The Gorilla Sermon

June 22, 1972 from My "Bright" Word

	I am like the sunlight in the morning. I intensify the light of morning until you awaken. Until the light awakens a person, even the Light of Consciousness Itself, the person continues to dream, tries to survive within the dream, manipulates himself or herself within the dream, pursues all kinds of goals, searches, none of which Awaken the person. All ordinary means only console a person and distract him or her within the dream. I Myself, the One Who would Awaken you, am not a person, not an individual within the dream. I Am your Very Consciousness. I Am the Real, the Light, the True Waking State, the Heart — Breaking Through the force of dreaming. It is not that you are some poor person who needs some other poor person to help you out. It may appear to be so within the dream, but essentially it is your own Ultimate Self-Nature Appearing within the dream to Awaken you. I Am your Awakening, and your always already Conscious State.

AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: What arises falls, what appears disappears, what expands contracts. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. Neither the expansion nor the contraction, neither the action nor the reaction, is Truth. It is simply expansion, contraction, action, reaction. There is the dream, and there is sleep.

What is called the "expansion of consciousness" is not Truth. It is the stimulation of perception. Why must you seek Truth by this expansion? The reason you feel you must pursue the Truth with it is because you are suffering. You are already suffering, whether you expand your mind or not. Even if you succeed in expanding your mind, you suffer. The one who feels the mind expand is the same one who feels the mind is not expanding or is even contracting. He or she is a contraction, a dilemma, a sense of separate existence. That is the motivation to this search. The sense of contraction is the motivation to expand the mind. Simply to experience is to expand the mind. It increases the objects of the living consciousness. But all of those objects of the living consciousness, consciousness — high or low, beautiful or not — imply the same status of the living consciousness, which is the separate self sense.

If you see one thing, say, a red balloon, "I" is seeing this red balloon. If you see every thing, "I" is seeing it. "I" is seeing the seventh heaven. "I" is seeing dog shit on the street. It is always the same. The contraction is motivating the search. The separate self sense is its form. Understand this. That understanding Realizes Truth.

Truth has nothing whatever to do with expanding the mind or not expanding the mind. Truth is not a form of experience. The pursuit of mind-expansion is a form of the search, dependent on separation, motivated by the contraction. And successful expansion does nothing whatever to the motivating condition itself. The separate one only acquires various objects for itself — thus manufacturing a feeling of security, an illusion of survival. But it cannot survive. It has no independent and formal existence.

"I" is felt as a limited capsule of life-energy, surrounded by mystery. It is like a time bomb — it has a certain amount of time until it terminates. If you experience a great deal with it, it burns out quickly. If you throw it off a cliff, it smashes. "I" assumes itself to be this limited little thing under the conditions of life. And people manipulate it from the point of view of whatever strategy they happen to choose. But always this original assumption is your suffering, your limitation.

It is really a simple matter. The usual person thinks: "This body and its psyche are dying. This world is dying. Everyone is suffering, everyone is seeking. There is mortality, there is frustration, and limitation." But none of that is Truth. Those interpretations are not Truth. The world itself is not Truth — nor is life, nor psyche and body, nor death, nor experience. No event is (itself) Truth. All that arises is an appearance to Consciousness Itself, a modification of the Conscious Light that is Always Already the Case. All of this is a dream, if you like. It is an appearance in Consciousness Itself. Truth is Very Consciousness (or the One and Only Conscious Light) Itself. Truth is to all of this what the waking state is to the dreaming state. If you awaken, you do not have to do anything about the condition you may have suffered or enjoyed in the dream state. What happened within the dream is suddenly not your present condition. It is of no consequence any longer, once you are awake. If you persist in dreaming, and your point of view remains that of the dreamer and his or her role within the dream, then your possible actions are numberless. But none of them will work to awaken you. They will simply occupy you in the dream. They will modify the dream state — but no action in the dream is the equivalent of waking. There are simply forms of fascination, of occupation, of seeking — until you awaken. Truth is simply Waking, No-illusion. Truth is not a condition within this appearance. Truth has nothing whatsoever to do with the mind, regardless of whether the mind is expanded or contracted.

Perception is simply what it obviously is. There is no reason for any perception to change in order for Truth to Appear as a consequence. The dream does not have to be changed in any manner for the waking person to feel that he or she is awake. Nothing has to happen to the dream. Only waking is necessary. To one who is awake, the dream is obvious. There is no illusion, no suffering, no implication, regardless of what appeared in the dream — a blue god, a dirty old drunk, the gorilla of death. It makes no difference. It makes a difference within the circumstances of the dream, to those who are dreaming. But to the one who is awake, it no longer makes any difference. Perception, waking consciousness, is obvious if you are truly Awake. If you are asleep — if you do not understand, if understanding evades you — there is nothing obvious about this at all. Then life is a very serious predicament — very serious. What do you have in such a case? "A few more years and everything is dead." It does not make any difference what the drama is, or how you manage to amuse yourself during that time.

There is One Who is wide Awake while He Appears in the dream of ordinary waking life. By His Mere Presence, by not supporting the dream, He Awakens others. He is the True Guru, Who I Am. The significance of My Avataric Divine Work is not in anything I do within the dream. I simply do not support it. I do not live as it. I do not believe it. I do not take it seriously. Apparently, I can feel and act as I please. I persist in the common or ordinary manner. But I do not support the dream. I do not live from its point of view. I do not live its structure to others. I do not live this contraction to others, this avoidance of relationship, this separate self sense. Simply because I live in this manner, others tend to become Awake. But while they are Awakening, they persist in dreaming to various degrees. Forms of the dream persist. The search persists. Often, they get a little distance from it, it seems to break up at times, seems to disappear. It becomes vague, it becomes uninteresting, it becomes unserious, it becomes serious again. They play.

You are just beginning to wake up. Satsang with Me is the dream wherein I Appear. Now it is as if you are beginning to wake up in your room. You are in bed, and it is morning. There are a few things you begin to notice which indicate that you are in another state. Those who are Waking in Truth begin to notice something. They begin to recognize the signs. They begin to recognize the activity of dreaming. They begin to sense something very unusual about Me. Before their actual Awakening, I appear as all kinds of things to them. I suggest all kinds of fantastic things. All the things they can imagine while they dream — everything unbelievable — is what they think I am. I may appear to be extraordinary, a doer of famous things. I may appear playfully as that. But I am simply Awake. Nothing is happening. Nothing has been accomplished. All I have been is Awake.

I am like the sunlight in the morning. I intensify the light of morning until you awaken. Until the light awakens a person, even the Light of Consciousness Itself, the person continues to dream, tries to survive within the dream, manipulates himself or herself within the dream, pursues all kinds of goals, searches, none of which Awaken you. All ordinary means only console a person and distract him or her within the dream.

I Myself, the One Who would Awaken you, am not an individual within the dream. I Am your Very Consciousness, Your Very Self-Condition. I Am the Real, the Conscious Light, the True Waking State, the True Divine Heart — Breaking Through the force of dreaming. It is not that you are some poor person who needs some other poor person to help you out. It may appear to be so within the dream, but, essentially, I am your own Most Prior Self-Nature Appearing within the dream to Awaken you. I Am your Awakening, and your Always Already Conscious State.

