Beyond the place of laughter and tears in the land of devotion 0970104103

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Beyond the place of laughter and tears in the land of devotion Spiritual Writings of DAVID SPERO

Paramatman Productions

'Tliis book is {oving{y offered to tliose wlio ardent{y wisli to merge into tlie Suyreme ReaCity

"Beyond the place of laughter and tears in the land of devotion" Book designed by Roger H. Rodgers for Paramatman Productions Copyright© 2000 David Spero Publications 2S7J :iJyi:1i:ls"'er Lee13, Settth / Pslm Sp1i11g~, Califu111ia 92262 Printed in USA All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission in writing from the publisher, except by a critic who may quote brief passages for review purposes. ISBN#0-9701041-0-3 Library of Congress Card Number #00-103869

Contents Introduction .... .' ..................... 4 About David Spero ................... . 10 Chapter 1 -

Divine Experiences ......... . 12

Chapter 2 -

What is Satsang? .......... . 17

Chapter 3 -

Thoughts of David Spero .... .25

Chapter 4 -

Talks Given to Devotees ...... 44

Chapter 5 -

Sexual Yoga ............. . 116

Chapter 6 -

The Divine Mother ....... . 121

Chapter 7 -An Essay ............... . 128 Chapter 8 -

Experiences ............. . 129

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INTRODUCTION

Introdncti on By Reverend Thomas Ah/burn

first met David Spero when he was a college student in Rhode Island, and I was the Senior Minister of the First Unitarian Church of Providence. I was leading a Monday evening meditation group at the time called simply, Spiritual Concerns. All kinds of spiritually concerned people attended our group: church members, college students, lonely souls, lost souls, curious people, people in recovery, atheists, theists, New Age drifters, even a few aging hippies. Practically every religious inclination was represented among us. But the primary thing that united us was that we were all spiritual seekers. I certainly was. I had just spent a sabbatical year studying with Tibetan lamas, and had also met a wonderful Cambodian refugee monk living in Providence named Maha Ghosananda. Both Maha Ghosananda, now the Supreme Patriarch of Cambodia and a Nobel Peace Prize finalist, and my beloved teacher Tulku Thondup, the author of numerous important books on the Tibetan Dzogschen tradition, visited us regularly on Monday evenings, as did a host of other teachers, Buddhist, Taoist, Hindu, Christian, and Jewish. So did David Spero.

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In David I discovered more than a kindred spirit who was reading what I was reading and asking the same questions, I found a delightful younger brother. It was a heady time for both of us, a very happy time, as well. Though we were serious students of mystical thought and practice, neither of us were stuffy fanatics. If anything, laughter was our mantra, and the communication of happiness was our aim. We yearned for the same things: spiritual clarity, resolution, understanding , peace, and a heart connection with whatever it was that was drawing us both somewhere back behind the beyond. But David was unique in this respect, and brought to his spiritual quest a wondering innocence and unyielding resolve unmatched by anyone that I have ever known. Something unconditional was churning away in David's soul, pulling him steadily and sometimes terribly. into a luminous void that he wanted to know - and was destined to know whether he wanted to or not. It would be years before David connected fully with the source of his spiritual yearning. Before he did, he quite literally searched the planet for answers. I know life wasn't always easy for him. Like all of us, David has known both wonder and woe, but there was simply no way he was ever going to set aside his exploration of the Divine and no door he wouldn't open if he believed that opening it would advance his quest. From time to time, David would report back to me about his latest insights and adventures-fr om the Pacific coast or the desert or another continent-an d I would marvel again at his persistence. He never hesitated to sacrifice comfort or convenience if he thought it was Mother's will that he do so. But he has lived this way for

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INTRODUC TION

many years, certainly for as long as I have lmown him, and when I ask myself what David would be doing today if not conveying Mother's grace, I am' left without any answer. He was born to this work. Beings like David are born, not fashioned on earth. Some spiritual traditions say as much, claiming that realized beings take birth in conditioned realms repeatedly over the course of beginningless and endless time in order to attract the rest of us into a recognition of our own primordially enlightened or unconditioned nature. Such a being is usually called a Buddha or avatar, or perhaps a Christ, though she or he may well take rebirth in much less exalted or recognizable manifestations, even as the lowest and most untouchable beings imaginable. But whatever form a given realized being takes, all such beings are manifestations of Divinity itself-the Godhead, the Dharmakaya, Brahman or the Divine Mother-an d are incarnations of Divinity's liberating grace. So who is David Spero? What's so special about him? Is he a realized being? Does he have the Divine Mother's blessing? Is he an avatar? Frankly, I don't think questions like these matter. They are merely preliminary concerns, or what the Buddha calls unavailing questions not conducive to liberation. What matters is our response to David's message and invitation. Which is to say, readers of this book will have to judge for themselves whether or not there is something gracious and liberating going on in its pages or if such things as David writes about are even possible. That David's views deserve respect goes without saying. His intellectual mastery of eastern thought and the literature and spiritual practices associated with Indian devotional paths centered on the Divine Mother is highly impressive, as is his solid

INTRODUCTION -

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grasp of contemporary spiritual issues, such as the evolving significance of feminine spiritual energies. On this score, I think David's views are as brilliantly insightful as any that one is likely to encounter among living spiritual writers, including those of Ram Dass, Andrew Harvey, Ken Wilber, Bernadette Roberts, and the great spiritual genius Adi Da Samraj. That he is also the first openly gay realized being among us is certainly important, too. But as I indicated earlier, David is a very special being. I believe that David's readers will have to conclude that he has done his homework, and knows all there is to know about meditation and spiritual practice generally. But the primary thing he knows and conveys so very clearly in this marvelous book is that what truly matters in life, life's saving grace, is always already here and now the case, and free for the taking. If I understand him correctly, David is saying that the here before it passes, the now before it's • gone-this world just as it is-is the Divine Mother. Each arising and perishing instant is a clear, empty, and unimpeded moment of Mother's infinite love. Again, her gift is free, open, and nothing we need to attain, rather something we always already are and only need to realize or understand. As David says, cleanly and beautifully, "The creation is the ecstatic participation in its own reality, in its own bliss. There is no separation of the creator from his or her creation." The creation David is invoking is not the astronomical one, the so-called big bang, which presumably happened billions of years ago, nor the biblical one, the once-and-forall creation of the universe mentioned prominently at the

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outset of the Old Testament, but Mother's eternal creativity or unending gift of herself to herself we lamely call reality. This creation is beyond measuring or charting, either scientifically or theologically. How could one possibly measure or chart that which one always already is: this infinitely loving reality here and now the case; a creation without an inside or outside or determinate dimensions in space and time? Of course, one couldn't, and I am reminded here of the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein's frustration at finding a rational ground for that which is, in principle, beyond logic. Remarked Wittgenstein, "One gets to the point where one would like just to emit an inarticulate sound." Nor is divinity's wondrous effulgence served by those who are tempted to rest silently content with the traditional Vedantist formula: "I am that." A5 David wisely observes, "'I am That' is a sad ending to a beautiful story. Love goes on and on even after That has been realized." The chief idea presented here is not to surrender to anything less than Mother's unconditional love. Nothing should stand in the way of this final sacrifice: the finite logic oflanguage, meditation, the void, visions, sectarian religious expectations, detachment, nothing whatsoever. Like the Buddha before him, David teaches that enlightenment involves giving up all that we know and love, even that which makes us most comfortable or secure. If we don't, we might as well die; there will be no further growth, love or wonder in us. This applies to all our endeavors, even our most cherished spiritual practices. The Buddha likened all of his teachings, including the Four Noble Truths, the very cornerstone of the Dharma, to a raft that pilgrims might use to cross a raging river to some farther shore-or from

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ignorance and suffering to understanding and serenity. Once the passage has been made, the Buddha contended, the raft itself would be worthless and should be discarded. To become attached to the raft would be a fatal mistake. But David goes this traditional teaching of the Buddha one better, and puts it this way, "Meditatio n takes you across the ocean of misery. But once you get across the ocean you should forget about both sides; it should be indistinguishable bliss. Nirvana and samsara are, absolutely, without any shadow of a difference, one. Then you will be intoxicated with the Lord. And it won't stop. You won't have any questions about, 'am I really realized?' All that will be washed away in this Divine Silliness, this Love." A being who has looked at both sides of life, nirvana and samsara, and lovingly transcended any difference between the two is rare, indeed. Such a being reveals the source of all our yearning: that blessed place "beyond the place of laughter and tears in the land of devotion." Her or his "state" is traditionally called "sahaja samadhi," or living lovingly at ease with and as the Divine (my translation). That David Spero lives lovingly at ease with and as the Divine and can be of inestimable help to all who come into his presence, I have no doubts whatsoever. There is so much more to my old friend, his fiery intellect, infectious laughter, healthy affirmation of human sexuality, uncompromising honesty, and his manifest warmth and kindness, but this, his loving realization of the Divine Mother, is surely the heart of his goodness. And me? What will my response be? As always, I shall love him. Written at Pema Cho-ling in Greensboro, Vermont, on the 29th day of the eleventh Tibetan month of the Earth-Female Rahbityear, 2726.

