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Understand
your un-Happiness. Then you will be capable of locating
Happiness, and, having located Happiness, you will be
capable of practicing the Way of Adidam, which is nothing
but the devotion of life to Happiness. The practices
of this Way are not methods for attaining Happiness,
but they are the expressions of Happiness. The disciplines
of money, food, and sex are not a way to become Happy.
Discipline is difficult enough — why should we also
burden it with the obligation to make us Happy!
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AVATAR
ADI DA SAMRAJ: People are basically un-Happy, I have
noticed. [Laughter.] Spiritual practice and religious
belief or religious commitment are traditionally proposed as
a means for attaining Happiness, but the instructions associated
with a spiritual Teaching are received by the ego, this knotted
being that wants to own it, to use it, and to be made Happy
by it. You think that you can seek Happiness and find it. Thus,
your search for Happiness is itself a confession of un-Happiness.
I am here to tell you that you cannot Realize Happiness by persisting
in un-Happiness or the method of un-Happiness. All seeking is
the expression, the method, and the practice of un-Happiness.
It
is not enough that what I am saying is true. It must also be
understood. You must observe yourself, observe all of the means
represented by your life and see that you are always un-Happy,
always trying to become Happy. That being the case, you can
ask yourself "Where is Happiness?" You might well
ask! [Laughter.]
But the process considered in the essays you have heard today
is not a search for Happiness. Come to Me, sit with Me, live
with Me, listen to My Argument, observe yourself, begin to understand.
See Me, feel the Spiritual Divine and Awaken in My Company,
in this community of practice. All of that begins to become
the location of Happiness.
These
essays are not suggesting that, un-Happiness being the case,
you should go and find Happiness. I am not telling you who are
un-Happy to do something to become Happy. You must first understand
your un-Happiness. You already want to do something about it.
You already want to seek Happiness. Instead, I ask you to consider
this un-Happiness, consider this moment, this process, this
activity, this self. If you will listen to Me to the point of
hearing, to the point of understanding this consideration, you
will also begin to "see" Me, you will also begin to
become Awakened to the Spiritual Divine, you will begin to become
converted to Happiness rather than the search for It.
All beings are always
already Happy. You always know, at this very moment you know
exactly, what it would be to look and feel and be and act completely
Happy. Yet your attention is wandering from that Happiness,
wandering into the self-contraction, into the not-self or the
objects of self-contraction, the dilemma, the problem, the troubles,
the fear, sorrow, anger, mortal pursuits, obsessions, desires,
consolations of mind, emotion, body. That is why you are un-Happy.
Clearly, Happiness is not to be attained by meditating on un-Happiness
(or the self-contraction), but just as clearly it is not to
be attained by trying to protect yourself from feeling un-Happiness.
Happiness is presently
the case. In this moment you are already Happy. Sitting with
Me, locate this Happiness. Feel where it is that you are now
Happy. Look for it in your toes, in your fingers, in your shirt,
in your head. Look for it in the chakras, your stomach, your
desires, your wife, your husband, your relations, your pain,
your pleasure. Find it. You are Happy. Where are you being Happy?
Where is the actual feeling of Happiness? Simply locate it and
meditate on it, feel it. Come into My Company and hear Me argue
this Teaching, which is basically a criticism of un-Happiness,
a call for you to observe the mechanism of your un-Happiness,
so that you will not then go and try to become Happy, but will
rather, having understood un-Happiness, become capable of locating
Happiness.
The advanced practice
of the Way of Adidam depends upon this hearing and seeing. You
cannot fully practice Ruchira
Avatara Bhakti Yoga, or the conscious process, conductivity,
service, the disciplines of money, food, and sex, or any other
aspect of this Way without listening to the point of hearing,
without observing to the point of understanding the mechanism
of un-Happiness or self-contraction, and without seeing, or
being turned about, or being converted in your attention to
Happiness rather than un-Happiness.
