The Bridge To God
(Even Science is a Magical Activity)

October 21, 1980

PART 3

	This world is God Present. God is not merely behind the world and elsewhere and up there and inside. God is Omnipresent, absolutely Present, unqualifiedly Present. Not to see God in the terms of manifest reality is to fail to Realize God. Therefore, we must awaken to the magical nature of this world, see the Divine, and enjoy the link or bridge to God that all our relations, the body-mind itself, and all the media of this world represent, particularly all its outstanding features, those unique magical entities, places, and substances that show themselves to be of great significance in the course of Spiritual practice. These things, above all, must be valued in the ritual terms of sacred activity.

AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: The trouble with conventional religion is that it has broken down the bridge to the Divine World. Conventional religion talks a great deal about God, but it has no bridge to God, in the form of either esoteric practices or an understanding of the world as a sacred universe. In conventional religion the universe has been emptied of its sacred significance as a bridge and as an expression of Divine Communion. The Divine is therefore considered only in the abstract. People are everywhere crying out for help from God, but there is no Power in their cries because they have established no link to the Divine. Without the link there is no Power. The medium of connection, the actual connection, the bridge, makes the Power possible, makes prayer and all sacred activity workable, makes such activity effective and not merely imaginary.

We must value all the links, all the media, of Divine Association. Such valuation is the significance of the body-mind as "the temple of God." It is not such a temple in and of itself, but when rightly related to the Divine, the body-mind is a bridge, a form of Divine Association. It is in this sense that it should be valued, not merely for its own sake, as an egoic temple to oneself.

Likewise, the entire world is a temple of Divine Association. All temples are really summations or descriptions of the total cosmos. They are empowered as the summary of the cosmos, as a perfect bridge to the Divine. The Divine is perfectly apparent in Holy Places, therefore, and may be contacted directly there through right kinds of association. The body-mind is such a temple, but worship is not to be reduced to self-possessed activities of indulging one's body-mind. Such a view justifies Narcissistic immersion in oneself, inversion only.

No, the total universe is a sacred manifestation, an incarnate expression of the Divine. It is a perfect link to the Divine if we are Awakened. Then, when Awakened, we see the magical significance of the cosmos and of the present moment and no longer discount the features of this world because we are in mortal fear. Rather, we use all the features of this world as a bridge to God, as a medium of God-Communion, as a Vision in fact of the Divine — not a vision in and of itself but something that is transparent to God, and a medium nonetheless, not something that is supposed to be discounted and emptied of Divine Power.

This world is God Present. God is not merely behind the world and elsewhere and up there and inside. God is Omnipresent, absolutely Present, unqualifiedly Present. Not to see God in the terms of manifest reality is to fail to Realize God. Therefore, we must awaken to the magical nature of this world, see the Divine, and enjoy the link or bridge to God that all our relations, the body-mind itself, and all the media of this world represent, particularly all its outstanding features, those unique magical entities, places, and substances that show themselves to be of great significance in the course of Spiritual practice. These things, above all, must be valued in the ritual terms of sacred activity.

To live such a sacred life, you must be free of all automatic asanas, prejudices, and habitual ways of adapting the nervous system and accumulating presumptions totally independent of clear thinking or experience. You must free the body-mind, the nervous system, the being altogether from the entire concoction of suffering that is just an obstruction even to seeing what is before your eyes at this moment. Therefore, apply the discipline of being unreservedly associated with what is. Make that your occupation, instead of spending your lifetime spewing out the logic of your own suffering and calling it knowledge. Apply yourself to that discipline of unqualified association for a period of time, and something remarkable about the nature of things is bound to break through it.

This is what I did in college. I just gave Myself up to that discipline. It was very difficult, no doubt about it, but it is the only option you have when you recognize that your life is nothing but accumulated suffering. If life is nothing but a mortal cage and "when you're dead, you're dead," then let that really be seen, and then the hell with all of it! If mortality is all there is to life, the hell with the whole machine! Who gives a damn! Why should you even suffer then? Pleasurize yourself into oblivion! Kill yourself with pleasures! What difference does anything make, if mortality and annihilation really are what life and death are all about? But find out if that really is the way it is!

To find out, however, you must apply yourself to another discipline altogether than just presuming that that is the way it is. Those who simply presume that this is the way it is have not applied themselves to the difficult affair of existence with sufficient energy to really find out about life. They have just suffered in a bind, a box of ideas and presumptions, a certain logic of the nervous system, one particular asana or attitude. Such a state is of no value and cannot produce anything of significance. Therefore, really find out the way it is for yourself.

