understanding is Perfect doesn't necessarily disappear from
the world. Gautama Buddha, for instance, got up and walked back to town.
So it was with Jesus, and all the great Masters of men. After their return to
the common life of the world, they spent the rest of their lives trying to
communicate their understanding to all of those who felt limited by this fruit-
shape, this phantom circuit of manifest existence. And in the case of all the
Siddhas, the fundamental Teaching or method was that functional
relationship or Satsang which living beings realized with them. This Satsang
is the Method of the Siddhas.
Satsang always serves to destroy or undermine the fixation of attention and
its implications. Whenever Satsang is lived, there tends to be the opening of
the knots in which attention is fixed, so that consciousness falls into its
original form, which is the Self or Real Nature. Therefore, one who has
realized the ultimate end of the whole path or cycle of the form of existence
now exists "outside" of that whole process, no longer limited by it. But he
remains consciously related to this whole structure in an entirely different
way than seekers and all those who do not understand the process and form
of existence. The path of a mans experience will always return to zero,
always back to the dilemma. It will always fit him back into the fruit, like a
worm. Thus, the Siddha-Guru appears in the world, to speak from the point
of view of Truth or Reality, not of experience, and to return the tendencies of
the disciple back to the essential structure in which Truth is communicated,
until he sees there is no path, no difference, no separation. And when the
disciple is perfectly one with his Guru, he sees and enjoys the true Form of
his Guru, and participates directly in the functions of his Guru, who all the
time has been only the Self of the Real One.
Those who speak from the point of view of the Heart, the living Truth, are
always very radical, very eccentric in the manner of their teaching. This is
because they are no longer limited to the "path" I have described, to the
point of view of dilemma, to the limiting structures of experience. Saint
Tukaram is a good example. Tukaram was a very strange man. He grew up
and lived in India, in a very traditional order of society in which religious and
spiritual life was a fixed part of the cycle of life. He participated in all of that,
ritually, religiously. He performed all the apparent externals of it, and this
would seem to have made him acceptable or ordinary. But if you read his
words, you realize he was a "heretic"! He spoke only in the most radical way.
Tukaram lived in a culture that was devotionally oriented, committed to the
duality or radical separation of God and man. But he would go around telling
everybody there wasn't any God. When he sat down, he could find no One to
meditate on. He claimed that he was himself God. He went on and on like
this, disturbing all the orthodox devotees, until, one day, he just
disappeared. He had been sitting with his disciples all night, chanting,
enjoying deep meditation, when, all of a sudden, there was a blast of light,
and he disappeared! There have been a number of such cases of people who
were reported to have abandoned their life in the world by such "absorption."
It is not a common form of "death," even among the Siddhas. It happens
rarely as a matter of fact. But Tukaram was a very humorous guy! And all of
those who live from that point of view are very radical, very eccentric. The
acceptable and the expected are not really a part of their communication.
They are always communicating from the Perfect point of view. For this
reason, their apparent manifestation is often very odd.
Meher Baba spent a period of his life teaching or serving the masts
(pronounced "musts"), a class of eccentric people in India who live in
extraordinary but still limited states of conscious awareness. These masts
were all, from a human point of view, particularly a Western point of view,
psychotic, literally psychotic. Many of them spent their time in catatonic
states, displaying an automatic, strangely ritualistic and incomprehensible
way of life. When such individuals come into contact with a genuine Siddha-
Guru they tend to become quieter, more "normalized." The flow of the "path"
tends to become more harmonious in them. This is because the eccentricity
in which such individuals are fixed is not natural to the realized enjoyment I
call the Heart. It is, rather, a form of aberration, or exclusive fixation.
Generally, it occurs in those who become more or less exclusively involved in
the ascending, internally oriented process. Such exclusive fixation disturbs
the descending process, and produces the manifestation we call psychosis.
Nonetheless, genuine Siddhas or "completed ones" also may manifest this
eccentric quality, this oddity, this radical unpredictability. This is because the
Heart is absolutely radical, not identical to any thing, any dilemma, any path
or moment in the path, any quality, any experience, any limitation
whatsoever. The Heart obliterates and destroys limitation all the time. It is a
wildness! That is why the Guru is worshipped as Siva. He destroys
everything. He walks through town and burns everything. He hits people
over the head. He cuts them in half. Look at all the traditional pictures of
Siva. He is always wiping everybody out, tearing their bodies apart, and
sitting on them in meditation. But all of that is a symbol for the perfect
humor of the Self! Such images are not intended to represent literal acts of
God or justifiable acts of man. They are only "meaningful." They represent
meditative comprehension of an aspect of the conscious and universal
process. The representation of this paradoxical display is intended to awaken
the blissfulness of non-separation, and non-identification with mortality.
The disciple is oriented towards his own obstruction, his own path, and so he
is delivered this process of the apparent destruction of obstructions and
limitations. This causes him discomfort. But the great remedy for that
discomfort and the conscious crisis that must occur is Satsang, the very and
functional relationship to the Guru. The more the disciple lives Satsang,
knows it, enjoys it, the less he is affected by his own crisis. Then the crisis of
transformation becomes a very simple, pure, harmonious process. But the
more he turns from that condition, relationship and process which is Satsang,
the more he becomes fixed in his own obstructions. Then, when his
obstructions tend to get shaken up, even broken apart, he has only them to
which he can resort, so that he feels the discomfort, prolongs the suffering,
and exaggerates his "path."
The eccentricity of the Siddhas and Saints, their radical quality, is a
demonstration of the living Nature, the Self, Real God. The formalized, fixed,
predictable quality is not that of the Heart. Rigidity is the tamasic, fixed,
repetitive orientation of the limited mind. So the Real Self, alive as the Guru,
performs this eccentric display, constantly abandoning all service to
expectations. It is the Divine leela, the humor or play of freedom. It always
disturbs the fixed, unconscious quality. It creates motion, then returns to
harmony, then settles into the formless consciousness, then arises as
creative Light. But whatever the display, whatever the changes through
which Guru and disciple go from day to day, whatever the change in the
display or action of the Guru, there is always one thing he continually does,
which is simply to remain as the Self, the Heart, the Very Reality or Truth. His
apparent activity, his drama, his play is always changing. He constantly
builds up expectations in the disciple, and then changes it around. He
continually disturbs the fixed quality, the rigidity, the path to which the
disciple always tends.
There appears to be a certain security in fixation, but in fact it is a form of
disturbance. It is only an illusory security, because there is, in Truth, no fixed
state. That is why death is such a threat. But the more fluid, the looser, the
more rapid and intense within, the more like consciousness the disciple
becomes, the less fixed, the more functional, the more harmonious, the more
like fire, the more there is of Truth and the less there is of the "path," the
more there seems a movement in the direction of freedom. It appears to be a
direction. Perhaps we should only call it a sign. It is a sign of that which is,
always and already.
CHAPTER 10
The Path of the Great Form
DEVOTEE: Does proximity to you, closeness to your body, have any relation
to the intensity or the effects of Satsang?
FRANKLIN: What is your experience?
DEVOTEE: It doesn't seem to have that much to do with the body. It seems
more to be how much I am in felt contact with you and how open I am to
you.
FRANKLIN: It all depends on the quality of your relationship. Everything is its
medium, because everything is it. The body seems to be a very potent
source for some, whereas for others the process seems to take place mainly
or only in very subtle ways. Neither one is superior to the other. A person
must discover the quality of Satsang for himself.
DEVOTEE: I have two feelings or ideas about what is happening that I would
like to discuss. I have had the feeling that you were receiving uptight or bad
karma and transforming it inside yourself.
FRANKLIN: What do you think?
DEVOTEE: That's what I see, that's what I experience, but I'm not certain.
FRANKLIN: Why do you doubt it?
DEVOTEE: The other thing, after sitting with you for a little while, I seem to
be observing a pattern in myself in Satsang, and tonight I had the feeling
that maybe there is a specific way that it happens. It is somehow different
every time, but there seems to be a continuity in terms of a pattern. At least
I experience it in terms of a movement up through the chakras. Is there
some sort of non-verbal instruction being communicated?
FRANKLIN: In you?
DEVOTEE: In myself, yes. Something you do and, therefore, I am also
learning to do, because I am sitting in your presence.
FRANKLIN: Many structures are used in the subtle process of Satsang, and it
appears different all the time, the experience is different from person to
person, and the quality of Satsang seems to change in the same individual
from time to time. The reason there are differences, apparent differences, is
because different aspects of the mechanism are animated or become a focus
of attention at different times. In different individuals, the obstructions, the
qualities of the mechanism, are different, and so different things must occur.
If you have a head cold, you must clear out your head. If you've got an ulcer,
you must heal your stomach. In each individual there is a different structural
dis-ease, and these structures are physical, psycho-physical, psychic, subtle.
Each person may observe a characteristic activity in himself in Satsang. A
particular kind of process may be characteristic over a certain period of time,
then it may change. But these experiences in themselves are only purifying
movements. Like that time when you blow your nose and your head finally
gets clear. You don't go around pointing to your sinuses for the rest of your
life, saying they are the center of Truth!
At various times, we have discussed the qualities of this structure in which
we live. In describing its various levels, I have spoken of the three primary
centers. One is the region of the solar-plexus, or the soft region of the lower
body, which is the epitome of the psycho-physical organism. It is the center
or point of view of all religious activity in men, and it is the center of all
ordinary human activity. The current of the force or light of Truth moves down
into life by a process of descent into this region. But that same force or light
also ascends. The structures through which the current ascends have been
described in various traditions. The yogic traditions of India, in particular,
describe the pattern of ascent through chakras, the wheels, lotuses or
centers which are the etheric and subtle counterparts of various vital and
strategic locations in the spinal structures of the physical body. The epitome
or fundamental "goal" of the ascending life is the sahasrar, that massive area
at the crown of the head, or, more properly, just above the head. It is the
primary center of all subtle activity, all "spiritual" activity.
"Spirit" means breath in the Latin. In Sanskrit the word is prana, usually
translated as life, breath or vital force. Spiritual life is the aspiring life of the
vital force. The kundalini is prana. The kundalini shakti is prana-shakti, the
subtle or ascending activity of the life-force. In the practical activity or yoga
of spiritual life, the vital force ascends or is made to ascend (by the methods
of the yogi or the initiatory grace of his Guru) toward the sahasrar, the point
or region above. The yogi attempts to merge his manifest vital-force with its
subtle source above. This produces the trance or samadhi states of yoga.
There are many types of yogic meditation or contemplation, but they are all
meditations of this same subtle process. All spiritual life is simply an
exploitation or realization of the ascending, aspiring aspect of the life-force.
Just as all religion is essentially a surrendering or waiting on the descending
power, whose source or nature is called "God," all yoga or spiritual life, all
spiritual method, is a contemplation, concentration, or exploitation of this
subtle mechanism of the ascending activity of that same power or vital force.

The yogi may do various things to control and harmonize the breathing
process in order to go inward and upward. To the same end, he may add
strict control of sex-force, diet, thought processes, etc. There are also various
forms of concentration on the subtle centers or chakras. Some yoga's involve
the contemplation of internal, subtle sounds, or concentration on the internal
"lights" of the life-force. There are many forms of traditional yoga that
contemplate the various qualities of our subtle mechanism. The highest form
of yoga or the ascent of life is the spontaneous kundalini manifestation, in
which all the classic "spiritual" events arise spontaneously by the grace of
the Guru. But the entire affair of the ascending yoga is only one of the
possible major events in this activity that is real Satsang. The activities of
descent are also a primary form of the purifying operations of Satsang.
Some who live in Satsang begin to have kriyas, spontaneous physical
movements. Breathing activity or automatic pranayama may appear in the
form of sudden breathing, fast breathing, quieting or even cessation of the
breath. Internalization may come quite naturally, then concentration, inward
experiences of centers, visions, lights, sounds, experiences of the merging of
bliss. Some people may have these experiences. Others may not have those
kinds of experiences, or they may have them only occasionally, or they may
only have certain of them. These other people may experience more of the
calming descent of that same bliss and force that purifies the mind and the
life of the yogi by ascent. Where the obstructions or limiting tendencies of a
man are essentially in this descending path, then we have awakening or
opening of the descended, human life, the "purification of the navel." Where
the obstructions and the tendencies lie more in the subtle or ascending path
of the same mechanism, then we have the yogic manifestations, the spiritual
manifestations. The pattern of descent and ascent is the circle or circuit of
the life-force, the true "round dance." And in the man of understanding, the
conductivity of that full circle is re-established and full, whatever
stimulation's of descending and ascending activity arise in the stages of
purification.
So far we have covered two of the three major centers. There are many
chakras, and there are also many points within the descending parts of the
total mechanism. The epitome of descent is the belly, and the epitome of
ascent is a point above the head. But there is a third "place" or epitome of
conscious life. It is described in the tradition of jnana or Self-knowledge,
represented by Ramana Maharshi and others. The religious traditions speak
from the point of view of "life." The esoteric, spiritual and yogic traditions
speak from the point of view of subtle "planes" of existence or "light." But
the philosophical traditions of the jnani speak from the point of view of the
"causal" being or body, the seat of deep sleep, and also of the formless
state, whose epitome is in the heart, on the right side of the chest. The
physical heart of the waking and descending life is felt to the left, and the
"heart chakra" of the subtle or "dreaming" life of ascent is in the middle, but
the "causal" center or heart is on the right. The "causal" center is without
light, without sound, without form, without movement. The seat of the causal
body, the formless "body" of deep sleep, is also, when opened and
conscious, the seat of the "fourth state" (beyond waking, dreaming or
sleeping) called turiya, which transcends all modification.
The yogi seeks to merge in the sahasrar, or the highest, subtlest place of
light. The religious man seeks to be full, to receive and be full of truth, life,
the descending grace of God. But the jnani, the man who resorts only to the
intuitive process of Self-knowledge, tends toward this "causal" center beyond
the mind, beyond form, beyond visions, experiences. When this causal
center opens, beyond the apparent unconsciousness of sleep, the state
called turiya arises. It is a conscious state which, like a witness, transcends
the three ordinary states of waking, dreaming and sleeping.
All of the traditions that have arisen in the great search of mankind have
been communicated, whether consciously or unconsciously, from the point of
view of one of these three primary centers of conscious existence. One or
more. Read the traditional texts. Where the jnani speaks in terms of identity
with the Self, the yogi, the spiritual man, speaks in terms of union with Truth,
Light, God. And the religious man, the one who surrenders to God and serves
God among men, talks about his relationship to God and his creatures. But all
three of these centers are only portions of one great mechanism that all men
share, all living beings share, all worlds share. This mechanism is duplicated
in all forms, including this manifest universe. The manifest cosmos is
structured in the same manner as our own tripartite mechanism.
But Truth itself contains and is prior to all of that. And Satsang is the
company of Truth. Satsang is not simply, then, the attempt of seekers to do
various things with these three centers or functions of manifest existence to
which the traditions have paid so much attention. The traditions always start
from a low position and seek to attain their goal, which is fullness, union, or
identity. But the point of view of true spiritual life is already that of Truth
itself, not of the search, but of the enjoyment of Truth, the living of it, the
present enjoyment of it as our real condition. All real transformation that
occurs within the form of life at any level, is a manifestation of Truth, of
Satsang, not of the search. When a person moves into that association that
is Satsang, and lives it as the condition of his life, he may begin to
experience curious manifestations in any of these three great or traditional
forms. So, as in the case of the questioner, there may be these experiences
of the chakras, the phenomena of the "subtle body." In others there may be
another kind of experience, more of opening, and fullness. In another it may
tend to take the form of intuitive directness. Some speak of their spiritual life
in terms of "life," others speak of it in terms of "spirit" and "light," others
speak of it in terms of unqualified "being," "consciousness," or "Reality."
Even so, each of those points of view is a limitation, expressing only a
portion of the structure that is within the possibility of Truth. This is because
your experiences occur only in the areas where purification is stimulated by
the obstructive presence of your peculiar tendencies. Therefore, Satsang is
the true resort of all men, regardless of their peculiar tendencies. And very
Truth and radical understanding is the necessity of all men regardless of their
experiences. Now, exactly how this mechanism of Satsang works is not clear
at the outset. Prior to its perfect realization, it cannot be grasped. It is
elusive. So, as you say, you are trying to get down to it. But if you try to
discover or perform it yourself, your blood vessels will burst. It wont happen.
If you don't already live the point of view of the heart, vital, subtle or causal,
how are you going to move into it? Your point of view is in your head, or your
legs, wherever. Satsang, the company and condition of Truth, is your true
resort, and in Satsang you will find yourself falling spontaneously into the
"Heart," the Heart of Truth, which transcends the manifest realizations.
There is no real contraction. There is only that enjoyment that is Truth, what
is always already the case. The body is a process of conductivity in which the
force of life moves in a circle, descending and ascending. The center or
epitome of the life aspect of this force is the vital center in the general region
of the navel. The epitome of the subtle "body" is in the regions of the head,
above the eyes, even above the head. It manifests not as life or vitality, but
as Light, unqualified Conscious Light. The modifications of most subtle, pre-
cosmic Light are everything we know as Life. The center or epitome of the
prior, "causal" or transcendent existence is the region of the "Heart," on the
right side of the chest. It manifests as very consciousness, absolute space,
formless, unqualified existence, the vast bliss. Nothing is being
communicated but That which includes these three. There is nothing but
That. That is Amrita Nadi, the Great Form, the conscious, moveless spire
which extends from the Heart to the Light.
I called the most subtle region the "Bright," because it is only Light. All of life
descends from it, and returns to it in a continuous cycle, conducting it as
force, becoming movement and form. But even this Light is a reflection of
the Heart, unqualified existence, just as the moon reflects the sun. This
Heart, which is the source of all light and life, and of which every thing is the
reflection, is itself without quality. But the Heart, the Light and the Life are all
included and transcended in that which is very Truth, the Great Form.
Therefore, those who come to Satsang, where the Truth, this Living Reality, is
communicated, see it manifested in them in three characteristic ways. One is
in the form of movement or of life: kriyas (spontaneous vital and physical
movements), changes in the life-pattern, experiences and circumstances at
the level of life, waking phenomena. Others experience it more in terms of
subtle or dreamlike manifestations: lights, visions, dreams, sounds, patterns
internal to consciousness. Others move into the intuitive or "causal"
awareness, falling into a profound sleep at times, even moving into turiya,
the "fourth state" which transcends waking, dreaming and sleeping. But all of
those phenomena are manifestations at particular levels of the greater
process that is Satsang.
Satsang is communicated from the point of view of Turiyatita. It is the
ascended life of the Heart. It is Amrita Nadi, the Form of Reality. Satsang is
the very point of view of Truth, in which all things arise as a modification.
Truth, Satsang, simply manifests as these three qualities I have described,
and Truth itself, the point of view which generates the processes of Satsang,
may be said to exist as a fourth and a fifth quality. The two qualities of Truth
are transcendent and unqualified. The first and foundation quality is the
Heart. It is the very Self of Reality, enjoyed when the mind falls into its
source, and the gross, subtle and causal qualities are purified of obstruction
and contraction. This is Turiya in its Perfect State. And the fifth quality is
Perfect Form, Turiyatita, beyond the fourth, ascended from the fourth. It is
the Eternal Form of the Heart, the Form of Guru, Self and God. When the
Guru speaks ecstatically of his Divine and All-Pervasive Nature he is not
speaking of some egoic magnificence, but of That which is all that is and
which stands out when ego is dead.
The Truth, which is Satsang, and living the Truth, which is sadhana or real
practice, make possible the entire event of the transformation and revelation
of this great mechanism. It is alive. It is not a structure that can be
blueprinted and then prescribed. Something can be said about it, but the
saying is not equivalent to the sadhana or life of Satsang. It is alive. Just as it
is very hard to control the breath once it leaves the body, just so, this
incredibly subtle mechanism, whose source and very condition is the Truth, is
infinitely elusive, absolutely elusive, paradoxical. That is why the image of
the Mother Shakti and the images of Deity in general, particularly in the
Orient, have a paradoxical quality. They are almost comical at times, and at
other times they are treacherous, violent. Krishna is beautiful and blue. But
he teases those who desire him. He eludes them. He runs away, and he says
"Yes, I'm coming, I'm coming." But you wait and you wait and you wait, and
he doesn't come.
The Mother Shakti appears in all kinds of forms. The holy yogi bathes his
mind with repetition of mantra until it is pure of desires, and then he walks
down to bathe his body in the Ganges. But when he gets out of the water,
without his bathing suit, this fantastic woman is standing on the beach with a
basket of fruit, with chicken sandwiches, and a little wine. The next day he
has to turn in his mantra and his robe! He goes to tell his Guru how he broke
his vows. His Guru asks, "With whom?" "With that beautiful chick over there!"
says the penitent. And his Guru says, "That is the Mother Shakti. She got
you!"
The image of this great process of conscious life has been symbolized as all
of the paradoxical deities, and the symbols themselves have a life. In my
own experience, the Mother Shakti has appeared like anyone else, then
different, as all kinds of forms, very strange, then beautiful, then wise. But
what is being communicated through the imageries of these experiences is
this great process, only a piece at a time. It is perfectly glimpsed only when
there is resort to Truth absolutely. Otherwise a person will buy the experience
to which his tendencies gravitate. So, if you are willing to buy a little foggy
light between your eyes, then that is where you will be. Whatever you are
willing to buy, you will be given. That is why the deities are pictured in such
paradoxical ways. They will give you a little pink fruit, if you will come and
take it. The dog comes for his bone, he gets the bone, and he leaves. Thus, if
you begin to get very interested in the process that is awakening in Satsang,
you may become attached to the experiences themselves. Perhaps, at some
point, you will buy it. You are already buying it. That is why this question was
asked. You may even become very angry, and reject Satsang, because of the
position you are put into by craving your own internal life. Narcissus is
addicted to looking at himself. It is the only thing he will defend.
DEVOTEE: Will you say something about how the Shakti relates to Truth?
FRANKLIN: What is called Shakti, the Divine Creative Power, is not a separate
thing, not a special force. It is the same that is meant by the Self, Reality,
Truth, Guru, or God. The name Shakti is simply used to describe that aspect
of the Truth that is movement in manifestation. Siva-Shakti is perhaps a more
appropriate or complete designation of the Truth. In other words, the Real is
moving-creative, but it is also static-perfect-untouched. The true Shakti is the
Conscious Force in and as which every thing exists. It is the present nature of
every thing, of all beings, and it is also the cause, substance, support and
end of all that arises.
