The exercise of intelligence, or coming to a conclusion about reality, is a fundamental part of wisdom. If you truly exercise intelligence, you come to a right conclusion about reality. Intelligence knows the conditions of ordinary conditional reality. It also knows and refers itself to the Unconditional, or Divine, Reality. This is why so much importance has been given to this (what can be called) "sheath" of intelligence, in the traditions of Yoga. It is an absolutely essential mechanism for the truly human life, for the religious life, therefore — absolutely essential. The mechanisms of egoity tend to be used as a way of divorcing the being from intelligence. In that case, you do not experience and know and come to a conclusion about conditional reality. Neither do you experience and know and come to a conclusion about the Divine Reality. You just wander in reactions and forms of conditioning in a kind of oblivion, a kind of soup of egoity, which you try to maintain as a kind of sensory state of good feeling and pleasure.

You will not transcend it, however, until you can break this habit, consistently. And among the things required to break it is the exercise of real intelligence, heart-intelligence. In that process, you must become Godward in your disposition. If you are exercising the capability of intelligence, you are coming to a conclusion, or have, in fact, come to a conclusion, about reality that accepts the nature of conditional Nature, but that also accepts and embraces the Divine, or That Which can be called by many other Names-and 'the Divine' is a good one.  

What is your conclusion about Reality, your actual present-time presumption about Reality? Do you presume Reality Is Divine — or not? The question is important, because your conclusion about Reality is operative in every dimension of your life. . . That conclusion — whatever it is — is determining your life, moment to moment, and even now.

The conclusion that the Divine is Real is the result of conversion, not the result of a mere intellectual process. If it is to be effective in your life, however, it must become a conviction in the mind, and in every function altogether, in your disposition altogether. To be governed by the presumption of the Divine means you have come to the conclusion about reality that it is arising in Real (Acausal) God and is to be surrendered in Real (Acausal) God. Life, then, is about Real-God-Realization and not about conditions. Therefore, the important matter is this conversion, or your conclusion about Reality.  

It seems remarkable to Me that human beings can be feeling so uncomfortable fundamentally in their depth, so uncomfortable about being physically alive that they are so willing to devote themselves entirely to just being an organism, knowing its mortality, its limitations, and all the rest. It's remarkable.

It must be being heavily propagandized by something or other that you would make that choice given an option, given the eternal option. But if you're deprived of the knowledge of it, the knowledge of this Revelation and this practice, you won't know any better.

So the Revelation had to be made. But that's been done, and now you have to do the practice. And the practice is not at all about being content or driven to merely fulfill the body. It's about ego-transcendence, and therefore it's about transcendence of everything.

Being aware of the real nature of the body is like being aware of the self-contraction. It's itself a terrible knot, in itself a horrific condition. That's why people find all kinds of ways to desensitize themselves to it, forget about it, or be relieved of some kind of stress all the time, because you do know the nature of the body, and you are afraid of it.

You feel trapped in it.

You don't know that there is a way to be free.

But having found out about that from Me, you have to practice and actually Realize what there is to be Realized. Otherwise, you're always consenting to be the organism, consenting to be its fate, its possibilities in every moment, not a lot different from poor little beings in the forest who are prey to a lot of others.

The machine is so vulnerable, and ultimately mortal, how can one be content with it?

How can one be willing to live an ordinary life?  

Yes, being not merely "lovey-dovey" — you in your place, complacent and feeling consoled by this God-Love. You must respond, and you must be governed in your life intelligently by response.

Never forget to respond to Me. Therefore, always be governed by the obligation to respond to Me, in every moment of every day, not just sometimes. This is your obligation. It is the Law.

When you respond to Me, purifications occur, you advance in your practice of the Way of the Heart, and you grasp something more of this Revelation of Mine.

Then you move on by accepting the Law of that response, that Revelation, that conclusion. You grow more and more by your devotional response to Me. More is Revealed, but on the basis of your response in doing the sadhana you are Given, on the basis of the Yoga you will manifest in your sadhana.

If you make light of this process, if you do not take it seriously, if you do not become serious, if you do not do the sadhana, then you use up much lifetime in the face of My Revelation without great change.

If you are really, seriously committed to not suffering, then you had better get on with Me! The thing you are choosing otherwise is inherently about suffering and will suffer.

If you are finding some way to feel somewhat mediocre and to feel a little buzz of pleasure in the midst of it, without doing the sadhana all the time or most intensively, then you are just lying to yourself about your inevitable destiny. You are immunizing yourself.

If you are really committed to not suffering, then you had better do this Yoga for real — no longer committed to the lower-based body-mind and its signs but committed to self-surrendering, self-forgetting, and Most Perfectly self-transcending God-Realization — and move on, therefore.

The sign of someone who is really committed to not suffering is growth in the Way of [Adidam]. If you shuffle your feet in hesitation, you only commit yourself to that which inevitably suffers.

Therefore, commit yourself to That Which is not suffering.