Having done that personally, it has not at all been My discovery that "this life is a mortal cage" and "when you're dead, you're dead." Not at all. But I have not come to this point of view merely by thinking in some predecided fashion or by wanting to believe something like that. I simply gave Myself up to the Process of existence. I allowed its Revelation to take place. When you live in that sensitive disposition, the universe moves and breaks up, you move and break up, and What is Alive begins to show Itself.

Now if it had turned out that life is a mortal cage and when you're dead, you're dead, then I Myself would have said the hell with it. But that is not what became obvious. Likewise, all of you must do the same thing. You must go through the same trial. I am not suggesting that you believe a certain bunch of propositions based on whatever authority you may want to presume exists in My case. We simply consider this together. And you must consider it to the point of understanding, practicing, associating yourself with the Real Process of existence, and seeing that revelation.

The Way of Adidam is about finding Real God, the Actual, Living, and Present, Revealed God, the God Who is Tangible, Obvious, not merely believed in, not merely thought about, but directly, obviously Revealed. And it is a Way of associating with That One in which you can participate with your entire being. The Way is about developing that capacity. If you are weak and afraid and in doubt, then obviously you are not very close to that capacity. But know that the actual development of the Way involves the transcendence of fear and weakness and doubt, not by working on fear and weakness and doubt or on other characteristics in yourself you feel you must somehow press out or cease to notice, but by discovering, through the submission of yourself to the Totality of things as they are, whatever That is, and entering into association with That in the Presence of Which fear and weakness and doubt simply do not arise.

If you are hungry and there is lunch, then hunger ceases to be your attitude. You simply eat. In the Presence of the literal Divine, in the moment of actual Communion with the Divine, fear and weakness and doubt do not come into play. The only reason they exist at all is that we are involved with ourselves and not with the Real God.

The fathers and prophets of Israel would wander around in the wilderness calling for God. Then suddenly they would have a direct Revelation of God. Wherever that Revelation took place, they would build a temple and settle the tribe there. That is how those early patriarchs became part of the ancient history of the Jews.

In the earliest days the Jews were not a single great tribe. Theirs was an accumulated culture whose alliances were based on the wanderings of individuals who would perform this exercise of surrender, calling upon God and waiting for the Revelation. They did not just arbitrarily believe in God. They kept praying, wandering, actively looking for God. Then, when the Revelation came, they would build a temple on that spot and settle. The individual patriarchs acknowledged by the Jews were originally principal figures in single tribal groups. Over time these various tribal groups began to become integrated with one another, and they collectively acknowledged all the individuals who had made this discovery. Eventually, as a single culture they came to certain opinions about the nature of God.

You must do the same thing. You do not know what anything is. You do not know what this entire existence is. You have no reason to presume any of the ideas you have, positive or negative. Thus, you have no option but to surrender yourself completely to Whatever It Is and wander and call upon It, Whatever It Is, until It Shows Itself. Then when It Shows Itself, you settle down and relate to It.

People should get out of their houses and out of the cities and go screaming into the countryside and do whatever the hell they must do just to maintain their attention in discovering the real nature of their existence. If they did this for a few years, instead of just carrying on as everybody is, there would be much positive change. Let all those politicians abandon their mansions. Let them take off their damn clothes and go out into the desert somewhere and find out what is happening. Everybody is upset, crazy, negative. Well, kick them out into the desert. Do not place them in positions of power. Let them go and find It as It is. This has been done in times past. This is exactly what ancient societies used to do with aberrated people. [Laughter.] Youth was supposed to be devoted to finding It out, rather than being idiotic and a threat to everyone.

But in our time you are not expected to find anything out. You are expected to believe life as it is given to you, you see. We were all naive in our childhood and willing to accept what parents told us, what everybody told us. But after a few years, you realize that life is rotten, that you are just an unhappy, confused son-of-a-bitch, and that everybody is suffering. The whole affair is insane!

Rather than settling down to an adolescent life of complaint, you should kick your ass out of the house and submit yourself to the bare facts of existence. Wander until you find It. This was an obvious course to Me. There was no way I was just going to take a profession or a job and settle down to a middle-class life. To do so was insane from My point of view. I did not see any Happy people. I only saw people burdened with their lifetime occupation, their dumb ideas about existence, and their endless neurotic fretting. What is the purpose of organizing that into a career? What is the purpose of devoting yourself to a life of preserving that?

