Finding
Adi Da > Chris Tong > Part IV (Waking Up) > B (Moving Beyond) > Chapter 3
3. The Asana of Turning to Adi Da and Living in the Divine Domain
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This is Part IV-B, Chapter 3 of Chris Tong's book, Finding the Divine In Person and Waking Up From the Dream.
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Everything is passing, all this flesh, all this mind. There is no freedom from rebirth and illusion unless while alive you are literally existing in another dimension. Literally!
Such an existence is not a matter of philosophy, of feeling good, of all the conventional horseshit that people put together.
You may return to this human kind of birth after your next death, if you are lucky, but you will return to it without any recollection, without any more capacity than you now enjoy, driven as you are now, confused, obsessed, without the least distance in you from this arising here, bound to it, craving on the basis of it, having no capacity whatsoever to be distinguished from this body-mind.
This will be true of you unless, while alive, you literally begin to exist in another condition, in another "place." Then, at death, and also while alive, you may go there and not come back here.
The difference between the asana of being happy and the asana of living in the Divine Domain.
We'll explore "fruitful practice" by moving through several developments of the practice: from "recognition of Adi Da", to "searchless beholding", to "filling the cup". And, for each of these milestones, we'll be considering the following themes, and understand how they unfold as the practice advances:
- the Way of Adidam is about replacing your limited, egoic state with the unlimited Divine State
- the Way of Adidam is about growing recognition of Adi Da as the Prior Condition
Come in and know me better, man!
- the Way of Adidam is about increasingly experiencing being in the Divine Domain
I Am the Acausal Self-Manifestation of the “Bright”.
I Am the Divine “Bright” Spherical Self-Domain. I Am Real (Acausal) God. I Am Reality Itself.
Adidam Ruchiradam begins only when I am straightforwardly devotionally recognized in exactly these terms.
This Is “It”.
This Is What must be Proclaimed.
This Is What devotees of Mine must live.
Adidam Ruchiradam — As It Truly Is — Is the Proclamation to all beings of the Breakthrough of the Divine “Bright” Spherical Self-Domain into the cosmic domain.
The Divine Avataric Self-“Emergence” Way, or The Walk-About Way of Adidam Ruchiradam, is not a matter of My being required to explain people to themselves and (thereby) to lead them through a seeking-process of “self”-conscious (or “self”-meditative) “self”-understanding (whereby they strategically and progressively shed their limitations). Rather, The Divine Avataric Self-“Emergence” Way, or The Walk-About Way of Adidam Ruchiradam, Is The Way of Me-recognizing devotional response to Me, such that My devotee — merely by Sighting (and constantly Remembering) My Divinely-Avatarically-Born bodily (human) Divine Form — is directly entered into The Divine-Domain-Condition in every moment, through whole-bodily-responsive Invocation of Me and (thus) total psycho-physical (and tacitly unobstructed) Communion with Me.
That Great and Unique Process Is Intrinsically (and not merely strategically or programmatically) Transformative and Purifying. That Great and Unique Process has Its own characteristics of evidence over time. From the beginning of My any devotee’s practice of The only-by-Me Revealed and Given Reality-Way of Adidam, That Process Is tacitly (and Avatarically) Established in My Divine “Bright” Spherical Self-Domain — Which Is The Self-Revelation of My Own Intrinsically egoless Person and Self-Evidently Divine State.
Those who devotionally recognize Me, in The Walk-About Manner, are recognizing (or tacitly Apprehending) My Divine State. Such recognition of Me is “radical” devotion to Me — because such recognition of Me is already “at the root”. In that case, there is no body-mind-ego responding to Me. Rather, there is direct devotional recognition of Me — Prior to all egoic “self”-identification with the body-mind-complex, and Prior to all egoic “self”-identification with the patterning of the body-mind-complex.
The right and true devotional Sighting of My Divine Avataric bodily (human) Incarnation-Form will (now, and forever hereafter) Give all those who rightly and truly devotionally recognize Me and whole bodily turn to Me always immediate access to the Divine Self-Domain, moment to moment, and from the beginning of their right and true practice of the only-by-Me Divinely Avatarically Self-Revealed Reality-Way of Adidam.
From that beginning, My true devotees participate in a process that is purifying, transforming, and (altogether) En-Light-ening — such that, Most Ultimately, all-and-All is Outshined, and Only the Divine Self-Domain Is Eternally Self-Evident As One and Indivisible Conscious Light.
The Divine Self-Domain — the Very Context and Condition That Is Reality Itself — is un-“known” (and un-“knowable”) to any “point of view”.
Therefore, all “points of view” must become a turning to Me — and, in that turning to Me (which is Divine Beholding of Me), There Is “Perfect Knowledge” and Inherent Divine Liberation.