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ABOUT DAVID SPERO

About David Spero

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avid Spero was born on March 24, 1957, at 2:40 p.m. in Providence, Rhode Island. In 1996 David awoke spontaneously as the Ocean of Eternal Being, a state which he calls "sahaja samadhi" (effortless and continuous immersion in Divine Consciousness). vVhile meditating, his consciousness opened into an expanded condition of Divine Luminosity (from which there has been no return). He says of this experience that, "David Spero became extinct. The mind had no top or bottom, no inside or outside. Even the word 'meditation' became meaningless. Soon the power to initiate became a natural capability and the raw power of the Shakti began to function on Its own. It was unimaginable, unfathomable. It was the primordial consciousness beyond time and space." David continues to describe this moment in more detail. "It was in a motel room where I sat to meditate, a simple and ordinary place. For some months previously my meditations became extraordinary and my relationship with the Divine Mother intensified. Each day was like a tidal wave of bliss. It was never-ending. I felt as though the state of nondual consciousness was permanent, yet She seemed to be calling me higher and higher, into realms of experience which I had never even read about . .A5 I closed my eyes on this day I merged into perfect Light. My head, and the thoughts which moved in this head, went from being a spherical, physiological casing to an Ocean of Divine Light within seconds. This ocean was 'Me' and I was 'That.' This Ocean then began to move out in waves, waves of intensified and mystical bliss. I was lost, gone forever. The whole world and beyond was That, wave after wave of divine love and divine light, sweeping and devouring everything."

D

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1 Divine Experienues I was a sophomore in college and was walking to the mail room. It was a freezing, grey New England day. As I descended toward the last step and my right foot touched the mail room floor, I went through the bottom of my mind into the uncreated source of pure existence. I was lost, completely, evaporated from head to toe. Just after reassuming "consciousness" I remember saying to myself, "I have never been born. I am the Uncreated." The "witnessing condition," which transcends the compulsive round of waking, dreaming and sleep states of consciousness, became permanently established through an intense sadhana of Jnana Yoga (reaching the Ultimate through the intellect and the discriminative mind) and meditation. It was a never-ending state of Inquiry, involving the heart and mind completely. Breakthrough after break-

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through drenched my Life in my Heart's goal. Each day was a continuous "extension" into the unknown. I lived in an abiding sense of ignorance that dissolved me again and again. Death was my lover, and I petitioned That constantly to consume me. I was not going to stop until everything was gone, even the one who was offering. The more I tasted the bliss of pure extinction, the more I was ravished, ravished into wanting to become permanently extinguished. The more I died, the more I wanted to die; for I knew that my Abode was That. I belonged there, into That into which I surrendered. There is a kind of spiritual madness that is known only by the greatest Lovers of mankind. For them, the accomplishments of worldly life are like toys in the playpens of children. There is a driving force, unstoppable, unmodifiable which can only be quenched by the state of nirvana. This force is the intensity of Life wanting to sacrifice Itself for the sake of everything. One day, in the Spring of 1979, I was typing a term paper on the play "King Lear." I remember being moved deeply by the play, yet there was still something else that was dominating my awareness, while I strove, with all my heart, to think through its meaning. I can remember my teacher advising us, "If you will just care about writing this paper you will please me." Those words hit me like a ton of bricks. I knew she wanted devotion. As I sat in the chair with my electric typewriter, I became engrossed in the depth of my own thinking process on the word "nature." "What is 'nature' as expressed in this play?" I wanted to discover the relationship between nature, as the evolutionary process, and the ways in which characters changed in the course of

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DIVINE EXPERIENCES

this play. I "positioned" myself in such a way that consciousness itself posited the question and the depth and intimacy I demanded of the topic had me expose my entire inquiry to the Absolute Being. All at once something shocking occurred; my awareness exploded down into the depths of Being. Within this state of dissolution I went to the very ends of the human race. I entered into a field where I could perceive the evolution of philosophical systems and religions. This was in a state of pure mindlessness and not a series of thoughts. I saw how, in the vast expanse of time, the oscillating wave of human brilliance asserts itself in the birth and dissolution of systems of knowledge and belief. I went into this bliss and found that in a few moments I had returned to my body through the top of my head. As soon as I had realized bodily consciousness, I knew that I had reentered history and the concomitant experience was that bodily consciousness had bound me in knots. I felt wrapped around by "cords" and knew that this was the reason the ancient scriptures referred to being in the body as "bondage." One afternoon I sat for my practice of meditation in the spring of 1979. It was a day just like other days except meditation went into a state of Fathomless Consciousness. My awareness merged completely into the Atman, the Self. About forty-five minutes went by before I came to awareness. During that entire time my bodily functions came to a halt; everything stopped, the heart, the breath, everything. There was only That. There came a time when color began to impact on my senses with a devastating intensity. Each time I would look

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at a sunset I would feel myself dissolving, merging into pure Color. Beauty was overwhelming and as I was dying into It tears would come and in those tears were the temporality of all existence. I was the beauty that can only come from knowing death. She showed me, in a very short time, the depth of Her Love. It was terrifying. I saw Her in the form of Kali, eating and destroying There is a everything through time. It was a state kind of of unrelenting madness. Then, in the midst of this, I saw directly how nirvana spiritual (liberation) and samsara (suffering) madness that were one. Truly, it was beyond anyis known thing imaginable-how time and the infinite become each other. I longed for only by the this "schooling" to come to an end for I greatest Lovers did not know how long my body could of mankind. take this. It was a never-ending display of Mother's universal power and omniscient consciousness. It went on for months. For weeks I went with little sleep, driving along the California coast. Mother's divine intimacy was so severe, so full, that only She existed. Then we drove outside of Santa Barbara. For weeks I had been driven by this energy and now, facing the ocean, looked down off the high cliffs. It was a beautiful, sunny day in the early months of 1997. Mother had been showing me the different worlds, the exalted planes of consciousness that are inhabited by enlightened yogis after they transcend earthly existence. She told me internally, "now I want to Show you Mother's Realm, which is beyond

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all the worlds and planes." Slowly, observing the ocean, I noticed a strange, beautiful strand of color. It was a shimmering green, moving in the waves. Soon the green was transformed into a red and from red to purple. I thought I was hallucinating and became fearful. Then I began to relax into the rhythm of these changing colors and felt as though I was undergoing a transmutation of my world. I felt it dissolving into pure Beauty. These colors surpassed any idea of human color. I do not believe that anyone, anywhere, in the whole history of humanity has seen these colors. Soon I began to lose consciousness and was drawn into the most singularly profound state of consciousness. My body-consciousness exited through the top of my head and I was in another World. It was completely unmanifest. It was the Being of pure, timeless awareness. Simultaneously, the essence of those colors was there, swirling like a silent tornado. It was beyond conception and experience and yet experience was not completely forfeited. Then, I felt a total shock in my being and the life-force descended back into the body-mind. I was conscious that I was held to my body by a thread of sorrow that was joined to my solar plexus. It was this sorrow that pulled my awareness into the body and was the urge to love and be loved.

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2 What is Satsang~ This "yoga," which flows unobstructedly from the Heart of the Mother, is Self-activating-enlightenment-consciousness. It is instantaneously liberating and will lead an aspirant through all the stages of his or her sadhana (spiritual practices) and beyond. This satsang comes from the breath (prana) and feelingvibration (shakti) of the Divine Mother. It radiates light and love, thereby elevating both meditational and devotional experience. In such an atmosphere, suffused with total divine consciousness, spiritual life can blossom naturally. Anyone can enjoy the bliss of this Divine Yoga. "Prana" and "shakti" are merely the aspects of Life itself. "Prana" and "shakti" allow the full intensity of Divine Bliss to flow on and on, drenchin g the being in everlastin g life. Realization is without end or circumference; dilation and constriction are not its properties, but a continuous flow from the Beyond, bringing the devotee to a state of unlimited freedom. This state is not mere uncondit ioned Impersonality (nirvana), but the vast realm of perfection itself. I radiate myself infinitely, in all directions, like a well offering water to those who are thirsty.

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WHAT IS SATSANG

The purpose of the Kundalini-Shakti is to purify, uplift, expand, and intensify devotion. This satsang is the full revelation of Light and Energy. This state culminates in all-knowingness of ever-present Love. It opens the heart to the center of existence and liberates the mind to infinite freedom. After this, the Great Void expands eternally in its own dimension, like waves which break forever against ocean sands. Through feeling-breath the individual is brought close to the transcendental reality. Bhakti (love) and prana (brearl?-) merge and there is a sensation of absolute feeling. This feeling circulates and The pu:rpose liberates the entire body-mind, gross and ofthe subtle, from bondage.