Since My Own inheritance was lacking, since I really received no inheritance but suffering, there was no possibility, then, from My point of view, of just assuming the life of an ordinary householder, working and paying My dues to society. Since, in spiritual terms or real terms, I only received a negative inheritance, it was obvious to Me that there was no option but to take up a life of wandering, of submission, in order to discover the Truth, whatever That was going to be. My intention was simply to discover Reality altogether as It Is, rather than presume It to be anything whatsoever.

You likewise must do this in some essential sense before you can actually take up the Way of Adidam. You must become capable of real consideration, real observation, submission to the Reality of your total existence. You will take up the Way when that consideration has become conclusive, when the Revelation is in some sense basic enough to initiate the further process whereby the Revelation becomes total Enlightenment.

I have seen some people wandering in My lifetime, but they have a lot of baggage with them. They are just walking around, tasting everything and settling for all kinds of nonsense. I have not seen many real wanderers. I have not encountered many people who have actually confronted the Revelation of the Truth, because you must submit yourself to the extreme to Realize that Revelation.

A little bit of the Truth covered over by a lot of nonsense, you see, is as aberrating as no Truth at all. And I have seen people with a little Truth who were aberrated like everyone else. Your commitment to the Truth must become so profound that you are willing to become aberrated by that commitment. You must be willing to go mad with it. You must be willing to be destroyed by it. Your commitment must be complete.

At the beginning, of course, there is no guarantee of anything whatsoever. My engagement of this Way of life was totally open-ended. There were no guarantees. Thus, it is a dangerous proposition to submit yourself, not to that which you know, but to That Which you do not know at all. After a while, perhaps, you know something about It, and maybe some of Its features begin to brighten up, but you never know It. You are still always submitting yourself to What you do not know.

The trouble with people in general is that they are submitting themselves, consciously or unconsciously, to all kinds of things they think they know. The discipline is to submit yourself to What you do not know. Most of what people think they know is not knowledge at all. It is just presumption, imagination. Ultimately, you must be in an utterly mindless, uncontracted disposition of total submission to the Infinite.

In that disposition the Revelation can take all kinds of forms. It is Crazy Wisdom, you see. All Wise Men are Crazy. You must be Crazy to surrender so hard that the room gets bright! If everything looks bright to you, you must be a little mad. But do not even look for brightness. Just surrender, because if you demand brightness, the Brightness may start glaring at you like a five-million-watt bulb and drive you insane. Merely to see brightness is not to be Enlightened. Schizophrenics see brightness and become terrified.

Do not look for all kinds of psychic stuff, therefore. Psychism can be deluding and maddening. Simply surrender the total body-mind into the Infinity that you do not know, through the practice of Ruchira Avatar Bhakti Yoga in every moment. Do not demand any kind of experience. Whatever experience occurs for you could very well drive you mad and disturb you unless you are simply in a surrendered disposition. Enlightenment is not necessarily associated with all kinds of psychic phenomena. It is very likely that such things will develop, but it is not necessary that there be psychic phenomena, visions of light, or anything of the sort. There can be just utter surrender, an intuition of Bliss, and Freedom, tacit but Real nonetheless, and utterly Liberating.

Therefore, let existence take whatever form it is going to take. Do not demand that it take on some sort of extraordinary psychic form or any extraordinary form in the world. Simply surrender. The Revelation will take whatever form it is going to take in your case. And when it takes place, and when it is real, it will be obvious and also sufficient. Therefore, you should make no prejudgment about what form it is supposed to take. Simply put yourself in a position to observe all its forms.

Do not arbitrarily make the decision that you exist in an objective, independently existing, material world. You have no reason to believe such a thing. Conventionally you are associated with forms and others, but you need not assign independent existence to all of that. Your perceptions are all psychic in nature. They are developments of the mind and nervous system. They are not really associated with something independent of a process of psychic perception and cognition.

Do not be so quick, therefore, to presume that the world is of that objective kind. Submit as you are. Submit in human terms. To submit in human terms, you must submit in consciousness. You must submit psychically. You must surrender into existence as a psychic being, a conscious being, who is not associated with objective, independent events, but only with a mass of psychic states. That is the way it is in any case. You cannot make it any different. Surrender as that, therefore, and look for all the peculiar signs of the nature of things.

My experience is that it is utterly and directly confirmed that what we call the physical world is just a dimension of the psyche, a dimension of the world in which we exist psychically. The so-called physical or material universe is passing through changes according to psychic laws. All the physical laws ultimately coincide with psychic laws and with the whole domain of subtlety that cannot be differentiated from the mode of existence we call the psyche. You know that anything positive or negative can arise in the mind, but the same is true of this physical universe. It can seem to be dark and dismal and mortal. It can also seem to be totally different from that — bright and immortal and magical. It is not that one or the other of those perceptions is true. Both possibilities exist, and the one you perceive depends on your habit of association with existence. You command the karma of your destiny by virtue of your technique or habit of association with things.