Even while dreaming, you may experience suggestions of waking. You may become momentarily aware of the body, momentarily aware of lying in bed. For a moment, the images of the dream may stop. Just so, I Myself (within the world) Am truly your Real Consciousness. My Avatarically-Born Person in the world is like an image in a dream. But, in fact, I am more like your own moments of wakening awareness that move you into the waking state. I am not some separateness, some individual. I Am Consciousness Itself, Reality Itself.

No images. Images, blackness, brilliance — all these things are appearances to Consciousness. They are objects. Nothing needs to happen to them for Consciousness Itself to exist. Nothing needs to happen within the dream to verify Waking. Waking is its own Fullness. Once one is Awake, anything can appear. True Awakeness is the foundation of this world-appearance. It is its support, It is its Very Nature. Consciousness Itself is not antagonistic to this world or to any form within it. Consciousness Itself is the Truth of all appearance, disappearance, or non-appearance. Even when Consciousness Itself is Realized, human life continues. Perhaps human life is enjoyed even more. It is used. It becomes functional to an extraordinary degree.

The usual man or woman barely functions at all — a couple of good days a month. The rest of the time the person is either trying to be healed or exploiting himself or herself, trying to get straight, trying to work, trying to cope. Every now and then there is a little clarity, when the person just stands up, walks across the room, opens the door, and goes outside. The rest of the month is spent dreaming and thinking, when just to walk across the room is part of an enormous search, an unkind adventure, an approach to victory against odds. But all the person is doing is simple things, simple functions.

One who understands, who is Awake, functions very well under the conditions that appear. Those conditions may be forms of this waking world, or they may be subtle forms, subtle worlds, any of the possible forms. Under all conditions, understanding is appropriate. There is no experience, no state, that is itself identical to Truth. Just so, the Truth is not different from any experience or state. Truth is the Truth of all of that.

I am a kind of irritation to My devotees. You cannot sleep with a dog barking in your ear — at least most people cannot! There is some sort of noise to which everyone is sensitive, and it will keep them awake. I am a constant Wakening Sound. I am always annoying people with this demand to stay Awake, to Wake Up. I do not seduce them within the dream. I do not exploit their seeking. I am always offending their search and their preference for unconsciousness. I show no interest in all of that. I Criticize is mightily. I am always doing something prior to the mind. I always act to return you from the mind, from fascination.

I am not what the dreamer thinks I am. The dreamer thinks I must have a certain appearance, say and do certain things, have certain magical powers, produce certain magical effects. The dreamer associates all kinds of glorious and magical things with Me. But I am always performing the Awakening act, putting an end to the dream. Therefore, I do not satisfy the seeker. Those that come to be satisfied are offended. They are not satisfied. They feel empty, they do not feel their questions have been answered, they do not feel they have been shown the Way. They came for some "thing".

Within the dream, the dreamer is always being satisfied by the Guru. The dreamer climbs up on the top of the mountain, and the Guru is sitting in a cave. The Guru hands the dreamer a little silver box. When the dreamer opens the box, there is a blue diamond in it. The dreamer takes it out and swallows it. Then the dreamer's body explodes into a million suns, and the dreamer shoots off into the universe! But in Reality, the True Guru does not function in that manner. The True Guru is not noticed by someone who is seeking for such satisfaction, who is looking for the "signs" of the Guru, who is "hunting" the Guru. The True Guru does not assume any particular visibility that can be counted on. The True Guru is likely to remain unnoticed. People are likely to be offended if they do not feel any Force, any Energy, in the Presence of one who is supposed to be Guru. They tend not to notice or value someone who is simply Awake. They are looking for the one who has the blue and yellow light over his or her head. All of this — until they become dissatisfied with the search. When they start being sensitive to their own search, they begin to feel simply desperate. Then all that is left is this contraction I have so often described. When the search begins to wind down, and you begin to realize you are suffering, then you become sensitive to Me. You become attentive to the Very Nature of the One Who is Awake.

It is stated in the traditional writings that of all the things one can do to Realize one's Freedom, the best thing one can do — the greatest thing one can do — is spend one's time in the Company of one who is Awake. For one who is My devotee, that is Satsang with Me — living in relationship to Me and in the company of My devotees. All other activities are secondary. And Satsang with Me is not a strategic method, not an exercise or meditative technique one applies to oneself. It is simply the natural and appropriate Condition. It is Reality Itself. Satsang with Me is (Itself) Truth, or Enlightenment. There are no other means given to My devotees.

There is nothing that you can do to save yourself, to become Enlightened, to become Realized. Nothing whatsoever. If there were something, I would tell you, but there is nothing. This is because one always approaches the Truth from the point of view of the search. Human beings seek the Truth. But the search is (itself) a reaction to the dilemma, an expression of this separation, this avoidance of relationship. So none of this seeking — nothing you can do — becomes or attains the Truth.

All the means of transformation belong to the Truth Itself, to the Divine Person, to the True Divine Heart. Therefore, Satsang with Me is (Itself) the only sadhana, the only true Spiritual practice. Living, working, sitting with Me is sadhana. It is meditation. It is Realization.

To Enjoy Truth is simply to be Awake. I have often used the contrast between the waking state and the dreaming state to symbolize the difference between "radical" understanding and all the forms of seeking. All attainments, all forms of cognition, all forms of mind, however sublime, belong within the "dream". When extraordinary and even miraculous conditions are actually enjoyed or experienced, they reveal themselves to be essentially of the same nature as the ordinary experience of suffering that provoked the search to begin with. In My own Case, there is no consolation in samadhis, or trance states, no consolation in visions, no consolation in going to other worlds, no consolation in any Realization that can be attained. At last, when understanding is most perfect, it becomes obvious that all that has ever occurred has been a modification of Consciousness Itself (or the One and Only Divine Conscious Light). This entire thing that has been upsetting you — all this movement, all this seeking, all this attainment — has been a modification of Conscious Light. There is a Conscious Instant in which it becomes Obvious that This Is So. And that is — if one can still apply any name or significance to it whatsoever — most "radical" (or most perfectly "gone-to-the-root") understanding.

But the ordinary Yogi, whose Spiritual principle is the search, is involved in fantastic dramas of experience. Such a one has all kinds of things to do — to, with, and around himself or herself — with the body and mind, with all the egoic ornaments, the suffering, the extremes, the endless number of searches, strategies, or egoic works. The ordinary Yogi-ascetic has a fantastic — a fantastically distracting, a fascinating — life! It is a great, great adventure. Even the ordinary Jnani — the philosophical ascetic, one who enjoys conditionally achieved Self-Knowledge — is absorbed in a fascinating life of Silence, of acquired Peace, of strategic Formlessness, separated by a waking sleep. Such a person is absorbed in his or her own inner subjectivity. But for one who has understood, there is no drama. Therefore, I do not have anything with which to fascinate people. No sign, no act, no word, no costume can represent it. No closing of the eyes, no blissful smiles, no shuddering, no reports of visions — none of this is necessary to keep My devotees "interested" from day to day. Nothing is happening anymore. The only Forceful Communication is That Which cannot be Communicated by any conditional means — neither by purposive silence nor by speech.