K.u:ndaliniShakti is to

The mechanics of this teaching are overLife breathes you, purify, uplift, whelming and simple. you do not breathe Life. Energy fills you expand, and from its overflowing bounty, you do not extract energy and then "live it." The sense int:ensify of individual existence, constricted and devotion. bound by unnatural prana and submerged in lower energies, is offered to the Divine Beloved. You may ask, "what kind of offering is this?" I reply, "She wants the offering of ignorance and has an unlimited appetite for unfulfilled existences." The brilliant, blinding Light of the Self is the essence of "prana." The endless river of feeling, or emotion divinized, is "shakti." I absorb the "prana" of my devotee and feeling-

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ly fill him or her with the endless consciousness of Divine Love, the Kundalini-Shakti. Bliss is everlasting light, uncontainable joy, and is one with all life, one with all Love. Where Bliss is there is no time, or motion. Bliss is within breath (prana) and feeling (shakti). Our feeling and breath are the way Divine Life penetrates, re-organizes, and transforms our entire consciousness. This transmission of prana-shakti moves, without moving, into the tissues, the brain, the vital organs and throughout the entire subtle network of the nervous system, adjusting and transforming it into the glistening Radiance of Life. As this process matures and intensifies one is naturally stabilized in the full experience of nondualtiy, where there is only Oneness. Finally, we are absorbed totally into what we have always been, the uncreated fountainsource of Pure Light and Pure Love. The Spiritual Heart of the Master is saturated completely in Divine Love. Divine Love shirks at no level of suffering. The infinite tenderness that is the Master's Heart transforms suffering into Divine Bliss. It does not matter the extent of the suffering. His eyes fill with tears and, in his infinite compassion, he absorbs the prana of suffering and instills the prana of Eternal Life.

In the midst of constricted feeling the Master feels through the suffering with the shakti, the force of the spiritual current, and corrects the imbalances of those in ignorance. The absorption of the "prana" and the released "shakti" move in the Heart of the Devotee and awaken him or her into the permanent condition of "sahaja samadhi" (effortless abidance in the Divine).

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This satsang fulfills all paths of spiritual development. It is not possible to describe the total spectrum of effects it can manifest, nor its ultimate goal. The complete divinization of the human race is a concept that will paralyze the intellect. To transform matter into light is beyond human comprehension. Love, light and energy engage every aspect of the human being's spiritual This satsang On the path of samadhi, of process. falfills all paths transcending thought through meditaof spiritual tion, the vital emotions are ignored. .The result is a mind absorbed in its development. Source without feeling. On the path of It is not possible light, or nondualism, you are reminded to describe the mentally that you are the Self. Again, total spectrum of the emotions are left out. On the path of the Kimdalini-Shakti, which includes effects it can all forms of transmission of Divine manifest, nor its Energy, the individual is turned toward energies, visions, and experiences that ultimate goal. are subjective and ultimately nonilluminating. Divine Illumination, as revealed through Divine Mother satsang, engages full relationship on every human and Divine dimension, the heart, mind, and Inner Being. "Sahaja samadhi," effortless abidance as the Divine Itself, can never be reached through a path. It is the full, spontaneous gift of the Absolute Reality. The shakti is everlasting energy. Energy which is derived can always be depleted. The shakti has its full grip on the spiritual master and is without beginning or end.

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It moves through him just as his blood courses throughout his body. This infinite vitality magnifies the spiritual intensity of those around him, bringing them various subjective experiences which terminate in the state of unconditional realization. This teaching is a revelation of the most exalted condition of "sahaja samadhi," (effortless abidance in the Divine). No effort is necessary and no distraction is possible. When the Supreme Beloved awakens, there is an end to spiritual evolution and the endless odyssey of human ignorance. Only Divine Light, Divine Love, and freedom from all knowledge remain. Prana is everlasting wakefulness. Prana is life, light, and breath. Prana travels from the gross breath to the subtle breath within the breath that holds Eternal Life. This satsang is literally the breath and the devotion of the Divine Mother. Her Life inundates the atmosphere, unleashing all spiritual possibilities. In "satsang" I have witnessed Her extraordinary power unleashed through my own Being. "Diksha," the initiatory power of the Guru, is the emanation of Divine Light, Divine Love, and the multicolored Shakti (Force), impinging on the body of the Devotee. It is this power that transforms and enlightens. All paths converge in the Divine Mother: Zen, meditation, nondualistic Vedanta, paths of devotion, Kashmir Shaivism, Taoism, Shamanism, Esoteric Chrisitianity and Islam, everything in the East and everything in the West. I invite you all to find the Truth and not a path to the Truth.

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The transmission of Radiant Bliss is the Heart of the Divine Mother. He or She is not the mere conduit for Divine Energy, but is him or her Self Avataric or Divine Consciousness fully embodied. He holds nothing separate for himself so that when you see Him truly you see him everywhere. The avatar is not merely enlightened. His light is differ- - - - - - - - - ent from a Guru's Light. He contains the whole spectrum of multidimenlights of consciousness. These sional The avatar is lights heal, liberate, and transform. not merely . The Glistening Fullness of the Avatar enlightened. is ungraspable; it is beyond void-consciousness. Yet, in his Presence, His light is because of the vast realization that he different from a is, everything becomes surrendered Guru's Light. spontaneously.

He contains the whole spectrum of multidimensional lights of consciousness.

This satsang's Light emits a radiant, multi-colored field of bliss and energy. It strikes deep within the body-mind, stimulating the depth of pure innocence and emotional vulnerability. Meditation happens naturally as the - - - - - - - - - individual spontaneously probes deep levels of feeling which remain hidden. The function of the spiritual master is to disorganize the life of ignorance. A well of longing must emerge from the Heart of the

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Devotee. It is the intensity of this thirst that allows the spiritual master to offer himself completely. The spiritual master's eye can see deeply into the being of the student. No amount of avoidance can divert his gaze. The body of the Enlightene d Beloved is precious. It transcends religious ritual, scriptural admonition s and ecclesiastical authorities. The body of the Supremely Awakened One is a bridge across the ocean of birth and death. Even the mere vision of Such a One's Body is deliverence into the Milk-Ocean, the Ocean of eternal Nectar.

lfil ~ lfil

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

She Clenched Her Arms I found myself one day to be Her, the Goddess, the Divine Mother. She clenched Her arms around my waist and squeezed until I bled tears of devotion. Now I find Her everywhere.

lfil~

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ lfil

@I

•

I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I ~ I I I I

@I

Amma The Hunger for Your Touch has driven me to the ocean sands where the sound of breaking waves beats against the hollowness of my chest. The fragrance of Your Body washes through my mind like the lonely seagulls' cries as the sun sets over a blackened shore. In this far away land as my life ebbs in the nothingness that is eating away at my heart's core I can remember only the sound of Your Name:

I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I ~ I I I I

@]. ~

I~

''Amma, Amma. "

~~ @I

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3 Thoughts of David Spero The spiritual master speaks a language of no-meaning. He speaks the universal languag~ of Love. The fruit of knowledge is devotion. Devotion is the fruit of action and meditation flowers in devotion. Even devotion will yield only devotion. "I am That" is a sad ending to a beautiful story. Love is everything and goes on and on. The spiritual master resides in the transcendenta l reality which underlies the waking, dreaming, and sleep states of consciousness. Although he witnesses these states, supreme love allows him to face each one as himself. Beyond his own freedom from causality, he has become the Shakti Itself, the fire which maintains conditional existence. Through the Shakti he initiates those who come to him, bringing the resolution of emotional and mental difficulties and stimulating the path of spontaneous self-transcendence.

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The joy of forgetting all into the Transcendental Reality is the One and true and only joy. Relative life is full of suffering. Absolute consciousness is bliss. Beyond relative and absolute there is a joy, an ever-expanding wave of LordConsciousness. And even beyond this is the Divine Mother Herself who is the living embodimen t of compassion and fulfillment, a state which is totally beyond description. This satsang comes from the breath and heart of the Divine Mother and delivers an aspirant to the final state of Lord Consciousness and beyond. Cognition of the Divine Reality is a complete absence of knowing. First, we are shocked into rememberi ng the pure awareness that is beyond time and space. Then it comes in waves, washing through the conditioned mind, purifying, cleansing, and establishing it in That. Finally, we are swept into an Ocean of Divine Light where even the waves of relative life are absorbed into the cosmic rhythm of Divine Forgetfulness.

Bondage is a lack offeeling-depth. Meditation is ultimately dissolution in the Great Shining Light that is within and on the outside of everything. After awakening, one moves as this bright power, transforming everything into this same Light. Consciousness is both light and energy and this heat instigates the spiritual process in those who are open to receive it. "Sahaja-samadhi" is fully spiritualized naturalization of the world. World and self are opposites in a meditationbased consciousness. Absolute consciousness is immutable,

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unchanging, beyond everything. The world is full of color, rhythm, and change. Beyond these two resides the Supreme Lord. No person can live or understand the state of "sahaja samadhi." When the Lord functions smilingly, being neither this nor that, then a riddle is created which requires no solution. "Sahaja samadhi" is Divine Love in action. Divine Love absorbs and transforms all that touches It. Pure Light and Pure Love are One, forever. The Kundalini-Shakti and the colors of the rainbow-spectrum of full existence push the individual unceasingly into the Final State. "Sahaja samadhi" is very funny and you will laugh when you see how divinely ordinary life is. Devotion is not a state of perception or a state of the human nervous system. It is a heart-rending state of total Love where nirvana and samsara finally merge. Beyond everything understandable, within and beyond the realm of total feeling, is an expanse of transparency of uncreated bliss. This uncreated bliss is That, the relative world. The nervous system, gross and subtle, nature, and the physical world all become transfigured in luminosity as divine ecstasy. Divine Mother burns out in Her ecstatic radiance the boundaries of worldly existence. In this state, all realms are shattered in the unspeakably brilliant grin of Kali.