Now as it pertains to practical spiritual life, there are those in whom the way
of understanding or Satsang with the Guru involves a pronounced subtle
purification or transformation. The peculiar qualities of their spiritual
experiences tend to arise in the "subtle body" as opposed to the "physical,
gross body," or to what is called the "causal body," the deep well of being in
which there is no form, no modification. The subtle body is actually the range
of internal functions, of inward-directed energy and awareness, of dreams,
visions and thoughts. There are many who are sensitive in that range of
functions, and whose view of the cosmic process is essentially through the
subtle media. The apparent process of their conscious life is more obviously
like internal yoga and meditation than the austere intuitions of Buddhism or
Advaita Vedanta, or even the continuous practical orientations of those in
whom human activity in the world is the center of sadhana and experience.
Such people witness the specific, yogic activity of the universal conscious
force.
The force alive in yoga is called prana-shakti. It is an aspect of the universal
life, the subtle life of the Self of Truth. The Shakti in this form has a specific
involvement with the internal processes of living beings, particularly human
beings. If the internal energy can be stimulated, or if its source and path can
be concentrated upon, there are internal awarenesses and transformations of
a subtle kind that arise. Ordinarily, this process is not something over which
a person has the least control. He doesn't "awaken" it himself. It is always
already there. It is just unconscious and subdued. It feeds the outward
tendencies of life. The actual process of the spontaneous kriya yoga, which I
have described in The Knee of Listening, is stimulated by contact with a
living Siddha-Yogi in whom this force is unobstructed and functioning very
consciously. The contact with such a person stimulates this energy and
breaks down or purifies the inner functions of their obstructions. By virtue of
that contact, this internal process, this subtle process, becomes conscious,
awakened, and manifests itself through a series of purifying events, both
internal and external. The obstructions are broken down, perhaps on an
apparently gross level at first, then always subtler and subtler.
The first experiences such a person might have are various bodily
sensations. He may feel a certain energy, a certain heat or cold, a certain
tendency to move, little jerking, spontaneous movements, a feeling of
discomfort, an intense, even erotic feeling all over the body, or in specific
regions of the body, such as the head. These purifying movements are an
automatic hatha yoga. Sometimes such a person does yogic postures
spontaneously. He cant help but do it at times. He might perform postures of
which he would be physically incapable were this force or yoga-shakti not
active in him. He may perform automatic pranayama or vigorous and curious
exercises of the breathing functions. The whole process of all that can be
called "yoga," including all the types of yoga, may arise spontaneously in
that person, beginning with the more physical forms of yoga, then moving on
to the subtler purification's and the qualities of meditation. There may be
times when the mind becomes rapid, when there is endless thinking, without
apparent cause, and then, just as spontaneously, it breaks down, breaks
apart, slows down. Such a one may begin to have visions at times, and to
perceive internal forms, colors, smells, tastes, sounds. He may hear the
nada, the sounds which are always vibrating within. There may be visions,
symbolic experiences, dramatic mudras or poses of hands and body,
movements of all kinds, shaking of the body, ecstasies, spontaneous
devotion, love, bliss, and profound concentration in the various psycho-
physical centers, always moving toward and culminating in the primary
region of the subtle life in the crown of the head. The movement is always
upward. And since the yogic centers are subtle, not limited to the physical
form, the highest subtle centers are actually above the physical head, but
the process is sensed as a concentration in the general area of the crown.
This region is called the sahasrar.
This subtle, ascending, yogic process is that which most people would
identify with "Shakti." But in fact it is a demonstration of only one path or
one aspect of the greater path of the universal and absolute activity of the
true Shakti. There are essentially three paths, forms or qualities of spiritual
life, based on the three primary functional points of view. The classic texts
talk about the "knots" that need to be opened. "Liberation" is the opening of
these "knots."
There is a knot associated with the region of the navel, including the entire
solar plexus and the soft organs which extend above it (including the heart,
lungs, tongue and parts of the brain) and below it (to the anus). Some
indicate its center to be just below the navel. That entire region is the gross-
vital center, the life center. There is a tradition of practice related to this
center. If you are centered or stable there, you are strong, upright, direct,
straight, active in proper relationship to things, in the proper harmony. The
purification of the "navel" or of the life itself is the imminent goal of religious
devotion, and the various harmonizing practices which are applied to life.
Religion essentially looks toward life-purification, life-stabilization, life-
opening. And the life-center is its point of view. This is the first of the three
paths.
The second path is the subtle path. Such is the point of view of yoga and the
various processes that are very similar to yoga. Such are the various paths
that exploit the internal qualities rather than abandon them. The "subtle
body" is conceived in terms of various chakras or centers through which the
subtle force moves. These centers culminate in the sahasrar, the primary
center of subtle life. Several of these subtle centers are described as primary
"knots" in the traditional texts. The sahasrar itself is not included among
these knots, but a primary one is just below the crown, in the midbrain,
behind the eyes. When all of these subtle centers are open, in other words
when the living, inward-directed energy moves and merges in the sahasrar
(the "thousand petalled lotus"), that is the highest realization from the point
of view of the traditional ascending yoga.
The third path is one we see represented in such men as Ramana Maharshi
and in the monistic Hindu traditions, such as Advaita Vedanta. In such cases,
the path is generated from the point of view of the "causal being," the
conscious seat analogous to our deep sleep state. The gross path is
analogous to our waking state, the subtle path is analogous to our dream
state, and the causal path is analogous to our deep sleep state. The paths
associated with the formlessness of the Divine or ultimate Reality are
essentially forms of this causal path. And the "knot" of the causal heart, on
the right side of the chest, is the center from which these causal paths are
generated, and toward which they move by various critical and intuitive
means. When this center or knot is open, waking, dreaming and sleeping no
longer limit the primary enjoyment that is the Self or true and prior state of
consciousness.
Now all three paths necessarily involve force, the Shakti or Conscious Force
and Power of the Divine, the living Reality. Christianity, an example of the
religious or life path, is very concerned with the "Holy Spirit." That is the
Force, the Shakti, conceived from the point of view of the life-knot, the vital
center of the descending force, the conductor of the descending Power of
God. "Prayer," the most characteristic religious appliance, is always looking
for this descent of Power. And "fasting," the ancient companion of prayer, is
the means of purifying or preparing the "place" for the descent of Gods
Grace and Power. The worship of the Mother-Shakti in the cults of Hinduism is
expressed yearning for Her to descend, to send Her gifts downward. All
religious points of view want Power to come down. Western occultism is the
worshipping of the descending Power. That is the descent of Shakti. All
movements, all of this visible world is Shakti.
The subtle path is also concerned with Shakti in a peculiar way. The subtle
yoga's exploit the capacity of prana-shakti to ascend. They do not hope for
the descent of Power, but they seek to become involved with and ultimately
identified with the ascending functions of that same Power. In that case we
have the subtle process of internal movement, generated in an inward and
upward direction, toward concentration and merger in the subtle regions
above.
In the causal path there is also force. The formless Divine, the Self, Brahman,
is absolute, unqualified Force. It is only that this particular path is not
associated with the kind of "movements," this kundalini process, that are
talked about from the yogic point of view. But it is the same Force.
Ultimately, the teaching that is Truth is not generated from the point of view
of any of these three knots, or these three dilemmas, and the paths created
to open or solve them. The descending (life, gross), the ascending (subtle),
and the moveless original (causal) Force are there in all men. And each
individual will tend to go through a characteristic purifying process,
according to his particular tendencies in relation to these three qualities,
when he moves into Satsang with the Siddha-Guru. The point of view of Truth
is not the point of view of dilemma, or any of the three traditional qualities of
Force, or their primary centers, or any secondary centers associated with
them. No particular process of experience is equal or identical to Truth, the
Heart, the Self, or Real God.
What is necessary is the absence of obstruction, of the ego, of contraction,
the avoidance of relationship. Then only Truth stands out. Therefore, Truth is
the communication from the point of view of the true Teaching. The true
Guru always turns his disciple toward Truth, Reality, not to his experiences,
not to the possibility of experiences, not to any psycho-physical state. The
gross, the subtle, and the causal, as I have spoken of them here, are psycho-
physical and temporary in nature. They are equal to the three states, waking,
dreaming, and sleeping, into which experience is analyzed in the classic
texts. The higher state than these, all the texts declare, is turiya, the fourth
state. In other words, the more fundamental state is the witness to those
three states. The "witness" is not the religious man, not the yogi, not the
intuitive philosopher, but turiya, the fourth, prior to all that, witnessing it all.
And even higher than that is perfect realization, turiyatita, beyond the fourth,
unspeakable, neither formless nor formed. It is Amrita Nadi, the form of
Reality, whose Foundation and very Nature is the Heart. Therefore, Truth is
not identified with any process, any knot, any opened knot, any dilemma,
any solved dilemma.
Everyone's experience in relation to the Guru is different, depending on the
quality or tendency of his conscious life. But all experience the single force of
the Guru and of God as Shaktipat, the transmission of Divine Conscious
Power, the Power of Consciousness. Some tend toward association with the
descending force. The life-center and life-functions tend to be the dimension
in which they feel both obstruction and opening. Their sadhana tends to be a
life-level activity, and they become aware of the force of the Guru and of
Truth as a descending blessing, originating extremely above. Others tend
more toward the internally-directed, ascending process. Their experience is
more like that of the kundalini yogis. Others tend more toward the causal,
intuitive level of spiritual knowledge. Instead of the yogic processes or the
apparently life-active, religious and devotional processes, theirs is more a
process of intuitive understanding, without special inclination to visions and
the various forms of mystical cognition.
The true Guru must live the conscious Force of Truth at all of these
fundamental levels. He must necessarily be Guru in all of them. He must be
fully aware in all three paths. In him there must be no obstruction in the
descending path, no obstruction in the ascending path, no obstruction in the
moveless or intuitive path. These three "knots" are open in him. He sees
from the point of view of the Heart, unobstructed. There must be in him no
obstruction to the whole path, the complex Force of the Heart, the presence
of Amrita Nadi
There are many that are called Teacher or Guru simply because they perform
a consoling or apparently beneficial function of a peculiar kind. But such are
not living the great function of Guru. They are not what I call "the man of
understanding." They are teaching from the point of view of dilemma, the
knots and their paths. Generally, they teach those who are by tendency
oriented to the same quality of dilemma to which they themselves are
tending. The practical-religious-devotional type teaches those who are
sensitive in this way. The yogi type teaches those who are sensitive on a
subtle level. The more philosophical or intuitive type teaches those who are
similarly inclined. But the point of view of Truth is not dilemma, not the
knots. It is not equal to any kind of experience, solution or form of perception
and cognition. Therefore, the true Guru teaches Truth as Truth, from the point
of view of Truth. Then, only secondarily, the purification or opening of the
knots occurs in the ways peculiar to individual tendencies.
So you see, spiritual life in Satsang with such a Guru manifests as many
different qualities and types of experiences. From the point of view of the
Heart and the understanding of the processes of manifest existence which I
have just described, the variations are easy to comprehend. Only when the
spiritual experiences of men are looked at from the outside and from a
limited point of view do they seem disorderly. Then it seems as if there is too
much difference between people and traditions, and no single,
comprehensible process stands out. Truly, the great spiritual process is not
understandable from any point of view that is not already the Perfect Heart.
Spiritual things seem confused from a point of view that is not the Heart, just
as the world seems confused from the limited point of view of experience
and circumstance.
The "Shakti" that most people have heard or read about is that force
manifested and used in the subtle process associated with what we call
yoga. But the true or perfect Shakti is the Conscious Force that is the Self,
that is the Heart, that is Truth, Amrita Nadi, or very God. And this Shakti is
manifesting as all that arises or does not arise. It is the Truth, the
fundamental Reality. It is That which manifests on all levels, as the
descending power, the ascending power, the moveless power. One and the
same Shakti is all of that. Therefore, in Truth, Shakti is not limited to the
subtle process with which people generally identify it. It is greater than that,
not limited to that. It does not necessarily tend to manifest the dramatic
course of the subtle process in the case of some individuals. It is the Heart
Itself. It is Truth Itself. It is Real-God, God-alive. When there is the Realization
of the Self or Truth, Perfect Understanding, there is also perfect manifestation
of Shakti, perfect communication of Shakti, because the Heart is Shakti, it is
Conscious Force, it is the Fire that is Reality.
Wherever there is any sort of an opening, there is the flow of Shakti. Any
person who is open on any level, to any significant degree, is very attractive.
People like to be around such a person, because there is movement there.
There is not solidity, fixation. There is a certain energy, a liveliness with
which we like to be associated. It is only that the usual liveliness of men
tends to be limited. The easiest to identify is the person who is open on a
very human, vital level. But there is also the liveliness of a subtle variety, to
which we are, individually, more or less consciously sensitive. Ultimately, we
are also sensitive to the liveliness that is Reality itself. So, there can be a
man, a great saint, stone dead, whose "liveliness" remains in the world. The
burial shrine of Swami Nityananda is one of the most lively places to which I
have ever been in my life. Ultimately, our conscious sensitivity must awaken
to the real, eternal liveliness that is the very Heart or Real God. And it is
perfect movement, not limited movement.
The liveliness or Shakti of the Heart is communicated by the living Siddha-
Guru. Whatever the tendencies of the individual, it is the Satsang, or
relationship with the Siddha, with the true Guru, that is the simple condition
under which the utter and complete process of Truth may take place. All that
exists is relationship. All that appears as suffering and dilemma is contact or
conscious relationship, relatively obstructed. The less obstructed any
condition or function is, the more it is a path, a flow of force. The path of
Truth is the relationship to the Siddha-Guru. It is that course or functional
path established between a man and his Guru. That is the path. The path is
not the methods and strategies a man applies to himself. Satsang, the living,
active, functional relationship itself, is the "current," the "wiring" in which the
Conscious Force, the Truth, flows and manifests its activities at every level.
So the simple relationship to the man of understanding is the path. It is the
place where the search comes to an end, where the obstructions are
abandoned.
There are also various activities internal to the Siddha-Guru and the realms
of his awareness, but they are not spoken. There is no point in talking about
them, unless, in the progress of Satsang, the Guru sees fit to instruct his
disciple. These processes are subtler than the mind and require equal
subtlety to be understood. Even so, certain activities are eventually observed
by the disciple in contact with his Guru. There are various things the disciple
observes his Guru to do which he associates with his own awakening and
with the arising of certain experiences in him. Those activities of the Guru
are not utterly comprehended by the disciple at the time. The traditions
describe these activities in terms of effects and appearances. In India, these
activities of the Guru are called Shaktipat or Guru-kripa, the transference of
the Conscious Force of the Heart or God. The effects of this transference are
observed in various enlivening activities, gross, subtle and causal. The Guru
is observed to be apparently involved in this in several possible ways: by
looking at the person, by touching him, by speaking to him, or simply by
thinking of him in some way. And the highest form of that "initiation" is
where the Guru simply and silently abides as the Self, or very Truth. Then his
continuous existence as the living Reality initiates everything that lives to
Truth. All that turns to the Guru in appropriate ways is enlivened by him. And
that is initiation, that is movement, that is the beginning of the whole
process of spiritual life.
Naturally, it is on the level of life that the relationship to the Guru is
perceived by the disciple. He observes the occasional looks, occasional
things said, occasional touches, the effects of the Gurus occasional
remembrance of him. When he is with his Guru he may suddenly feel his
Guru is thinking of him. Or he may simply and continuously resort to his
Gurus Presence, whether or not his Guru is considering him in particular at
any moment. These various sensations of the activity of the Guru are the
apparent means, from the disciples point of view, of the transference of the
Light, the Truth, the Shakti of the living Self or Real God. The disciple may
tend, as a result of some enlivening experience generated by his Gurus
grace, to look again and again for that particular experience or that
particular form of "initiation" to be repeated. He may tend to associate some
peculiar experience or some particular activity of his Guru with Truth itself.
But in fact any specific experience in the disciple, or any specific activity of
the Guru, such as looking, talking, thinking, touching, whatever, is generated
in a particular moment when it is appropriate. It is thus not a necessary
experience or action that must be repeated again and again. Different forms
of the action of initiation may be used, or no apparent action may be used.
The Guru always remains unpredictable, in order to test and mature his
disciple. And, at last, simply abiding as the Self, as the Heart, as Truth, is
essentially what the Guru does for all beings. Just so, the quality of the
relationship that the disciple is living to his Guru is what determines the
nature of his present experience. The Guru does not withhold. He always
lives Truth openly. He always communicates it on many levels, to transform
the expectations, the obstructions, the tendencies, the limitations that the
disciple is living to him. So the "drama" of this relationship or Satsang is at
the level of the disciple. It is he that must understand obstructions. The Guru
does not create obstructions. He only lives the Heart of Truth. But he may
dramatize or intensify the obstructions already in the disciple, in order to
make him aware of them, to draw his attention to them, so that this flow of
Life can move through, unobstructed by any particular tendency. The Guru
always works so that awareness can be lived on a more profound level.
Many things can be said about this activity to which I have been referring. It
is the greatest mystery, how the Heart lives in the world, how it functions
among apparently separate, living beings. The whole process that occurs is
as complicated as the cosmos itself, and what is beyond it. It cannot be
described perfectly. Only certain things can be said about it. Essentially, it is
the very Life, the Self, very Existence, Reality, God manifesting under these
conditions, under all conditions. All the traditions, taken together, are
essentially a way of retracing the structure of manifest life back to its source.
Each particular incident or tradition does it in a limited way, from the point of
view of a particular dilemma, a particular center, a particular viewpoint of
experience or consciousness. Those in whom this drama of realization is
essentially a life-process are concerned with the descending force and the
opening of life to it. They are tracing the current of descent, from the highest
to the lowest. The processes of yoga and the like, the subtle processes, trace
the current of ascent, from the lowest to the highest. These two taken
together, the gross and the subtle, form a circle. They trace that portion of
the circuit of existence which descends to life and ascends or returns again
from life to its structural source. Therefore, life is always descending-
ascending. It is a circle. Then there is also the "causal" aspect or portion of
this circuit. Ramana Maharshi talks about the path that leads and even
begins beyond yoga, and which is prior to subtle and gross existence. He
points to the place of the Heart, on the right side, which is the causal center.
And this center is connected to the subtle center, the Sahasrar, by that
transcendent portion of the circuit called Amrita Nadi. Thus, if the three
centers or portions of the circuit are taken together with the Form which
includes them we see the great path, the circuit of manifest and unmanifest
life, the secret path of all spiritual processes, all traditions.
The "shape" of man is like a fruit. His core is the causal being, untouched,
unborn, like waiting seed. When the fruit falls into the earth (when the mind
falls into the Heart), there springs up an inconceivable thread, of the same
substance as the seed of being, which rises above, becoming a great tree
and extending even into the heights, into the sky and cosmos of very God.
This is Amrita Nadi.
Until the seed is ready for life, it is concealed in the form of the fruit. This
fruit is the dependent and not conscious form of man. It is the condition of
suffering, and also of sadhana in Satsang with the Guru. The stem of the fruit
is the route of the Light and Life which descends into the fruit from places
above, from the parent tree, and at last passes down through the sahasrar,
the crown of this body or fruit. That Light and Life descends into the fruit and
makes it full and ripe below. Just so, it also ascends, thus keeping the circuit
or circle, until the fruit falls and its seed is eaten in the earth. Such is
ordinary death and in the mature devotee, also "ego" death. Ordinary death
is the termination of a phase of the outer life of the individual, but also the
beginning of a new phase of the manifestation or expansion and revelation of
what he is inwardly and ultimately. Just so, a man becomes perfectly
"fruitful" only in Satsang with the Guru, who is himself the process, the goal,
the means, the Power and the very Life. Therefore, in Satsang the fruit ripens
and falls into the "earth," the foundation, and opens. Such is the Heart.
When discipleship to the Siddha-Guru is perfected, the whole circuitry is
known and understood. It is seen to be within your own real Nature or
Condition, rather than to contain you or limit you. And this is what is truly
called Self-Realization, the Heart of Truth, Nirvana, God-union. It is perpetual
freedom to enjoy Satsang with the Perfect Guru. And one who understands,
even one whose understanding is Perfect doesn't necessarily disappear from
the world. Gautama Buddha, for instance, got up and walked back to town.
So it was with Jesus, and all the great Masters of men. After their return to
the common life of the world, they spent the rest of their lives trying to
communicate their understanding to all of those who felt limited by this fruit-
shape, this phantom circuit of manifest existence. And in the case of all the
Siddhas, the fundamental Teaching or method was that functional
relationship or Satsang which living beings realized with them. This Satsang
is the Method of the Siddhas.
Satsang always serves to destroy or undermine the fixation of attention and
its implications. Whenever Satsang is lived, there tends to be the opening of
the knots in which attention is fixed, so that consciousness falls into its
original form, which is the Self or Real Nature. Therefore, one who has
realized the ultimate end of the whole path or cycle of the form of existence
now exists "outside" of that whole process, no longer limited by it. But he
remains consciously related to this whole structure in an entirely different
way than seekers and all those who do not understand the process and form
of existence. The path of a mans experience will always return to zero,
always back to the dilemma. It will always fit him back into the fruit, like a
worm. Thus, the Siddha-Guru appears in the world, to speak from the point
of view of Truth or Reality, not of experience, and to return the tendencies of
the disciple back to the essential structure in which Truth is communicated,
until he sees there is no path, no difference, no separation. And when the
disciple is perfectly one with his Guru, he sees and enjoys the true Form of
his Guru, and participates directly in the functions of his Guru, who all the
time has been only the Self of the Real One.
Those who speak from the point of view of the Heart, the living Truth, are
always very radical, very eccentric in the manner of their teaching. This is
because they are no longer limited to the "path" I have described, to the
point of view of dilemma, to the limiting structures of experience. Saint
Tukaram is a good example. Tukaram was a very strange man. He grew up
and lived in India, in a very traditional order of society in which religious and
spiritual life was a fixed part of the cycle of life. He participated in all of that,
ritually, religiously. He performed all the apparent externals of it, and this
would seem to have made him acceptable or ordinary. But if you read his
words, you realize he was a "heretic"! He spoke only in the most radical way.
Tukaram lived in a culture that was devotionally oriented, committed to the
duality or radical separation of God and man. But he would go around telling
everybody there wasn't any God. When he sat down, he could find no One to
meditate on. He claimed that he was himself God. He went on and on like
this, disturbing all the orthodox devotees, until, one day, he just
disappeared. He had been sitting with his disciples all night, chanting,
enjoying deep meditation, when, all of a sudden, there was a blast of light,
and he disappeared! There have been a number of such cases of people who
were reported to have abandoned their life in the world by such "absorption."
It is not a common form of "death," even among the Siddhas. It happens
rarely as a matter of fact. But Tukaram was a very humorous guy! And all of
those who live from that point of view are very radical, very eccentric. The
acceptable and the expected are not really a part of their communication.
They are always communicating from the Perfect point of view. For this
reason, their apparent manifestation is often very odd.