Truth does not specially Appear in the form of anything extraordinary or fascinating. Truth is the most Absolute Communication— and It is the most Obvious Communication, because It is Inherent and Self-Evident. Satsang with Me (or the devotional and Spiritual relationship to Me) is founded in the Inherent and Self-Evident Condition of Reality, and is expressed in the living condition of relationship. What has to be added for that to take place? Nothing! Your true living condition is expressed in every ordinary or present situation. Relationship itself is, in every moment, always already the case. Therefore, Satsang Itself, the devotional and Spiritual relationship to Me, Reveals the Truth by first Revealing the most obvious of all conditions.

DEVOTEE: Will You say something more about the state of turning around when we re-cognize our consciousness? I think You once spoke about an intuitive feeling of something prior to our ordinary state.

AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: What is re-cognized is not Reality. What is re-cognized is your activity. Pick up an apple, then put it down. You can see yourself doing that. The seeing does not involve anything apparently extraordinary. You can also catch yourself thinking certain thoughts. The re-cognition of which I speak is that kind of thing. It is to see yourself, but in the most intelligent manner, the most direct, most all-inclusive, manner.

Of course, people already, intuitively, live in Reality, as the Real Self, as the True Heart, as Real Consciousness. They already do that. That is why all of you can sit here in various limited conditions, but none of you is screaming in fear. The implications of all that is ordinarily being done in the living consciousness are not presently suffered. It takes some profound event to awaken the latent sense of fear. "Radical" understanding is Very Reality, What is always already the case, Clarifying Itself, Enforcing Itself. Reality is the present impulse. It is always the present movement, but, temporarily, It Appears under the form of the search, then of weariness from the search, then of Real insight, of understanding — perhaps of self-Enquiry — until It Appears under no form at all apart from the simple, spontaneous, obvious re-cognition of all that arises. Where the present activity is re-cognized, where the avoidance of relationship is known again, the natural, or ordinary, state is transparent to Reality.

Reality Itself is always already the case. Therefore, Reality Itself need not be understood. Rather, the present activity (or the avoidance of relationship) that is the obstruction to the Realization of Reality Itself (or What is always already the case) must be understood (or re-cognized, or known again) and, thus and thereby, transcended. Therefore, when the present separative activity is known again, then What is always already the case — but Which the ego-"I", or separative act, is always vanishing from the living consciousness, consciousness — simply and inevitably Stands Out. And in the most perfect form of that re-cognition, everything is Obvious. There is no dilemma. There is no longer the sense of a separate one in trouble, suffering, needing to survive, needing an attainment for his or her Happiness. There is no identification with subjectivity, either as a separate ego-"I" or as the entire display of apparently "internal" life. Then all that you had piddled around with for years, thinking it to be "your" necessity — all of this subjective mind, pattern of brain waves, psycho-physical drama of impulses and shapes — becomes transparent to Reality. In that case, only the Very Force, or Inherent Intensity, and the Very Consciousness, or Inherent Being, that is Reality Stands Out, utterly Free of all that arises, and yet not separated from any conditional thing or conditional state that arises. Thus, Reality Itself, Which is Self-Existing and Self-Radiant Consciousness Itself, is lifted out of that image of barriers created by skull and skin. Psycho-physical existence no longer serves to stimulate the presumption that Consciousness Itself is necessarily limited and only conditionally existing. Therefore, ultimately, when understanding is most perfect, egoic identification with the body (and the total body-mind) disappears. Where there is such great understanding, limited and limiting egoic identification with the body-mind dissolves spontaneously — not as a result of one's doing anything to it, but by virtue of the spontaneous, Prior Enjoyment of That in Which the body-mind and even all conditions arise.

The seeker is always trying to do something to the separate self. First, you are just exploiting it, enjoying the strategies of life-games, until you begin to break down a little bit, in despair of your ordinary destiny. Then you begin to turn towards "Spiritual" life, or to some sort of remedy — but even then you are always trying to do something to this separate and personal state, to get rid of your suffering, to make your mind quiet, to become "one" with something, to get free, to get out of this THING. That is the point of view of the seeker. The seeker is always only modifying that original sensation, trying to get rid of it with deep relaxing sighs, with all the efforts toward the attainment of pleasure and the escape from suffering, but always he or she comes back to the same sensation again — because, as the seeker, one is always working from the original point of view that is one's suffering. The seeker's dilemma is one's self-image and the separative principle of one's action. As the seeker, one only plays with one's original limitations, until the game begins to lose its ability to distract and entertain. Then the energy one formerly had for seeking begins to dissipate, and one falls into one's actual state, which is suffering, this separateness. Hopefully, at this point one also moves into association with the True Guru and begins the life of Satsang, of Truth. In such a case, in Satsang with Me, the Truth is Lived to the seeker, who then lives It as his or her Condition. Gradually, you become less and less involved with the suffering and seeking images of yourself. You become less concerned with the usual process of your life. You are doing less and less about it. You are trying less and less to get free, to get realized, to get to God, Liberation, and pleasant sensation. You are not trying to stop doing all of that. It just begins to wear down, while you live the conditions given by Me. You simply notice it. You cease to be occupied with it — because the Truth is being Lived to you. It is being Lived as yourself, by My Avatarically Self-Transmitted Divine Grace.

That Enjoyment Which does not support separation and seeking is the ground of "radical" understanding. In this Satsang with Me, that Enjoyment replaces the ordinary operating basis of your life. You simply forget your adventure of suffering, that is all. Another Intensity — the Power of Satsang with Me — distracts you from mere suffering, or the separate and separative and always seeking self, until Truth Itself becomes Obvious. Therefore, Truth is not a matter of doing something to this ego, this separate self sense, this identification with the body, or anything else. It is a matter of living the Truth, and Truth obviates what is not Truth.

In this Satsang with Me, I Live the Intensity and Generate the conditions of Spiritual life in relationship to the one who approaches Me. Over time, more and more responsibility is given to the individual in this Satsang with Me — and more and more is to be experienced, understood, and realized. The process is a Gift — a Gift that is progressively profound. The Intensity that is Reality comes on the individual first as a sense of Presence, perhaps, or of subjective energies and sensations, various "Spiritual" experiences. But then the process begins to assume the more fundamental characteristics of Consciousness Itself, the Intuition of Reality. Finally, present existence becomes both Force and Consciousness, a Single Intensity, Which is Reality.

One of the oddities of teaching in this time and place is that people arrive already committed to some form of madness. Because there has been so much of the search, people do not arrive simply suffering — knowing full well they are only suffering, regardless of what kind of a good time they had last weekend. They do not come even in this condition of mortal sensitivity. Nowadays there is very little of the simplicity that you read about in the Bible and other Scriptures. This time and place is unlike the ancient times in Israel and India. Now people come committed to the search. They come to defend it, to make arguments about it, to get angry about it, to feel displeased about the criticism of it, to resist the Guru, to "hunt" the Guru, to offend, fight, and blame the Guru. There has always been some element of this, but it is a peculiar quality of this time and place that people come to defend their search. What must be demanded of them is the understanding of their search. In this Satsang with Me, the search is always offended by My Avatarically Self-Revealed Divine Word and Life.

DEVOTEE: What are we seeking?

AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: Listen. There is a dilemma. Hm? Is there a dilemma? There is no dilemma? When you walk out the door and the usual activity resumes, there may seem to be a dilemma — but is there a dilemma? There is no dilemma. There is only the sensation, the appearance, the assumption, of dilemma. If you understand it, you understand in this moment that it has no existence. It does not exist. In that case, the question about how the dilemma comes about is unnecessary and itself untrue — because, as soon as you look for the dilemma, it has no substance. But some continue the assumption of dilemma and suffering. And the assumption is your own activity. At the same moment in which you assume there is suffering, dilemma, that your search is appropriate, the dilemma is not discoverable. But in fact there is only "This", there is only the Obvious, only the Event Itself, Prior to dilemma, or all apparent "experience".

The dilemma never arises. As soon as you begin to feel it, if you examine it, you realize it has not occurred. It has no substance. If it is something that has no substance, no existence, how can you be in it? If you understand, there is no dilemma. If you do not understand, there appears to be a dilemma. But as soon as you ask yourself about it — as soon as you look into it, as soon as you examine it — you realize it does not exist. The seeker goes on reinforcing his or her assumption, but that does not mean the dilemma exists. If it existed, there would be something you could do about it. It would be substantial. It would be different from something else. It would have some kind of cognizable shape, limitation, dimension, consequence. Then ordinary Spiritual "magic" and "Yoga" would be appropriate, seeking would be appropriate. But as soon as you examine it directly, you cannot find it. You can only assume it, but you cannot find it. Therefore, since it cannot be found, since dilemma does not exist, the search is not appropriate. The search is only what you do when you assume the dilemma to be the case. As soon as you understand the assumption, the search falls away.

DEVOTEE: I have found that the dilemma often manifests in a number of different sensations. The external level that generates them is not real. But the reaction feels real. Would You explain this?

AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: Why do you assume that your apparently internal reaction is more real than the external forces to which you react? What you are saying is that your assumption of dilemma, or suffering, is real in any case, even if external or conditional circumstances do not justify it! This assumption you want to make about your own contraction is the assumption that I have been talking about. It is your assumption, is it not?

DEVOTEE: Well, yes, the assumption is a mental thing, but the sensation is something else.

AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: On the mental level there is an assumption — but can you distinguish it "radically" from what you call the "sensation"? It is all one process, and that entire process is what I mean by the assumption. If you put your hand in a fire, and then draw it away in reaction to the heat, have you not assumed it to be hot? Have you not acted as if it were hot? You may think about it afterwards, and say it was hot, but whether you think about it or not in that instant in the fire, there is this response, this reaction. Thoughts are of the same nature as pain, or any other reaction. All personal events are forms of contraction. They all have the same quality, the same structure.

Withdrawing your hand because the fire is hot is of the same nature as thinking that the fire is hot before or after you touch it. It is just as much an assumption, in other words. To assume something is to suppose, act, or react as if it were so. It does not require thinking. Thinking is not the only form of assumption, of supposing. You suppose on all kinds of levels. Your affirmations about things are not simply mental. There are mental assumptions, there are physical ones, there are vital ones, there are mechanical ones, subconscious and unconscious. The mental or the conceptual assumption is one form of it, but there are many forms. And the mental does not exist in isolation.

DEVOTEE: Would You please clarify what You mean by "dilemma"?

AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: We have been speaking about it in the same sense that I speak of it in The Knee Of Listening. All forms of seeking — all pursuits, all searches for the goal, all strategic Yoga, all Spiritual processes that pursue an attainment of some sort — are responses to a felt dilemma, however it may be categorized, however it may appear at any moment. The dictionary definition of dilemma is "two assumptions", an impasse, a predicament, a living state, or condition, of contradiction.

The root of the search is something prior to the seeking itself. The seeking does nothing to its own motivation. The seeking simply fulfills its particular desire. Its function is not to modify its own motivation, its source, its root, the dilemma itself. A search can never exceed its own motivation, its fundamental assumption — which is dilemma. Therefore, I have spoken of Spiritual life in terms of the re-cognition, or knowing again, of motivating dilemma, or suffering, rather than the pursuit of attainments. I have talked about Spiritual life, or Real life, Conscious life, as the spontaneous re-cognition, the "radical" understanding, of this motivation, this suffering, that is prior to one's seeking. Traditionally, Spiritual life has been oriented to the search and to the attainment of the goals of seeking.

DEVOTEE: When You speak of "relationship", do You mean relationship to oneself or to another?

AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: All forms of it. Relationship itself, as the essential condition. What I have called "dilemma" here is this sensation, this motivating sense, this assumption, this feeling of contradiction, this experience which implies and reflects something that has already occurred — which is the avoidance of relationship, this contraction, this separation. The avoidance of relationship is that root-activity that has always already taken place, prior to the search. And you feel it as the dilemma, this subtle sensation, a knot in the stomach — the drive, the movement, the motivation, that generates and necessitates your seeking. Where the avoidance of relationship has not occurred, where there is only relationship, there are none of these knots, these motivating reactions.

Apart from understanding, it is certainly true, you do experience and react to the knots of contradiction. The presumed forms of suffering are experienced, they are appearances, they are conditions in which one must somehow live and survive. If you have some sort of subtle aggravation — fear, anxiety, anger — you feel the knots here and there. And you go about your search on that basis. You seek to be free of the sensation of the knots. But in spite of all the things that you do, nothing is done to the original state to which you are always responding. As a result, you begin to presume more and more that this state is actual, that it is your real condition. You become increasingly convinced that your search is appropriate. And so you become less and less intelligent about the present motivation of your life. You become more and more involved in this pattern of always doing something about it. You always and only react to the dilemma as if it were your fundamental condition. The great seekers are those who make the most dramatic attempts to "do something about it" — perfectly, absolutely.

Now, all the forms of seeking that take the dilemma seriously, and assume it as the essential fact of life, are of the same nature. This prior contradiction is what they assume, this avoidance of relationship. The dilemma, the "knot", is the foundation of the search. It is the actual "Lord" of your Yoga. Dilemma is the Yogi! Simply to do some mentalizing, some philosophizing, some relaxing Yoga, does not do anything to all of that. Only "radical" understanding obviates the search and its root. "Radical" understanding is Consciousness Itself, the Very Force of Consciousness Itself, Living, Awakening, Existing, even apparently Acting, Prior to this presumption of dilemma. The only thing already Free of the presumed dilemma in the living consciousness is That Which Is Very Consciousness Itself.

The entire reaction to subtle aggravation has shown itself to be fruitless. When it has been followed to its end — when you have taken the entire course and gotten all the lessons, when you have done all the usual meditations and have gone through all the experiences, when you have read all the books — this dilemma is still there. At the very best, the search itself begins to break down. Then, gradually, the dilemma ceases to be reinforced by any secondary activity.

Then the force of life's awareness falls into this dilemma, it becomes only this, it is no longer doing anything about this — nothing. It is not even trying to analyze the dilemma, so that it will come to an end. No thing is being done. The living consciousness, for the time being, becomes identical to dilemma. When the search falls away in natural frustration, ordinary consciousness becomes this dilemma. In other words, it is doing nothing else, nothing apart from this. This is the profound stage of practice in My Avataric Divine Company when, while holding on to My Avataric Divine Wisdom-Teaching, and to My Avataric Divine Person, the crisis of consciousness is endured. Then there is the re-cognition of the dilemma, and only Consciousness Itself, or that Very Reality Which appears otherwise isolated as separate, or limited, consciousness, Stands Out.