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There is no condition of consciousness or awakening that is ever established permanently. To be free from states of consciousness and the misery of spiritual evolution is the natural state of being. This is the gift of "sahaja samadhi," the gift of the Divine Mother. "Amrita" is "Ananda," nectar is bliss. This bliss of "amrita" can manifest as cool pockets that spread throughout the body. The energy of the moon is this nectar-like Everything is coolness.

Mother. There is no inside or outside, no high and low, good and bad. Everything is Her Divine Love, radiating endlessly.

· Samsara, or conditional existence, is one with Divine Love and there is no difference between the realm of endless death and rebirth and the place of immortality. "You are That" means you are both-the excruciating sorrow and the brilliant ecstasy-and that unnamable Bliss which is beyond, which is both of these.

Detachment is a quality of consciousness itself and not an attitude. Compassion is also a quality of the nature of Being. Why exemplify detachment when you can just as easily show compassion? There is no sweetness in life without love. You can conquer the chakra system and see the lights of gods and goddesses. All visions and experiences exist in the field of separation. Beauty is when only Mother exists. When your whole heart comes to rest on that which cannot be seen or

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touched, you will become unspeakably beautiful and full of love. "Siddhis," supernormal powers, are natural manifestations of Divine Consciousness. Of all "siddhis," the only one I can rememb er is Divine Love. Divine Love can transform human beings' lives from hellish nightmares into Divine sweetness. I have become so invaded by Divine Love that I cannot rememb er any "siddhis." It is easy to renounce, whether it be one's feelings, one's intellect, or one's sexuality. It is easy and practiced often because separation comes easily. But to breathe into and feel completely, to come down wholly into Divine Love, into one's very body-n ow this is extraordinary. This is the gift I offer. Once you have the taste of full reality, then states of meditative samadhi looks like jail cells. It is good to practice meditati on techniques. It is easy to succeed and attain some kind of spiritual state. It is not uncomm on to attain cosmic consciousness (nirvana). All this is in the arena of detachment. Everything here is about the "Me,'' the Self. Can you love someone completely? As long as there is any kind of "me," love will be a threat.

The spiritual master who has attained the full grace of Kali is like no other teacher or guru. Even the enlightened ones should come to receive his blessings. Vulnerability, the willingness to be hurt in love, to offer one's entire life without withholding, is the true "sahaja samadhi." The spiritual master who has been absorbed by the Great Mother Herself is pure Love.

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The Supreme Lord loves completely in the field of human relations. What other greatness is there but this descent into flesh? The manifestation of the whole earth rests in the body of one who has descended from Holiness to Holiness. There is nothing to understand. There is nothing to experience. There is nothing to attain. There is only Divine Love. Full awakening is like a great river where everyone can come to drink. To drink of this water is to drink of Eternal Life. It is not possible to end one's own suffering, but it is possible to love so much that only That is remembered.

We are terrified of being possessed by the infinite energy of God because we have become accustomed to the small feeling of being possessed by ourselves. Happiness is self-realization, freedom. Supreme happiness is constant communion with the Lord, who issues His Love over the relative and the absolute and dissolves their difference. Beyond supreme happiness is the Domain of the Divine Mother. Realization is unbroken continuity with "what is." Dwelling in "what is" yields "I Am." "I Am" shatters into everything. Innocence is the Divine Consciousness Itself. If this innocence is allowed simply to be it turns into unfathomable energy.

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To see everything in one's Self and one's Self in everything is the highest level of realization. Beyond this is the Realm of Mother from Whom all states of being issue. Everything, gross and subtle, exists within Mother. From Her nonduality can be felt and experienced. Beyond Her is Her own Domain, existing eternally beyond time and space. We are like children at the feet of the Divine Mother. We do not know anything. We do not even know what is best for our selves. Therefore, let Her give us everything. Unmanifest Being is simply our true Self. This "nothing" is void of heat and cold, dark and light. Everything that exists is rooted in That. This realization is the beginning of spiritual life: Prior to this we are caught in superstitious and paranoiac beliefs about our existence, especially in relation to "god." After we become rooted in That, the eyes begin to open and the heart begins to feel. The full perception of relative existence is a wave on the ocean of consciousness. Even beyond this is a fullness of the Divine Mother which shocks one out of all previous and causation-dependent realizations. This is "sahaja samadhi," which retains full transparency between relative and Absolute and abolishes, once and for all, the relationship between the devotee and God. The movement of that life is the paradox of glistening, infinite Being. The Divine Mother includes all that is and is not. Ignorance is Her nature as much as Light. The web of maya (illusion) adorns Her U nmanifest Existence the way a strand

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of pearls adorns its wearer. "Sahaja samadhi," effortless and continuous awareness of the Divine, is uncontaminated by Light or Darkness. Both appear peering out of one's nature. Devotion is the nectar which runs through all realizations and finally disappears in the conversion of man/woman into God. Meditation is the essence of this life and not a routine or practice. Realized in Transcendental Ecstasy, Kali, standing one with the suffering of all beings, the on the head of Enlightened One comes and goes withShiva, is Divine out destination.

Love, fiery and insatiable, having destroyed the detachment born ofpure consciousness.

Love creates out of Itself endlessly and makes more and more of Itself. Love transforms misery into detachment and then transforms detachment into ecstasy. Ecstasy is like a lighthouse of the impossible. Everything which has possibility, quantification, cannot live there. It lives in a special place where only the Supreme can thrive. We grow in the unlimited and die in the measured. Being is infinite, absolute, effulgence of Divine Light. It is second to nothing and beyond everything. Deep within the field of Being there is timeless light of pure awareness, the cognition of everlasting Life. There are three aspects to full Realization: Paramatman (pure consciousness), Divine Love (Supreme Devotion), and the Kundalini-Shakti (movement of the spiritual current). These three conditions are fulfilled at the feet of

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the Spiritual Master who resides in the Immensity of the Divine Mother. Absolute bliss is not the goal of meditation. Absolute bliss is exclusive and breeds isolative consciousness. This may sound strange that the state of Divine freedom is a form of separation. It is my experience that this is so. Until the heart is dissolved in tears of devotion, the meaning of happiness is not known. The realized man or woman who cannot cry is like a bird with no wings. Divine Love contains the rainbow spectrum of colors that heal and mend the isolation bred from realization or ignorance. Love is the door. In the final stages of human spiritual development it is love that is finally remembered. How could it be otherwise? The path has been strewn with leaves of grace and devotion. The broken heart, fitting everything inside itself, is the final moment.

The Divine Mother is the maker of Gurus and Avatars. Identity is the accumulation of memory and emotional experience. As time progresses memory solidifies and emotion freezes. We become locked into a cold, hardened package of concepts and stifled feeling. This block of solidity and impenetrability is what goes on as the "me." Through breath (prana) and feeling (shakti) this "house," made of "cement" and "bricks,'' can be dismantled.

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Imagine, the stagnant air in a cold, damp house that has been in isolation for many years. Imagine, now, how removing one brick could cause a draft of fresh, clean air to sweep throu gh the inter ior of this darkened abode. This is how awakening comes. To have this house dismantled, brick by brick, seems to be a long and excruciating affair. After all, how long have we been like this? Yet the marvel of spiritual awakening is that the old is waiting to be cast off and wants to give in to that which is more true. The spiritual mast er is like a great physician. Divine Love knows how to lick the wounds and bruises that are infected with isolation, rejection, and betrayal. His Saliva is a balm. It flows unob struc tedly and continuously, dism antli ng every thing but Consciousness. To come into the presence of this Warm th is enough. Just that will eradicate the barriers to growth. To come into the presence of the spiritual mast er mean s that you have finally met your matc h-yo ur isolation cann ot outlast his love. Even the subtle or absolute attainment s of yogis and other "enlightened masters" cann ot be maintained around one who teaches in and as the Moth er. For one who has attained unio n with the absolute, there is a constant sense of detachment. The absolute can become a wall, even harde r and more impenetrable than a wall built by the ignorant. Actually, the absolute can beco me just another defense against emotional vulnerability. In its craziest version, the absolute is a hidin g plac e-a loveless, oneway mirror. True naturalness (sahaja samadhi) trans cends the aloofness born of Self-Realization. The sense of naturalness that a truly free man or woman exhib its is an affront to the hardness of those who use their spiritual realizations to spurn others. If your realization can be

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harmed by the "ignorant," it is not the supreme state. If you have to mesmerize yourself with repetitious slogans and "positive" philosophies to feel "happy,'' you've totally missed the point. A great being does not advocate his own way of thinking and does not spurn others. If there is no loving communication with the universal sense of failure that permeates the nature of all action, then there can be no real compassion. The Great One finds this world, with all its suffering, the great jewel in the brow of the Divine Mother. Divine Light, Love, and the Current of Life all blend into one Divine Wholeness. Teachings which are not directly from the Heart of the Divine Mother will fragment into one or another of these aspects. Love is not light, and light and love are not the Kundalini-Shakti. Spiritual masters tend to teach one or the other. Only Mother Herself can demonstrate the three coming together in one satsang. Consciousness is not just the Pure White Light of Unmanifest Being. Consciousness is filled with the various colors of the rainbow-like spectrum, representing the different vibrations of matter, the different Realms. The Enlightened One is an enigma because he or she does not find a home in any place. Jesus was quoted as saying that foxes and birds can find places of rest, places which fully encompass them, but there was not a comfortable place for Him to be. To practice spiritual techniques without love will never yield liberation. Love is innocence. Innocence has no strain, no time in it. The more deeply you love (bhakti) your teach-

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ing or your teacher, the deeper you will fathom his or her Heart. There is no end to spiritual experiences; consciousness is ever-expanding. The only thing that allows the Heart to finally come to Rest is the deep draught of Divine Love which is so overwhelming that It satisfies completely. Before the beginning of time we have been loved. After the end of time I have always loved you. In this love, this shimmering, radiant Beauty, all that has been hidden is revealed. Now you can see and be seen in Love.