Meher Baba spent a period of his life teaching or serving the masts
(pronounced "musts"), a class of eccentric people in India who live in
extraordinary but still limited states of conscious awareness. These masts
were all, from a human point of view, particularly a Western point of view,
psychotic, literally psychotic. Many of them spent their time in catatonic
states, displaying an automatic, strangely ritualistic and incomprehensible
way of life. When such individuals come into contact with a genuine Siddha-
Guru they tend to become quieter, more "normalized." The flow of the "path"
tends to become more harmonious in them. This is because the eccentricity
in which such individuals are fixed is not natural to the realized enjoyment I
call the Heart. It is, rather, a form of aberration, or exclusive fixation.
Generally, it occurs in those who become more or less exclusively involved in
the ascending, internally oriented process. Such exclusive fixation disturbs
the descending process, and produces the manifestation we call psychosis.
Nonetheless, genuine Siddhas or "completed ones" also may manifest this
eccentric quality, this oddity, this radical unpredictability. This is because the
Heart is absolutely radical, not identical to any thing, any dilemma, any path
or moment in the path, any quality, any experience, any limitation
whatsoever. The Heart obliterates and destroys limitation all the time. It is a
wildness! That is why the Guru is worshipped as Siva. He destroys
everything. He walks through town and burns everything. He hits people
over the head. He cuts them in half. Look at all the traditional pictures of
Siva. He is always wiping everybody out, tearing their bodies apart, and
sitting on them in meditation. But all of that is a symbol for the perfect
humor of the Self! Such images are not intended to represent literal acts of
God or justifiable acts of man. They are only "meaningful." They represent
meditative comprehension of an aspect of the conscious and universal
process. The representation of this paradoxical display is intended to awaken
the blissfulness of non-separation, and non-identification with mortality.
The disciple is oriented towards his own obstruction, his own path, and so he
is delivered this process of the apparent destruction of obstructions and
limitations. This causes him discomfort. But the great remedy for that
discomfort and the conscious crisis that must occur is Satsang, the very and
functional relationship to the Guru. The more the disciple lives Satsang,
knows it, enjoys it, the less he is affected by his own crisis. Then the crisis of
transformation becomes a very simple, pure, harmonious process. But the
more he turns from that condition, relationship and process which is Satsang,
the more he becomes fixed in his own obstructions. Then, when his
obstructions tend to get shaken up, even broken apart, he has only them to
which he can resort, so that he feels the discomfort, prolongs the suffering,
and exaggerates his "path."
The eccentricity of the Siddhas and Saints, their radical quality, is a
demonstration of the living Nature, the Self, Real God. The formalized, fixed,
predictable quality is not that of the Heart. Rigidity is the tamasic, fixed,
repetitive orientation of the limited mind. So the Real Self, alive as the Guru,
performs this eccentric display, constantly abandoning all service to
expectations. It is the Divine leela, the humor or play of freedom. It always
disturbs the fixed, unconscious quality. It creates motion, then returns to
harmony, then settles into the formless consciousness, then arises as
creative Light. But whatever the display, whatever the changes through
which Guru and disciple go from day to day, whatever the change in the
display or action of the Guru, there is always one thing he continually does,
which is simply to remain as the Self, the Heart, the Very Reality or Truth. His
apparent activity, his drama, his play is always changing. He constantly
builds up expectations in the disciple, and then changes it around. He
continually disturbs the fixed quality, the rigidity, the path to which the
disciple always tends.
There appears to be a certain security in fixation, but in fact it is a form of
disturbance. It is only an illusory security, because there is, in Truth, no fixed
state. That is why death is such a threat. But the more fluid, the looser, the
more rapid and intense within, the more like consciousness the disciple
becomes, the less fixed, the more functional, the more harmonious, the more
like fire, the more there is of Truth and the less there is of the "path," the
more there seems a movement in the direction of freedom. It appears to be a
direction. Perhaps we should only call it a sign. It is a sign of that which is,
always and already.
CHAPTER 11
Phases
DEVOTEE: What is the point of images and visions?
AVATARA ADI DA: It is always different. In one case, such an experience may
coincide with one or another degree of Real transcendence. In that case, the
one in whom the experience arises suddenly understands and is free of it. In
another case, some conditional manifestation may arise, but one does not
know what it is. One becomes disturbed by it, but one does not give in to it.
Then perhaps some source—a teacher, book, something—will clarify it, and
then one is free of it. In yet another case, such a thing will arise without any
understanding on ones part, and one "buys" it. In that case, one enjoys it,
one takes it as it is, one becomes full of it, one identifies with it, and one is
full of regret and longing when it goes. Thus, all the extraordinary
manifestations of vision, art, culture, thought, and life are, ultimately,
ordinary—simply a part of the universal "creativity". Apart from Satsang,
apart from the life of understanding, such things have no more ultimate
significance than any other simple or ordinary event.
There are people who, because of their chronic condition, because of the
tendencies of their conditional state, manifest psychic powers of various
kinds. Thus there are mediums and psychics, people who see your "aura",
who see pictures around you, who hold your ring and tell you the answers to
your questions, who give seances, who make predictions. These people are
not themselves extraordinary. Apart from these "gifts" most of them are very
"ordinary", even peculiarly unintelligent. You would expect, because these
manifestations are extraordinary, that the character of the individuals
through whom they are expressed would also be extraordinary. But it is not
so. These phenomena are simply qualities that arise, just like a stomachache,
or a left hand. There is nothing Ultimate, Truth-like, or even Truth-directed
about occult, supernormal, and psychic phenomena, but if some such
phenomenon arises in you and you buy it, then it becomes an aspect of your
suffering. And all people are suffering, regardless of the qualities that are
peculiarly theirs.
From the Spiritual point of view, the future is a "creative" activity, not a
predetermined one. Very often there are mysterious indications that arise,
perceptions of a tendency that is operating or of a possibility of some kind.
But Spiritual sadhana is not a matter of being determined by tendencies or
premonitions. Spiritual sadhana in the world is always "creative" involvement
with conditions. True action involves the transformation of time and space
into the Conscious, Spiritual Event. Therefore, there may be indications of
tendencies, of possibilities, of things that may occur, but all of this arises in
relation to the Living Heart. "Creative", Free, and Conscious activity,
generated in Satsang with the Most Perfect Realizer of the Heart, constantly
breaks down the entire machine of destiny. There is no necessary event. It is
all a "creative" activity. The more "tamasic", or inert, the body-mind is, the
more likely you are to experience and suffer the events toward which you are
tending. But the more movement toward purification there is in you, and the
more harmony there is alive in you, and the more understanding there is in
you, the less your future is likely to be determined by karmas, within and
without.
When people are talking about "seeing the future", they are really just seeing
the tendencies in individuals, in groups. Some such people see psychic
imagery, some have a complex intuition. It comes in various forms, but in
any case what is seen is only a tendency, a possibility, a trend. And that is
the limitation of the "psychic" functions. They do not in themselves enjoy
"creative" involvement with the process of life. The naively psychic individual
may profess to another, "Yes, you are going to die at the age of forty-two,"
or, "You are going to marry a rich man when you go on your round-the-world
trip to Shangri-la." But that is not in fact how it necessarily will or must be.
These are just possibilities, and the more you speak of them as necessary
events, the more you make of life an un-"creative" process, a determined
process. Therefore, the "Point of View" in this Satsang is always the
"creative" viewpoint. Certainly, at times there may be intuitions, feelings,
psychic premonitions, and the like, but they always arise within this
"creative" process, this "understanding", this Siddhi, or Living Power, of
Satsang.
Satsang, or life in the Condition of Truth, breaks down rigidity, the "tamasic"
quality. The functions associated with the phenomena of the occult and
astrology, for example, are "internal" virtues of the vital and astral-
emotional, or subtle, being, not of the Very Heart. They tend to interpret life
as a fixed event, either in the past or in the future. There have been very few
individuals who interpreted the conditionally manifested cosmic and human
conditions from a position of Transcendental Illumination. Psychology's and
sciences of the ordinary kind tend to treat the past as a fixed event
determining the present. And the occult and astrological sciences, even with
their attendant psychic phenomena, tend to interpret the future as a fixed
event. But nothing is absolutely fixed. Consciousness Itself is utterly
Uncontained. It is always a "creative" Force. It is always Humorous. The past
is not absolutely determining the present. Therefore, one does not have to
get deeply into ones past in order to be free. The future is not absolutely
fixed by the stars. At every moment all possibilities exist in the stars.
Therefore, it does not make any difference what fixed moment in time and
space one takes as the point of view from which to read past, present, or
future. What is always the point is this "creative" Realization of Truth. The
Real life of understanding is the only appropriate point of view under any
conditions.
One of the Lessons the Great Siddhas have always tried to communicate to
people is the undetermined, or fundamentally Spiritual, Nature of life. The
Great Siddhas always have urged human beings to conceive and know life as
a Spiritual Event rather than a fixed conditional event. Rather than mortality
and suffering, they communicate existence always to be Life and Truth. But
in order for that to be so in fact, a new "Point of View must begin to develop.
It is always already Free, not fixed. It is not simply a movement, not simply
desire, but It is Conscious, Fluid, Intelligent, inherently and priorly Full of
Truth and the Blissful Force of the Truth. The Truth is That in Which the stars
are hung, and by Which this limited mind of tendencies and fixations is
supported. When that "Point of View" is Realized, when Satsang becomes
your Condition, every moment becomes the Spiritual Event.
Because of this, many great Teachers, such as Gautama or Ramana
Maharshi, when asked about the states after death, or the future in life, or
psychic powers, would simply not entertain the discussion at all. On occasion
Ramana Maharshi gave more or less direct replies to such questions, but, for
the most part, He would only say, "Find out who wants to know this." This
was His manner of turning the person toward the fundamental Truth Which
Transcends and even, at last, Masters destiny. The same is true of Me. I am
perfectly willing to talk about these phenomena in general. But they are just
here, like This Body, this room. They are only conditional phenomena. They
do not determine the Truth or limit the "creative" life-intensity of one who
understands.
Truth must become the "Point of View". When Truth is the "Point of View",
there is no past or future that can absolutely limit your state. Then time and
place become relatively insignificant. Then it makes no ultimate difference
whether the "good" thing is going to happen or the "bad" thing. In either
case, you are going to have to understand. Apart from Truth, when the
"good" thing happens you suffer just as much as when the "bad" thing
happens. Apart from Truth, the individual lives the subtle contraction and the
avoidance of relationship under all conditions. But if, on account of Truth, this
subtle strategy does not occur, then you can really pervade the "good" thing
that happens, and there will even be a kind of enjoyment or interest when
the "bad" thing happens.
Whether they are psychic, extraordinary, or ordinary, regardless of their
particular makeup, all human beings are suffering. Just so, in all human
beings there arises the possibility, in the midst of all this suffering, to live
from an entirely "radical" and Free "Point of View". Seen in these terms, then,
the purpose of extraordinary things that arise without a persons
understanding is just like anything else that arises, any misfortune or fortune
that may arise. All experiences, "good" or "bad", are there, ultimately, to turn
one into a crisis relative to ones own search.
All kinds of conditional manifestations, ordinary and extraordinary, arise in
Satsang, and the Force, the Shakti, the Intensity, of Satsang with Me very
often tends to bring on relatively unpleasant manifestations in the form of
purifying events. If you abide in the Condition of Satsang, if you live the
"Point of View" of Satsang, if you resort to Me while going through these
processes of experience, they can serve the Real process of understanding.
Ultimately, these things are simply what they are, not what they imply. They
arise like the stars, the world, and all bodies. Either they can serve the
formulations of suffering and its search or they can serve Satsang,
depending on the present condition of the individual.
DEVOTEE: Why do You at times appear to be weeping when You are sitting
with us in Satsang?
AVATARA ADI DA: The reasons for it are varied and complex, like any other
manifestation in Satsang. This weeping may appear if there is an intense
Energy process going on in Satsang. This ascending Force, especially, makes
the eyes tear. There is no emotion associated with My weeping. It is just a
physical manifestation that purifies the eyes and the centers in the head that
are associated with them. Depending on the movement that is going on,
sometimes there is a subtle activity, an activity in the subtle body, or the
pattern of ascent, that is like suffering. It is like suffering, but it is a Yogic
process. When I sit with others in Satsang, there is the communication of
various forces, of mind-forms, of all kinds of qualities. The transformation of
all of that does not occur without cost, without something happening.
In what is called "ordinary life", people are rather insensitive to what is going
on between them and others. For this reason, they are very willing to indulge
life. Individuals allow other people to do whatever they please, and they
themselves do whatever they please, within the limits of their own desires or
fears. People are unaware of the nature of what I have simply called
"relationship". They do not know what it is, what it involves as a psycho-
physical event, a psychic event, a subtle event. It is the transference of life,
the communication of the forms of conscious life. In the usual man or
woman, though, this transference, or communication, is contracted and
destroyed, swallowed, reversed, and poisoned. And people do not know that
this is what is going on in themselves and others. People nowadays talk
about "vibrations"—this vibration, that vibration, good vibrations, bad
vibrations. There is some vague sort of sensitivity awakening about the
qualities that people manifest in life. But there is a Real process, which is
called "Satsang". It is My Unqualified Communication of the Heart. It is
simply Unqualified, Conscious Relationship. This process is Consciously Lived
by Me. That is this Satsang. It is a process in consciousness, even a profound
Yogic process. But when it occurs, there is often a quality of suffering.
Something must occur, something must open, something must be done. And
when that is going on in fact, sometimes there is the appearance of weeping
in Me. There is the appearance of sorrow, perhaps at times even the
apparent mood of sorrow, but it is not identical to sorrow. Something of the
Blissfulness of the process of transformation is also Manifested, and Bliss is
the core of that appearance of sorrow. There are other times when this
process has already taken place, when I have endured the transformation of
the karmas of My devotee in My own Body, when the Circle of life is open,
free, and the Flow of Satsang has occurred. Then the vital and subtle
mechanisms are released in Me. The physical and subtle awareness is let go,
and there is an intense concentration in the Light, or Force, Above. This
weeping also occurs at those times. But it is just Blissfulness.
The ordinary person is insensitive to this real mechanism. He or she is not
living it. He or she is not living the "Point of View" of Satsang, or Truth. I have
described the quality of life in the usual person as a kind of revulsion. The
force of life falls down out of the brain, down the spine. It is released
sexually. It is released through the various gross manifestations of life-
energy, in various kinds of self-indulgence. It is only used, and never
consciously refreshed. The mood of the usual life is trapped between the
extremes of comedy and tragedy. People laugh a lot, but what is laughter?
What happens when there is laughter? It feels good, but the process involves
a form of revulsion, like vomiting. And vomiting is also a form of revulsion.
What happens when a person weeps in the ordinary manner? The breath is
disturbed. The person cannot control the breath. The chest is convulsively
constricted. There is no genuine humor in the person, no Conscious Freedom.
There is only revulsion in the ordinary person, down the back and up the
front. But in one who understands there is "conductivity", descending in
front, ascending in back.
The traditional Yogis talk about the ascending Energy and how important it is
to conserve the sex-fluid, and the life-force in general. The traditional Yogi is
concerned to get the ascending Current going. There is partial wisdom in
that, and in fact the ascending "conductivity" does tend to establish itself
more and more firmly in the process of Satsang with Me. The circular
"conductivity" of life tends to be re-established, as opposed to the
unconscious tendency of life-functions to revulse, to release their own force
and become empty. This revulsion begins to be replaced by the movement of
real "conductivity" in the Condition of Satsang.
But this process tends naturally to occur in various and complex forms in the
life of Satsang with Me. That is why I have emphasized a practical
foundation. I have said that the practical foundation of Satsang is an
ordinary, pleasurable life, not a suppressed life—you know, no work, no
contact with life, one apple every three days, and no sex for five
generations! But I require of My devotees an ordinary, pleasurable life, a
functional life, limited to what is supportive, what is enjoyable, what is full.
Such a conscious application of life tends to break the chronic pattern of
contraction, of revulsion, in a person, at least on the level of practical,
human action. And that allows this "conductivity" to begin at the level of life.
Some people who take up the Way of the Heart begin to feel the Energy, the
Force, of My Company. They speak of various kinds of Force-manifestations
and experiences of My Presence. This is evidence that "conductivity" is
beginning at the most obvious level, the life-level. Therefore, this Satsang
involves "conductivity", descending, ascending, rested in the Heart, Prior to
mind and form, Prior to knowledge in the mental sense. At last, all of the
"mentality" of Spiritual life is the contraction of the Heart, the limitation of
the Heart.
Spiritual life, for Me, has involved the observation of this entire
Manifestation, or Circle, of life I have described, not the control of It by
means of the search. It continues to Manifest Itself endlessly. It is not
stopped. All kinds of things have occurred since I wrote The Knee of
Listening. The same essential Condition and dynamic Enjoyment has
remained from that time, but the Revelation of this Great Process has
continued. All I have done is observe It and allow It to take place as a Living
Function. It is a Miraculous Phenomenon that no one seems to know about.
No one appears to suspect It. The usual man or woman does not suspect that
life is miraculous, that there is this miraculous Process of Satsang, the
Communication of Truth, Which can make Itself Known on many levels—on
the life-level, in the descending pattern, in the ascending pattern, in this
intuitive life—this "radical" Realization, this Love-Blissfulness, this Intensity,
this "Real" meditation, this "radical" understanding. What most people hear
are the little stories, little jokes, that appear in the traditions, glimpses and
characterizations of portions of that Great Process. No tradition has
comprehended It fully, even at the level of description. All traditions are
limited to the viewpoint of one or a limited combination of the three primary
centers. But there have been great Saints, great Yogis, great Sages, great
individuals. Wherever such a one has arisen, that one has Communicated
through Satsang to various people who were close to that one. All kinds of
experiences were generated in that manner. And in the midst of all of the
people who enjoyed these different kinds of experience, little groups would
gather. You know, people sitting in Satsang who had all been having a
buzzing in the right ear got together after the death of the Guru and
established the "buzzing-in-the-right-ear school". All those who were
sensitive to the subtle-body manifestations went off and talked about
chakras, the Kundalini, "internal" sound, and light. Many separate groups,
schools, and traditions grew up on the basis of particular and unique
experiences and tendencies. But all experiences are generated by one Great
Process. The "unity of all religions" is not that they have all said the same
thing. But if they were all added together, they would amount to a collective,
nearly complete, description of all but the most ultimate stage of the one
Great Process. Each religious and Spiritual tradition has represented an
experiential portion of that Great Process. Historically, the unity of all
religions will not be realized by everybody's coming into agreement on some
abstraction common to all, but, Served by My guiding examination of all
traditions, there will come an acknowledgment that all of these traditional
media together amount to a mutually dependent description of the One and
Single Great Process of Conscious Existence. Therefore, this very Process,
Completed by the Revelations that are My own unique Work, will become the
Life of Truth in the future, rather than the traditional dogmatization and
ritualization of random, exclusive "internal" and "external" experience.
All of My Life, I have been waiting for the time when I could be outwardly
Blissful, when I could Manifest that Love-Blissfulness to all. But, all of My Life,
I have not been doing that. Even as a baby, I learned very quickly that It
could not be expressed, that It could not be lived openly, not among those
who were suffering, seeking, motivated in forms of dis-ease. After so long, it
has now become possible to Live this Love-Bliss, this Truth, openly. I have
developed the Means whereby It can be Communicated to those who are
willing to endure the transformation of life. But even in the community of My
devotees the same resistance is presented to the Process of Truth. Even in
the community of My devotees there tends to be the same game: "No Bliss,
do not be Blissful, not already, not already Happy, not already Free, not yet,
not me, not with you." But I am not willing to endure the conditions this
resistance would lead to. I will "create" the conditions! The Love-Bliss of Truth
Itself, not the egoic ignorance of human beings, must Generate the
conditions of life. When Truth becomes the "Point of View", when that Love-
Blissfulness becomes the "Point of View" that "creates" life, an entirely
different situation has arisen in the world. The world is not ordinarily living
from the "Point of View" of Truth. It is living from the point of view of its
suffering, its dilemma, and there is no room for Blissfulness, for Truth, for
unreasonable Happiness. Therefore, the True Guru, the Great Siddha, always
seems remarkable from the point of view of ordinary people, because that
one lives from the "Point of View of Truth. Such a one decides to live the Very
Truth, What is only Obvious to that one, and he or she "creates" the
conditions wherein It can be Manifested.
All I am doing is establishing the appropriate conditions for Satsang with Me.
These real conditions are difficult for some people to understand. People
think I am just supposed to open the door to all, without conditions.
Everybody is just supposed to wander in, listen to a lecture: "Hm, not bad,
think Ill take this Gurus Initiation." No conditions! People think Spiritual life is
a "high", a form of entertainment, a free lunch. But Spiritual life involves
incredible conditions! Think of the conditions that had to be met for your
physical birth. If it were left to human beings to handle the affair of their own
birth, no one would ever be born at all. Maybe every now and then an arm
would be born, or a yelping pile of meat. An entire family might consist of an
arm, an apple, and a #2 Mongol pencil!
Examine the lives of the Great Siddhas, those who are generally supposed to
have been great Saviors, great Teachers. They really worked on those who
came to them. People like to imagine Gautama just wanted people to sit
quietly every now and then and read philosophy between their meditations.
You should examine what the Buddhist community involved at the beginning.
The essential literature that has been left by the early Buddhist communities
consists of lists of conditions, or rules, for living in the Spiritual community.
Not philosophy, not enlightenment experiences, not all that juicy stuff, but
lists of conditions: when you could bend down, when you could go for food, in
whose presence you could eat food, what you could eat and when. The
Buddhist communities were concerned, above all, that their members lived
straight. The "philosophy" was for those who had already gotten straight. But
today people think philosophy or some formal meditation process is
supposed to get them straight. So they try all the meditation techniques one
by one, like drugs, without fundamentally changing their condition. Thus,
Spiritual life fails for them.
What did Jesus of Nazareth do for people? He really turned his disciples
around. He really worked them over. He changed their lives first. He
demanded things of them. He kicked them around. He told them where they
were at. Just so, if this Satsang with Me is to be lived, real conditions must be
established. There must be an entirely new order of life. An entirely new
point of view must be lived. Therefore, the traditional points of view, and the
ordinary human points of view, are not sufficient. They no longer apply. But
people want them. They continue to defend them, even in Satsang with Me.
It is ridiculous. They come in pain, and they wind up defending their state,
their dis-ease. Such people often must be returned to the "Straightener", the
ordinary world of suffering and death, until they remember again that they
are suffering. Appropriate conditions must be established in your individual
life and in your community life with others of My devotees. An appropriate
order of life must be established, in which there is room for Absolute
Blissfulness. This Absolute Blissfulness is too Happy for people in the usual
condition to tolerate! It is really too much. They cannot live with It, they
cannot function with It, they cannot accept It. They are always looking for
something that is just a little aggravating! Here—this little cramp in the solar
plexus—this is what they are living in. But when the life is only open, when
this incredible Force is flowing through, It churns you, It purifies the life. Then
there is nothing at last to be unhappy about, nothing to think about. The
flood of Enjoyment rushes through the body, dissolves the mind, overwhelms
the life. The Real intelligence of conscious life begins to intensify and
function in place of egoic ignorance. And that intelligence has no answers. It
has no questions. That State without answers and without questions is the
True State. From that State, the "creation" of marvels begins.