You tend to propose spiritual
life on the basis of your un-Happiness. You have some problem
and you want to be relieved of it. You want spiritual life to
be the proposition of a method whereby you will be relieved
of the problem of your life. Such a process might be proposed.
Traditionally, it is proposed. In fact methods for release from
un-Happiness are proposed by every condition, every
moment, every circumstance, every
being. Every moment of existence represents a proposition to
you of a way to become Happy. It is not only religion and esoteric
spirituality that are in the business of giving people methods
for becoming Happy. Everybody is in this business, everything
is in this business.
The fulfillment of all
of those efforts, the fulfillment of desire in any form, is
not God-Realization. The processes of our existence are all
developments of our un-Happiness until we are Enlightened —
until we understand the egoic
self, are established in the Divine Being, and so recognize
the universe. Until then, every moment of existence is the play
upon the self-knot, the knot of the heart, the self-contraction,
and we are bewildered and un-Happy.
There is no object high
or low, in any dimension of the realm of Nature, the attainment
of which is Happiness. Brahman or God or Happiness is not an
object that can be attained. To Realize God, Truth, Brahman,
or Happiness we must transcend the self-knot and our motivation
toward objects of all kinds based on that contraction. The spiritual
process in the Way of Adidam is not merely another form of what
people are always already doing (which is the motivation of
un-Happiness toward the goal of Happiness). If it were, it would
be very much like having a meal when you are hungry, having
sex when you desire it, or any version of the ritual of achieving
a goal.
The true spiritual process
is not a version of the conventional ritual of the body-mind
or of the ego. The true spiritual process is based upon understanding
the mechanism of egoity, embodiment, self, and self-contraction.
If you — you as this self-contraction — ask Me how
to Realize Happiness, basically I have nothing to say to you.
There is no way for you to become Happy. You simply are not
Happy, and that is what you must recognize first.
Understand your un-Happiness.
Then you will be capable of locating Happiness, and, having
located Happiness, you will be capable of practicing the Way
of Adidam, which is nothing but the devotion of life to Happiness.
The practices of this Way are not methods for attaining Happiness,
but they are the expressions of Happiness. The disciplines of
money, food, and sex are not a way to become Happy. Discipline
is difficult enough — why should we also burden it with
the obligation to make us Happy! [Laughter.]
The first thing you encounter
in My Company, this Satsang with Me, is My Teaching Argument.
It has many, many forms, but fundamentally it is a criticism
of self-contraction or the mechanism of un-Happiness, and
it is a criticism of all the
things that you want to do about your un-Happiness. It is a
criticism of your entire life. No congratulations whatsoever
come to you through confrontation with My Teaching and with
Me. Why should you be congratulated? You are un-Happy! Un-Happiness
is a common attainment. [Laughter.]
Why should you want to settle for your present state? Why should
you want to be congratulated in it? You have not even begun
and already you want to be acknowledged for having attained
It.
The ego, Narcissus, the
self-knot, is always defending itself, always seeking isolation
and immunity from relations. The fundamental condition of the
Way of Adidam is Satsang, or the relationship with Me. The fundamental
condition of existence is participatory relationship with the
Divine, or the obligation of self-transcendence. We do not exist
in isolation. The Divine Being, Person, or Self is not within
us in isolation. The Divine Person is the Condition within and
from which "I" is contracting. The Divine Self is
the Identity from which we are contracting in our egoity, our
independence, our conventional individuality, our isolation,
and our inwardness.
People read My Teaching
and they want to be the Gurus of others. They think about My
Teaching a little bit and they want to be famous as Spiritual
Masters. They manage to keep their physical life somewhat straight
for six months and they want to be regarded as Avatars! Life
is foolishness. This is no time, in any case, to be tolerant
of foolishness. The world is mad, and these are dreadful times.
Things are not going to be easier in the years ahead. The spiritual
process has always been lived in difficult times. Therefore,
the spiritual process tolerates no fool. The spiritual process
itself will spit you out. It is not an easy attainment, but
a profoundly difficult affair. Even what you have listened to
today has been heard by only a fraction of the human race in
all of history. The opportunity to practice is extremely rare,
and the fulfillment of practice is practically unknown.