Duality is nothing but shame, the shame that we are less than God. Love (bhakti) eventually becomes Divine Love (Parabhakti). There is nothing sweeter than Divine Love. It can even make you forget about the Atman (Eternal Self). As you feel the depth of pure devotion you will become drunk, so drunk that you will lose your balance and fall at the Feet of the Lord. In this state of inebriation you begin to become That. This drunkenness is so all-consuming that even reading the scriptures is like eating rocks. This living water is everlasting and you will never drink of anything else again. The joy is in melting and even though you are becoming That you are still wanting it, wanting it with your whole being. "Paramatman,'' Supreme Self, is like a blank movie screen. It is just the light in back of the mind. The individual mind is made up of this light. It is easy to see through meditation, when the mind turns back on its Source. As one grows in the consciousness of the Paramatman, one begins to know that everything exists within one's Self. Others are

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an illusion and so is the world. In fact, there is no world. The ultimate fruit of this state is isolation. Until the mind is shaken from its hold to its transcendent center, the truly ultimate state of being cannot dawn. For becoming and Being to finally merge the heart must be shattered in devotion; then the state of Self Awareness (Paramatman) is subject to the tornadoes of feeling that are known only by the heart. Only then can you say that you have been beyond the place of laughter and tears in the land of devotion. The spiritual master is like a whirlwind of energies. He is the state of Yoga itself. He is also meditation, the force that initiates and delivers the ignorant from bondage. In his presence you will taste the final goal of all spiritual practices. The spiritual master is the fountainhead of all spiritual practices. His life is like a river from which all can come to drink. The path of spiritual evolution is a labyrinth of endless experiences which go on and on. Until you become drunk on pure love itself, you cannot become free of your own spiritual path. Even the subtle aspects of the spiritual path are forms of intense suffering. If you have been dreaming of being near the ocean your whole life, then as you approach and can smell the subtle odor of seaweed and salt in the air your suffering, your yearning will grow more intense. In a similar manner, if you have been drawing close to the Ocean of Bliss, then the subtle experiences, the lights and visions, that arc generated in Its vicinity only serve to drive you on more intensely into the Final State.

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The various aspects of the Divine, such as Jesus, Krishna, and Buddha are nothing but aspects of our own Self. Sometimes we like to worship these Beings as something different from our own Self. But there is nothing higher than one's own Self. In fact, when it comes to merging completely into the Ocean of Joy, our own sorrow at having an external God will haunt us.

The Supreme Union is the complete realization that meditation is devotion. Then all spiritual practices drop off like dried leaves from a tree.

I teach the "path" of the Divine Mother. Her Love is the door. Everyone who walks through me walks into Her. To be placed totally in the grip of Divine Love is to have the Guru perform one's sadhana (spiritual practices). Once this is truly realized, spiritual life becomes no longer a process but surrender. You are sustained in the knowledge that you cannot "do" and that everything is being done.

"Bindu" is the "dot" of pure "darkness-light" around and from within which the whole creation dances. "Bindu" is, in the very depths of unfathomable being, hiding and revealing itself in shimmering waves. These waves are like a golden ocean of light. As they move the creation is "eaten" and returned back into its Source. A baby who cries "ma" is completely taken care of by its mother. When we cry to the Supreme from within the Supreme the Divine Mother runs toward us.

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There is no contradiction between meditation and devotion. Meditation will not yield the fruit of permanent Union with the Absolute unless there is the subtle feeling of divine yearning in its background. Devotion will not yield Union with the Beloved unless the devotion (bhakti) is felt from within the Ground of Existence. Once the relationship with the Master has been established then it goes on even from afar. He is the Shakti and no walls or miles can separate Him from his devotee. Love of the Master is the means of feeling His omnipresence. Some people believe that only] esus, Buddha or Krishna are Enlightened Ones and lived without difficulties. They forget that even They had bodies and while alive suffered under the threats of the ignprant. There were many in Their day who completely denied Their Divinity. And then there are others who believe only in "god." They say that he has no form. Only Supreme Love Itself will love the eternal in human form and crave It to appear visibly. The Supreme Form of the Lord transcends both the manifest and the unmanifest. He is a riddle and only those of a great spiritual temperament will take the time and patience to find out who he is. It is not possible to love completely without total surrender. There will always be a pocket of separateness into which you can hide and from which you can reject. The only way to dismantle the whole apparatus of rejection is to love the Spiritual Master with the spiritual Heart that He awakens in you.

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"Worship" is the release of unrestricted, uncensored feeling toward an "object" of adoration. It can drive you mad, madly into Love. Worship is not deification or bowing to an object. It cannot occur where there is an "other." There is only That. Worship is your own Heart finally bleeding through. It is when, in spite of all that you are and all that happens, you remain as Love. The spiritual master asks for everything. He asks for everything because he has already given everything. And when everything has been given and everything has been taken-everything remains. Unquantifiable Love is the Heart of the Spiritual Master. No one can buy or sell him. He is not a commodity. The markets rise and fall in him and the marketplace is the worst kind of hell. When life is lived only for Love, this world begins to look like a mental hospital. The disease is selfishness. Cruelty is everywhere. Therefore, one drop of devotion in the heart of a devotee produces tears of great refreshment. Then She took me through the different "yogas" (ways to achieve union with the Divine) and said, "You are king of all of them. You can deliver anyone on any path." Then She showed me the culmination of every "yoga" Gnana, Karma, Bhakti, Raja), guiding me through each of them, one at a time, and said, "they are all in you." We are embodiments of pure love as well as renunciation, of the fullness of feeling as well as the transcendence of feeling. This may sound paradoxical but it is true. Let me

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give a visual metaphor. The ocean and the desert seem to be contradictory, separate places, yet deep within the ocean, at its very root, is sand and deep within the desert is water. If you sprinkle desert sand into the ocean, where does it go? If you take ocean water and sprinkle it onto the desert, what happens? When you fully realize the condition of Mother's Fullness you exist within Her and She in you. Mother's love is unimaginable, beyond time and space. She showed me this one afternoon as I was driving from Santa Fe to Chicago. I saw that I had always been with Her. I wept like a baby, feeling destroyed from the inside out. Then I felt "there is no me, there is only Her." Bhakti (love) became parabhakti (supreme love). Even as I write now my eyes fill with tears. I have no control over my life because She has taken it all. Her love is without end and the heart that I thought I once had belongs to Her. She showed me supreme emptiness, emptiness without end. She said, "behold, your Self all around." I looked at the mountains and they were Me, my own Unmanifested Being. Then She said, "this state of unity consciousness is only a fraction of My Love. I wish to show you everything." Then it became maddening to be ushered completely into Her Realm, the madness of supreme love becoming intoxicated by a world that was Her Body.

Meditation at Joshua Tree National Park, California

..,

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Enlightenment is endless meditation on and ecstatic absorption within the Supreme Beloved. "Sahaja samadhi," effortless abidance in pure consciousness, is a "state" where the Divine is found both within and without. Nothing is excluded. Everything is transcended. Nirvana (liberationfreedom) and samsara (bondage-attachment) are one. Divine Love and Divine Light are the natural effulgence which emit from an enlightened consciousness. Divine Love embraces and swallows everything. Divine Light illuminates voidness, the nothingness at the heart of Reality. When these two merge into Mother all is lost in unfathomable bliss.

"Sahaja samadhi" is the precious jewel beyond all states. Dissolution in God is devotion merging into nothingness. In the height of this wave both knowledge and devotion are penetrated into ultimate and unfathomable Reality. One's own Heart is seen everywhere. Duality is not the opposite of unity. Divine Consciousness has absorbed the state of ignorance and contains it without conflict.

It is so lonely to be the One. You love and love without any "other." When you begin to awaken you feel like every second of your life is suffering. This is what it feels like to live in time, that you are heading toward death. It is in this state that great spiritual aspirants take up meditation practice. They

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practice diligently and unceasingly until they realize That which is completely beyond time. It is their intense urgency to go beyond everything that produces the state of deliverance. Meditation, abiding effortlessly with "what is," becomes the doorway through pain. But if meditation becomes full, the feeling of walking through a door must also be transcended. All partial forms of awakening are transcended in "sahaja samadhi," the final release from all spiritual practices. One evening Reverend Tom Ahlburn introduced me to a special man whom he called his teacher and friend, Tulku Thondup. Tom introduced us with kindness and I can recall the childlike innocence permeating Tulku's talk that evening. Afterwards, Tulku approached me, smiled and took my hand in his. He looked into my eyes while shaking my hand and suddenly I was transported into the Pure Land, the Divine Origin of Buddhas, into an uncreated, glistening Void.