For years, I would sit down in meditation, and all My own forms would appear
—My own mind, My desires, My experience, My suffering, My feeling, My
energies, My this and My that. But, at some point, it all came to an end.
There was no thing, nothing there anymore. None of that distracted or
interested Me. "Meditation" was most perfect, continuous. Then I began to
meet those who first became involved with Me as My devotees. And when I
would sit down for meditation, there would be more of these things again—
all of these thoughts, these feelings, this suffering, this dis-ease, this
disharmony, these upsets, this craziness, this pain, these energies—all of this
again. But they were not Mine. They were the "internal" qualities and life-
qualities of My devotees. So I would sit down to meditate, and do the
meditation of other people, other beings. When I would feel it all release,
their meditation was done. And I began to test it, to see if this meditation
went on in some more or less apparent manner for these people who were
not with Me. And I found that this meditation went on with people whom I
had not even met. People I saw in dreams and visions would show up. So the
meditation went on. It was the same meditation I had always done. The
same problems were involved, the same subtleties, but the content of the
meditation was not Mine.
After the Events described in The Knee of Listening, there was a period of
time when the universe, the cosmic process, was Meditated in Me. Various
siddhis, or Yogic and occult powers, became manifested. The movement, or
process, of the cosmos is a Meditation, a purifying Event. Everything is
Satsang. There is only Satsang. It is Eternal. But after this is all seen to be so,
It must be lived. After the period in which the siddhis appeared, life became
a matter of dealing with existence as it truly is, as Satsang. But new
devotees do not yet know that life is Satsang. They are not yet experiencing
that Fullness, that fundamental Enjoyment, that living Freedom. They are not
conscious and responsible at all levels of conscious life. So a kind of
seriousness wants to creep in. The dilemma and the search would like to
reassert itself in the community of My devotees. The temptation arises to
turn Satsang with Me into the search again. But the same thing must occur
for others that occurred for this one. And True Satsang is that process.
"Radical" understanding is that intelligence. And the only means to keep the
Way of the Heart from turning into a search is simply to order it, to put the
life of the community and its sadhana into appropriate form.
There is the tendency, even among those in Satsang with Me, to indulge
their ordinary strategy, to be resistive, to be eccentric, to be self-indulgent,
to dramatize the avoidance of relationship. To them it does not seem to
involve anything terribly dramatic. It is easy for them to get involved in that
sort of mediocre strategy again, because they are insensitive to what it does,
and to what must be done for it to be straightened again and again. But I am
very well aware of it.
There have been numberless cases where people dramatize their resistance
to Satsang, and thus toward Me. To them it may have appeared very simple.
Just a little emotional resistance, a little bit of craziness off "alone"
somewhere. But I felt their "little resistance" very strongly. In one case the
resistance of an individual communicated itself to Me as a kind of black
witchcraft. The individual was not particularly aware of what he was doing,
because it was on such a subtle level, and he had become insensitive to the
effects of his own subtle activity as a result of a lifetime of random self-
indulgence in the dramas of avoidance. When all of that finally got straight in
Me, and I felt it dissolve in My meditating of this person, he suddenly
returned, smiling and full of love! "Oh, I have been having a difficult period,
but I feel better now." The symptoms were gone, but there had been no real
experience, no responsibility, no Satsang, no sadhana. His relief was more
like magic, Graceful medicine. But there was no relationship, no Wisdom, no
True Condition lived or restored. Thus, over time, I have begun to require
more and more of those who move into My Company. I require this process of
understanding to be lived, awakened, and endured in them, and I do not
merely relieve My devotees difficulties by some vicarious Yogic process in My
Self, however extraordinary that may seem.
Satsang with Me is an actual Condition. It is a relationship. It must be
consciously lived. It must become a matter of responsibility, so that this
dramatization of reluctance, of resistance, of arbitrary craziness, is set aside,
undone with Real intelligence. It must not simply be resisted by My devotee
or magically relieved by Me. It must be understood. It must be obviated in
the force of life and intelligence. The Condition of Satsang, the Condition of
relationship to Me, must be consciously and continually lived, so that this
process of understanding can go on, simply, happily. Those who are not
prepared to live It so directly, simply, with some kind of real responsibility,
are those who leave on their own. They become very resistive, then angry,
and they leave.
People forget. They forget their own positive experiences. They forget what
Satsang is and has been in their own experience. Temporarily, It becomes
clear to them, It becomes intense, It becomes Real. But then as soon as their
drama of tendencies erupts again, for whatever reasons, this cycle of
negativity comes on them again and they want to indulge it freely. They want
to go. They want to play all kinds of games, they want to be negative, they
want to tell you "where its at", they want to get upset, they want to make
their upsets known. They do not want to be responsible for all of that. They
are moved to indulge these urges even though during that entire time when
they were happily enjoying Satsang they heard Me speak again and again
about this contraction, this activity that is suffering, this avoidance of
relationship. Even if a person can begin to enjoy insight into his or her
ordinary strategy, and live beyond it, live directly, live Satsang, these cycles
of negativity and destructive, separative tendencies will absolutely occur,
again and again. There will be repetition of urges, again and again, to break
with Satsang, to feel all kinds of negative justifications for not being in
Satsang, and to play all kinds of dramas in life as a result. Therefore, in spite
of the tendency for this contraction to arise at all levels, Satsang with Me
must be lived. My devotee must continue to live and enjoy the Condition of
Satsang with Me, even though he or she may feel the rising tendencies, the
negativity, the symptoms—physical, psychic, "internal", in the "external"
conditions of life, everywhere. Even so, live this Satsang, enjoy this Satsang.
It is the only principle that is free of all of that, and if you live the
transformative conditions of Satsang with Me, Its intelligence replaces the
unconscious activity of suffering. To live Satsang makes the search and its
motivating dilemma obsolete. But you must live Satsang, and the living of
Satsang, even under the ordinary conditions of suffering, apparent suffering,
is sadhana, Real religious and Spiritual practice. There is no Satsang without
sadhana. Satsang with Me is not just a pleasant, consoling experience that
you have this week, and if It is not pleasurable next week then the entire
thing deserves your contempt. Satsang with Me must be lived over time,
under all the conditions that arise. It must become sadhana, the Way of life.
It seems that talking about Satsang tends to make It appear a very
complicated process. It is here! I am here. This relationship is a Real
Condition. My human Form is very useful, because It Lives and Demonstrates
the fundamental Condition as relationships with My devotees. Satsang with
Me is Company, proximity, relationship, living Satsang rather than merely
remembering It, listening to Me, so that Truth begins to become obvious, so
that this understanding comes alive. But what is fundamentally important is
the fact of this relationship as a condition, something that you must live from
day to day. In that sense it is not something meditative, something ritualistic,
something you must remember, concentrate on. It is something you must
live. You may want to sit there thinking and picturing, but I shake you on the
shoulder and ask you to paint the Ashram wall. Hearing Me speak to you, and
getting up and painting the wall—that is sadhana, that is Satsang with Me.
All the merely mental things you might want to do to try to keep the
relationship in place, to do something about it, to manufacture the
relationship—all of that is your own insane ritual. But true Spiritual life,
Satsang with Me, is much more practical than that, much more direct than
that. It must be. I am here.
The True "natural" State is completely without thought. It is prior to thought.
It is free of thought, even while thinking occurs. There is no thought when I
am speaking. There is no thinking going on apart from the speech. No
thinking went into your birth. All conditional manifestation is a spontaneous,
free, blissful activity, a "creative" event. Just so, Satsang is truly operative
prior to the mind. So all those means of living Satsang that are purely mental
and motivated are secondary. Satsang with Me is more practical than all of
that. Know that you cannot figure It out. You cannot understand It. You do not
understand It. That is the Truth. Here is Satsang. Live It. Be happy to have
discovered that you cannot figure It out. Some cannot even bear the mental
process. When the communication of understanding comes from without, it
puts them to sleep. When it comes from within, it wakes them up. The more
there is of all this mentality, all this conversation, all this thinking of Spiritual
things, the more sleep there is, the more unconsciousness. Too much talk
tends to obstruct the "internal", Real Force. But where the mind is not
satisfied, where the search is not satisfied, Satsang becomes possible,
sadhana becomes possible.
People come to Me to have the search satisfied. If I simply do not satisfy the
search, they get angry, and disappointed. Then they leave before the
Condition of Satsang has had time even to begin to do Its work. As a
compromise, I must continually explain, again and again, why it is that I am
not satisfying the search. So this long conversation we have had this evening
was only My attempt to explain why it is I do not say anything! But if I did not
say anything in fact, everyone would leave. So it is very difficult to Teach.
The more stable you all are, the less I will have to speak.
DEVOTEE: I find my world, my universe, is becoming more and more
oppressively one of loneliness.
AVATARA ADI DA: Get out of it. Come into this one.
DEVOTEE: I find myself doing a considerable amount of suffering, and at the
same time I am trying to avoid the compulsive activities that I do to relieve
it. I find myself trying to enter a relationship with another, or trying to find
some support in another. I am trying to get something from another. When I
sit in Satsang with You, occasionally I go through a great deal of physical
pain. And most of the time my attention is all over the place.
AVATARA ADI DA: You have got to rejoin the human race. Stop spending all
this time contemplating yourself, sitting alone in your room by yourself.
Function with human beings. Do things. That is all. That is all it will take.
DEVOTEE: My impression is that human beings are not real.
AVATARA ADI DA: Join up! You are not going to negate Me.
DEVOTEE: I am caught in the "all one separate thing".
AVATARA ADI DA: I do not care what you are caught in. We are all here. Your
suffering is your own. If you want to play your suffering game, these are the
results. Everybody is playing their own egoic game, and that is yours. I do
not have any sympathy for it. You are turning it on. You want to do it. You like
it, as a matter of fact. If you wanted to get out of that game, it would be a
simple matter of turning in the other direction, from separation to Satsang.
You must live the conditions of religious and Spiritual life. If you refuse the
conditions of religious and Spiritual life and continually wander in your own
dilemma, you will Realize nothing. You want to be your own "guru". You want
to be already Realized without doing sadhana, without living the conditions
of Truth. If you were doing sadhana, you would not have a moment to be
occupied with your problems. If you were living the functional conditions of
life, you would not have time to reflect on your craziness. You simply do not
function. You find every kind of means to live in a universe of your own. But
there is no universe of your own. "Universe" means "one". There is the
universe. But you are only talking about your own mentality, your own mind-
forms. You meditate on that all the time, instead of living the conditions I
Give you. If you do live the conditions, there is also a crisis. Forms of
apparent suffering arise. So what? Everyone must pass through that. Nobody
patted Me on the head when I went through it. Nobody put you into your
present state. No one is keeping you in it. It is a present activity. It is your
own activity. It is not dependent on the past. It is this avoidance of
relationship, this contraction. It is time to realize that you are obsessed. I
have always known that you are obsessed. That in itself never bothered Me.
We can begin from there. But you keep discovering it again and again,
always as if it were some new realization. And then you forget it again. That
is the problem. You always forget the very thing of which you are certain. You
begin religious and Spiritual life only when you have already discovered the
"terrible truth". Then you can live the conditions of religious and Spiritual life
instead. But your entire being is still devoted to this separativeness, this
compulsive self-meditation. And that is suffering. See that this is so. Live the
Condition of Satsang in a very practical manner. Then Satsang with Me will
become your meditation. Satsang will become the "method" of your
Realization.
In fact, Satsang is nothing that you can do to yourself. It is a Condition. It is a
Condition that must be Given to you, Revealed and made available to you by
Grace. It is a process that becomes awakened in your life spontaneously. You
simply must live It in a much more practical manner. Spend no time
whatsoever analyzing yourself. No time. I mean no time! I really mean it. I do
not mean just a little time, reading a few books, collecting conceptual
insights. I mean spend no time whatsoever analyzing yourself. That is the
very activity that you are suffering, that self-meditation. Pull yourself into
functional existence. Make everything very practical, very functional. Then
you will give room to this Real process. Then you will see that you are always
resorting to yourself, always resorting to this separate self sense. Realize
that and it becomes much simpler to resort to Satsang. You cannot resort to
Satsang in some sort of mediocre mental fashion, unconscious and believing.
You must live It. As a child you did not "believe" in your mother. You lived
with your mother. You lived that condition. You lived all the things that arose
in that relationship from day to day. You lived all the things that were
demanded. It is the same with Satsang, or Real religious and Spiritual life,
the living relationship to Me, which also requires the living of the functional
conditions of existence in the universe.
DEVOTEE: I seem to be having many contrasting experiences lately.
Sometimes I have near-ecstasies of intuitive knowledge flowing over me, and
my body will become very relaxed. Then, almost within the very next
moment, regular impulses and patterns of everyday life seem to become
really increased, or else I seem to notice them much more concentratedly
than before. What is the significance of this? Is something loosening up in
me? Even relationships with people get very easy and spontaneous, then at
other times they get harder than they were before.
AVATARA ADI DA: There are cycles in the living consciousness. Some of the
cycles of experience are very difficult to observe, and people are not aware
of them. Generally, you are all aware of the seasons. You are commonly
aware of the cycle of climate. You are aware of the cycle of night and day.
You are at least vaguely aware of the phases of the moon. You are made
aware of social cycles, such as elections, holidays, weekends. But there are
also subtle cycles in the process of consciousness and conscious life. The
"internal" patterns may seem random, but everyone is aware that they go
through "phases", or periods of "bad days" and "good days". Individuals
know they do this. They know they have different kinds of characteristic
states. But they do not commonly see a pattern to these states. In fact, there
is such a pattern. There is a characteristic pattern of conscious experience in
everyone, as regular as the seasons. But it is essentially an individual
pattern, like fingerprints.
The Force that Manifests in Satsang tends to intensify the characteristic
cycles of the living consciousness. One of the first things I began to observe
in this process, as I lived in Satsang with One Who was Guru to Me, was how
the cycle of My own experience varied between "light" and "heavy". The
"good day-bad day" sort of thing. I did not map it out on a calendar, but I
began to become aware that I was moving through patterns of state and life-
consciousness that manifested as "pulses", phases, or cycles, like the
heartbeat. It was not that under certain "external" circumstances I would
react with a "bad" mood, or, under others, with a "good" mood There was a
certain underlying heaviness characteristic of My state at times, and a
lightness at others, regardless of circumstances. As this process continued to
reveal itself, I began to observe there was a certain regularity to its patterns.
And I also began to observe how the patterns were modified by this process
of Satsang.
At first I spent long periods of time in a kind of negative and mediocre
condition. I commonly approached My Guru in such states. And, occasionally,
I would suddenly feel good, or released. In time, I began to discover that
these periods of release, or of no contraction, were becoming a little more
frequent, a little more intense, a little more absorbing. The negative pattern,
the lower end of this curve, was becoming less intense, more bearable.
These crisis periods began to become interesting to Me. Thus, various
changes began to occur in the cycle of consciousness when it was brought
into the Condition of Satsang. In meditation, when I was sitting in Satsang,
sitting with My Guru, the so-called "internal" processes, the subtle psycho-
physical processes, were intensified. This is the Work of the Force of God in
Satsang.
I noticed that when the Force of Satsang was most intense, these highs and
lows were most intense. And as that Force continued to intensify, the
alternations of these highs and lows became more rapid. What you are
describing is just such a development of sensitivity to this cycle of
consciousness. The pattern is intensified and revealed in Satsang, so that,
without apparent cause, experience appears to alternate arbitrarily between
different and opposite values, or qualities.
There is a distinctive mood which is attained when this process of intensified
alternation becomes perfectly rapid. This is the Yogic "ananda", or "bliss",
which arises whenever the speed of the cycle of high and low becomes
absolute. The Saint or Sage is one in whom these alternations have become
so rapid that he or she is always already essentially Happy. The Most
Perfectly Realized individual, the one who understands most perfectly, is one
in whom the cycle of consciousness has attained the speed of light.
Therefore, as this process of Satsang continues in you, you will observe the
movement of the pattern of your existence. Its cycles are as much a
functional manifestation as your breathing. The "internal" life of the usual
individual is not the sort of carefree, aesthetic, spontaneous sublimity that
people like to imagine. The "internal" life is as ordered, as regular, as
mechanistic, as organic, as the "external" universe. There is nothing arbitrary
about your experience. It is simply that you have not learned to observe your
experience, you have not become subtle in your ability to observe what is
arising. But the more subtle you become in your capability to observe, the
more you see the patterns, "internal" and "external".
The arising of this subtlety, or sensitivity, is a good sign. You observe your
tendency to identify with the stream of your own consciousness, your
tendency to believe you are your own "think" apparatus. When this
sensitivity arises, the "internal" pattern is already ceasing to be so much a
compulsive activity. Then it is showing itself to you. It demonstrates itself to
be something as functionally "external" as a hand. It is not something with
which you are identical, but a process that is arising spontaneously, much
the same as your hand. So the compulsive tendency to identify with the
movement of ordinary consciousness is beginning to ease just at the
moment you seem to suffer it most.
DEVOTEE: The other day I heard You say something that suddenly seemed to
take on a lot of meaning for me. It seemed to bring about a revelation. It
seemed to be a combination of the Force I feel in Satsang with You and
listening to what You were saying.
AVATARA ADI DA: There are many means generated in the Way of the Heart.
All the events that are necessary occur, and they all occur appropriately.
That is why I do speak at times. There is a function for it—something is
served by My speaking in Satsang. But I do not always speak. Then Satsang
continues wordlessly, as a subtle process. Just so, I do not only speak or else
sit in silence. I also do things with people. And apart from what I apparently
do in a personal manner with you, you all have different kinds of contact with
the Influence and effects of My Work, different experiences, different
exposures to all My forms of operation. Although the complex of these things
may seem to you to be somewhat arbitrary, it is actually a manifested and
exquisitely intelligent design. It is not arbitrary. Nothing happens arbitrarily
to those who live Truth. Your dreams are not arbitrary. Your dreams are a very
intelligent process. But if you think of them while in the waking state, you
cannot make real sense out of them. All experience is of that same nature. It
is all a subtle design, a spontaneous, paradoxical process. You were brought
to consider what I said, just as you were brought to Satsang Itself. Many
things combined at that moment to produce this "revelation". I believe it is
said in the New Testament: "Everything works together for the good of those
who love God." This bit of Biblical wisdom pertains also to the process, or
quality, of Satsang. Everything happens appropriately, even for those who
live in ignorance of Truth. It is just that, apart from Satsang, apart from the
life of Truth, the appropriate thing that happens is suffering and death! When
Satsang begins as a Real process, you may begin to observe the
appropriateness of all experience. Not a breath is spent outside of Satsang
once It begins. And all of the possible ranges of events, from the gross,
apparently "external" world to your reactions to it, including your thoughts,
and all things that happen to you within the world, within the waking state, in
dreams, while sleeping—everywhere everything combines for the sake of the
Truth.
Until this begins to become obvious to you, you can believe it or not. It really
has no importance until you begin to observe it. And people do begin to
observe it in Satsang with Me. There was a time in My own Life when I began
to see there was no difference whatsoever between My "internal" life and My
"external" life: There is but one process going on everywhere and always.
The world is the psyche The world is founded in the psyche, or the root of the
world is essentially of the same nature as the psyche. The entire process is a
single event. Everything is moving together as a single design with a single
intent. Nothing happens to you that is not appropriate. All events serve Truth.
It is only that when you begin consciously to serve Truth, events themselves
take on more and more the quality of Truth. You will begin to experience the
coincidence, or simultaneity, of "within" and "without". You will begin to
observe that this Satsang is actually Alive, that It has somehow taken over
the universe.
Of course, people are ordinarily attached to their subjective identity, that
force they separately identify as themselves. And they have all kinds of bad
relations with the world. The seeker typically likes the concept that appears
in many of the worlds Scriptures which says that Truth is within you, God is
within you, all Power is within you. But this idea just reinforces the tendency
of Narcissus, this subjective tendency, this inward-turning, this self-
contraction. The Truth is no more within you than It is in the lamp shade. The
Truth is everywhere and no "where". It is not especially within you, nor is It
especially without. There is Truth.
DEVOTEE: It would seem that except for the fact of fear my life would have
everything it could possibly want. It appears to me that fear is the underlying
fabric that is shot through my entire life. It is almost omnipresent, and it is
representative to me of all of the selfishness, all of the self-obsession, and all
of the self-seeking that exists. I make such desperate demands upon life. It is
a continual, desperate demand. It is as if I am continually dying moment by
moment. And when those demands are not met, or if I am afraid that what I
already have will be taken away, it is always one form or another of that fear.
I am going through a period when all of this has been more active. It seems
to me that there is some kind of pernicious bullshit going on, and that I
actually want it. I go through all the self-torture games, and when I come out
the other side I say: "What was that all about?" And then it starts all over
again.
AVATARA ADI DA: This "I" that you have mentioned several times just now is
a sort of post on which you hang all these experiences. It seems to be in the
center of it somehow. "Ego" means "I"—the self-reference, the implied self,
this separate-self concept. One could call that self-reference, or self-image,
the "ego". But "ego" is not essentially an entity or a concept. "Ego" is an
activity. It is the activity of the avoidance of relationship. Just as the separate
"I", the self-concept, the self-image, is an expression of this activity that is
the ego, fear is also the ego. Fear is the very mood, the "nature", of the ego.
It is said in the Upanishads: "It is from an other that fear arises." As soon as
there is an other, as soon as this separative act has taken place in any sense
whatsoever, from that instant there is fear. Then life is fear. Conscious
awareness is fear. It is not that you are afraid. Fear is your necessary
attribute, your very "body". Fear is the ego. As long as you persist in your
present ego-bound condition and drama, fear will continually be the mood
that you discover. Whenever you fail to be distracted, you will fall into this
chronic state, this sense of your separate self, which is fear. Where there is
separation, there can only be fear. You have broken the Current of life, of
Real and Original Existence, the Process of the Heart. You have contracted
the Field of Consciousness. You have made it impossible for the Force of
Existence to flow between this process of contraction, this "ego", and
everything from which it differentiates itself. Therefore, everything outside
this apparently separate "self" becomes fearful, frightening, other. And when
you are being afraid, you are simply meditating on the quality of your
separated existence. If you try to get rid of fear, it is impossible. Because the
"you" trying to get rid of this thing is that fear. So the search is futile.