In some sense you could
say this life is hell. In our religious language we talk about
what could happen to you after death: you can go to heaven,
you can go to purgatory and get cleaned up, or you can go to
hell. And then having gone to purgatory or to a temporary hell,
perhaps you will be lucky enough to be born as a human being
and devote yourself to the spiritual process. Looking at it
in another way, you could say this birth itself is hell. This
is one of the hells, because this is a domain of un-Happiness.
What else is hell but a place of self-obsession, bewilderment
without release? This is a tormented place, not tormented by
constant fires and people gnawing on your skull, although these
things also happen. [Laughter.]
But the nature of this hell is that we are self-possessed. We
are born in un-Happiness and we do not transcend it readily.
We constantly pursue Happiness through all kinds of incredibly
complex means, and we never attain It. In the entire history
of this mortal gathering there have been occasional individuals
who have actually Realized (to one degree or another) the nature
of existence, the Condition, the Reality, the Divine Nature
and Domain, not simply as a form of belief, but fully, bodily,
utterly, transcendentally. Such Great Ones become a mechanism
in Nature that serves the possibility of Awakening in others.
If
Spiritual Realizers did not turn about and Teach, this would
truly be a hell instead of being like a hell. It would truly
be a hell if there were no possibility of Enlightenment, if
there were no Teaching, no Spiritual Masters, no sacred Way,
no sacred community, no capacity for understanding or self-transcendence.
It is true the world is always struggling against such possibilities.
The world does not like Spiritual Masters, Spiritual
Teachings, spiritual communities.
Neither do individuals like these things. Thus, those who take
up the Way of Adidam struggle with Me, struggle with My Teaching,
the community, the institution, animating the endless affair
of brutishness, betrayals, attacks, plain old neurosis, non-service.
The world in its hellish form is at war with Happiness.
My Teaching is Wisdom
about un-Happiness and the offering of the Transmission of Happiness,
the offering — to everyone who will hear and see and take
up the Way of Adidam — of every possible advantage that
can be given to beings born in this dimension. Yes, the Teaching
is good, practice is good, community is good, you as a practitioner
of My Teaching are good, but it is even better if there are
the Spiritual Master, mature devotees, the Sanctuaries, the
means of Blessing, if the Transmission is Radiating through
all of time and space through My Blessing-Work. This is much
better. And in fact it is those more profound forms of Transmission
that are the true Treasures, the real or ultimate means upon
which all other Agencies are based.
You must understand that
this Communion is not a religion business or a cultic haven
where the neurotics of the world may dramatize their suffering.
The world is already a haven for the dramatization of suffering.
The institution of Adidam is simply a vehicle for My Teaching
and Blessing Work, a means whereby the Teaching is made available
to as many people as possible, a means whereby a cultural gathering
of practitioners becomes the context of practice rather
than isolation, a means whereby
Sanctuaries can be created and empowered and preserved and made
accessible, a means whereby the Spiritual Master can be maintained
as Spiritual Master and not some worldly functionary and made
accessible to those who will practice.
My Teaching is a serious
and profound matter, and you must study it profoundly and devote
your entire life to it. The process is most difficult, as any
creative process is difficult. And because the Way of Adidam
is the greatest process of all, it is therefore the most difficult
and the most relevant. All other difficulties or forms of tapas
[heat] are simply expressions of this one fundamental
tapas, the heat of the spiritual process. And what is the spiritual
process ultimately? It is a matter of keeping attention in Happiness
rather than in un-Happiness, keeping attention in My Well of
Happiness, the Condition, the present Locus in which My Happiness,
My Current of Love-Bliss, is actually felt, and on that basis
developing the various aspects of the Way of Adidam: real meditation,
conductivity, service, and self-discipline.
Many people who are beginners
and many who remain beginners even for a very long time are
struggling with the life-disciplines, service, conductivity,
and meditation. They are struggling, but actually these aspects
of the practice are only the remote cause of that struggle.