TALKS GIVEN TO DEVOTEES -

4 Talks Given to Devotees

(

"Grace, and Grace alone, takes one beyond the fitful changes of spiritual evolution. Grace is a gift and cannot be earned or attained through any kind of spiritual practice. The Spiritual Master is the embodiment of Grace. He bestows, through his simple presence, the fulfillment of all spiritual paths." ·

David Spero

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Multidimensional Uonsci onsness March 25, 1999 -

Santa Fe, New Mexico

The matter of spiritual evolution is literally endless. To step off this path of evolution is to step off the path of earth consciousness and enter into universal consciousness. Earth consciousness has its own particular vibration, its own series of experiences, and finally its own kind of illumination. The illumination that you receive at this final point would be freedom, nirvana, which makes the earth obsolete for you. Each time a being attains nirvana, or freedom from earth consciousness, there's a great influx of light and love that enters this dimension. So it sounds somewhat contradictory to say that when a person attains the final state of nirvana then he or she can become free from the earth consciousness. Yet, at the same time there is this reciprocal aspect which allows light and love to come down intensely into the earth through the liberation of that being. Right now there are many, many people entering into nirvana. It's happening all over the world. It's a great thing. The vehicle for that transmutation is meditation. Meditation takes the consciousness from earth-boundedness into its unboundedness. And then one remains established in eternal bliss, forever. Then there are a series of states of consciousness which go beyond nirvana and have to do with "divinizing" or manifesting light into the physical plane. This first happens in

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one's own body and then later on it begins to spread like a wildfire. Then you're into a plane where "multidimensional" states of consciousness comes into being-or you could say multidimensional consciousness itself, which is many aspects higher than mere nirvana. Then beyond all of these is the state of the Divine Mother Herself, which swallows all the different states of consciousness. What is it that allows for this experience of awakening to occur, that is, getting into the perception of everything being light and then "divinizing" all matter with the same intensity? It is being freed from the inner subjective plane of yogic experience. The path of yoga is the path of endless evolution. And through the gift of the Mother you can be given a one way ticket into the most exalted state of consciousness; which is not really a state of consciousness; there's really no way to describe it when you become meditation. There's no longer a journey you are on. There's no longer a gradual movement toward the culmination of evolution. There are no more experiences ·of higher states of consciousness. You become vast emptiness, a mirror which begins to reflect the states of the people around you-and ultimately of the world, so you become the world.

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The Transmission of Insanity March 27, 1999 -

Santa Fe, New Mexico

What tends to stifle human development at an early age, in the formation_of a human character or human personality, is the disturbance created in the field of giving and taking. Another way to say the same thing is: there is a disturbance in the dialectic between emanation and absorption of energy-which is, essentially, love. There can be very deeprooted traumas and disturbances in the very nervous system, the physical structure, with all its subtleties. These disturbances come about because of the lack of love. Many of us grow up being paranoid, hypochondriacs, manic depressive, psychotics to some degree; neurosis being the "common ailment." But actually from the deep perspective of an enlightened master, it all looks like psychosis. Freud created the myth that neuroses are somewhat normal for people, but in fact everyday adaptation to a loveless life is the most psychotic form of human endeavor. Intimately related to that inability to give and receive in balance is the ailment of selfishness. When we grow up in a selfish atmosphere this becomes the transmission of insanity, because that's where this play of disturbed giving and taking starts to take place-which means, you learn at a young age how not to give when it's appropriate to give, how to take when there's effort involved or when it's inappropriate to take.

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The truly balanced life knows how to give without giving and take without taking. There's a very smooth, fluid, harmonious, loving thing about relating to such a being, who is not hung up about giving and taking. Once these psychoses are formed in the human being they tend to be extremely deep-rooted and persist way into adulthood. Only through the "surgical" prowess of an enlightened master can a person become free from being possessed by this same kind of selfishness that robbed him of his human integrity at such a young age. As a spiritual teacher I radiate the energy of the Divine Mother, emanate this complete sense of balanced giving and taking, which would entice you to trust once again. As a spiritual teacher, as I continue to move into the depth of Divine Relationship, if you consent, if you relate, if you come forward and let yourself be known, I can then move spontaneously into those aspects of the personality which are still caught in some kind of maze, some kind of disturbed functioning. Often, these disturbances penetrat e right into the "prana" (which is the breathin g capacity), and into the "shakti," or the feeling-vibration of that being. And what tends to happen is that the feeling-vibration becomes lukewarm. It doesn't have much intensity to it. It learns how to function very methodically, very carefully, very consistently sometimes, but it loses the ability to delve deep and to express that deep, deep, feeling nature, which goes beyond any kind of protocol, any rules or regulations that might be established by social norms. The spiritual teacher is very much like a radar. If you get involved with me you'll see that I really want to feel you out. I really want you to feel in my presence just as you are. Otherwise, these matters will not be dealt with, worked

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through, transcended; you will always feel like there is something in your life which was never known and felt completely, something that was never lived through. To feel the intense urgency to love and be loved is what tends to dominate the consciousness of a fully awakened and harmoniously established i~dividual. This is what he or she knows is truly So to feel the important and it looms forth conintense urgency to stantly in one's awareness. It doesn't love and be loved get covered up by details. It doesn't get buried in the mire of ordinary life. is what tends to Soon, that type of honesty, in the dominate the presence of the spiritual master, consciousness of becomes a blaze of the shakti. That is the initiatory power of the Guru when a folly awakened and harmoniously can really begin to function. It blazes forth and lights up, ignites, the open established heart of the student, whose hunger for individual. love has been stimulated through trust and innocence. You might think you've adapted to some kind of spiritual realization, even based on receiving various teachings, but in the presence of the Divine Mother you'll see that She knows how to bring out any faulty aspect of human development. And that's mainly because this is a relational "yoga." It's not about what you experience inside, what you see, what kind of lights you see, what kind of heavenly realms you can ascend to. It's not about establishment in the void. It's about balanced, consistent God-Realization being expressed moment by moment. It's normal for you to feel, even if you're a highly advanced person, in this satsang, that your strategies are

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being questioned. This is because someth ing more is being offered. A spiritua l life withou t bhakti, withou t love, or para-bhakti, supreme love, is very much about merely the subjective fulfillment of some aspect of your consciousness. Medita tion can become perfected withou t stimulating the impulse to love and be loved. And it's this final challenge that really makes life livable and lovable. It's meetin g the challenge to relationship and understanding that if you embrace a life of give and take you have to embrace love of another. There's no escape. Celibacy is not an escape. The fiery possessiveness of the Divine Mother is like a great flame, a great fire, and you lovingly walk into it because you know that's where those outstretched arms of supreme devotion are-rea dy to hold you, ready to make love to you, in that ecstatic embrace. @] ~ @]

~

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

To speak of the Divine Mothe r as mere nondu ality is to stick a dagger in Her heart. She is a flower, an anima l, a distant star, She is the supreme mome ntum of everything that lives and dies.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

@]~ @]

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And None of That Puts a Smile on Your Faue March 30, 1999 -

Santa Fe, New Mexico

Regardless of the spiritual path that you're on, if it's to succeed, it must be accompanied by the subtle, fiery devotion, that divine restlessness, that does not want to stop anywhere. Some people think devotional practices are something external and that there is a difference between paths of meditation and paths of devotion. Through the path of meditation, you'll end up surrendering to light. And through the paths of devotion and feeling, you'll end up with kindness. How can these two things be different? How can kindness contradict SelfRealization? How can love contradict knowledge? The only way it can contradict knowledge is if knowledge thinks it's superior. And that's only because of the sense of elevation you gain in that state, in the state of Self-Realization. It's like climbing a high mountain from where you can see in all directions. That's the height of meditative and discriminative paths, and they can be very steep to climb. And many people fall down and do not get to the true nectar of spiritual life. Paths of devotion recognize the primacy of devotional energy-and it's only the feeling of devotion that brings you to the climax of your spiritual path, whatever it is. Otherwise your spiritual path will be endless. Because it's love that satisfies and not merely a sense of being elevated in consciousness. In fact, I have witnessed in my own life,

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having been on a path of karma yoga and meditation for many years, that the practitioners of these paths are frequently compulsively attracted to their path long after the value has been attained. Long after the Self has been realized, there's this redundant insistence on transcending, on going beyond. How many times do you have to go beyond? For spiritual life to become truly ecstatic you finally enter into a relational yoga. Only love can give that sweetness. We can master the whole chakra system. You can exit out of the top of your head. We can be in this vast sense of silence where your "me" becomes written with a big "M," and none of that puts a smile on your face.