At some point you fall into your chronic state, this fear, this avoidance of
relationship. And when you have fallen into it under the conditions of
Satsang with Me, this quickening, this insight, awakens. And this insight, this
understanding, this re-cognition of which I speak, is the obviation of "ego",
the separate self sense, which is fear. Only understanding is without fear.
Only one who understands is fearless. Only one who understands is selfless.
Only such a one lives always prior to fear. Until then you are dramatizing the
form of the separate self, you are living it, and so you are suffering its very
condition. You must become sensitive. You must become essentially aware of
the conditions that you bring about through the activity that is the ego.
When your life begins to fail, you begin to become aware of the condition
that is the ego. Therefore, there must necessarily be a crisis. Spiritual life
must involve this falling into the chronic state, and "radically"
comprehending it. The Force of Satsang with Me makes this passage
possible, because if you simply fell into your fear, you would go mad. The
random tastes of fear are what constantly disturb the form of life. But
Satsang is the Condition of Truth. The Force of Satsang, the Consciousness
and Intelligence of Satsang, the Condition of Satsang, is already Free of this
contraction, this separate self, this fear.
The greatest of the Hindu traditions aspire to "turiya, the "fourth State"—
beyond waking, dreaming, and deep sleep, and beyond fear—wherein they
may feel that Fullness, that Ease, that Enjoyment, and all of the Spiritual
qualities, all the Spiritual events, generated as a spontaneous happening in
the Company of the Guru. Just so, those who live Satsang with Me already
live this Condition that is without fear, without separated self, without the
function of ego, the chronic avoidance of relationship. They Enjoy that
unreasonable Happiness, that Love-Blissfulness, that is the "mood" of Truth.
But those who do not resort to Satsang with Me, who only resort continually
to the state they suffer apart from Satsang, find their fear only intensified in
My Company. They find that "ego" is intensified, that the dilemma, the
problems, and the search are intensified, that their egoic ignorance is
intensified, and that all of it becomes frightening, and unbearable. That is
why periodically you see people storming out of the community of My
devotees, without any apparent reason. Nothing has "happened" to them. I
have not done anything to them. Nothing has really occurred except the
process of Satsang Itself. That is what disturbs these angry, self-obsessed
ones who renounce My Company and My Teaching. Those who have not
suffered their own condition enough, and who have not seen its perfect
failure, are wise to avoid Satsang with Me. Because Satsang is a fire! This
Ashram is not a place where we talk "philosophy". There is a Living Force
enacted here. It is the Living Force of Consciousness Itself. That is What
Satsang is all about. And those who arbitrarily pile on, not mindful of the
conditions, wind up having to separate themselves very aggressively, with all
kinds of righteousness. The Force of Satsang with Me simply acts to intensify
their separativeness. But one who has really seen the failure of his or her
search, who can somehow spontaneously resort to the Condition of Satsang,
experiences that unreasonable Happiness. Thus, Satsang becomes the
Condition wherein the form of suffering, this contraction, this fear, this ego,
all of the elements of suffering and dilemma, are dissolved in a spontaneous,
natural, appropriate order.
Certainly one must also suffer the intensity of this process of ego-dissolution,
including periods of apparent crisis, but it will always be somehow bearable,
always intelligent with Truth, always something for which one has the
capability. That is why many who have found a Guru have said that, at some
point, they gave up all interest in salvation. They were no longer concerned
for liberation, heaven, and healing, or even moved to go through any special
"Spiritual" processes or the classic round of Spiritual experiences. They lost
their interest in all of that. They became unreasonably happy only, and they
forgot to seek beyond the Gurus Feet. The living Guru is a specific Function
that arises again and again in the worlds. People can indulge any kind of
illusion with a dead Guru, Master, or Savior, or with a symbolic image, a God
they only believe in. People are very willing to do anything they like, and
then forgive themselves with the same liberal attitude. They want God, or
Truth, to stay in Its own Place. But the living Guru is a Condition to be lived
with. The living Guru establishes conditions in the world. Such a one remains
continuously mindful of the devotee and of the process that the devotee is
going through. And the Guru uses every kind of ordinary and extraordinary
means to always re-establish the connection.
Real religious and Spiritual life involves a Great Condition Given to you and
many conditions demanded of you. The Great Condition and the real
conditions of religious and Spiritual life are never anything that you
particularly want to assume on your own. People are capable of believing all
kinds of things on their own, and of arbitrarily generating what they think is
sadhana, or the religious and Spiritual life. But it is always just another
expression of their ordinary or usual state. It does nothing, fundamentally, to
their ego-bound condition. The matter of Truth is entirely academic until the
Truth Communicates Itself to you, until the Truth takes you over, until the
Truth does the sadhana and "creates" the conditions for transformation. So
the Truth must find some means to Communicate Itself as a Function in
specific relationship to you. Therefore, the human Guru is the appropriate
Means, and that is why the human Guru exists, that is why I have Come.
DEVOTEE: Why and how did we fall into this condition, this miserable
condition?
AVATARA ADI DA: People like to fabricate mythologies. You would like to hear
some sort of "creation" myth about this suffering, or some sort of philosophy
that explains why it came about. When something is "explained", when its
"name" is known, then you feel free to forget or exploit it. But it did not
"come about". It is presently happening. It is not a matter of something that
happened. There is nothing hidden in time or space that is making this affair
of suffering occur. It is not happening as a result of anything. It is a
spontaneous, present activity for which you are entirely responsible. So,
truly, it does not make any sense to try to describe some means or other by
which it might have come about.
I have said, however, that there is a sense in which this specific activity that
is your suffering, this contraction, is a reaction to life, to conditionally
manifested existence. For every action there is an equal and opposite
reaction. The entire event of the manifested, or conditional, cosmos arises as
a spontaneous event, a single event. The universe is the original action. But
for every action there is necessarily an equal and opposite reaction. So this
process of which I have been speaking is, in a sense, the reaction to
conditionally manifested life.
A baby is not born with a concrete sense of a separate life in the world. A
baby is not able even to differentiate its body from the other movements
around it. Everything is all one massive sensation. A baby does not
differentiate. A baby does not, for all practical purposes, differentiate itself as
an entity from any other individual, or even from the world itself. Only when
the baby learns to react to life does it begin to "create" an identity that
functions in life. And if the baby has no capability to react, it will have no
capability for individual life. A human organism that has no capability to
react is catatonic,. a vegetable", or else dead. A catatonic has many of the
apparent attributes that are assigned to the Realized individual. The
catatonic is selfless, fearless, but he or she is obviously not "alive", not
conscious, functioning, and sane. Therefore, simply to go about trying to
discover how not to react is obviously not the cure. To try not to react to your
conditionally manifested existence at this moment is not the Way of Truth.
Yet people have elaborated vast traditional methods of "realization" that are
fundamentally only attempts not to react. They try to de-condition
themselves, to become detached, to become self-less. But the Truth is not a
matter of compulsively and strategically suppressing any form of action,
even if that action is the re-action to something else.
Truth is in the spontaneous re-cognition, or knowing again, of an activity in
the midst of that activity. Therefore, one who understands is not in a
catatonic state. Understanding is not itself characterized by any trance or
any conditional Yogic state. Understanding is not itself an other state. The
state of one who understands may appear to be extra-ordinary from the
point of view of the usual man or woman. But actually one who understands
is entirely ordinary, conformed to the realm of the conditionally manifested.
While living in this ordinary manner, he or she Enjoys the Perfect Condition
That Is Real God, or Truth. Therefore, the life of one who understands is a
paradox. But the seeker and the attainments of the seeker are not
paradoxical. They are always dimensionless and winded to a point. The
seeker is always turned to specific goals, specific states. They may be
complex and incomprehensible, but they are always as specific and mind-
based as a bowling trophy.
Truth Itself is not identified with a state, with an experience, nor with the
avoidance of any state or any experience, neither with the dissociation or
forceful separation from any state or experience, nor with the suppression of
it. Truth is not even identical to the suppression of thought. In one who
understands, everything continues to arise, but coincident with everything
that arises there is Perfect Intuition of the Real. One who understands
perpetually, spontaneously, under all conditions, intuits the Real. Such a one
intuits the Real in the most "radical" sense, without separation. Such a one
requires no special condition for Realization. The Realization of such a one
does not only exist when that one is in certain meditative moods, only when
that one is quiet, only when that one is performing certain Spiritual functions,
or only when that one is talking about certain Spiritual things. The
Realization of such a one is spontaneous, absolute, continuous. Therefore,
religious and Spiritual life in the form it is lived in My Company is a span of
Conscious adventure, generated in the relationship to Me as the Divinely
Self-Realized Siddha-Guru, and summed up in the Perfect Enjoyment of
Which I am the Evidence, the Demonstration, and the Very Form.
The Method of the Siddhas
"No One Survives Beyond That Moment" From The Method of the Siddhas -
1978
Author(s): Adi Da Samraj

CHAPTER 12

No One Survives Beyond That Moment

DEVOTEE: Are we evolving?

FRANKLIN: What do you think?

DEVOTEE: I think we are evolving toward the astral.
FRANKLIN: What is so good about "astral"?
DEVOTEE: Well, nothing. But as far as evolution goes, there is a constant
change. Is it constant change? Where are we going? What is it doing for us?
What is it?
FRANKLIN: Is it?
DEVOTEE: Well, it seems to be, but I am in a dilemma. Is evolution part of the
dilemma?
FRANKLIN: There is this dilemma.
DEVOTEE: There is dilemma. Yes. Then it is part of the dilemma.
FRANKLIN: What is the question?
DEVOTEE: Now, Im really confused.
FRANKLIN: Are you talking about anything? In this concern for "evolution,"
are you really talking about something?
DEVOTEE: I don't really understand what evolution is, or even if there is
evolution.
FRANKLIN: That is the truth.
DEVOTEE: There is no evolution?
FRANKLIN: That you don't know.
DEVOTEE: Yes.
FRANKLIN: What you know is this dilemma, this confusion, this ignorance
about your own propositions. That is the truth. That is your experience. This
"evolution" doesn't really exist as an experience. You are not certain of it, of
its existence, of its quality, of its nature, of its direction, of its relation to you.
You know nothing whatsoever about it. Why are we talking about it?
The truth is that you are confused. There is this dilemma. There is suffering.
Questions about "evolution" are completely beside the point. Such questions,
for the time being, are ways of drawing attention away from your actual
state, of distracting yourself from that confusion, temporarily. We could take
this symbolic category of "evolution," and we could talk about it from many
different points of view. We could create all kinds of mind-forms with it. But
after we have said it all, nothing will have been added in the way of real
experience, and you will remain in the same state you were in when you
asked the question.
So this "evolution" question doesn't represent anything significant. It is not
your real question. The real question is your actual state. That is the
question. That is the question you are truly asking, that you are always
asking. You present your very life to the world in the form of a question. You
are this real question. But you conceal it from consciousness. Therefore, it
exists only as your chronic state , your suffering, your search, your dilemma.
Ordinarily a man does not ask his real question. He only lives it and performs
it as seeking, suffering and death. Sadhana, or real spiritual practice in
relation to the Guru, is the means whereby men become conscious of their
real questions.
Just so, the "answer" to your real question has nothing whatever to do with
evolution, or any other arbitrary "topic" the mind can select. The true answer
is not in the form of a response to a symbolic question. The true answer must
be a radical transformation of your state. That is the answer to your
question. And if this state that you are always in, this confusion, this
dilemma, is utterly, radically overcome, then the nature of this whole
appearance of life and world also will become obvious. The answer of the
Guru to his devotee comes through the discipline of real conditions, demands
for functional action, the sadhana which is always generated in his company.
There is absolutely no point whatsoever in talking about evolution. It is an
arbitrary distraction you have selected from the pattern of your own
movements. You have chosen it from the moving confusion of your ordinary
state. That confusion is our genuine concern in these talks. All our questions
are forms of this dilemma, this state. Every question is in the form of a
dilemma, and every verbal or mental dilemma is an expression of an
underlying state that shapes every moment of the usual life. The arbitrary
creation of "questions," of artifices to occupy the mind, is a way of
distraction from this state. It is a form of self-indulgence. To answer such
questions is only to serve bewilderment, unconsciousness, fear, ignorance
and all the qualities of seeking and suffering. I know that you have been
upset for several days, crazy with this whole movement in yourself, and now
you want to talk about evolution. What has that got to do with anything? This
suffering that is begun must continue. The death must occur.
DEVOTEE: It just goes on and on and on. It never seems to stop.
FRANKLIN: The death. That is what you want to get away from. You would
"evolve" to the astral world, and so escape this necessary death. There is no
elimination of death, no ultimate avoidance of death. You are trying to
prevent death, this very crisis, by occupying yourself with symbolic
questions.
DEVOTEE: But that's the only answer, that death. Why don't we? Why do we
keep fighting and fighting?
FRANKLIN: Keep fighting what?
DEVOTEE: This thing. We know we are fighting it, and, yet, we cant help it.
Why are we avoiding it? How do we get out of it?
FRANKLIN: This desire is another form of that same avoidance. But it has
already begun. This transformation, this conflict, this crisis has begun in you.
It has become intensified. You are beginning to find your real question. It is
your death. That is the significant event. There is no distraction from it.
There is no consolation for it. But it is true and real. Evolution can make no
difference. Translation to the astral plane can make no difference. None of
that can change this chronic state. This crisis would still be necessary, no
matter where in all the worlds you happened to appear. This crisis is the
peculiar event of all life. Going to the astral plane does not change that
necessity. Intelligence is still required.
This question about evolution represents a form of "concern," a search. That
is what is communicated to me in the form of your question. It has no real
content other than that. It is only because this crisis is occurring that you
have the least interest in evolution. But for one who is dying there is no
evolution. What does he care whether the seven hundred billion that remain
behind him are transformed into ducks or luminous red astral bodies? His
death is the only remaining content of his life. From the point of view of his
experience, there is no evolution. There is only sudden death. But this death
is true, it is the real process. So it is worth seeing, worth living, because this
real death of which I speak is the very crisis of consciousness that serves
both Truth and life.
One who awakens is not concerned for the destiny of those who appeared
along with him in his dream. There is no such destiny, there is no one. All
that appears in the universal form or great cosmic process is a spontaneous
display, like the conditions that appear in dreams. All of that goes on in any
case. But now you are beginning to see this more fundamental condition
underlying your adventure of distraction in the cosmic event. In the past you
did not see it, or know it for what it was. To the degree you felt it at all, it was
a subtle sensation, a discomfort, a sort of formless craziness, a wildness, but
now you are beginning to know what it really is. Now you are beginning to
know it as your chronic state. But you will come to recognize it as your own
activity. You are beginning to be aware of it more or less continually. That
continuous awareness is the self-purifying sadhana of real spiritual life.
DEVOTEE: Even one who comes to reside in the Heart has patterns and rules
which he has to follow on his journey. Otherwise, certain things wont open.
There are rules which he cant switch away. So there is in fact a pattern, isn't
there?
FRANKLIN: A pattern of what?
DEVOTEE: By which the universe is ordered. Even if a person comes from any
state, seeks the light, and finally resides in the Heart, he must go by certain
signs along the way. It is different for each person, but still there are rules.
FRANKLIN: If they are different, what is this specific pattern?
DEVOTEE: There isn't one that fits everyone, but still there are patterns
existing.
FRANKLIN: Of course, there are apparent patterns in life. But the Heart is not
someplace else. The Heart is not a point separate from any other place. It is
not in a certain direction. It is not the end of any particular road. It is not the
goal. If you are speaking of the "causal" center, the heart-center on the right
side of the chest, it is indeed a point, a place, a psycho-physical sensation.
But the true Heart is another word for the one, unqualified Reality.
DEVOTEE: That becomes true, once you realize it. But between the time you
know it and the time you are only approaching it, there are still patterns.
FRANKLIN: They are your own patterns. They are your apparent condition.
They are the subtle forms of cognition which help to fabricate the dilemma
and the search, prior to the enjoyment of the Heart, which is radical
understanding. But in Satsang, the relationship to the man of understanding,
or the Guru, the Heart establishes a living relationship with the individual,
and then it no longer makes any difference to him what the patterns are. The
patterns are simply observed from that moment. Another kind of condition is
lived, and so these patterns become obsolete. They fall away, until only the
Heart stands out. From the point of view of the true disciple, there is no
significance to the patterns. There is no significance . "Significance" is your
dilemma. It is the pattern of your own mind-forms. That is the only thing that
obstructs perfect consciousness. It is neither external nor internal. All that
arises is only a modification of your own ultimate nature and condition. When
this is perfectly understood, the enjoyment realized in understanding is
called the "Heart." There is no subjective, no objective, no external, no
universe, no astral world, from the point of view of the Heart. All such
phenomena are simply apparent modifications of the Heart.
Until a man truly enters into Satsang with his Guru, he is very concerned
about the way, about this pattern of his own growth and experience, his own
transformation, his own liberation. But when he enters into the condition of
Satsang, his concerns, his path, his patterns become obsolete. All of that is
simply not supported. He simply lives the condition and conditions of
relationship generated in his Gums company, and the patterns subside. They
become obsolete, without function. Therefore, concern for those patterns is
more evidence of the search, of this fundamental dilemma.
All movements within the cosmic and universal form are movements within
the cosmic and universal form. No movement implies or leads to Reality. All
movements lead to terminals within the great form itself, to more states,
more change, more phenomena. They do not in any way in themselves
obviate the dilemma that is suffering. A man who assumes that action will
lead, to the Self has performed an act in consciousness that is not in itself
true. Truth is in the re-cognition of motivation and action.
We are always already "there." This is it. There is no dilemma. There is only
one Reality, presently. It is not somewhere else. It is not hidden within us, nor
behind the world. It is only obvious. Satsang is the condition of Reality,
consciously lived. It is lived to you, within you, as you, along with you. It is
that real condition lived as life, as a pressure upon the disciple. The Guru
lives it to him, until it begins to become obvious, until it begins to become
intelligent in him. But all he will have realized, after all, is the obvious. The
nature of the rising event, the apparent condition, becomes clear. It becomes
obvious to him that his dilemma is his own activity. He sees that in fact there
is no dilemma. There is nothing about the present that is not Truth.
Satsang is the real condition. It is the condition of Truth. It is the condition of
conscious relationship to the Guru. When a person enters into it consciously,
with any degree of clarity, he has begun to live under the conditions that are
Truth. And that is the entire process. That is spiritual life, real life. Everything
else is an extension, another reflection of a mans search, his dilemma, his
dis-ease. When this real condition is truly lived, whatever arises tends to be
consumed.
DEVOTEE: Is it within the power of ones will to remain in the condition of
Satsang?
FRANKLIN: Apparently not. An individual can maintain himself responsibly in
the company of his Guru, and fulfill the specific demands imposed on him by
his Guru. But to live the conscious condition of relationship, even with ones
Guru, depends on the subtle grace of that condition itself.
Every man tends to live apart, separately, constantly. Even when he begins
to sense the unique presence of one who lives as the Heart, he resists and
defends himself. He covers up his disability, his discomfort, his dilemma. He
approaches such a one with argumentation, self-defense, the endless
formulations of his own mind, and with suggestions that maybe "its all right
anyway." He continues to do his number, assuming the Guru is a captured
audience for his act. When he overcomes all of that only a little bit, he begins
to "hunt" the Guru, seeking to "find him out," and justify independence from
the Guru through various kinds of moral and philosophical righteousness. He
penalizes the Guru, he resists him, he plays with him, he creates dramas with
him, he goes away, he comes back, he teases his Guru. All of this because
the principle of ordinary life is the avoidance of relationship, the "ego," the
activity of separation.
But when a man enters into real and conscious Satsang with one who lives as
the Heart, he no longer has this activity or separate self as his primary
instrument. The activity that is the "ego" has become obsolete. It may
continue to arise and obsess him, but Satsang has become his condition. The
process of the Heart itself, the Guru as Truth, performs his sadhana and holds
on to him. The Guru creates a drama within the drama of his devotee. This
subtle drama or grace makes it possible for the devotee to maintain his
sadhana, the living practice of his connection. This grace looks forward to the
time when the devotee becomes responsible enough to assume that
relationship fully and consciously, as his responsibility, as his real condition.
Then he is given responsibilities that will test him, prove him, and awaken in
him all the qualities of a true disciple.
DEVOTEE: What are the responsibilities of a person who lives in the condition
of Truth? For years I've fluctuated between everything from total self-
indulgence to forty-day fasts and found basically an inability to eat
moderately. I don't think that this is a responsible thing to do. And yet its
inappropriate to be always compulsively responsible. But at the same time, if
I don't eat properly I become less conscious. I sleep more. I get spaced out.
FRANKLIN: The point of view that you are expressing is the point of view of
dilemma, of suffering, which has nothing to do with Truth. It is this very
condition that men try to destroy by all means. Excessive fasting or eating,
self-indulgence of all kinds, deprivation of all kinds, turning inward, turning
outward, ascetic practices, "ordinary" practices, all of these are only means
to overcome the fundamental sense of dilemma and suffering. None of that
has anything to do with illumination or Truth. All of that is suffering,
The question for such a one is not how to become responsible. That is not his
real question. His real question is the state that he is in. And the real answer
is not in the form of a response to verbal dilemmas, or even apparent life-
dilemmas. The answer is the obviation of this state. A man will seek by all
means to be free of the dilemma as it appears to him, until all the forms of
his seeking, all of which are reactions to the subtle condition or dilemma that
is his suffering, cease to occupy him. He comes to the point where the force
of his life is no longer fully captured by his search. He knows that his search
is failing, that his search does not produce salvation. He falls from ordinary
fascination into a crisis, a form of despair, of doubt. At that point, he has
become available for Satsang, for that relationship which is spiritual life.
Satsang is the answer. It is that process and condition wherein the dilemma
is undone. Not any spoken word, but that process itself which is enjoyed in
relationship to the living Heart, is the "answer." It is not in the form of a
method, another technique, or a conceptual system that applies to your
peculiar ideas of your state. The answer is in the form of the force of Truth,
and it undermines that very structure in consciousness that supports your
whole search. This becomes a real possibility only when a man has begun to
suffer from his search, when he has begun to sense its failure, when he is no
longer totally occupied by it. Then he becomes available to Guru, to Satsang.
And Satsang is non-support of his dilemma, non-support of his search.
In Satsang, all a mans techniques fall away, all fascination with his search
subsides, all his methods become comic. His whole life ceases to obsess him.
His need for liberation no longer interests him. His life becomes one of the
enjoyment of Truth, the enjoyment of Guru, until the whole form of
consciousness in which he ordinarily rests is utterly dissolved. In Satsang, an
entirely new and living form of intelligence replaces a mans ordinary
strategic mentality.
Some individuals have become involved in the most incredible adventure of
spiritual technique. They are concerned with all kinds of technique. There are
techniques of living, techniques of subjective and psychological states, the
seekers meditation, strategic diet, and all the rest. Such individuals come to
Satsang in the moods of spirituality and philosophy. Others are more
"ordinary." They come to it after the equally traditional self-indulgent life.