Such people really are struggling with disciplining the ego,
with their resistance to the ritual of purification and devotion.
They are trying to practice without first establishing the foundation.
As seekers, as un-Happy people seeking Happiness, they are trying
to practice. They are not founding their practice in surrendering
the faculties to Me. Therefore, they can only imitate
certain of the outer, behavioral features of practice, but they
cannot really practice.
You can practice the
Way of Adidam only if you are Happy, through your surrender
to Me. Therefore, I have said many times, and I say it again:
Come to Me when you are already Happy. Do not come to Me un-Happy.
There is nothing I can do about it. If you want to live an un-Happy
life, then that is your business, your concern, your karma.
I am not your parent. You must become interested enough in the
transcendence of all of that to practice the Way.
Why
struggle with Me? Why struggle with My Teaching? Why struggle
with this Communion? If you do not want to practice, then do
not practice. If you want to live as you are tending to live,
then go and live as you tend to live. Choose it if you will.
But if you cannot choose your destiny as it is, then consider
My Teaching and understand.
Hear Me. Awaken to the
Spiritual Reality in this Company, take up the practice seriously,
become a serious person, not part of the mass of molecular machinery,
the robot world of body-minds.
The Way of Adidam is
serious, I am serious, this Communion is serious, and we are
struggling to preserve our Communion and to be of service to
people in these difficult times. What you are offered therefore
is this relationship. I am here. I am present in the world.
I am no longer active in the ordinary sense, but I am present
here.
My business with you
all is not to give talks anymore. Your questions are problems,
and the Way of Adidam is not a solution to your problems. The
Way of Adidam is based on the Happiness that is Transmitted
in My Company. You should approach Me and use Me for that Transmission.
You have the opportunity to sit here with Me — do you feel
the Happiness, the Current of Happiness?
The greater the force
of your attention, your participation, your submission here,
the more profound the realization of that Current becomes, the
more it attracts attention, the more it becomes the foundation
of your life, the more you become capable of the discipline
of service, the more you become capable of adapting the body-mind
to that Current, breathing it, feeling it, relaxing into it,
the more you become capable of keeping attention in that Well
of Happiness. To attract your attention to the Current of Happiness
is the purpose of My birth.
Everything is un-Happiness
except the location of Happiness. All other pursuits are contraction
from Happiness. Therefore, you must found your existence on
Happiness. You must understand the mechanism whereby you become
un-Happy and constantly locate this Bliss. And then practice,
make use of My Company personally in the form of all the Agencies
that I have established here, make use of the capacity to enter
into the sphere of My Influence through meditation. I am manifesting
in this appearance, but I am
that Current.
How much of it you receive
or notice in any moment depends on how great the vessel of your
gift. If you hold up a thimble, even if the ocean fell on your
head, you would have only that much! [Laughter.] Why
defend yourself in My Company? Why defend yourself in the Company
of God? Why blame God? Why make God into your parent and then
play adolescent, dependence-independence games with God? God
is not outside you making you, God is this Current, this Nature,
this Being, of which everything, including your apparent self,
is a modification, an unnecessary play, transparent when we
recognize it.
If you are thinking,
is that locating this Happiness? Is Happiness in your thinking?
Are any of these thoughts Happy? [Laughter.]
You are already feeling this Current, this Happiness. Where
is the feeling? Even in a moment when you are physically in
pain, emotionally in pain, mentally distressed, even in that
moment you can locate this Current of Bliss, of Happiness. Even
in such a moment you are already Happy. That Current that you
may realize
[as already present]
at any moment is the link to the spiritual process.
In addition to realizing
that link, finding that Happiness, in every moment you must
understand the mechanism whereby you forget Happiness, whereby
you contract from it. You must understand more and more and
locate this Current consistently. Then over time it will begin
to saturate the entire body-mind and the entire world. It will
magnify itself. Its extent will begin to be shown. This is the
work of Transmission that cooperates with you in your practice,
your surrender, your hearing and seeing. The mere sense of Happiness
that you may now contact is not itself ultimate Enlightenment.