In the Reality-Way of Adidam (or Adidam Ruchiradam), the forms of right-life “self”-discipline are never about dissociative introversion (or retreating “within” the body-mind-“self”). Rather, in the only-by-Me Revealed and Given Reality-Way of Adidam, the forms of right-life “self”-discipline are about Standing Prior to egoic “self”-identification with the body-mind-complex. Indeed, the entire Reality-Way of Adidam is about Standing Prior to egoic identification with the psycho-physical “self” — not about using the body-mind-complex to eventually achieve a state in which you, in one fashion or another, “eliminate” the body-mind-“self” through your practice, and (thereby) achieve a presumed state of Realization.
The Reality-Way of Adidam Ruchiradam is fundamentally about establishing the Position in the Divine Space. People tend to dwell in the psycho-physical space of the ego, and do not even know the Divine Space. They do not know that the Divine Space Exists.
People are in the "mummery-world" — an illusion that is rooted in ego and the constructs of mind that extend from egoity, "self"-contraction, separateness. The entire "world" is a mummery of people who are bound to this "point of view". They do not know there is the Divine Space.
The process of the Reality-Way of Adidam, even from the beginning, is one in which every devotee is enabled to enter into the Divine Space That is Prior to ego, Prior to mind, Prior to body, Prior to the psycho-physical mummery of egos.
To come to the point where you know that Space — My Space, My Domain — is the great and fundamental transition associated with Adidam Ruchiradam. Once that Space is established, once It is "Known", once there is the "Perfect Knowledge" Position, that is the Governor of life from then on.
The solid "waking world" is, when seen in Truth, no more real, necessary, fixed, significant, or true than any random "dream place".
When this begins to become even a little obvious, a process of Awakening has begun, similar to waking in the morning from your dreams.
When you begin to suspect your life a little, then you begin to become distracted by another dimension — much as the sleeper begins to sense the bed-cloth, the solid body, and the room.
At that point, one may become sensitive to the Guru, or the Buddha — One Who Is Awake, the Paradoxical Being.
The Guru Is That "Other Dimension" — in Person.
- the Way of Adidam is seventh stage from the beginning
Divine Translation, or “Real Heaven”, Is My Divine “Bright” Spherical Self-Domain of Conscious Light. Divine Translation, or “Real Heaven”, Is the Non-“ different” Sphere (or “Midnight Sun”) of the “Bright” Itself. There are all kinds of conditional domains. This plane of appearances — the human “experiential” happening — is only one locus (or “point-of-view”-specific domain). In addition to the human “possibility”, there are countless other “possibilities” in the conditionally manifested realms. My Divine “Bright” Spherical Self-Domain Transcends all “possibilities”. My Self-Domain Is the Indivisible “Bright” Divine Sphere within Which all-and-All is apparently arising. My Divine “Bright” Spherical Self-Domain Intrinsically and Always Priorly Outshines all-and-All. Therefore, when My Divine “Bright” Spherical Self-Domain Is Realized, “It” Outshines all conditional domains of “possibility”, including the domain of human “experience” on Earth. My Divine and “Bright” and Free-Standing Self-Domain—the Non-“different” Sphere of the “Bright” Itself — Is Where I Am, and Where I Stand. My Divine and “Bright” and Free-Standing Self-Domain Is What There Is to Realize. In the Ruchira Dham Event, My Stand in That Domain Became Uniquely Broken-Through to here.
Some of the benefits of growing in the practice of the Way of Adidam:
- greater intensity of Happiness
- greater whole bodily surrender — greater awareness of the difference between ordinary subjectivity and the Divine State of Happiness — not taking it into the body, reducing it to subjecivity, and dissociating from the Divine like a dog with a bone
- greater awareness of the Divine as freedom from conditional existence — greater awareness of the Divine as another Dimension
- a better context for self-understanding — increasingly less (or "flabbier") self-contraction and an increasingly better context for self-understanding
- a practice that is experienced increasingly more as Samadhi
- greater ability to effectively engage the Devotional Prayer of Changes
One of the reasons beginners often get stuck on the "beginner's plateau" is that they are not experiencing any of these benefits, at least to a degree that makes a difference. At the very beginning, the degree of Happiness can be so relatively small that it doesn't really stand out from the usual means one uses to pleasurize or relax oneself. Given that, it's easy for beginners to fall into a life that Adi Da described as "one foot in the world, and one foot in the Divine — and the bigger foot is in the world". And that pretty much guarantees one will not progress in practice.
In contrast, the more of these benefits you are experiencing, the more they can help create a "virtuous circle" or "positive feedback loop" in your practice — where, for example, greater experienced intensity of Happiness motivates greater practice which leads to even greater intensity of Happiness. Then, as Adi Da once put it, "you will move through these stages [of practice] like a hot knife through butter!"