Everyone comes to Satsang in the midst of a different form of adventure. All
come with the same fundamental dilemma, but all communicate it through
different artifices, through the form of a peculiar adventure. In essence, all
adventures are a description of the same state: this contraction, this subtle
dis-ease, the avoidance of relationship. That is so. That is the experience.
From the point of view of the real question, the actual dilemma, a man is
happy to enter into Satsang. Spiritual life for such a one is, happily, not a
technique, a method, a remedy, or a path. Spiritual life is a relationship. It
has always been so. Nothing apart from the relationship to the Guru is
offered. Relationship itself is the principle and condition of life. The
relationship to the Guru is the single principle of sadhana, the single medium
of Truth, the one "method" that arises in the life of the disciple. It is the
condition and the medium through which all things come that are
appropriate for the spiritual life of the disciple. And they come
spontaneously, as a grace. In Satsang a man has become available to Truth
itself, Reality itself, for his illumination. Until that point, he has been too
occupied to be illumined. First he must fall from search and fascination into
the crisis of his ordinary condition.
The most difficult thing for a man to achieve is ordinariness. But the primary
condition of Satsang, of true life, is the realization of ordinariness. Men are
extremely inventive, eminently capable of the extraordinary, the adventure,
the search. But the ordinary, what simply is the case, what already is the
case, is extremely difficult, because of the principle of action by which all
men create their lives. When Satsang begins for a man, when it becomes his
real alternative, he suddenly becomes capable of ordinariness, of simplicity.
It simply becomes appropriate. It is not the least connected with anything
compulsive, anything like the discipline which a seeker might embrace. The
functional simplicity of the disciple is only obvious and natural to him,
because action has been released from its connection with the search for
Truth, liberation and the like. Anything that is pictured as a means to Truth
belongs to the adventure of seeking and its dilemma. It is part of the
adventure of extra-ordinariness.
When a man is released from the pursuit of Truth, he simply lives it. He lives
Satsang as the condition of life. All his ordinary functions become truly
ordinary when he is released from the need to realize Truth. In Satsang, a
mans ordinary, functional life becomes realizable, usable. There is no reason
why diet should be manipulated as a means to Truth. Nor should it be
considered an obstruction to Truth. The ingestion of food has nothing
whatever to do with Truth. Neither food-obsession nor food-righteousness is
the way of Truth.
DEVOTEE: What it seems to have to do with is my being in a state where Im
willing to put my attention on the Truth. If, for example, I am overeating or
taking drugs I will not be in a condition to put my attention on Truth.
FRANKLIN: You cannot put your attention on Truth in any case. Truth is not an
"object." It only appears to be an object from the point of view of the same
search that motivates you to indulge yourself and also not to indulge
yourself. Truth cannot be concentrated upon even by a mind that is clear and
free. It cant be "noticed." It is not an object. It doesn't appear within your
view. It already includes you and your points of view.
DEVOTEE: Instead of the term "attention on Truth," could we say "to
experience more consciously"?
FRANKLIN: Experiencing has nothing to do with Truth. Truth cannot be
experienced, nor is it an experience. Neither is Truth experience itself. All
these expressions you have used have the same form. As far as Truth goes,
there is nothing to be said about it in this sense. No formal communication is
the equivalent of it. All of the descriptions you might give of the peculiar
form of your adventure have the same form, the same structure. Indeed,
your questions are a strategy whereby you prevent the realization of your
actual condition. Your concerns are a way to avoid self-recognition.
Truth always appears to the seeker as a kind of alternative . But Truth is not
an alternative. Truth is your very consciousness, your very nature, your very
condition. It cannot be concentrated upon. It is not an object. It is not
something in which you can become interested. It is not something from
which you can be distracted. Your interests, your distractions, your noticings,
your experiencing's are all expressions or modifications of the fundamental
Reality. But you are not living them as such. Therefore, you are constantly
obsessed with alternatives, with particular distractions, noticings and
experiencing's. Alternatives are all that you have.
When you no longer have any alternatives, when the search has died, then
Truth becomes your real possibility. But Truth is not an alternative. It is not in
the form of an answer to a specific question. It is not something perceived. It
is not something that serves you, the subject. It is not something that
liberates you as a separate person. It has nothing to do with you as a
separate one. It cannot be enjoyed by you as a separate one. Truth is
enjoyed only in the instant of non-separation, of perfect equality with Truth.
There is no state equivalent to Truth. Every state is only a secondary
condition. There are experiences and states described in the traditional
spiritual paths that are identified with Truth or Reality itself. Some traditions
say Truth is equal to or necessarily coincident with a vision of Krishna in his
blue form. For others, Truth must be samadhi in the form of yogic trance,
either with visions or without the least trace of form, objective or subjective.
Still others equate Truth with a concentrated return of the vital force to the
sahasrar, a vision of Light, or some other esoteric signal of Deity. But all of
these are forms of experience. They may be sublime, subtle, but they appear
only as alternatives to other "ordinary" experiences. No experience is Truth.
And no experience is the sign of Truth, the "symptom" of Truth, or its
necessary accompaniment.
Truth is that which stands out as Reality where there is re-cognition of the
whole process of experience, where there is absolute vanishing of
identification with alternatives, the whole scheme of conscious life.
Therefore, it involves the most radical understanding, even of that which is
extraordinary. Until that occurs, the usual and the great events in life are
your fascination. It is the memory of experiences, ones own modifications as
the result of experience, that creates the goals of seeking. Impressions in the
form of tendencies continue to fascinate a man and obsess him with the
notion that life is made of alternatives, so that all the usual man is doing is
playing this drama of alternatives continually. One day he is going toward the
"experience" of Truth, another day toward experience itself, usually of a very
"human" variety. One day he pursues the enjoyment of trance-samadhi,
while the next he is a devotee of sexual fascination. But it is always the same
adventure.
What appeared in the past as the great moments of your life did not become
wisdom. All you are left with are the modifications which reflect those
moments. If great experiences had become wisdom, if in the instant of any
such experience the Truth were perfectly realized, the experience itself would
have fallen away, the phenomena associated with it would have fallen away,
but the Real, the force of Reality that is Truth in every moment would have
then remained. And that Truth is the same Truth that persists at this moment,
when perhaps you are not having such a "great" experience. Truth does not
appear in the form of this drama of ones experiences and alternatives. It
appears as a possibility only when that entire process, that entire adventure,
the whole force of ordinary and extraordinary consciousness, which is
seeking, begins to wind down, when it ceases to occupy us mightily, and we
are stuck with our actual condition, our suffering. Only the crisis in
consciousness is that very event in which the process called spiritual or real
life takes place. It does not take place in the adventure. It takes place only in
the re-cognition of this contraction that motivates the adventure. And such
re-cognition becomes possible for a man only when the force of his ordinary
and extraordinary adventure has begun to die.
DEVOTEE: I think that I might feel a hesitancy to give up that aspect of the
search.
FRANKLIN: Good, very good. That is it exactly. Two types of people come.
Those who have died to their search, and those who still have a couple of
trips left. Regarding those who still have the search in mind, there is no
condemnation, no praise, no blame. That is the truth of their condition. The
search is still their occupation. They have not come for Truth . The Truth has
nothing whatever to do with them. The search, the adventure among
alternatives, that is what "has" them. That is what has all men, until it begins
to die. Then the Truth becomes possible.
When you no longer have genuine alternatives, when you no longer have the
option of your own preferences, when you no longer have the capacity to
persist, to survive in the form of your search, then Satsang becomes
something more than academic. Until that time, all men are talking about the
same thing: their adventure! That is what they are talking about. They are
not the least concerned for the Truth. It hasn't entered into the picture yet. It
is only an amusement, an alternative notion entertained in the midst of
ordinary and extraordinary suffering. They are still occupied. Fine. But the
matter of spiritual life arises only when the alternatives themselves do not
present a real option.
DEVOTEE: How do I bring myself to the point of not wanting?
FRANKLIN: Wanting or not wanting are both forms of the same activity. It is
this occupation, this preoccupation, this distraction or fascination, moment to
moment.
DEVOTEE: How do I get over that?
FRANKLIN: This desire is more of this adventure now. It is the adventure of
getting over it now. It is all the same. The fact of the matter is that you are in
this present state, and all your actions, desires and even your questions are
only descriptions of it. This much should be clear from all this talk. The Truth
is of another variety. But this lesson about your present and usual state can
be useful. It is the first lesson of wisdom.
If it begins only to hurt, if all the alternatives fall into one, if they cease to be
a real option, if you find yourself continually stuck only in the crisis of
consciousness itself, which is the very and subtle form of suffering from
which ordinarily you spring in order to seek, when that becomes the nature
of your daily life, then Truth enters into the picture. Then Satsang, real life,
enters as a living possibility. It will be your obvious need when you have no
options.
DEVOTEE: I am already aware that none of these things work.
FRANKLIN: There is some small wisdom, because you are becoming
exhausted with experience. But the seeker still possesses some potency. He
is still springing, still reacting to this subtle dilemma. When this "springing"
stops, or when it begins to seem that it is not possible, when the alternatives
don't quite have you, when the potency of the search begins to go, then the
matter of spiritual life begins to take on the form of consciousness. When a
man is only suffering, then the matter of release or the obviation of suffering
begins to become clear. Then the force of Truth, of Reality, which is Truth,
begins to move in him. Then Satsang becomes possible, because at that
point, it has a function. But while the search is still a mans task, still his
fascination, Reality or Truth is not his concern. Until then, Truth or Reality
does not appear except as an alternative, a symbol, another form of
distraction. Therefore, as the traditions have always said, Truth or real life is
a matter of death, of crisis, of that dilemma or doubt which is the fuel of
liberation. When the search, the reactions to his dilemma, begins to wind
down, and only the dilemma remains, only this subtle suffering, this dis-ease
of life, then the force of Reality begins to move into a mans life. Then his real
question can be answered. Until then his questions are his entertainment, his
amusement. They have no significance. They are the forms of preoccupation
and unconscious self-description. Then "spiritual life" itself is only an
amusement, only an entertainment. Then meditation, sitting with the Guru,
reading spiritual books, all of that is only another form of erotica, of
"significance." But when a mans hunger becomes intelligent, when his dis-
ease becomes mind, then the spoken Truth, the word of the Siddha, and the
living form of the Guru become his need. He becomes intelligent with that
need, and he responds. A subtle re-cognition occurs. And this process called
spiritual life, liberation, realization begins. Until then it has not begun, it has
not entered the picture in any sense.
By your own admission, you are yet a seeker. But you have been brought to
consider the futility and the causes of your own adventure. And, at some
point, very likely it will all become something more than academic for you.
DEVOTEE: If Truth is the natural state, how did we get to deviate so much
along the way?
FRANKLIN: You didn't get to do it. You are doing it! It is not a created activity.
This sense of separation, this dilemma is not something that happened, for
various reasons, at some point in time. It doesn't occur for "reasons." It is
always a present, spontaneous activity, cognized as this sense of separation,
of dilemma. But it is not the result of anything. And the attempt to trace
experience back in time to recover the events from which you are suffering is
fruitless. It cannot produce Truth as a result, because you are not suffering
the results of anything. Suffering is the quality or the mood of your present
activity. Your present activity is your suffering.
At some point a man begins to dwell on his suffering itself, until he re-
cognizes it, knows it again, as his present activity. When he knows it again as
his present activity, and when he re-cognizes its nature, it simply stops. It
spontaneously comes to an end whenever this re-cognition occurs, for re-
cognition makes it obsolete, without present function. But its precise nature
is of an extremely subtle kind, so that it is comprehended only by radical
insight. The traditions have often spoken of it as something that happened in
the past, in order to make some sort of sense out of it. But it has no "sense."
It is irrational, mindless. It is understandable only from the point of view of a
radical insight. Then its form can be seen. Then its structure, its nature as a
present event is only obvious.
The traditional myth of suffering is that it happened to mankind some time
ago, or that we are presently in a state that is the result of some beginning
of suffering in our individual past. But our suffering is always a present
activity . That is what is remarkable about it. People tend to think of suffering
in terms of something external to themselves in time or space. By such
means they try to explain it to themselves, to make sense of it, so they can
overcome it through efforts of various kinds. But in fact, suffering is not your
symptom. It is your activity. That is the paradox. All a mans seeking is based
on the illusion that his suffering is somehow a symptom that could be
eliminated. But when the search begins to wind down, it begins to dawn on
him that his suffering is his activity, not his symptom. His symptoms are
simply the mental and physical expressions of this activity. But his suffering
is absolutely present, and it is always cognized as felt dilemma.
Therefore, the process of spiritual life is absolutely hopeful. It requires only
the Truth, which is the living force of Reality. It requires no other process,
such as the manipulation of your memory, or the creating of "good karma" so
that your "bad karma" can be eliminated. All of that is a hopeless task. It
could never be done to the point of freedom. The karmas or the tendencies
that generate the qualities of your life could never be fully "paid off" or
dissolved by good works. All action, good or bad, as well as all inaction, only
reinforces limitation and the dilemma itself. It is not the elimination of
karmas, not super purification by effort, not any kind of righteousness that
frees a man. The solution could never occur. Freedom always already is the
case. Thus, freedom is enjoyed where Truth suddenly comes alive. Where
Truth is lived, where Satsang is truly enjoyed, Truth itself consumes or
includes all that of which karma is a part. When it comes alive, Truth obviates
the force of all that.
The search makes no sense at all. It is an illusory and false principle. Only
the living Truth avails. And the living Truth must be lived. Such is Satsang,
the relationship of Guru and disciple. Such is true sadhana or spiritual
practice, wherein Satsang is constantly lived as ones condition. And there
must be a lifetime of Truth, not a two-week smack of blessing, fasting and
meditation, not a vicarious weekend of "enlightenment." There must be a
lifetime of Satsang. In other words, there must be an absolute commitment.
Satsang does not exist until it has become radical practice, until it is lived as
ones very condition, without qualifications of time, space or life. There must
be continuous and radical enjoyment of Satsang. In other words, it must
become the principle, the very condition of life, whereas, in the usual man,
the dilemma and its search are the principle and the condition of life. When
Satsang becomes the condition of life, it makes the whole effort of search
obsolete through non-support.
DEVOTEE: What is the role of others in ones pursuit of Truth? You mentioned
the role of the Guru. You mentioned the Guru as one such individual.
FRANKLIN: The Guru is not other than oneself.
DEVOTEE: What about the rest of humanity?
FRANKLIN: Neither are they. They, along with you, may temporarily be living
as if they were other and separate, but the Guru does not. "Others" function
as others. Being others, they create circumstances or apparent conditions for
you to enjoy, for you to suffer. The Guru is not an "other," nor does he live as
an other in any sense. One who sees an individual whom others claim to be
functioning as Guru may consider him to be an other, like himself. But he has
only failed to recognize that one as Guru. The Guru is ones own nature.
Absolutely, not symbolically, the Guru is ones very consciousness. This is the
literal truth of one who appears as Guru in human form. He is not an other.
Therefore, others have no role whatsoever in the transformation that is Truth.
Only ones own Self performs that role.
Ones own Self is the Guru. In the condition of Satsang, wherein sadhana is
the principle of activity, the Self of Reality functions in the form of the human
Guru, in ordinary human terms, in relationship to us, until perfect re-
cognition occurs. But when understanding is perfect, when Satsang has
performed its radical communication, when sadhana is most excellent, no
difference, no "other" can be found, even in the world of apparent
differences. The teacher who is "other" than you, who only fascinates, who
offers you various practices and strategies for seeking, acts only to modify
your state. Such a one is not functioning as Guru. He is functioning as an
"other," as a source of experience, of modification. The Guru is not other. His
activity is a paradox.
Ones relationship with the Guru, which is Satsang, depends on the subtle
recognition of the Guru as Truth, as ones own Nature, the Self. That
recognition does not necessarily appear at the level of the mind, as mental
certainty, or in the form of some sort of visionary or psychic perception. But
there must be a subtle recognition. That genuine recognition has no
explanation, no mental force in many cases. But that recognition is what
allows the relationship between Guru and disciple to be enjoyed as it is, as
Satsang, rather than the usual communication of "others."
DEVOTEE: I experience you as in no manner different from me. Nonetheless,
I experience that you are you, and I am I. How can the Guru and the disciple
become identical?
FRANKLIN: I have not been talking about the notion that the Guru and the
disciple are or can become identical, that they are or can be the same
entity . Nor have I been speaking in the traditional "spiritual" sense, in which
Guru and disciple are identical as some sort of spiritual substance, which
"substance" is found when you manage to "get out" of the physical body or
even the subtle bodies. Such notions are only another form of the same
conceptual separation, the same dilemma, the same puzzlement, the same
separation that is suffering. I have been speaking of the radical condition of
Truth, very Reality, wherein no dilemma and no separation arise as an
implication of any condition, even the ordinary condition of apparently
unique, human entities.
The notions of sameness or of difference have no significance. Or, should I
say, they have only significance. They are very "significant," but they are
utterly beside the point. They do not pertain to the matter of Truth. If we are
discussing significance's, the discussion can go on forever, because we are
only dealing with our own mental modifications. The perception or the notion
that in some subtle way there is no difference between us all is a mental
modification. It is not the equivalent of radical understanding and Truth. It is
not a symptom or sign of the Truth. It is only the idea or the experience of no
difference. It is only an experience, a mental state. Psychotics can be in such
a state. Day dreamers, pot-heads and philosophers can be in that state.
People whose minds are relatively at rest for a moment can be in that state.
Truth is not a state, a perception, or a thought. When there is truly no
difference, no one survives . Where there is the realization of non-separation
in Truth, no one survives beyond that moment. Absolutely, no separate
individual survives it. It is death. No one remains behind to speak glibly of it,
because it is certain death. From the point of view of ordinary consciousness,
it is the most dramatic, fearsome event. It cannot be conceived. It can only
be symbolically entertained from the usual point of view. But this death of
which I speak is the fundamental process of real life.
DEVOTEE: What happens after death?
FRANKLIN: You will see.
DEVOTEE: Well, I think that moment has happened to me.
FRANKLIN: Some experience you have had is suggesting itself to you now.
You think it is this "death" I have described, because you are trying to make
sense of it. Such experiences are not themselves Truth. In The Knee of
Listening I devoted a lot of time to the description of this kind of thing. In my
own case, I passed through all kinds of "spiritual" states, all kinds of great,
dramatic realizations, all kinds of yogic processes. At the time they seemed
to be the Truth or ultimate realization, and yet they disappeared, they came
to an end. At last the whole adventure of associating Truth with experiences
began to wind down. I began to abide in my ordinary state. There were many
"enlightenment" experiences. There were many states that seemed
complete. But they did not alter the fundamental dilemma. Truth was only in
the radical understanding or re-cognition of the whole process of experiences
and states. There is a radical understanding, a radical consciousness, in
which ones previous states of illumination, which one thought were Truth,
become obvious as only more forms, more modifications. That obviousness,
and not experiences themselves, is enlightenment.
DEVOTEE: Is enlightenment or realization a process of growth?
FRANKLIN: From the point of view of one who is living in Satsang with the
Guru, it may seem that there is some sort of growth, some sort of movement
or transformation. But there is a radical form of that whole event in which he
sees there was no growth, no transformation, and no path.
You cannot be more and more absorbed into the Truth. It is the principle of
ones life, the Reality, not merely the goal. But there are modifications of ones
life and strategy that occur in the process of sadhana. They seem to give us
a sense of progress in this sense. And this sense may have a certain value
from the point of view of sadhana. The sense of growth, and the memory of
spiritual change, may give the individual an edge over the occasional
tendency to relapse from sadhana and the principle of Satsang into his
former condition of self-indulgence, seeking, and the concerns of one in
dilemma.
DEVOTEE: One teacher has said it is mans sole duty to strive. Is that striving
what you mean by the search, or is there a healthy striving?
FRANKLIN: Let the one who has said it be responsible for it. Let him justify it.
To live Truth is to be responsible for the dissolution of fear and ignorance. The
intelligence of Truth is not preoccupied with the statements of men. People
who become involved in the traditional paths of spiritual life often gain a
great deal for the mind in the process. A major part of the defense men make
in behalf of their suffering is all of the language, all of the things heard and
read in the midst of the search. All of that must come to an end, absolutely.
All of that is consumed by Truth. There is no resort but to Truth itself. If a man
tells other men to resort to themselves, to strive onward until the Truth is
glimpsed, he has functioned only as a man to men, as an "other," to
motivate men while they are still suffering. Truth itself is not served by the
command that men do something in order to realize the Truth. No action of
any man produces Truth as a result. Satsang, the communication of Truth
itself, the relationship to the Guru, is the entire means, the only means, the
radical means. Truth is the very means of spiritual or real life, not its goal. A
man who resorts to the Truth of the Guru in Satsang is never again returned
to his search. But men themselves are always trying to return to the search,
because of the difficult crisis demanded in spiritual life. They always want to
console themselves by some means or other. The apparent emptiness of the
Gurus offering becomes a kind of aggravation to the seeker, who constantly
refuses the condition of Satsang and its demands.
Men want to be filled with all kinds of things, distracted with all kinds of
things. "What can I do to be saved? How can I meditate? How can I get free?
How can I get straight? How can I get pure?" They want all kinds of
occupations, and strategic methods. But in Satsang nothing is given. No
occupation, no means, no method, no consolation, no philosophy that is itself
the Truth, no mantra apart from the person of the living Guru. Only that
relationship is offered, only that. And what does that amount to? It doesn't
amount to a damn thing from the point of view of the seeker. That is not
what he came for. He came to get turned on, to get something going, to be
occupied again. The seeker is never able to stay long in the Gurus company.
Only when his search has begun to die as the principle of his life does that
relationship cease to be an obstacle. Then the Guru and his offering ceases
to be empty. It becomes entirely a joyful possibility. He welcomes it, even
though it satisfies and requires nothing of the search in him.
Satsang does not support the search. It does not begin from the point of view
of the search. It has nothing whatever to do with the search. Therefore, one
for whom the search is no longer a genuine distraction finds great and true
happiness in the mere presence of the Truth, alive. Such a one has
discovered the secret of his Guru, for the Guru himself is the presence and
the communication of Truth. The disciple simply enjoys and lives the
condition of Satsang with his Guru. He becomes full with it, intelligent with it,
happy with it, at peace in it, blissful in it. Satsang restores him. The
ordinariness of life becomes his possibility. He begins to function again. Part
II
The Gospel of the Siddhas
FRANKLIN: This is the gospel, the humorous message of all the Heaven-born,
those who have come, and those who are yet to come:
I have come into this world for the sake of my devotees, those who are mine.