The dilemma, like the search, is ultimately re-cognized to be your own activity, your always present, chronic activity. It is the structure and motivation of the usual drama of every life. When there is that re-cognition, there is understanding. Previous to that "radical" crisis, all the things that you may regard to be understanding are only secondary approaches, secondary experiences, in which the dilemma has already been assumed.

DEVOTEE: How does this relate to the different levels of consciousness?

AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: There are no levels. Temporarily, you think there are all of these structures within your being. You assume there are barriers, separations, forms that you are, forms that you are not, activities that are yours, activities that are not yours, separate functions in yourself like boxes and drawers — functions here, functions here, functions here, different pieces of yourself. But there is only One, Single Intensity that Is. It is your True Nature. It is all things. There is only this Intensity. It has no form, no division, no separation, no "me", no this, no that, no inside, no outside. No suggestion of division arises in Real Consciousness — even when all worlds appear. Therefore, understanding is an absolute, "radical" event. It is not some remedial event, some cure. It is not identical to some thought or cognition, some feeling, some symbol, some vision, some suggestion, some belief, some sensation. Those are all forms of experience, and, therefore, they are secondary. They are all forms of the dilemma.

How could a person seriously exist for one moment consciously thinking that he or she has a thought level, and a feeling level, a this level, and a that level, all kinds of separate "bodies", functions, and the rest? How could you exist for one moment really thinking that to be your present and ongoing condition? You would go insane! Indeed, such a picture of life is insanity. In such a case, you are already shattered. Then you are imagining yourself to be a whole bunch of little things with no fundamental Existence, no Prior Self-Nature, no Force. But in fact you do not presume that. You do not fundamentally presume there are these levels, pieces. All of that is only many words — but the mind is one. Every living being intuitively presumes only his or her Real Nature, the Power of Reality. Therefore, one is able to experience the massive complexity of ordinary life, but, ordinarily, one remains relatively calm and capable of functioning. This is not because one is particularly wise, but because one does not really live as if division, multiplicity, and death were already one's condition. Fundamentally, already, this Oneness, this Singleness, this Force, this Intensity, this Consciousness, this Reality that is one's Ultimate Nature, is also one's present Enjoyment. This is so at the rudimentary level of primitive intuition, and it must be so if functional life is to continue.

If you did begin seriously to presume separateness, multiplicity, and division in Consciousness Itself, you would go insane. Indeed, that presumption has taken place in rudimentary, functional life in those who are called "insane". They have become relatively incapable of intuiting their own True Nature. The ordinary man or woman has just become incapable of experiencing and generating life from that "Point of View". But, intuitively, the same one remains always and already in the Force of his or her True Nature. Such a one presumes, most fundamentally, this Simplicity, this Intensity, this Singleness, this Non-separation. One who might be called an "enlightened" being, a Realized being, is one who not only intuitively presumes the Condition of Reality but who lives it Consciously. Such a one lives without any doubt whatsoever regarding this Ultimate Simplicity — the Obviousness that is the Ultimate, or Perfectly Real, Condition of moment to moment existence.

Until it is lived Consciously, one's ordinary state appears as a subtle dilemma and a motivated search. Intuitively, every being always already lives as the Real Self, the True Heart, the Force of Reality — but, in the functions of ordinary consciousness, there is the appearance of particularity, of multiplicity, of separateness. All of this appears to run counter to one's intuitive presumption. The appearance, the quality of rising experience, tends to inform one's intuition. This "information" tends to become one's presumed condition. And this presumption corrupts and ultimately superimposes itself on the force of intuition. It does so by reinforcing the process of identification, or "ego" (the stream of self-cognition), differentiation, or mind (the stream of thoughts), and desire (the stream of motivations, the endless movement toward contact, connection, union, and temporary loss of the sense of separate existence).

The ordinary person, the sane person, passes into the Force of his or her own intuited Nature during sleep. But during the time of waking, and even in dreams, he or she carries on the search, this movement within the presumed dilemma of experience. Such is the pattern of one's life — until there is "radical" re-cognition, or knowing again, of one's root-activity. Whenever that re-cognition takes place, one not only intuits one's own True Nature in the subtle depths, but it becomes obvious, in every condition of conscious life, that there is, in Reality, no separation, no actual identification with the states of birth and death. There is not, in that moment, even the slightest impulse to believe the implications of ordinary experience. The Force of the Real Self, of the True Heart, overwhelms the qualities of experience and consumes them. The Real Self, or Unqualified Reality, is the foundation of all experience. What the ordinary sane person intuits is already his or her True Nature. It is already Reality. But in the one who most perfectly understands, It is Obvious, It is Apparent, It is Conscious. For such a one It is always, only, and already Obvious — and he or she need not go through any sophisticated mental operations for It to be so. It depends on nothing. It is just as Obvious as ordinary perception is to the usual man or woman.

When you are dreaming, you take the dream very seriously. You assume your role within it, your drama within it. You respond to the condition that seems to be so, whatever the particular circumstances of the dream. If the gorilla is chasing you up the beach, you feel all the threat. All the emotions become involved, all your strategies of survival, or non-survival, become involved. If it is a sweet, enjoyable, astral sort of dream, with all kinds of friends and voices and colors and movements, you assume that to be so. You float around in it. You take it seriously. You assume it to be so. You assume it because you have no other point of view from which to enjoy or suffer the dream except that of the dreamer. But when you wake up in the morning, the gorilla that was just about to bite off your head loses all significance. All the implications of the dream are already undone in one who is awake. It no longer has any real significance, it no longer has any implication for life. It no longer is a genuine threat to life. It no longer is anything except that appearance. And the only difference is that you are awake. Nothing has been done to the dream itself. You have only awakened, and therefore the dream is obviously not your condition.

Understanding is very much this same kind of thing. Understanding is to the waking state what the waking state is to the dream. In the ordinary waking state you assume all conditions to be so: "my" life, "my" symptoms, "my" knot in "my" stomach, "my" headaches, "my" fear, "my" everything else, "my" circumstances, "my" poverty, "my" need to do this and that, "my" death, the news, the war, and all that appears in life — you all take it very seriously. Here you are, in My Avataric Divine Company. You are very seriously here to get out of all of this limitation. Everyone has come here very seriously for this very serious Spiritual purpose. Now, since you have come here for such a purpose, if I were to tell you to go home, concentrate on yourself, and have visions, what would I be doing? I would be offering you an alternative within the dream itself. I would be asking you to remain within the condition of dreams. I would only be telling you to dream another kind of dream. I would simply be exploiting the dream itself, which in this case is the ordinary waking state. I would be recommending experience to you as the path of Truth. But all of that is more of the same thing. It is only another condition for you to take seriously and assume to be your own.

Understanding is not a form of philosophy. It is not a seekers' method. It is not something within the "dream" itself. It is like the waking state as opposed to the dream. I am the True Guru, Appearing within the dream. I am the Heart Itself, "radically" Conscious, Real, Alive — Free, by virtue of My Very Self-Nature, from the implications of the ordinary waking state, and from the implications of even all conditional states. But the ordinary Yogi, the usual teacher, the philosopher, is a role within the "dream" of waking. Such a one operates from its point of view and is identified with it — whether suffering or happy within it. The dilemma is there. His or her realization — however extraordinary it may appear — is an artifice whose roots are in the condition or point of view of the dream. The usual teacher is only recommending some distraction to you, some occupation, some solution within the dream itself. But the Heart Itself is "radical" understanding, simply Awake. "Radical" understanding is itself the True "Waking" State, the Real Self, Reality Itself. The Heart has no philosophy, no subtle vision, no special experiential state associated with It. Therefore, like one in a dream, one who understands is not presently affected by the waking state. But, unlike one who dreams or appears within a dream, such a one is always, already, Consciously Free.