Everything is Addicted to Love March 31, 1999-Sa nta Fe, New Mexico There are many different levels of consciousness. Each level has its own satisfaction. Even what might look like a very miserable life might be very satisfying to another. It's very strange. Even an extremely enlightened life could feel to that person like utter bondage. In enlightenm ent, all that becomes liberated is the illusion of time and space. With the right teacher that's an easy dream to wake up from. What's not so easy is to re-enter the dream knowing that you're dreaming and enjoy it as play. And that play does not

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exclude all the suffering that we see here in this embodiment. There is no end to suffering. It sounds like bad news. You may not be able to end suffering, but you can participate in it ecstatically, which is better than ending it. The Guru is the door. He or She is the door which you can open and enter into and find a permanent dwelling-place. You can climb into any level of consciousness through him. You can even end your suffering through him. It is really the urge to love and be loved, the desire for deep intimacy, that You might be able is at the heart of all suffering in this to imagine your- world and in the other worlds as well. Everything is addicted to love. self going to some Nothing is truly immune to love. other plane after The Avatar becomes the door to Supreme Love, which is sweeter than death where any kind of "samadhi," any kind of everything is transcendental reality. The Avatar takes going to be happy birth out of the infinite compassion that he or she Is and does not retract but that's still in from all the misery and suffering that the field of the impacts on his or her Heart. Each time imagination. the door opens an Avatar comes down - - - - - - - - - with a fully conscious birth, and lives through all the struggles of human life in order to pass through them with other people, to keep them company. He or she does not just give release (moksha), liberation, but the companionship and divine friendship that satisfies the deep longing in the human heart for eternal love. After all, if this is the only place there is, what better thing is there than for someone to hold your hand? You might be able to imagine yourself going to some

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other plane after death where everything is going to be happy but that's still in the field of the imagination. All you have is what's here, this is everything, this is all the worlds. This is the Divine Realm. So what are you going to do? My advice is to find out what makes you happy and find it, here, now. I'm not going to say, "Let me teach you how to detach from your senses and maintain the state of SelfRealization." I can't do that. There are teachers who will oblige you. If you want some names come and see me afterwards. I don't think it's healthy, though, to be merely in a state of detachment.

In The Garden of That Innocence April 2, 1999 -

Santa Fe, New Mexico

It may sound "cliche-ish," but without love you don't have anything. Love is a fire that keeps you warm and established in the field of give and take. Ultimately, the receiver and the giver become one and that is the life of ecstasy and Godlntoxication. You will find, if you live in the world of "nonlove," which is the world of objects, the world of bargaining, if you live in that world emotionally, then your life becomes full of boredom, and no matter how much you have it's not enough. But when you have love, even the

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little that you have is an overabundance. Love is being bodily alive. It is being alive bodily. It means being sexually alive-not repressed, not in a state of conformity, adherence to certain patterns, beliefs, etc. The most intimate form of giving and taking is on a sexual level-and if you don't know how to give and take there, naturally, spontaneously, with tactfulness, caring, and sweetness, you will be locked into the business consciousness whether you like it or not. Total bodily awakening is love, when you transcend all inhibitions. Being seen in love and seeing in love is enough to undo the complicated knots of self-consciousness, the emotional aridity. Love can open the door and love can keep it open. If you are lucky someone will walk into the door and you will be able to greet him. Then it will not be a lusterless life. The Guru tries his best to entice you out of all the patterns of functioning that keep you in a state of lukewarm feeling. To bond with him or her is to bond with the full force of feeling, the Shakti, which is like a fire, a Divine Fire; once it is lit it will never go out. Then you can communicate that relationship in the field of your sexual intimacy-in a very loving, spontaneous way. The key is to become clarified of a naivete, a kind of ignorance about one's own bodily hungers-and that translates very easily into sexual terms. In the field of sexual play we can't play games. We may try to play games, but it's one place where you need to become radically clear to enjoy the fragrance that is emitted from the garden of that innocence.

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As She Walks, as She Talks, as She Tonuhes April 4, 1999 -

Santa Fe, New Mexico

Mother wanted me to talk about light this evening. Questioner: I saw a lot of light. David: What color light was it? Questioner: A luminescent white with a tinge of yellow. David: How beautiful! David: Did anybody else have light tonight? Questioner: Gold. David: (Laughter.) Questioner: On the subtle body level I saw you as a Buddha emanating light but there were a lot of rose petals-a rose petal Buddha. David: A rose petal Buddha. Sometimes Mother fills my awareness completely with a very specific thing She wants to talk about. Other times She says "just talk, whatever you like to speak about." Light is the essence of the Self. Light is consciousness. Bliss is light. Knowledge is also light. It is a light which cannot be seen by the eyes but it can be seen by the mind. Sometimes even the mind will disappear and only consciousness will be there. David: You're laughing. Are you in bliss, a kind of bliss?

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Light can make you very happy, radiant. There's nowhere you can go where the light will not be. Ultimately, this light has the depth of love within it. It's not just nonduality, not merely the feeling of nonseparateness, but it does possess this deep quality of affectionate radiance. There seems to be a lot of peace tonight, too. When you really get filled up with that light or that peace or that love, there's nothing to say. There's nowhere to go. There's no better place than this. In this satsang Mother Herself comes, whose presence is known as compassion and love. Self-Realization is a natural state. It has no awkwardness in it. It has no uncomfortableness in it. It's when you turn into light and after that you cannot be turned out of light. The function of the Guru is to emanate light incessantly. He or she eradicates all the veils or sheathes that prevent the fullness of light to radiate on and on. He breathes light. He touches light. He tastes light. He even smells light. So everywhere he looks he finds himself. It's most extraordinary. There's no greater time spent than sitting in the presence of Light. You become what you sit with. You become what you love. To sit with the teacher is to keep sitting with your own Self. You can escalate, you can elevate, into remarkable states of light and bliss and transcendental happiness. The light cannot be separated from love. Neither light nor love can be separated from the energetic transmission which comes directly out of the Heart of the Master. Those who can come to sit get the opportunity to sharpen their ultimate state of discernment-by looking and relating on the level of vision, on the level of feeling, on the level of the breath; they can come to the awareness of the transcendental reality which is beyond

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the waking, dreaming, and sleep states of consciousness. The deeper you look, the more you care to look, the more your lovingness to look is stimula ted-the deeper the darshan goes-un til you melt completely into the Supreme Beloved, beyond time, space, and causation. To study the teacher is to study your own Self. There's no greater truth than one's own Self, there's nothing higher than one's own Self, there's nothing other than one's Self. It's this state of inebriation that produces the drunkenness of love, of bhakti; devotion issues out of this state The function of where there is no difference, no separa- the Guru is to tion, no anything. The Teacher just emana te light goes on living there with the love of the incessantly. He student -in space and time-w here or she eradicates there are perceived differences. "Sahaja -samadh i," effortless and all the veils or continuous awareness of the Absolute, sheathes that of the Divine Itself, is a state that never preven t the fluctuates, never changes; it is the goal of all spiritual paths and puts one at the fullness of light to doorstep of the Divine Mother, which radiate on and on. transcends even this great sense of naturalness. After that there is Her Realm existing in a state which is not comprehensible, it's the fullness of reality after that. Both nirvana and samsara unite in Her as She walks, as She talks, as She touches. So finally the Supreme Beloved comes down in human form as the Mother. In Her ecstatic condition all the falsities of worldly existence are burned out.

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Transcending Spiritual Isolation April 6, 1999-Santa Fe, New Mexico Isolation can be maintained even in very advanced or evolved states of consciousness. The root of that ability is in the verticality of evolution, which means going up and out of the top of the head and/or going deep down-sinkinginto the Self. You are either allowed to float out beyond the body-mind or you're able to dive deep within the Selfboth are descriptions of the transcendental arena. The blessing and the uniqueness of this satsang, this divine transmission of the Supreme Mother, is it's ability to interface horizontally on the transcendental level as well as engage one vertically. Instead of linear movement, either up or down, out or within, you are also going around in a circle. This circularity is the Shakti hitting the body-mind and allowing it to breathe right to the surface of the body. This is what will dispel the tendency to isolate or the tendency to shut down the feeling-nature within one's spiritual practice, even in the most highly advanced stages. That is why I write that this transmission is not like the transmission of a Guru who teaches you liberation, who teaches you nondual awakening. Even such a Guru might find this satsang very intimidating. The reason is he has not accomplished his world in terms of Self. This is Mother's proficiency, this is why they say Mother is beyond all the Gurus and that even Avatars and great beings emanate out of Her state. She's radically comfortable with everything.

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This unique transmission is literally a massive blanket of colorful blissfulness, radiance, which contains the white light of the spectrum as well as the golden light-w hich are transcendental in nature- but all within the fabric of the multidimensional lights of consciousness which soothe, heal, liberate and acclimate the body-mind to function in the highest dimensions of consciousness without shirking from relationship on any level. This is a natural capability and must be evolved into just as other states are evolved into. It's not an arbitrary decision, on the basis of the student, to make some kind of adjustment in his or her life where he or she can feel this. It is much too subtle. I was hoping you were feeling it in the room this morning, how powerful this force is-how it expands you and also contracts you back into the body-mind. Just like the breath, in and out, an amazing contraction down into the self and then an expansion of exuberant, bubbling bliss-co ming out of the body-mind. All of this working on you simultaneously.

Divine Sexual Relationship April 7, 1999 -

Santa Fe, New Mexico

Mother wanted me to talk about sexual love this evening. Sexual love is a natural yoga-it includes both renunciation and devotion. When properly understo od and lovingly practiced, it fills the whole being with fulfilled Divine Radiance.

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Sexual Yoga is essentially the moveme nt of the "prana" in terms of an unobstructedly, emotionally vulnerable life that touches another life-tha t's fully relational from head to toe and takes one right to the outskirts of the body-mind, making it fully vibrational with the Divine Intensity. Sexual yoga is highly misunderstood. The reason for that is there are teachings which emphasize techniques rather than utter naturalness. Each time two partners come together in mutual selfsurrender there's an exploration of kindness in terms of sexual bodily intimacy which cannot be duplicated anywhere else. The body-mind begins to produce chemicals of exhilaration, ecstatic chemicals which allow for the complete revelation of Light. Included within this is meditational experience, yogic experience and states of consciousness that might be explored through meditation. Each time these partners come together there is the resting in divine repose prior to the beginning of sexual play, whether the partners be homosexual or heterosexual. In this divine repose the sense of individuality becomes merged into the feeling of loving communion, thereby stimulating the natural urge t_oward ecstatic feeling that happens when the partners ' bodies come together in love. This field of devotion becomes like a wildfire that leads to the Supreme.