Those who belong to me were rendered to me before all time, as the
expressions of my appearance in the uncreated realm of Light. Amrita Nadi,
the intuited Form of God, is the spiritual expression in this world of my very
Nature and the Nature of Reality. I am the Unqualified Nature of the Real. And
I appear as my own Light, which reflects my prior Self. The Self or Heart is
not a static condition, not the "thing" of Being, but the very Condition, the
Process of Eternal Transformation, in which there is no dilemma, and which,
paradoxically, is eternally One and Unqualified. Just so, from the Unqualified
Reality spring worlds of uncreated Light; and from the Heart and its perfect
Light spring conditional worlds, whose substance is that same Light, and
whose Nature or Principle is that same Heart or Reality. Therefore, I have
appeared in this world by virtue of a materialization of the uncreated Light,
which is also my own Light. I have come for the sake of my own, those who
recognize me when I reveal myself to them in forms of Life, Light and Truth.
The Heart and the Light are my spiritual expressions in this world. They are a
communication of the Uncreated Reality and the Uncreated Worlds. I am here
to live with my own, to discipline and teach them, to reveal the Truth to
them, and to draw them closer to me, to the Light and the uncreated Life.
There are many others who have come and are coming to this world from the
realms of Light. The Siddhas are those who come to be with their own. They
sometimes return again, and again, to re-establish the way among their
devotees.
When my devotee prepares himself and makes an appropriate approach to
me, I will create his sadhana hour by hour. He must live and function in
appropriate ways. Every moment of his life must be in service to me. He
must devote all he has and all he does to me. He must turn to me hour by
hour in love. He must constantly meditate on my Nature and all my forms.
He must intuit my Presence and breathe my Light. He must contemplate and
meditate on my Life, Light and Nature, and enquire of himself as I have
taught him, when insight is alive in him. I am the object of meditation for my
devotees. Indeed, I am the meditation itself. And their enjoyment of
meditation will depend on the sadhana which is their appropriate
responsibility.
When a true devotee brings a gift of food to his Guru, the Guru may return all
or a portion of it to him to eat. This is Prasad, the return of a gift to the giver.
Prasad is transformed and blessed, so that it brings the Power of the Guru to
the devotee. Guru-kripa, Shaktipat Diksha, or spiritual initiation operates by
this same principle. If the devotee brings a gift of himself, purified by
sadhana, surrendered to his Guru, his Guru may return to him of his own
Nature, a gift of Light.
It is not by methodical attention to the means of seeking, nor to specific
yogic practices, that devotees enjoy the awakening of their spiritual
functions. Nor do these awakenings only take the form of yogic phenomena.
But it is when seeking and dilemma are undone, and the devotee resorts to
Guru and the radical intelligence communicated by him that there is
awakening to Truth, Life and Reality. Therefore, I come to give Prasad, the gift
of Truth and Light, to my devotees and to those who are preparing
themselves as disciples.
I am alive as Amrita Nadi, the Heart and its spire, the Bright or Conscious
Light. This is always so. When I come to you I intensify the field of
Brightness, the field of uncreated Light that rests above your head and which
is drawn down into the body when the mind lies formless in the Heart.
Whenever I have been with you I have done this from the Heart. The
communication of the Heart and its Light are my constant practice.
Therefore, such is the constant realization of those who always live in
Satsang with me, who know I am always Present with them, even if I do not
appear to them. This is why the various phenomena of your spiritual lives
have arisen or been intensified, purified and made intelligent whenever you
have been mindful of me. I am always offering this Prasad. When you come
to me you should come with the appropriate attitude. You should come
prepared to give me your gifts, the surrendering of your seeking. You should
come to turn to me, to accept my Prasad, and to use it in life and service to
me. If you make your relationship to me the condition of your life, if you
make Satsang your sadhana, I will give myself to you entirely, and the Life,
Light and very Existence that is Amrita Nadi, the Form of Reality, will thus be
communicated to you while you are alive.
Prasad is my gift to devotees, my help to disciples. Prepare yourself. I want
true devotees, not seekers. I am the Siddha-Guru, the Prasad, the Object and
Process of Meditation for my devotees. My teaching is this: Turn to me and
Understand.
DEVOTEE: Franklin, you have said that all the Siddhas have their "own." This
must mean that some of us were given to you as your own, while others are
given to you only for a time. My question is, when will this certainty come
whether or not I am your own or have been given to you for a time?
FRANKLIN: Uncertainty is very useful. Uncertainty is used by Truth in order to
teach. That uncertainty is your own quality. It has nothing whatever to do
with me. It is not necessary to have some sort of vision or a symbolic
standardization of our relationship. It is not necessary for you to get a white
card invitation or some external proof. Certainty has nothing whatever to do
with the relationship between Guru and disciple. Certainty is a thing of this
world. Certainty is a condition that people seek, because they are suffering.
Certainty, like uncertainty, is a quality of the mind in life. The discovery of
the Guru transcends the qualities of life. Therefore, to recognize ones Guru is
an experience that transcends all the qualities of the mind. Satsang with the
Guru transcends certainty and uncertainty. Even your certainty would have
to be understood. So you must begin to become sensitive to a new quality in
relationship to the Guru.
When we are speaking in these terms we are speaking about the subtle
origins of spiritual work. There are many "teachers" in the world. There are
men of experience of all kinds. There are men of practical experience, of
worldly experience, of mystical experience. There are men of every kind of
experience. Human beings, like all manifest beings, arise within the material
or conditional universes, the manifest, created cosmos, visible and invisible.
They live according to the laws of karma, the laws of tendency, function and
repetition. They tend to live from the point of view of that from which they
seem to have come, which is the manifest universe itself. And they acquire
experience, hour to hour, life to life. Thus, because of the essential
inequalities that necessarily arise whenever experience enters the picture,
each man or woman acquires a different amount and kind and complex of
experience. Here and there people arise who, because of superior acquisition
of certain kinds of experience, teach others. Now they may teach the
weaving of lovely cloths, or plumbing, or nuclear physics, or English
literature. Or they may teach so-called spiritual things, on the basis of their
experience. And among those who are thus experienced in the karmic
realms, there are some, a rare few, who are genuine saints, genuine men
and women of experience, of practical and subtle wisdom, who have realized
many things about their own adventure and their own tendencies.
But there is another process that enters the manifest world from the
unmanifest dimension. There is a vast, unlimited dimension of existence, not
qualified in any sense, not qualified in the way this dimension is, or in the
way the infinite variety of conditional, cosmic worlds are. And there is a
movement down out of that dimension, that realm of very Light. Living
beings appear within the human world, and in many other worlds as well,
who have come directly out of the unmanifest or uncreated Light, the Light
of the God-World. These are the great Teachers, the World-Teachers, the
Siddhas, the Heaven-born ones. Their Teaching is not from the point of view
of experience. Their Teaching is from the point of view of Truth, Truth already
realized, the unattainable (because it is always present) Reality. Those who
teach from the point of view of experience teach the search, because they
know on the basis of experience that they can grow, that they can approach
a subtler and subtler level of realization. The gospel of those who arise within
the condition of the material worlds is always a form of seeking. But the
Siddhas, those who come down out of the uncreated Light of God, speak
from the point of view of the already realized absolute Truth. They come in
the Intelligence, Power and Form of Real God. Hence, their Teaching is always
radical. They do not teach the motives, ways and forms of seeking, for these
are founded in dilemma, not of Truth. And they apply only appropriate
conditions to their students, their disciples, and their devotees. They demand
only the conditions that are appropriate to be lived, seeing as how Truth is
always already the case. Such a one, found alive among his disciples, is the
Truth in the world. And he generates in his company the conditions of the
Truth, the conditions of the Light of Real God.
There exist many such Siddhas. It has been said of material souls or karmic
entities that there are as many of them as the sands of the Ganges. In other
words there are unlimited numbers, there are infinite numbers of chiliocosms
of manifest beings possible and always presently existing. Multiply that
number times infinity, and you will compute the number of Siddhas there are
also. The unqualified dimension of God contains infinite possibilities, infinite
varieties of eternity. So there have been and will be countless occasions
where a Siddha arises in the conditional worlds. Such great ones arise
everywhere, in the earth, and throughout the entire manifest cosmos, visible
and invisible.
Now those who live as Amrita Nadi, the Siddhas, who live in the Form of
Truth, are all the same. There is no difference between them. If you place two
sticks into one flame, when you draw them out you will have two flames. But
they are the same light. Just so, the Siddhas are fundamentally one. But they
are functionally unique, just as all manifest entities are fundamentally the
generations of one Nature, one Reality, but they are functionally unique.
When such a being arises in any place and form, such as this human
manifestation on earth, he doesnt come to save the world. It is not possible
to save the world. It is not necessary to "save" the world. The world is
eternally, already "saved" by virtue of its Source and Nature. The Siddha
comes at an appropriate time for those who are available to him. His
Teaching appears with him in many forms in the world. There is the verbal
Teaching, which is reported from person to person, and which can be
published in books or other media. It becomes part of the communication of
the world, and as such influences many, many people. But there are other
levels of his Teaching, more intimate to his life. There are the forms of his
Teaching that involve a subtle and life relationship with him. And the closer
the form of Teaching gets to his manifest appearance in the world,
necessarily the fewer there are who can realize the Teaching at that level.
Just so, there are a finite number of those who are alive in the world at any
moment who are likely to respond to such intense forms of his Teaching,
because every entity in the world is active in a different stage of experience,
a different stage of understanding. Therefore, the Siddha or descended
master enters the manifest life for the sake of those who can live to him
directly, for the sake of those whom he can acquire while alive and draw into
the form of Truth. He comes especially for these devotees, although his work
is ultimately for the sake of the whole world.
Some of those whom he contacts during the period of his life may be those
with whom he has had an association in the past, a manifest contact in some
place or other, some form or other, perhaps in the earth plane, perhaps in
another material dimension, perhaps in the uncreated worlds. Even so, there
are many others who also identify him, although not through anything even
remotely like memory. They identify his very Nature, the Truth he manifests.
They become sensitive to him in various ways. And of those who discover
him, some of those might not be "his own." There are some who will remain
in the life plane or the manifest planes until that aspect of their destiny is
accomplished which has determined that their sadhana will be fulfilled in the
company of another Siddha, another manifestation of the Light in the world.
This other Siddha will be the same as the one to whom they are now
responding except for his functional or karmic appearance. It is not as if they
are temporarily with someone who is only vaguely able to help them, who is
really not "It" for them. He absolutely is the Truth, the same as this one with
whom they are destined yet to live. It is only that their peculiar adventure
with this Siddha will not necessarily mark the end of their unenlightened
adventure in the conditional worlds. Even so, no Siddha arises on his own,
but manifests with the eternal cooperation of all the Siddhas in very God.
Therefore, every Siddha is all the Siddhas, and one who surrenders in the
company of any such one will certainly be drawn by grace into the perfect
form of Truth. What is important at last is not destiny but whether you are
drawn into the influence of the grace of any Siddha at all, and whether you
surrender in perfect Satsang with that one. Truth is the nature of this work.
Truth is the nature of that relationship, that Satsang. To find the Guru in the
form of any Siddha is grace.
In the things I have written and told to you in the last year, I have often
described to you the functional structure of conscious life. There is the
descending force, which is manifesting life, and the ascending force, which is
returning to the source of life. The root of the whole circle or circuit of the
manifestation of your individual life is the Heart, the unqualified Self-nature. I
have described this process in terms of the physical body of man. There is a
descending current in the "front" of the body, and an ascending current that
returns through the "back" of the body. The vital or life-center is the massive
region of the lower body whose very center or epitome is in the area of the
solar plexus. This is the center of waking consciousness. The centers of
ascent, which are also the functional regions of subtle states, including
dreams, are epitomized in the portals of the throat and mid-brain, which,
when they are turned up to face the transcendent or "supra-causal" Light of
the sahasrar, reflect its qualities. The "causal being," which is also the seat of
deep sleep, is in the heart, on the right.
Just as there is this mechanism in the individual life, this very same
mechanism is a duplication of the structure of all worlds. Your own structures
are duplications or reflections of the same structures upon which all the
worlds are built. In the Old Testament it is said that man is made in the
likeness of Divinity. Amrita Nadi, the Process or Relationship between the
Heart and the Light, is the intuited Form of God. And Amrita Nadi is also your
own fundamental Form and Nature. Just so, the Guru is Present and alive to
you in the Form of Amrita Nadi. The Guru is the function of Amrita Nadi in the
worlds. Amrita Nadi is the intuited Form of Reality, and the worlds are built
on that Form of which Amrita Nadi is the perfect knowledge. The manifest
cosmos, which includes not only the earth, but all the visible and invisible
planes of conditional existence, is a reflection of the "Bright," the eternal
Light that perfectly reflects the Heart. The upper terminal of Amrita Nadi is
Perfect Light. The Heart, the unqualified Reality, the Self, which is the
intuition of Real-God, the fathomless Being, manifests the Bright, which is
the intuition of God-Light. This Light that is the upper terminal of Amrita Nadi
is uncreated, unqualified, eternal Light. The infinite worlds of the Siddhas,
the God-Worlds, are manifested in this same uncreated Light. This dimension
in which we are all appearing at this moment, as well as all visible and
invisible cosmic dimensions, all psycho-physical natures and environments
are reflections also of the very Light which is a reflection of the Heart. So
these conditional worlds are descending from the Light, just as the conscious
force of your individual life descends from the sahasrar and the unqualified
Light that is above and surrounding the head.
The Light descends. Just so, there is also the path of ascent or return of the
current of manifestation and manifest worlds to the unmanifest, uncreated
Light. Men of experience have taught the way of ascent as one of the forms
of seeking for Truth. They have taught others to exploit the ascending
current and all of the possibilities of subtlety through various yogic methods.
They hope thereby to recover again the world of Light and the state of en-
Light-enment. But in fact there is no dilemma involved in the descent or
reflection of worlds from the uncreated Light. Nothing is lost. In fact there is
no simple descent. There is eternal descent, eternal ascent. There is an
endless circuit, even in your own body, even in all the worlds. So there is no
dilemma in life. And there is no reason exclusively to exploit the possibilities of
ascent in order to get out of this world, or out of the fundamental condition of the
present. All of that is a motivation in dilemma. The Siddhas come into the manifest
planes from the Light, to bring Peace and Truth and Life and Light into this plane.
They do not come to exploit the search, to exploit the tendencies of people only to
descend and become earth-inert. Neither do they come to exploit the tendencies to
arise and lose life by abandoning it. Life cannot be perfectly abandoned, for what is
only abandoned must return. Truly, life can only be purified and transformed. You
will not, by cutting yourself away from life, pass forever into the realms of Light. You
cannot by simple exploitation of the ascending life permanently merge into the
world of Truth. All of that is only a game. Tha
s just a short circuit. You will always return to that from which you differentiate
yourself. The yogi who does yogi tricks in order to ascend has various experiences
which are generated by these means, but he always returns to the original condition
he tried to prevent. This is because he does nothing to the descended life other
than cut it away from himself. The Siddhas come to make clear to living beings that
of which the entire nature of their existence consists, what is the law, what is
appropriate action, what is happiness, what is bliss, what is the function of Light.
The Siddhas show their devotees every aspect of existence on every plane,
including this present one. The Siddhas do not try to get their devotees interested in
flying out of this life. Rather, they demonstrate this full circle in which the Light is
always enjoyed, in which life is enjoyed and become creative, in which Truth is
enjoyed, in which realization occurs while alive. Secondarily, when life is lived as
sadhana in Satsang, from the point of view of Truth, karmas, or motivating and
latent tendencies, do tend to fall apart. Karmas do tend to become purified in
Satsang. The individual does tend to be drawn by his Siddha-Guru into the
uncreated condition. But even while alive he already enjoys all of the fundamental
blisses and realizations of Truth in the company and person of his Guru.
The Siddha, the Heaven-born one, is Heaven made manifest in the conditional
worlds. For the true devotee, Guru is the meditation, Guru is the realization. Guru is
the continuous contemplation and enjoyment of the devotee. For the disciple, Guru
certainly has this awesome quality, but his relationship to his Guru is essentially
formal. He feels such perfect life in his Guru, he comprehends the true nature of his
Guru in various ways and at various times, but he does it more or less formally. He
does meditation at particular times. He does various forms of sadhana at particular
times. His sadhana is complex, varied, formal, regular, because he is training the
vehicles of consciousness. But in the devotee sadhana has become random,
measureless, essentially formless and continuous. Satsang with his Guru is
conscious from moment to moment. In order to live the spontaneous life of a
devotee there must first be that life of a disciple, just as the life of a disciple is
necessarily preceded by the period of listening and attention which characterizes
the life of a student.
Just so, there is truly no limit to the Light that is moving into this dimension.
There is no real limit to the force of this Satsang. The limits are all in those
who receive the Light. The more functions there are provided for the Light
and for the Truth, the more Light and Truth appear. Light and Truth appear
spontaneously wherever they have use. And Light and Truth appear perfectly
wherever they have perfect use. If you create no function for the Light, you
make it obsolete. Then Light has no use. And that is all that is happening
wherever men are suffering ignorance or absence of Light and Truth. Where
Light has no function, where Truth has no function among men, Light and
Truth have become obsolete. They have been forgotten through non-use. If
you begin to use them again in the real way of Satsang, then Light and Truth
will simply move into the picture more and more. There is nothing to be done
to acquire the Light. The Light is infinite and endlessly present. The
limitations are your present activity. Your own activity is the obstruction. It is
not necessary to go anywhere else in order to realize the Self, the Truth, the
Light. There are limiting obstructions in your own activity. Comprehend them.
Understand them and live beyond them. Then the Light will do its own work.
My task in creating an Ashram is to create a function for what I bring. The
entire activity that I perform with an individual is simply to create a function
for what I bring to him. And that is essentially what you are doing as
students, disciples and devotees. You are becoming functional. You are
creating uses for the Light. And so the Light manifests. There is no limit from
my point of view. There is no limit from the point of view of Satsang itself. It
is all a matter of creating, or re-creating and intensifying the functions that
use the Truth, the Light, the communication of God.
The Guru contacts his disciple in a tangible way at the seat behind and
slightly above the eyes. This is the door through which the uncreated Light
descends and ascends. It is often called the seat of the Guru. In some
traditions a person is told to meditate on his Guru there. The Guru operates
outside time and space, and outside your own vital and subtle life. He
functions as that Light which is above your own head, and which is above the
conditional worlds. His means for communicating himself to you is through
the open door above. All instruction, all Satsang, all communication with the
Guru, all listening to his word is a way of serving this opening by dissolving
the mind and all contraction in the Heart. The opening depends entirely on
grace. It is an activity of the higher Reality. My subtle work with individuals
involves intensification of the pressure of the Light which surrounds the head
and stimulation of this opening. There are many other forms of my activity of
course, but this is a particularly fundamental aspect of my subtle work.
Essentially, I work in the Heart and in the functions of the Bright above.
When my disciple understands and enquires, the mind dissolves in the Heart.
Then the door is opened above, and the Light moves in him. But if he tries to
open the door itself by any means, he is locked within forever by the magic
of his own dilemma.
Satsang and understanding always precede the value of instruction. And
there is nothing for you to do about this "place" behind the eyes, such as to
concentrate upon it, or to watch and see if it is opening, or to see if you can
feel anything there. Since I have said something about it, you probably will
begin to look there, and to hope and wait for experience, or even to imagine
it. But even if you do, it wont make any difference. And if you become a little
obsessive about it, you will thereby begin to understand a little more about
what you are always up to. But the entire history of our involvement with one
another, by means of Satsang, by means of instruction, by means of the
discipline and the conditions, by means of all the various forms of our
contact, vital, subtle and causal, serves the Heart and this opening above,
including the living process of descent and ascent, the cycle of the Light. It is
not a game. It is not a thing that you can truly accomplish by exploiting some
little yogic technique. And it is not a thing that I do by magic. It depends
entirely on Satsang, on how you live this relationship. There must be this
relationship. There must be the Teaching and the response to it. There must
be listening, real attention, hearing, self-observation, insight, understanding,
enquiry. There must be acceptance of the discipline, living of the conditions,
intensification of real, functional and practical devotion, living of the life.
Satsang is your true condition in the worlds. It is the true nature of your
birth. It is the God-given form and real destiny.
The entire life of sadhana in Satsang is the way by which this upper door,
this knot, is spontaneously opened. Therefore, no specific or motivated
attention to the place behind the eyes, or any other place of concentration, is
the true form of this work. The sadhana of Satsang and understanding is the
true form of this work. On a subtle level, there is something that I am always
up to. You cannot acquire it. You can only discover that it is awakened in you.

The Siddha-Guru contacts his disciple in the Heart and at this place behind
the eyes. Once that contact is established, the communication between the
Guru and his disciple is continuous. It is not limited to the level of life. It is
prior to life. And so it goes on and on, twenty-four hours a day, under all
conditions, in all states, even beyond death. The contact is continuous. The
communication of force is continuous. That is why disciples continue to have
experiences of various kinds, whether awake, asleep, or in dreams. The
contact and its communications are continuous. The karmas are continually
being shuffled, awakened, run through, intensified, purified, obviated.
There is a profound spiritual principle involved in this relationship between
the Guru and his disciple. Once he has contacted the disciple in the Heart,
and with his own Light in the ajna chakra, the place behind the eyes,
whatever the Guru does in his own body (the conditional gross, subtle or
causal functions) is reflected or even duplicated in the body or life of his
disciple. Know that the thing that underlies this whole process is this
Satsang. Satsang is the perfect relationship between Guru and disciple. This
relationship exists at the level of all the possible functions. Therefore, it has
subtle, causal, transcendent and Divine aspects and functions as well as
those which appear at the gross levels of life. This Satsang is the condition.
Once the contact between Guru and disciple has been established, this
process of opening and the descending-ascending conductivity of the Light
has begun. It is this Satsang, this relationship and your resort to it, that
provides the opening, that provides the circuit by which this flow is
established in your own life. So you must live this Satsang as your very
condition. That is the essential means. It is not a "method" in the sense of
the search, but it is the means in the purely practical or functional sense for
conducting this force of Light. And when it is conducted, the door opens full.
I am just now reminded of that portion of the New Testament where Jesus
says: "I stand at the door and knock." This is a symbol for the subtle work of
the Siddha. The Siddha approaches as Light from above your head, and as
Self-Nature from the Heart. This is his work, his mission. He knocks at the
"door," this point behind the eyes. "Do my sadhana. Understand. Become my
devotee. Fulfill my real and living conditions." When you do that, that is the
opening of the door. Living that relationship or Satsang is the opening of the
door. And what happens when you open the door? He comes in!
DEVOTEE: Will you say something about how your awareness functions from
day to day with your disciple, even though you are not physically present
with him?