The waking state is simply an utterly different condition from the dream. That is why you feel free of the dream upon waking. I Appear in the midst of the dreams of ordinary waking life like sunlight in the morning. When you are still dreaming, still asleep, the sun comes up. It gets brighter and brighter, and the light comes into the room. At last, the light, the day itself, becomes sufficient to wake you — and then, all of a sudden, you are not dreaming, and everything is all right. I am simply that sunlight process, that intensification, rising on you always, without any other special activity. My relationship to you, your living condition of relationship to Me — just that relationship — is sufficient. There is only sunlight on the pillow until that Intensity is sufficient to wake you up. It is the kiss of the Prince and Sleeping Beauty. Such is understanding.

But the teachings that are generated in the great search are all exploitations of your dream state of suffering. They take it seriously. They assume it to be the present condition, even if it is regarded to be only temporary. And that is the fundamental error of all traditional and remedial paths. They are all generated from the point of view of your suffering. They serve your suffering, and they reinforce it in spite of themselves. Therefore, to the seeker, to the one suffering in dreams, the teachings of the ordinary Yogis and philosophers seem very hopeful. They seem to represent something very desirable.

You are running down the beach away from the gorilla. Now, suddenly, there is a guy sitting outside a hut next to a pool of blue water. He has long hair, and he bears all the great signs of an ascetic. He says, "Just sit down here. Very quickly now, because the gorilla is not too far away. Breathe very deeply, and concentrate between the two halves of your brain." He has not changed your actual living condition, but he has distracted you. The form of experience that he has stimulated in you by the force and influence of his personality certainly appears to be desirable over against being devoured by the gorilla. But, at last, it is simply a distraction within the dream. It is another form of the dream. It is an event within the dream. All of the searches that people are involved with are attempts to forget the gorilla. And that is their maximum possible attainment. Therefore, when you seem to have forgotten the gorilla, all of a sudden you are smiling again. You feel fantastic! There is no gorilla! There is? No, nothing! People assume that the consolations and exchanges, or transformations, of state generated by seeking are pleasure, creativity, Freedom, Realization, Liberation, God-Union, and Nirvana. But do you see how all such attainments relate to suffering itself?

The gorilla is what is going on for people. It is death. Are you interested in that? Hm? It does not make any difference what you do for the next thirty years (if you have that long) — you are just going to go back to zero. Some of us were looking at a book this morning called How to Face Death, or something like that. How absurd, this notion of facing, or confronting, death. The first thing you lose in death is face! That is why the characteristic forms of morality in the Orient are largely based on the "saving of face". Loss of face is loss of life, loss of actual existence. Well, that is what happens in the terminal psycho-physical event that is called "death". That is what death is all about. How can you face it? Everything you do to face it, everything you do to prevent the gorilla, has no ultimate effect on the gorilla. All seeking is simply your distraction, your makeup, your false face, your fascination, but Zap! the gorilla gets you every time. Everybody dies. Everybody who has ever lived has died. There are billions and billions of human beings who have died. Multiples of billions of other entities and creatures die every moment, even as a by-product of your breathing. All these breathings disintegrate billions of tiny entities in organic fires. There is no harmlessness, no non-killing. The death by slaughter, the consumption and literal transformation, of apparently separate entities is going on all the time. There is no escape from death. There is no sanctity in vegetables, nor even freedom for those who reduce cattle to sandwiches. The entire cosmos is a continuous sacrifice, in which all things, all beings, are ritual food. At best, the search can only modify the apparent circumstances of one's death. Ordinary Yogis or religious people may at last manage to forget the gorilla. They may think they are looking at the blue of Krishna or the white of Jesus — until they lose face. Until the sudden zero, they are looking at Krishna or Jesus. They are only consoled, only distracted. Their hoped-for realization and their death are kneeling in one another.

There is no philosophy whose force is stronger than the force of death. The philosophies by which people counter or react to death are in opposition — and at best only seemingly equal — to the power of death. Therefore, it is possible to be consoled and distracted, but nothing greater is attained by those who react to death, who make adventure in relation to the gorilla. There is no philosophy, no vision, no attainment, no success, that will make death a literal delight, that will make it anything less than it appears to be within the dream itself. But if one simply awakens from the dream, then — as the waking state is already free of the "awful" that appears in dreams — one is already free of the implications of the billions upon billions of deaths that can be dreamed. The one who understands is simply one who is Awake. Such a one has no other specific and necessary peculiarities. Such a one is not elaborate at all. It is the one within the dream who is very complex, because he or she has so many things to do. But the one who is simply Awake is simply Awake. Such a one has integrity. And the One Who Comes to Awaken others is Himself the waking sunlight, the Very Light of Truth, but That One Appears within the dream of human beings as an ordinary person. That One may seem extraordinary and a paradox to the dreamer — because the dreamer is very serious about all of this — but That One, Who is only Awake, is not serious about it anymore. That One does not fundamentally assume the condition of the dream as limitation.

The one in the dream is waiting. "It is going to happen any day now — either Jesus is coming or the quake is coming, one or the other. Or the war, or the bomb — it is all coming. And you have got to prepare for it, boys and girls!" But the one who is just Awake slowly sips a cup of sweeted herbs. Everybody else is "Phew!" — hitting the panic button, or else inhaling consolations with their minds. But this one is unreasonable. Such a one just does not care. There is no sign in that one of any seriousness about this entire problem. For the seeker, life itself manifests as a problem, a fundamental dilemma. For the one who understands, there is no fundamental dilemma.

Only the Condition of genuine Waking is truly and "radically" Free of the condition in the dream. But that True Waking Condition is not the thing that is attained by any of the means generated in the dream, the search. And the means designed within the "dream state" of ordinary life are often magnificent, extremely elaborate. They grow out of practical necessity, and so they are very complex, very elaborate. They take many, many factors into account. Traditional religion and Spirituality, conventional Yoga, magic, occultism and mysticism — not to mention all the "sciences", so called, in life, the life-strategies and life-remedies — are all highly complex, and often very successful in relieving the symptoms, or experiential dis-ease, of un-Conscious life. And the methods and artifices of seeking fascinate those who are simply suffering. Everybody is looking for the consolation or technique that distracts to the maximum degree. Everybody is willing to pay money for what is not bread. People are not truly looking to be sustained. They do not require Truth. They only desire to forget or escape the gorilla. But I am not such a one. I Live only Truth to living beings.

I have talked about the relationship between the True Guru and his or her devotees as being the essence, the fundamental Condition, that is sadhana, or Real Spiritual practice. But this sadhana is not a form of concentration on the Guru as some separate and merely symbolic entity. That is not relationship. That is your own fabrication, your own suffering again. Where there is relationship, there is no need for all of these symbolizations. And the true nature of sadhana in My Avataric Divine Company is to live the Condition and the conditions of relationship to Me in My Function as Guru. Within the dream, the potential images may be consoling, and even hopeful — but such consolation or hope is not the equivalent of being Awake. Consolation and hope depend upon your being asleep. The forms of seeking exploit your capability for identification with the fundamental dilemma of dreaming, which is its unconsciousness. They may satisfy you within the context of your assumptions, but they are not the equivalent of Waking Up.