It is Enlightenment simply. It is the basis of existence, not
the end of existence nor the goal.
The
Way of Adidam is based on Enlightenment from the beginning.
Having realized this basis, now
you must practice, and if you will practice this Happiness,
then its Siddhi [Spiritual power] will be magnified,
and you will pass through and beyond conditions of experience
and knowledge that belong to the lesser stages of life, the
first six stages of life, in this good Company. If you are not
presently locating this Current, then you are unconsciously
and literally forgetting It, contracting from It. You must consciously
associate attention with this spiritual Current, or Blissful
Being, or you will unconsciously withdraw from It.
This is why I call meditation
the conscious process. Real meditation is not something that
goes on magically or subliminally, like the movement of energy
through the nervous system. You must devote attention to that
Current, to Me. You must randomly exercise the body in submission
to My Current through the parts of conductivity, feeling into
My Current from the heart in all directions to Infinity, relaxing
bodily from base to crown in My Current, breathing in a descending
and ascending circuit, breathing and circulating My Current
bodily and expressing the bodily Realization of the Spiritual
Reality through service and the life of equanimity, the lawful
conservation, the creative discipline of the body-mind, which
is not a matter of conventional asceticism or arbitrarily taking
on behavior patterns that are conventional or unconventional.
It is a matter of a lawful, creative, spiritual process brought
to bear on the functions of existence.
My Current can be felt
throughout the nervous system, circulating in the crown and
the bodily base. It can be felt in primary functional centers
of the nervous system, in the centers of the body-mind associated
with the first three stages of life or the more gross levels
of existence, or the fourth stage or the fifth, the subtle brain
centers and such. Ultimately My Current is felt rising up in
the right side of your heart, between the right side of the
heart and the crown.
But in your devotion
to Me, your enquiry or your recognition in the midst of that
devotion, you realize that Current, that Nature, that Being
prior to all conditional references. That One is neither inside
nor outside. I am not "self," neither am I "not-self,"
I am not within, I am not without, I am not up or down. I am
not located anywhere but in Myself. When you have transcended
all the centers of the possible location of attention in this
devotion to Me, then you enter into the seventh stage of life
wherein everything that arises is recognizable in this Divine
Being.
In the seventh stage
of life, wherein you are utterly established in a condition
of Identification with Me, Who is the Self of your self, you
recognize the Condition of objects and of the realm of Nature
in that same Self. And as you persist in this process of recognition,
you are Transfigured, Transformed by this free Bliss. But also
the seeds of the motion of attention, or the contraction of
the Universal Being, fulfill themselves and are not regenerated.
Divine Enlightenment
is establishment in the Self or in Amrita Nadi, the Current
that stands between the right side of the heart and the place
above the crown of the head while that Current also flows or
rotates in the circumstance of the body-mind and its relations.
That is Divine
Enlightenment.
In the midst of that Bliss you recognize conditional existence
in every moment of its arising, and the seeds that move attention
into the grosser and subtler planes of this circuit gradually
are released.
Then, in Divine Translation
there is no descent or ascent. What there is in that case is
to be Realized. It is the end of embodiment, and beyond it nothing
whatsoever can be said that makes the slightest sense, except
to say that it is the Ultimate Unqualified Realization of the
Divine Reality and Domain. It is simply utter identification
with Happiness, with Me, without the slightest qualification.
The Way of Adidam, therefore,
is not to seek Happiness but to locate it or identify with it
and practice Happiness, by locating Me. If you do so, then this
Happiness will magnify itself and become Divine
Enlightenment.
If you will not practice Happiness, you will also never Realize
it. Either you practice Happiness or you practice un-Happiness.
You pay Me now or you pay Me later! [Laughter.] Now do
you have some fundamental understanding of this principle?
DEVOTEES:
Yes.
AUDIO
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