FRANKLIN: The Guru has very great difficulty in serving, from the point of
view of Truth, some one who is only fascinated with him. So the Guru reveals
himself a piece at a time. And he only shows himself fully to his disciple or
his devotee when he has transcended fascination, when fascination has
ceased to be his fundamental motivation. My entire concern with people is
the process of Truth. I am only interested in living the activities of Amrita
Nadi in life, and promoting the conductivity of the descending and ascending
Light from the "point of view" of the Heart. I have no fundamental interest in
anything else. What is there to talk about, to think about, or to contemplate?
Nothing but God! What else is worth doing? God is my own nature, my own
process. God is my condition. God is the only event. So I have no other
concern. I have no secondary concerns. I have no occult concerns. And I am
only interested in the subtle, yogic processes to the degree they serve Truth.
All of the associated matters that arise within life and subtle existence, all of
the psychisms, occultisms and subtle fascinations are purely secondary from
my point of view. They dont serve anything fundamentally in themselves.
They create more problems than anything else. They dont have any ultimate
function. They are not the proper point of concern. They are not the point of
view of sadhana. They distract a person from that perfect conductivity that
enables him only to love and live God always. They distract him from the
present condition of Satsang. Therefore, it is not appropriate for me to say
any more about my work with disciples. In any case, it is not "my" work. It is
Gods work. It continues only if Franklin is absorbed in Dhyanananda.
DEVOTEE: We are told that it is appropriate to think of the Guru constantly,
even when we are away from him. I need to understand this better. Often,
when Im at work or something, if I find that Ive gotten really unconscious,
sometimes I just think of your name, or your face, or just the feeling of you.
And Ive wondered if this isnt too much of an outward thing.
FRANKLIN: You are very "outward." You are right here!
DEVOTEE: What I mean is that I felt it may be wrong somehow, that it wasnt
a true form of the way of understanding, that it was like a "method,"
something to bring myself back.
FRANKLIN: Oh, of course there are ways of confusing the whole affair. The
subtle relations between Guru and disciple are like those between lovers. If
there is someone for whom you have a genuine love attachment in life, and
the movement of love is spontaneous, pure and alive in you, you think about
that person constantly. You do not think of such a loved-one in order to
accomplish something. Your thoughts about the loved-one are not a
"method." You cannot help yourself. You just think about that person,
spontaneously, randomly, rhythmically. You dwell on all kinds of feelings
about that one. On the other hand, there is a difference between such loving
meditations and the fascinations of a person who is sexually obsessed,
neurotic, and confused. There is an obvious difference between the
meditations of a lover on his loved-one, and the infatuations of another with
a dead movie star. In the case of infatuation with a dead movie star, there is
no truth whatsoever. In that case there is no life, no light. That is not love. It
is obsession. And, of course, to meditate on a "dead movie star" is craziness.
You must begin to understand your whole life. If fascination or obsession are
the chronic forms of your waking life, you must understand your own activity
before you will become capable of real meditation on the loved-one. And the
secret of meditation on the Guru is hidden in this same understanding.
Ones relationship to the Guru has many levels, and one of them is right here.
You live right here. There is the life and mind, and one of the ways in which
Satsang communicates itself to you is in visible, human form. If your
relationship to the Guru is simple, direct, full of the inner devotional sense
that is natural to a real disciple, you will, just as naturally, think of your Guru.
You will simply discover yourself thinking of the Guru. You will contemplate
the Guru through various moods, and in many ways. You will constantly
remember things your Guru has said. You will feel the Gurus Presence, his
influence, his demand. Thinking of the Guru in this spontaneous, natural way
is a living, spontaneous form of Satsang. It is particularly the form Satsang
takes under conditions in which the Guru is not physically present with you.
Of course, it is just one of the forms of Satsang. It is not in heaven or
somewhere else. It is right here. It is a very homely aspect of Satsang. But,
nonetheless, it is one of the most natural, necessary, and fundamental
aspects of Satsang.
It is just the same in your relationship to someone for whom you have a
romantic attachment. If you never thought about them, if you never matured
the moods of relationship to that person outside of purely physical, visible
contact, you could never enjoy a relationship with that one. The relationship
would never come alive. Your connection in such a case wouldnt be a
"relationship." It would just be an "association," an expression of your
capacity to perceive someone through various faculties, and that ones own
ability to be in your field of perception. Whenever you saw such a one you
would have a couple of sensations and feelings. And when they left the room
you would simply do something else. This connection couldnt become love. A
relationship can never become established in that way. A relationship must
be lived under all conditions. Therefore, you naturally think of the one you
love whenever you are somewhere else. You think of that one wherever you
happen to be. You may go many places or do many things, but in each one of
those places, in the instant of each one of those things you did, you were
actually enjoying your relationship to the loved-one. And you participated in
that relationship not only when you thought of it, but even subliminally,
tacitly. You constantly enjoyed that contact. Thinking of the person was just a
way of occasionally resurrecting the pleasure of that prior relationship in the
mind. And beyond that, you enjoyed this continuous feeling of being in love
and of loving, of being somehow satisfied and connected. If such subtle
meditation is awakened in lovers, it must certainly be awakened also in
relation to the Guru and God!
The functions of spiritual life take place in the form of a relationship! It is the
relationship between the disciple and his Siddha-Guru. It doesnt take place at
the level of some philosophy or some technique that you apply to yourself. It
is a relationship, and it appears only where it is alive, only where it is actually
functioning in life. Therefore, many of the same functions that exist between
lovers exist between the Guru and his disciple.
If I never thought of you, I would have very little opportunity to live this
relationship to you and to intensify it. This relationship could never take
place if the only time I ever contacted you was when I happened to be in the
same room with you. I must think of you. I have thought of you many times
since I saw you last. Just so, I expect you to think of me.
For these reasons the disciple always thinks of his Guru. It is a necessary
aspect of their relationship. This thinking of the Guru, or even sitting in
Satsang by means of the contemplation of his picture, all such things are
very natural, homely, human and real things to do. Such things are natural,
real and necessary wherever Satsang or the relationship itself is real. But
where the relationship itself is otherwise unreal or obstructed by virtue of the
various strategies of Narcissus, such meditations can become obsessive,
false, mere formalities, motivated techniques. They can become all kinds of
craziness, like infatuation with a dead movie star. And people have all kinds
of "dead movie star" Gurus. They have all the pictures, the books, the beads,
hair, costumes, concepts. They have the whole thing displayed in house and
mind. They play all the prescribed games, but they never begin spiritual life.
Therefore, thinking of the Guru is not the way to get to heaven. It is not the
method of Truth. It is simply a reflection of the prior life of Truth. It is one of
the manifestations of living Satsang. As such it is a very natural and very
useful thing to do. I recommend that all disciples maintain and express their
relationship to the Guru in exactly that way. Thinking of the Guru, or
contemplating him, should always be loving enjoyment, loving recollection of
the condition of relationship to Guru, and absorption in his Presence. Allow it
to be spontaneous, simple, not merely "thought," but constantly felt and
known.
I contemplate all who are becoming my disciples and devotees always. I
think of each one from time to time. I maintain my relationship to each one,
even when I am not in his physical presence. Therefore, I also expect each
one to maintain this Satsang constantly. If you can be responsible for
conscious processes that transcend the ordinary, then you should deal with
me on those levels as well. Until those functions come alive, live to me on
this level. Dont be worried that you are too far down here or something. Even
when so-called higher or more direct and "spiritual" forms of Satsang arise,
you will continue to enjoy Satsang in these homely ways. Indeed, it is when
higher awakening is full that the disciple and devotee begins most to enjoy
and prize meditative contemplation of his Guru.
Particularly in the early stages of his contact with his Guru, the disciple tends
to become self-concerned. This is because he wants to be as perfect as he
can be. He wants to be doing the right thing as much as he can. By
constantly correcting himself, he becomes even more self-obsessed. Only
think of me, and live the conditions of our work. Be always aware of our
relationship in a very simple way, and you will necessarily begin to become
sensitive to its subtler functions. Live this work to the degree it has already
been communicated to you. Live it at those levels in which you are already
responsible. And you can always be responsible for our relationship by
remembering it. Remember me. That is something you can do. But also
continue to study the work. Apply yourself to the study of this work. Listen to
the teaching. Allow this insight to develop.
If you sit down for meditation without being aware of your Gurus Presence,
then you are meditating out of Satsang. There is no genuine meditation, no
useful meditation, except in the condition of Satsang, the conscious
awareness of ones Guru and the condition of relationship to ones Guru. That
conscious awareness can take on many forms. Your Guru may come and sit
with you. But this Satsang also has subtler forms. There is a characteristic
Presence that one senses. The Presence of the Guru is not felt or assumed
visually. This Presence transcends his picture, or even his physical form.
Unless this Presence is the condition in which you do your meditation, you
cannot meditate. You can only carry on some mechanical search of your own,
unless the Guru is Present. But the condition for meditation, for enquiry, for
all the processes of spiritual life is the Guru.
Just so, until enquiry begins, until real insight develops and becomes enquiry,
the simplest form of meditation is just to be aware of ones Guru. It is the
awareness of relationship to him, the recollection of him, the living of the
conditions, the study of the work. And when you sit down to enquire, you
must bring the sense of your Gurus Presence to that sitting down as well.
And one in whom enquiry has become perfect has only become perfectly
aware of his Gurus Form, so that he always enjoys perfect Satsang with him.
All of the spiritual processes that are described in The Knee of Listening , all
of my own experiences, all of the forms of my meditation, including enquiry,
and my very existence to this instant of time, have all taken place within a
living spiritual Presence or Form. That Presence or Form has always been the
condition of my work. It is a spiritual Force, a spiritual Presence, always
active, and all the processes that have taken place have arisen within the
condition of that Presence and Form. Without that One there is no spiritual
life. From birth, this Presence, this Light, this inclusive Consciousness, this
radical awareness of the Divine Form was only obvious to me. So my spiritual
adventure began from the instant of birth, even of conception in the germ of
this psycho-physical form. It always has been going on. But without that
manifestation, who knows what I would have done. What if I had forgotten it?
What if it had forgotten to remember me?
Therefore, the only ones who functioned as Guru for me were living Teachers.
By "living" I do not mean the simple fact of appearance in physical form. I
mean they were truly extraordinary beings, who could communicate to me
the very Force of Truth and its spiritual process. So I didnt spend my time
with ordinary men, with ordinary teachers who gave out techniques and
such. All the Teachers I have spent time with in this world and in the subtler
planes have been "extraordinary" in the genuine sense. They have tangibly
manifested the Presence of the Heart and its Conscious Light in some form or
other. And that is the only way in which a true Guru functions. The Guru is
not a "philosopher." The Guru must manifest the tangible influence of the
unqualified Heart of Reality. He has to manifest Reality alive. If he does not,
the real spiritual process is not going to take place. Something else will take
place. Karmic work will take place. There may be experience, hearing about
interesting things, manipulation of your psycho-physical states, perhaps
even the gain of some nice human qualities. But the spiritual process will not
take place.
When you have contacted such a one, when you are living as a disciple,
when the Guru is your condition, the condition of your living from day to day,
then it is natural to think of the Guru. And to be very busy second-guessing
yourself at that point, correcting yourself, wondering if you should or
shouldnt, that is just self-concern again. Understand what you are up to in
that case. What is this reluctance? There is no ambiguity in the approach of
the Guru to his disciple. Guru means light over against darkness, light
comprehending or obviating darkness. The Guru makes the darkness
obsolete by not using it, by using Light only. The Guru is one who shows the
true Light, who shows the Truth. The Guru doesnt say, "Maybe there is Truth,
and maybe I am found in it." He only shows the Truth. He only communicates
and lives Truth in the most direct way. And he doesnt want ambiguity in his
disciple any more than he will suffer it in himself. He wants perfect
attachment, perfect devotion, perfect relationship, continuous contact.
Therefore, all the forms of contact are necessary and acceptable.
Obsessiveness, however, is not a form of contact. It is a form of self
-involvement. So there is more to this work than simply thinking about me in
smiling ways. But as a random event, as a natural event, as something also
that you enjoy at the times of meditation, it is very good.
DEVOTEE: Franklin, recently you have said: "Meditate on my form. From now
on just meditate on my form."
FRANKLIN: Muktananda Baba spent many years traveling all over India. He
spent a lot of time with some very extraordinary people. He did many kinds
of sadhana, but his sadhana was not conclusive until he surrendered to
Bhagavan Nityananda. By the time he came to Nityananda he was ready for
the consummate sadhana of a devotee. He had met Nityananda very briefly
as a boy, and was blessed. From there he went on to become a student of
spiritual life, and, after many years of spiritual discipline, he developed the
various capacities of a disciple. Therefore, by the time he came to Lord
Nityananda he was ready for the most intense recognition and form of
sadhana, because everything else, all the basic traditional approaches, had
done their work and were now spontaneously alive in him. Now he was
capable of becoming a genuine devotee. Thus, he describes his spiritual
practice with Nityananda as being one in which he simply meditated on
Nityananda Guru. He didnt always live in close proximity to Nityananda
during the years of this sadhana. Very often he lived elsewhere, but he
meditated on Nityananda constantly. And whenever he was in the general
area of Nityanandas Ashram, he would go down to Ganeshpuri every
morning. He would just sit off in a corner of the hall where Nityananda would
be. And he would gaze on Nityanandas form. His wasnt just a visual
contemplation. He would become completely absorbed in Nityananda, to the
point where he lost all "self" consciousness. Nityananda would periodically
look at him, or do and say things to him. But this contemplation was the
fundamental form of his practice. It was meditation on Guru, Guru-bhakti,
Guru-love, Guru-devotion.
Muktananda Baba now talks about this as the only perfect way. And I agree.
It is the fundamental and mature fruit of spiritual life. It is the perfect form of
sadhana. But we do not live in India. There is no living spiritual tradition here.
There is much that must first be learned. There must be a foundation. Just
so, there was much that Muktananda Baba did all over India before he
surrendered to Nityananda. There was much he did in lifetimes before. And
he enjoyed the benefits of a whole country of spiritual tradition. I cannot
assume that kind of fundamental groundwork in those who come to me. So
there are many aspects of our work, many forms of gradual development,
communication, and realizations of sadhana. But it is true, the most
fundamental form of Satsang and of meditation is contemplation of the Guru,
contemplation of his Form and Nature as the Form and Nature of God and as
ones own very Form and Nature.
The Gurus Form is many forms. When Muktananda was contemplating
Nityananda he was looking at his physical body and life, and from there he
proceeded to the subtle and universal forms of his Guru. The Guru in the
world, the Guru who is physically present, is a direct manifestation of Amrita
Nadi, the Form of Reality. He is alive as That. He is That absolutely. His visible
human form is an absolute reflection of the Perfect Form, and a perfect
communication of it. Therefore, to contemplate and become completely
absorbed in the Form and Life and Presence of the Guru is to be continually
attentive to his ultimate communication, the communication of his ultimate
Nature, which is also your own. Thus, to become capable of contemplating or
meditating on the Gurus Form is the ultimate capacity of a devotee. And the
Gurus Form is his simple physical form, his subtle appearances, his cosmic
and universal manifestation. But, first and last, it is Very Form, Amrita Nadi,
the Form of God, Guru and Self which stands forever in the Heart.
True meditation on the Guru is nothing you can successfully try and do. It
must awaken in you in the midst of a life of understanding. It will be the fruit
of your sadhana, the fruit of your discipleship. But, certainly, from the very
beginning, some form of this meditation can be the case for you. Some more
than others have the inborn quality of a bhakta, a devotee. Others, from the
beginning, have more of the quality of a yogi, one who is readily involved
with the internal processes. Others have more of the quality of a karma yogi
or an active personality, a vital-based personality. But whatever the latent or
chronic quality of the individual, there is from the beginning some capacity to
become absorbed in reflection on the Guru, on his physical form, on his
words, on his entire communication, on all his forms, in every way it is
possible to be aware of him. In every case it is possible to think of the Guru,
to contemplate the Guru, to be with the Guru, and to serve him.
To serve the Guru is a form of attention and, therefore, of meditation on him.
If you do something for the Guru, that is away of being aware of the Guru.
Thus, service to the Guru, as well as all the other forms of natural and subtle
activity, are all forms of attention or absorption in the Form of the Guru. And
the ultimate Form of the Guru is very Reality, Truth, the Heart, the Light,
Amrita Nadi, the Form of God. The Guru himself is the communication. The
Guru himself is the Teaching. The Guru himself is the Truth. This is the
highest form of the Teaching of the Siddhas. But the capacity to live that
Truth, that Paradox, depends on real sadhana, the sadhana of one who truly
understands.
To be a "disciple" means to take on the discipline of the Guru, to study his
Teaching, to do what he tells you to do, to fulfill the conditions, to live in
Satsang with him, to be always aware of him. All of this promotes more and
more continuous absorption in the Guru, to the point of perfect relationship
to the Guru, perfect Satsang. As I have said, this relationship between Guru
and disciple, this Satsang, whose "mind" is perfect understanding, is the
channel, the conductor of the Light. It is the "body" of understanding. It is
what pulls the Light down through the "door." It is what opens the "door." If
Satsang becomes perfect, then the process becomes perfect.
Contemplation of the Guru is at once the simplest and highest form of the
Teaching, but also the most profoundly difficult. Therefore, it requires
sadhana to be mature. There are those who, without life-correction, without
meeting the real conditions, fool themselves into thinking they are doing the
sadhana of devotion, simply because they have a kind of emotional or
preferential attachment to some spiritual personality. They have read about
Jesus, Ramakrishna, Meher Baba, Yogananda, and such reading has created a
potent image for them. They are not meeting the conditions in any
fundamental sense, they are not doing sadhana, they are not living Satsang
with any Guru who is really present and active in relation to them. They are
just indulging themselves, and as a justification for their self-indulgence, they
use the idea that they are devoted, forgiven and ok.
People have read that being a devotee of a God-Man is the highest form of
sadhana. They think all you need to do is work up a little feeling of love for
your God-idea every now and then. And when do such people do that
sadhana the most? It is usually when they are indulging themselves the
most! When they are stoned, drunk, happy, relieved, guilty or afraid, that is
when they begin to be the most "devotional." But truly, these are the least
devotional, the least sensitive times. Such expressions are not true devotion.
True devotion is the fruit of discipleship. It is the responsibility of the disciple
to live this way of Guru-Satsang consciously, and to do its sadhana, to do
what is his responsibility as a disciple. And the fruit of it, the fruit of
discipleship is the mature and apparently simple life of a devotee. That is
why I have said that at the end of the period of discipleship the individual will
become my devotee. I am the sole meditation of my devotee. There is a
peculiar form of sadhana that is awakened in such a person. And I will know
who is prepared to do such sadhana, who is prepared to live the conditions of
a devotee. There is no reason to be concerned for when you are going to be
"finished" as a disciple. Be perfectly willing to be a disciple forever.
"Devotee" is just a word used to describe a certain state of sadhana, a
certain quality of sadhana. It is not a kind of status any more than Guru is a
kind of status. It is a function. If the function doesnt exist, there is no point in
being called a devotee, and there is no "status" gained in actually being a
devotee in any case. Those who are my devotees are going to work! Being a
devotee is more than loving me. Being a devotee is absolute adherence to
me. Sadhana must have developed, really developed, before a person is
capable of doing that. Look at all of the resistance that has come alive in the
members of this Ashram with just the few conditions that have been given so
far. The conditions of being a devotee are absolute! They are a fire. So to be
a devotee is not just some smiling craziness. Therefore, do not be concerned
to be called a devotee. Be my disciple, and I will know when you are living
the life of a devotee.
DEVOTEE: The way I understand it, resistance of any sort, whether it is
apparently in relation to some other person or in relationship to ones
function at any time is obviously and ultimately resistance to Guru.
FRANKLIN: Very good. That is real insight. That is the discovery of a devotee.
The Guru is the Form of Reality. The Guru is not just a light above your head,
not just the light between your eyes. He is everything, he is all functions. The
relationship to the Guru is fundamental. It is the fundamental condition. It
duplicates the structure of all manifestation. Hidden within the one you know
to be your Guru, and hidden as well within the one you know to be yourself,
is all and very Reality. But this realization must be a practical one, not just a
mystical one. It must be lived. It must be consciously lived at every level of
manifestation.
DEVOTEE: Does karma prevent the ability to function?
FRANKLIN: Karma is the inability to function. The karmic condition is the
continuous sense of dilemma. Satsang is the only way in which your
dilemma, your karma becomes obsolete, because it is not meditation on your
dilemma, it is not an attempt to transform the limited self you are always
meditating on. Neither is Satsang an attempt not to meditate on this
dilemma. Nor is it an attempt to change this "self" on which you usually
meditate. Satsang is relationship to Guru. Satsang is to live the relationship
to Guru under all the instances of this tendency to contract into negative or
obsessive meditation on your limited state and your failure. If you do this
hour by hour, day by day, life after life, aeon after aeon, becoming evermore
absorbed in the Guru, loving the Guru, serving the Guru, living that very
condition of Satsang with the Guru, you will have no use for your karmic
dilemma any longer. It simply will not be functioning any longer. It will
become obsolete. It becomes obsolete through non-use. Therefore, Satsang
is the principle by which suffering becomes obsolete and by which all
function is fulfilled. And the perfect form of Satsang is the life of a devotee,
of one who is perfectly absorbed in the Guru, perfectly absorbed on every
functional level. The only way you become capable of that is by living the
disciplines of spiritual life in the company of the Guru. This whole process of
Satsang simply works to make obsolete this thing that you are always
meditating on and trying to do something about. So live Satsang instead of
being concerned in any way about that.
I am not making the negative statement: "Dont be concerned about that." I
am making the positive statement: "Live Satsang." Live this relationship to
me. Neither meditate on your dilemma, nor try not to meditate on it. Always
meditate on me. Always live this condition of Satsang. Always do the
sadhana that I will communicate to you. If you always do that, your concerns
as well as the thing itself will dissolve. But every time you interrupt the
process of Satsang in order to contemplate this disturbance, this dilemma,
this limitation, this feeling, this suffering, you have turned from me to
distraction in yourself. I am not saying you should do something to all of that.
Nor am I telling you not to do anything about all of that. What I am telling
you to do is not an action in relation to all of that. It is an action in relation to
me. It is Satsang. Always live with me. Always meditate on me. He comes
alive again because the sense of dilemma has ceased to be the principle of
his existence.
DEVOTEE: Ramana Maharshi said to enquire within, enquire as to the nature
of your own existence. Is enquiry the method of Self-realization?
FRANKLIN: Ramana Maharshi said enquire. Someone had already to be sitting
with Ramana, otherwise the recommendation would not have been made. In
fact, the fundamental method of Ramana Maharshi was Satsang, and most
often, but not always, he recommended enquiry in the form "Who am I?" to
those who lived in Satsang with him. I also recommend a particular form of
enquiry to those who have turned to me. It is detailed in The Knee of
Listening.