What is required to Wake Up? What can you do within the dream to Wake Up? Nothing. There is only the Waking Itself. All actions within the dream are forms of the dream itself. Waking is another process, and it occurs by other means, by already conscious means. I am not a symbol, a condition of the dream itself. No mere symbol, no mere condition of the dream, can Wake you Up. I Am the Light of Consciousness, the Real Self, already Awake, Functioning Alive. I Appear in human Form within the dream of life — not to console you, but to Awaken you through the Real crisis in consciousness. I am a frustration to the unconscious condition of the dream.

There are those who preach various forms of mental preoccupation, and there are those who preach various forms of subtle preoccupation. They are all the same. They are all doing the same thing. They are all serving the dream. They are not the Self of Reality. They are not What the True Guru is, What the Great Siddha truly is, What I Am. The Man of "Radical" Understanding, Who I Am, Functioning as True Guru, is the Awakener. I am always already Awake. I could not care less about your urges and demands within the dream. I refuse to satisfy them. I would rather beat you on the head with a stick than give you an experience merely to console you. I have no intention of satisfying anyone's egoic game. All the demands for satisfaction that you bring are frustrated in My Avataric Divine Company. What is satisfied, what is made to grow, is that fundamental Intuition of Reality that is already the Foundation of your existence. That Intuition is intensified in Satsang with Me, the Condition of relationship between Me and My devotees. And all the rest, the fascinated search, begins to fall away. In this Satsang, the search begins to reveal itself, until it becomes obvious.

And understanding itself will not necessarily have anything peculiarly dramatic about it. How dramatic is it to wake up in the morning? You do not go, "Wowwwwwww!!!" You do not scream, "Fantastic! Oh, Revelation!" All you do is open your eyes and live. You just wake up. The Realization that you are not stuck in the dream has a certain pleasure associated with It, but It is not usually a fantastic sort of fireworks. It is a natural, already Happy Event. In The Knee Of Listening I described My Great Re-Awakening to the Divine Self-Condition. That Ultimate Event was not dramatic at all. I was sitting on a bench in a little temple. In the moment of Re-Awakening, I simply opened My eyes and walked out into the street. I did not talk to anybody on the way, and I did not say anything about It to anybody at home. I did not describe this profound Event to anybody at all for many weeks, even months. And when I began to talk about It, I tried to make clear that Its true Import was extremely subtle. It was not "extraordinary" in any conventional sense. It was without drama. I was simply being Awake. There was nothing to compare It to. It was not the attainment of anything.

Within the dream there are all kinds of attainments. The gorilla is chasing you and Smack! the big purple mountain has a crystal cave underneath. You go running into it, and you enter the water that is there. You go deep. And then there are red brilliant lights. Pearls and sacred ornaments hit you on the head. And you go shooting up like a rocket of gleaming silver and gold fire. You flash to the top of the mountain. Your head explodes into billions of serpents. At last you stand immortal and victorious on the mountain top. You scream at all the gorillas from the top of the mountain. You destroy them and smother them and smash them to smithereens! That is the attainment within the dream. That is the usual Yoga. That is the typical vision. But "radical" understanding is simple Waking Up.

Now, this dilemma, this unconsciousness, this "contraction" I have often described to you, is the "dream". It is the crucial presumption. It is not changed or undone by the fact of the ordinary waking state, nor by any ordinary life-activity or seeking. It is without benefit of this intuited Reality in Which you truly live. Therefore, you presume and live that condition of suffering, separateness, and fundamental dilemma, until you Awaken in spontaneous, "radical" Insight — or until you become shattered, insane, corrupted, thoroughly unconscious. If the gorilla eats you in the dream, you feel eaten. You are eaten. Those who dream long enough, who try all the alternatives within the dream, who have suffered all the attainments and failures within the dream, who no longer have anywhere to go, who are only dreaming, who are only suffering, who no longer take their search "seriously", for whom the search is no longer the thing to which they resort, who have despaired of their own adventure, their ecstasies, their attainments, their strategic paths, their methods, who are only suffering, who are only in dilemma, who in fact are only experiencing this contraction, the compulsive avoidance of relationship, but are doing nothing about it any longer, who know they cannot do anything about it any longer — they become sensitive to the sunlight.

To move into My Divine Presence is not something My devotee does. The devotee does not actually go to the True Guru. The devotee cannot decide one morning to go to the True Guru. The devotee does not know where the True Guru is. How can he or she go to the sunlight? My devotee is somebody lying asleep in bed. My devotee does not go to Me. I am the Sun, rising, intensifying the light, until My devotee realizes that he or she is in My Divine Presence. That realization is Satsang with Me. And "radical" understanding is itself True Waking, True Knowledge, or re-cognition, of the "sunlight". All seeking for Me, all going after Me as the Guru, is an activity within the dream. I cannot truly be found within the dream. Only the imagery of the dream can be found within the dream. Perhaps My Avatarically-Born bodily human Person can be found, but My True Self-Nature and Function cannot be comprehended by the "dreamer", by the seeker, or by his or her strategic methods.

If you yield to the gorilla at last, if you give up your search — not willfully, but spontaneously, having despaired of your seeking — essentially you have surrendered, or yielded, to that Reality you have always intuited. And that spontaneous surrendering, that Conscious "dying", that yielding to the gorilla, is a sign of Waking. It is the far end of sleep. It is the beginning of that sensitivity to the morning. As soon as you become sensitive to it, you just Wake Up and go about your business.

The life of My devotee is a very natural, functional life of Real Enjoyment, of Intelligence. It is a life Awake. It is not a life "in bed". It is not spent meditating in the crystal cave. It is a simple, normal, ordinary life of Happiness. It is to live already Awake. Of course, I have been talking in similes. Perhaps you have the idea that the "waking state" is the only condition uniquely free of the limitations of the "dream state". But even though all men and women are apparently awake, they know no other state that transcends the ordinary limitations of the waking state. People ordinarily do not pass into the "fourth State" (Beyond waking, dreaming, or sleeping) in which even the ordinary waking state loses the force of its implications. That is why My Avataric Divine Guru-Function is lived in the waking world. I Am that "fourth State", Alive in the waking world, under the appearance of the waking condition. Just so, "Real meditation" is not a fixation of the eyes on physical sunlight, nor on the energies, ordinary or extraordinary, that appear and move in the waking life. "Real meditation" is present Enjoyment of the Sun Itself, the True Sun, Which is Reality Itself. That "fourth State" is Awake to the "waking state". To acknowledge Me, to enjoy Heart-Companionship with Me, the One Who Is always already "Awake", is to be Awake yourself. When you truly see Who I Am, you are already Awake. Until that moment, you are still woozy. But if you live in My Avataric Divine Company and fulfill the conditions I require of you for your sake, you begin to feel a distance from the dream, from its compulsiveness, its repetitiveness. What is happening in such a case is that the Real Self, the Heart, the True Sun, Who I Am, is being Intuited, Enjoyed. And when you truly see Me, when you truly see the Sun, then you yourself are Awake. Just as the morning sun, the appropriate hour, the physics and biology of one's life-condition, conspire to awaken one to the ordinary world from one's natural sleep, just so, Satsang with Me, the entire Condition and sadhana of Real religious and Spiritual life, Awakens you to your Perfect, always present, and True State. All of the secondary forms of associating with Me are indeed secondary. All of your ordinary waking activities — even those in which you communicate with Me, are effective only in the ordinary waking state itself, the dream of usual life. They may be appropriate, even necessary, but they are not themselves the Way in My Avataric Divine Company. The Way of Adidam is the Condition Itself, the relationship itself. It constantly exists. It is the sadhana. It is the meditation. There is nothing else that needs to be added to it. The Condition Itself, the relationship itself, is the sadhana.