God-Communion is the Primary Bodily Pleasure. We opened this chapter with Adi Da's quote: "Do not let it just be a little, gentle sort of consoling sensation." We're now going to delve into just how Happy we can be through Communion with Him.
But you're not here merely to be consoled, distracted, pleasurized, self-indulgent, and all the rest of it. You're here to be Happy — Infinitely Happy!
You want to be Happy, right? I mean really Happy, satisfying the entire inclination toward Happiness, real Happiness — not pleasurable distraction merely and so forth. Not soft-core happiness. I'm talking about the real hard-core Happiness, the genuine, right-down to the depths and utterly huge, altogether and satisfactory (and not temporarily so) Happiness.
You should be so focused in the Love-Bliss you Realize in My Company that, in effect, you will almost swoon through this life — not disregarding it, but, even as you participate in it, feeling beyond it so profoundly that you hardly even notice your death. Be so focused in My Love-Bliss that life is a profound devotional Communion with Me for you, in which even all the stages between human birth and that transition place evaporate because of the intensity of your adoration of the Living One.
There Is Only Happiness. Go and make morality out of That. Go and make society, culture, life, and death out of That. That is My Teaching. Therefore, what does your un-Happiness have to do with anything? It is your disease, your patient-life. You are waiting to be Happy. How could one wait for the Principle of Existence Itself? Only a fool would wait for It! Only the Happy claim It. Only those who understand themselves magnify It through every moment of their existence, in every cell.
Therefore, the secret of living is to remain in a state of pleasure. That is your responsibility. The secret of living with others is to Locate the free attention and essential pleasure in them and in yourself and redirect them to their sanity by that means.
Absolute Love-Bliss-Happiness 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. A little cramp in the solar plexus, that is what they are living in.
But when the whole body is open and My Divine Spirit-Force is Flowing through it, that Force Churns you, Purifies your life.
Then, at last, there is not anything to be un-Happy about, there is not anything to think about.
The Flood of My Love-Blissful Spirit Current 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.
In the following talk, "The Pleasure of God-Communion Must Exceed the Pleasure of Sex", Adi Da makes it clear that "God-Communion is the Primary Bodily Pleasure" and "you must make your God-Communing life as intensely pleasurable and blissful as all the other things that now distract you":
 Bernini's The Ecstasy of St. Teresa |
You may have observed that during sexual intercourse you become self-possessed, you dissociate yourself emotionally. The feeling dimension of your being collapses and you become concentrated in mere physical sensation. Under such circumstances you view emotion or feeling as just a way to make sex more "fun." You may even think that you are "adding" God-Communion to the event, but really you are only adding pleasure to your own sexual involvement. Such self-manipulation is not the same as self-transcending love. Thus, you see, you suffer emotionally during sexual intercourse.
Entering into pleasurable Communion with God is part of our necessary consideration of sexuality. Your association with God should be equally as pleasurable as sexual play, even more pleasurable because it is continuous and it involves the entire body, including the mechanisms that you exploit in sexual play. Thus, surrender to God is more pleasurable than sexual play, even in ordinary bodily terms.
You simply do not yet know how to surrender, you see. You have not learned it. Meanwhile, you are troubled by what you have already learned, the inclinations you have by tendency! That is the trouble with learning sex before you learn devotion: Thereafter it is difficult to cultivate devotion, because you cannot feel good about devotion itself in the face of this intense pleasure of sex. Sex is a familiar and pleasurable distraction, whereas God-Association is not so familiar and seems to require a certain period of learning during which you do not feel as blissful as you would like.
This consideration of the ecstasy of God-love is just beginning in you. You are still only considering being ecstatic rather than actually involving yourself in this moment in the fierce, direct confrontation with God. You are still only thinking of self-improvement.
You speak and act like people who are obsessed with and somehow consoled by this world. You see, then, what is required of you in order to take up this Way of Life. You cannot be naive about yourself. You cannot be full of yourself. There is so much to be transformed, so much to realize, that you must give up all resistance, all wishing that from now on you could be the perfect devotee without having to learn or suffer or sacrifice.
You would like this Way to be consoling — but it is not. Yes, you can enter directly into ecstasy in this moment — but only through perfect sacrifice. Your moment to moment existence must be the heartfelt practice of literal sacrifice, service, and surrender, and it must be performed with great intelligence. This Way of devotional surrender cannot be mere emotional good-heartedness. No, you must be intelligent about your practice, and you must make your God-Communing life as intensely pleasurable and blissful as all the other things that now distract you.
God-Communion is the primary bodily pleasure. It is simply that you have not realized it as such, and, therefore, you conceive of God-Communion as self-limiting and ascetic. You think you will engage some form of asceticism a little bit at a time and without practicing fiercely, and that eventually, as a result, you will realize God. You tend to feel that God-Realization is a matter of stripping yourselves of attachments, relations, and enjoyments, rather than giving up to God.