You must become responsible for the attitude — mental, psychic, and emotional — whereby you relate to moment-to-moment existence. The place where we are thinking is the same place we see with our open eyes. The changes of mind are changes of the same universe we see with open eyes. It is simply that we apparently cognize these mental phenomena in a different dimension from this physical one. We do not see the coincidence between them, and so we are stuck with a mind that seems to be inside and separate from the world. We must ultimately recognize that there is no dividing line between the psyche and the body and the world. They are an infinite plastic. They are one Process. And when the psyche and the world begin to coincide and the barrier breaks down, then we begin to become Happy, because the Energy, the Being, That Is Inherent in the universe is then allowed to Move freely and to Saturate our existence.

You can see through the mind and the physical world at the same time. There is no obstruction between oneself and God. There is no self between oneself and God. We reside simply in the Seat of Being. And we are totally capable of being Happy simply to Radiantly Exist. It is just that we have all kinds of habits of mind that involve us in formalities, patterns, adventures, and limitations. So we cease to recognize things and we forget our Position, which is simply the Domain of Infinitely Radiant Being.

We will not achieve That Condition in time. We are already resident in That Condition. If you will recognize all these psycho-physical phenomena, then it becomes obvious that you are in that Position. You become Happy again. The body-mind begins to Shine. It begins to become blissful, transparent, and unnecessary. Its being unnecessary does not mean that you make the decision to dissociate from it. Paradoxically, its being unnecessary makes it possible that it continue, because it is not binding. It is not caused.

In our suffering and despair it seems that it would be nice to die and be taken out of here into some better place. But the discipline of our existence is to Realize the Brightness in this incident. Only on that basis, paradoxically, are we released from it. Thus, we are obliged by the very Law of our existence to transcend the limitations that are themselves only presumptions and that seem to exist by virtue of birth. We must become Happy and Outshine this body-mind, Outshine this world, Outshine all the doctrines of this world.

Ultimately, then, the secret is not to become psychic and peer through the hole in your forehead to the other side. It is rather to recognize this world totally, become free of all of its limits, outbreathe it, outlove it, outlive it. Achieve such Force through submission to God that the God-Force overcomes the world.

In our natural or usual condition there seems to be a consciousness, simply, and there seem to be processes of cognition and perception, and there seem to be forms of all kinds. But in the Enlightened Disposition of total Communion with the Reality That is the Condition of all of those features of our existence, they all become transparent. They have no significance or limiting existence. Everything is tacitly recognizable, transparent. There is no self. There is no mind. There is no perception. There are no forms. There are no relations. There is no world. There are no limits. There is no past, no future, no place. There is simply the Radiant Being, and it is to This that we must resort ultimately. It is This to which we submit all forms, all states, every sense of independent existence, to the extreme, to the point of Ecstasy, to the point of Translation.

In the seventh stage of life such Translation has already taken place. It seems to others, perhaps, that the individual is still current in the ordinary fashion. But from the point of view of Realization there is already no self, no mind, no body, no world, no time or space. Everything is recognizable, Shined through. In the Bhava of that recognition there is no sense of being a self behind anything or in any place. There is no thinking, no psychic or mental form, no bodily perception, no otherness, nothing concretely arising. There is only Radiant Transcendental Being.

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Crazy Wisdom — "Crazy Wisdom" is the spontaneous Humor, Freedom, Understanding, and total Liberation from all conventions (personal, social, psycho-physical, religious, spiritual, universal) that characterize the great Spiritual Masters wherever and whenever they appear. The Realization (whether partial or complete) at the root of Crazy Wisdom Teaching is expressed in such paradoxical formulas as "Nirvana (the Transcendental Reality) and samsara (conditional, manifest existence) are the same." Crazy Wisdom is thus unpremeditated, Free action, without regard for the egoic taboos and strictures of either conventional secular or conventionally sacred society. It is a Manifestation, often temporary, for the sake of the Teaching-Instruction of others.

Bhava — Avatar Adi Da Samraj here refers to Divine Translation, the final event in the course of the life of a seventh-stage Realizer. It is the natural "Mood of Ecstasy" in which there is Divine Inherence without any noticing of arising conditions, coinciding with the complete dissolution or Translation of the individual into the Divine Being.