There is no end to the numbers of living beings who can do this sadhana. The sadhana of relationship to Me is what My devotee must always realize and live. Since I always already Enjoy the Great Condition, It takes up none of My time. There is no limitation to My capability to be that fundamental Enjoyment for all beings. The limitations are on My devotee's activity within the life-appearance, and on My apparent activity within that same appearance. But those limitations are only the forms of pleasure and communication, wherein human beings represent their understanding to one another. Even so, I am rising above the house. I am not this limited state. I Am your own Enjoyment, Most Perfectly Known.

Since this True Waking is your Reality, your True Condition, the dilemma cannot be found when it is sought. It is purely an illusion that is assumed by the dreamer, by the one who only seems to be awake. You spend your entire life within the dream, within this vast adventure, to find the princess in the crystal palace and save her from the dragon, or to wait in the crystal palace to be rescued by the prince. You live an endless, endless adventure — millions and millions of ages, year after year after year — of numberless complications. But at some point along the way, you become serious enough to examine your motivation to seek, to examine the cause, the root, for which this goal is only the symbol. At last one realizes that one cannot find one's symbolic satisfaction. And this falling into one's dilemma, then falling through it, is the unqualified Intuition of one's Ultimate Nature and Real Condition.

There is no fated time when this will occur. You need not persist to the end of your seeking before it is appropriate to understand. A person can wake up at any time. You do not have to go through the entire dream process until you seem to find the princess sleeping in her castle or the prince finds you. You do not have to dream the entire sequence of the dream. Karmas, or destiny, are not absolute and necessary in this sense. It is appropriate to wake up at any time. It is only one who continues to believe in his or her own search who must acquire and achieve a great deal before Realization is "appropriate". Such a one has "twenty more years of striving", or "twenty more times to be born for death's sake". That one has an obligatory number of things to do. He or she must do certain things while embodied and earn a certain amount of money. He or she is born, so it is thought, with various conditions to fulfill. But the ideal of seeking is really absurd. You cannot imagine the dreamer defending all of that, but only one who appears within a dream. And even the one in the dream will not defend his or her dream-destiny of seeking in the presence of the gorilla. You can only imagine a person defending it when surrounded by delights, or when full of capabilities. Then such a person is like a child whose mother wants him or her to wake up to go to school. The child does not want to get up. The child says, "No, I'll get up later." He or she does not want to go to school. The seeker does not want to go to "school" — the seeker does not want to live the sadhana, the discipline, the real conditions of life that are found in the Company of the Guru. The seeker does not want to understand his or her own adventure.

The waking state promises something relatively undesirable to one who is suspended in the twilight state of a pleasant dream. Such a one is reluctant to understand, too distracted to be interested in understanding. The ordinary reluctance of people is not truly caused by a premonition that the life, or sadhana, of understanding is so difficult. It is only that they do not yet care about it. Somehow, for the moment, everything seems all right. For the most part, the usual man or woman possesses a relatively healthful physical life — with certain satisfactions, certain opportunities, things to do, books to read, a future of places, physical pleasures, mental pleasures. With all of that, who wants to Awaken? And most people come to Me in that condition. Therefore, I do not take them seriously. I know they are only indulging themselves, even if to others the new arrivals seem to deserve only mercy and the grin of promised salvation. When these seekers come to Me, they make all kinds of complaints about their fundamental suffering. "Please give me this salvation, this realization, this release!" But they are not really looking for that. They are unwilling to endure the discipline of Truth.

There are certain limitations to the entire adventure and pleasure of ordinary life. You know you are going to die some time — but, essentially, mysteriously, life still seems to be full. Thus, Truth is not likely to enter the usual picture without the intervention of some fundamental, transforming event. But if you are smart — if your life is generated with Conscious Intensity — you do not have to become desperate before you will turn to the Truth. Your circumstances do not have to become empty, corrupted, and diseased. You do not have to wait for the failure of life itself before you will turn to Truth. Someone who is waiting for life to disprove itself is only indulging himself or herself. There is nothing profound about the search or the suffering of such a one. But if one is smart, if one's life is an intensity, one is always turning to Truth from birth. The more distracted people are by the pleasures of existence as the condition of their life, the more mediocre their realization, on every level — even on the level of life itself. People who are just plain satisfied with how good their bodies feel barely function at all. There is no life-force, no life-intelligence, in such people. They do nothing. They just smile and play with sexual partners all the time. They do not create anything. They Realize nothing. They do not intensify the quality of life. They have achieved nothing more than symbolic existence. They may have to suffer drastic conflicts and upheavals before their unconsciousness begins to break up, but the suffering is not truly necessary. It is unnecessary to go through a long term of seeking, of suffering, of breaking down, of corruption, before Truth becomes appropriate. The Realization of Truth is not a matter of heavy, self-involved, constricted, willful effort. It is as natural as a simple response to sunlight. It is simply the relationship to Me, the intelligent life of Real sadhana.

Truly, what you bring to Me is not your dilemma. The dilemma has no real existence. You may be preoccupied with it, but I pay no homage to it. I may appear to take it quite seriously, or I may display only the most playful attitude toward it — even allowing My devotee to suffer or enjoy it temporarily, because it is of no ultimate consequence. Truly, what people bring to Me is their Intuition of Reality Itself. It is only that they are not consciously living it. But it is the very premise of their lives — and so they come to Me, Who Lives that Intuition Consciously, Who is the Sun to their deep-seated Intuition, and I Draw their Intuition into this instant.

Only the seeker takes the dilemma seriously, but the waking state does not take your dreams seriously. It is not the least concerned with your dreams. And, luckily, all beings are already alive with their Intuition of Reality. Therefore, they have this affinity with sunlight, with the True Waking State — with Me. Unqualified Reality is What they are already living, and that is What is consciously discovered in relationship to Me. Because they are always already Inhering in Unqualified Reality, it is Reality Itself that Draws them to It. It is the Intuition of Reality Itself that leads people to Me, that leads them to maintain themselves in My Avataric Divine Company. All "reasons" for holding on to Me fall away, and also all the reasons for not holding on to Me. None of these reasons has any ultimate significance. The affinity of your True Nature, your Intuition of your True Nature, the Heart Itself, is entirely responsible for this sadhana. When you become less concerned for your particular search, for your inwardness, for your adventure, you have simply become more sensitive to your Real Condition. You have felt the sunlight falling on your sleeping eyes. When your eyes have opened in the morning light, everything will be obvious to you. And you will know that you have never slept, that you have never dreamed, that you have never been limited to any thing that has appeared. You have never been in any condition that you have assumed. There was always only Reality Itself, your True Nature — Which is Love-Bliss, Consciousness, the Unqualified Intensity.