However, in truth God-Communion has nothing to do with such self-denial. It is a matter of outshining attachments, relations, and enjoyments through Communion with the Primal Enjoyment. If you are already in a condition of spiritual, bodily enjoyment, then all manifest enjoyments become superficial, ordinary, conventional processes that are neither overwhelming nor binding.
We were talking recently about St. Francis. Whenever he felt worldly desires, he would mutilate himself, punish the body for desiring. Once he threw himself into a briar patch. On another occasion he threw himself naked into the sea to cool off his cravings. Rather than living in the principle of God-Communion, he was busy working against desire. He associated with troublesome desires for which he could not be sanely responsible. He felt that they were happening to him. Thus, he could deal with them only in this bizarre, ritualistic, strategic fashion, trying to tear himself away from their binding force.
In contrast to St. Francis, others spend their whole lives indulging sexual desire. But neither the solution of indulgence nor the solution of suppression, as we see in St. Francis, is illumined. Neither of these two tendencies in any individual is true in itself — everyone adapts in some way to both solutions. Therefore, this matter of the emotional conversion, of the spiritual transcendence of all experience, is the root of the consideration of sexuality and the root of daily life for all practitioners of this Way. When the emotional conversion is not realized moment to moment, all practice becomes mediocre, if not simply false.
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.
Not just a little bit Happy. Not even very happy. . . He goes out of His way to use the words: completely Happy! And in an earlier quote: infinitely Happy. So is something to consider not only when you are not feeling happy at all, but also even when you are feeling Adi Da's Transmission of Happiness just a little bit — or even a lot. Feel the Happiness you are currently feeling and consider what it would feel like if you could "magnify it" — "Only those who understand themselves magnify It through every moment of their existence, in every cell" — to the point where there is no limitation whatsoever. One thing made clear by that reference to "in every cell" is that one aspect of "complete Happiness" is that the whole body — every cell of it — is Happy.
Let me give you a feeling for this consideration. One night I was semi-awake for several hours, feeling Adi Da's Love-Bliss entering me through the "ceiling" (as He calls it) — my head — and filling the body. That went on for several hours, and I'd alternate between being awake (and actively helping the process) and falling asleep. At one point, the Bliss in my head grew so intense that I wondered if it might get to a point where I would not be able to stand it. That was the first time I ever had reason to wonder that! But then it became clear that it was a gradual process of adaptation, and it was very relational — Adi Da was not giving any more than I could endure. So the point is this: this kind of experience I just described is a natural one when you are truly considering the matter of being "completely happy", and doing everything possible to get out of the way and allow complete Happiness to have its way.
Any Place is the Place of "Brightness". The Space of My Kiln is Infinite and It covers the entire cosmic domain.
I am just doing My "Brightening" Work. I am just Present as the "Bright" Itself. And that is the Means that I am using everywhere, and will continue to use after the physical lifetime of this Body. It is the Work of the Divine Domain, My Very Person.
The Kiln into which you invest yourselves is a Blessed afternoon of "Brightness", everyone becoming "Brighter" and "Brighter". That is your actual Condition. My devotees are not looking toward heaven. When you presently, by your devotion, establish yourself in My Kiln, you are already in the Holy Land the Divine Place. Just invest yourself in it. This is Liberation, My Work.
Your work is simply to get yourself into the Kiln with Me constantly.
God is Grace. God is the Source-Condition, the Condition of Infinite Love-Bliss. That is Me. That is the Divine Person. Enjoy this balmy afternoon with Me forever! And eventually, without sweat, without sunburn, without distress, the "Brightness" of the day will become so profound there will be no noticing but this Love-Bliss of Oneness with Me.
Revisiting the Grace of Suffering. Another virtue of Happiness is its ability to replace or "Outshine" the subjectivity of ordinary suffering, when there is enough Happiness — a kind of "ultimate pain reliever". Suffering from physical illness is a good example:
But you also to a degree mature in the practice of this Way. You never become the absolute hero in the face of God, but you do mature in terms of the ordinary content of your life. The crudity of your turning away begins to break up and you become a little more sophisticated. Still you are constantly shown, particularly as your practice begins, as in your case, that the first levels of false commitment are generally very gross. You have only to get sick and suddenly you abandon God! This is a useful lesson. The body becomes ill and you do not want to fulfill the discipline. You find yourself possessed by another interest, that is, the body in itself becomes the principle by which you define yourself. At another stage when you can pass through such a physical episode relative to the body or your life circumstances without being so heavily perturbed, you will begin to see that you define yourself on some more subtle level, in the mind or in the psyche.