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Immeasurable Feeling April 11, 1999- Santa Fe, New Mexico Imagine hanging from a cliff, holding onto one rock and below you is a 10,000 foot drop. Imagine the sensation of the hand on that rock, imagine the intense longing to live, what that sensation of touch feels like in that moment. When the Divine Mother fully possesses you, you have no life left. You've given it all. Then you are on fire with a love that is unquenchable, with a lovingl).ess which has the reverberations of emptiness within it. Everything is empty, both on the inside and on the outside. And everything is love, both on the inside and on the outside. At some point you realize that form is empty and yet you are madly in love with it. You're in love with your own form and you're in love with the form of "external reality." Even though you are in love with someth ing that can be seen, empirically, you are still madly in love with someth ing which cannot be quantified, which cannot be tasted or touched or heard or smelled or seen. So your hunger for love is infinite because it is the depth of that emptiness. Then there is no objective reality. Then you begin to unders tand the great process of evolution through time. It's all through love, all through unfulfilled desire, the unfulfilled desire of the creator. I can remem ber looking at the mountains and seeing myself everywhere, transpa rent bliss everywhere. Even more than that it was like a great expanse of perfect space as myself. I couldn't see it. I couldn't hear it. I was It, ever expanding consciousness even into the perceivable realm of nature. And it was nothing. To become everything is to

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become nothing. There was nobody there to experience that. It was complete dissolution. Only She remained, everywhere, lucid bliss. Everything becomes that Self. And you no longer exist. It's the height and pinnacle of all meditation, all devotion. Devotion seems to fall short of that, but when you come back into the field I can remember of devotion you yearn for That to become palpable on the material level. looking at the It's like you're always being swallowed moun tains and by this emptin ess that's ready to seeing mysel f destroy everything, consume everyeverywhere, thing. You're not someth ing separate. transparent bliss This nothingness has a wide, gaping mouth and it wants to take everything, everywhere. including you. This devotion-thing is not a light and easy matter. To return from nirvikalpa samadhi back into the world is the heroic act of total devotio n.That means that you take on all of the unfulfilled desires of human ity as your own. There is no more ego-personality to say "I, me, mine." There's only this anonymous thirst for fulfillment and liberation. When you re-ente r the world in this liberated state, and you see how loveless the world is, it begins to look like a mental hospital. Anything which quantifies and measures begins to look demonic. Everything which constricts and binds unnaturally withou t Love becomes nightmarish. The enlightened Avatar willingly takes on the karma of the whole human race in his own body and attempts to dissolve the immense armor of ignorance and unfulfilled living that goes on all around him. He understands that there is no love in the field of bargaining, in the field of separation, in numbers, in mathematical consciousness, in

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quantifiable feeling. He lives bravely in this field of immeasurable feeling, which is totally unbearable. The only thing that keeps him alive is the kindness and mercy that he feels trickling from the hearts of the people that he loves. Other than that he has nothing-the vulnerability of a flower, so open, so delicate. Imagine reading every spiritual scripture and finding out it was all about you, all descriptive of your life, right here and right now.

Every Seuond of Every Breath April 13, 1999 -

Santa Fe, New Mexico

In this divine yoga, this transmission of prana-shakti, which comes from the Heart of the Divine Mother, every aspect of the human being is engaged. There's a transmission of Light which engages pure consciousness. There's a transmission of Divine Love which engages the emotions. And then there's the transmission of the Kundalini-Shakti, which engages the body. It is all-comprehensive and all pervading bliss. At some point the body becomes Light. At some point consciousness becomes Love. At some point all these aspects interpenetrate each other completely. For the body is just as much Love as it is Light as it is Energy. Once that inner light is fully ignited and "sahaja-samadhi" dawns, which is effortless, ongoing abidance in and as the Divine Itself, which transcends all qualities, one lives in a state of

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unknowingness, fully embraced by this loving ignorance. You cannot put your finger on what this realization is. It's most tangible and it's absolutely elusive. That means you abide nowhere. It means that you are fully transparent and fully incarnate. Living in that divine duality begins to waken you to the very highest state of realization where you can sense the consciousness of the Mother enveloping you every second of every breath. The naturalness that Mother's consciousness issues will never become a place from where you can reject. At the same time it's highly self-protected, which means you're fully protected in this radiance. And it goes right to the surface of the body. When we speak of evolution in this teaching we don't mean only the evolution of consciousness. We mean the evolution of the body, the body's natural vibration, coming to Infinity, and we also mean the naturalization into the deepest level of emotional bliss, which is saturation in Divine Love, a love that has no beginning and no end. In the midst of this great realization there still is the process of evolution which one is fully in tune with. This is not a stagnant state, but a very vibrant state of evolution and the fullness of what life has to offer. If a person does not evolve into this condition then there will always be some aspect of life that will be wanting. You can be fully blossomed into Light and still feel something is missing. You can be devotional, fully devotional, and you will feel like the Light is missing. Or, you may have this Shakti and feel lots of energy and have visions and experience different phenomena that happen within consciousness, but you'll feel a lack of Light and Love. This realization is very, very full.

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Divine Love creates the possibility for Divine Relationship, which becomes immensely satisfying, when communication is laced with divine consciousness. "When the embodiment of your structure, your body, begins to vibrate in this Light-then it begins to take over everything. Then you have this singular sensation that only life is, only Consciousness Is, even though there is this apparent field where this play of relationship goes on.

Beyond the Field of Uhange April 14, 1999- Santa Fe, New Mexico Meditation is the door that takes you out of the waking state of consciousness. Through meditation, over some time, and depending on the personal time frame of the student, it will deliver you completely into the Absolute, which is beyond the field of change. Essentially, you walk through the corridor of your own mind and you find the source of light that is at the end of that corridor. Each time you pass through this corridor of the waking state of consciousness or the body-mind, you arrive at this source of light and the body-mind becomes more and more like that light. That's what's called the process of evolution. Over time, this source of existence, this pure light, becomes fully established, so there is never any sense of being other than That. As life continues in this state of Self-Realization the door to devotion begins to open. Devotion is the resurrection of feeling which has been transcended at the end of the

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path of meditation. Meditation takes you completely beyond the plane of feeling, so the path of devotion happens in a state of voidness. Until you're empty of your human self completely, the word devotion is a meaningless term. If meditation means walking down the corridor and finding the light, devotion means walking from the light back down the corridor into the body-mind as the light. There's a certain kind of transfiguring radiance that begins to happen as the body-mind becomes saturated in this movement away from light. It's like losing the state of SelfRealization. There are tornadoes of feeling which are known only by the Heart in this ecstatic, self-transcending state of purified action.

The Path of Enlightenment is aGreat Mystery April 16, 1999 -

Santa Fe, New Mexico

It's devotion that can propel you on the spiritual path. Techniques and practices are very helpful but they can become mechanical. Devotion is like a thread of feeling that permeates true spiritual practice and arrives at its goal. Otherwise you mechanically go through the routine of spiritual practices, month after month. You may even attain some kind of purity through that practice. Your habits in life may get better.

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This state of consciousness, of "sahaja samadhi" or the natural state of abiding in the divine, is not produced by anything. The different states we attain on the path are nothing but a modification of our own internal physiological state-which produces a sense of getting clearer and clearer in terms of practices. The more profoundly we go into our emotional states, going deep into the fabric of our emotional life (what is true of us) and release that which has been put there through some form of abuse or some form of betrayal-wor king through that you begin to feel naturally what you feel in an unhurt state. You can't get to the unconditioned through conditions. Generally speaking, the influence of an enlightened teacher can create such a wave of intensity in your life that you begin to really establish yourself in this understanding to the point where it won't waver anymore. You feel good in your spiritual practice. You feel as if you're evolving. Eventually, through the breakthroughs, the openings, the deep meditative experiences, you begin to crack into the Unconditione d, which washes over you. It penetrates through you. You begin to actually feel that "I am not the body-mind. I am not my sense of action. I am the source of action." The bliss begins to come through which takes you beyond words. Your mind becomes like an ocean of silence. Anything can then imprint itself into you and you can understand it completely. You've never heard a bird sing until you've heard it from this vast state of silence and emptiness. Devotion is the lovingness, the loving-tenderness you have for your own spiritual practices. It's the love that makes you succeed, not the practice. It's doing something with real

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care, reverence, respect without there being an authority. That's where the sense of humility comes from. Your whole life is an expression of this ultimate relationship which is not in the field of duality.

Beyond Everything April 30, 1999 -

Santa Fe, New Mexico

Even though love is said to be the final goal of spiritual life, it's not possible to really comprehend the meaning of that unless you go through meditation. Meditation is the actual deliverance of the individual spirit into the Universal Spirit or Universal Consciousness. In the presence of a great master or teacher this experience becomes instigated. It's like a heat or a light that begins to instigate your spiritual process-it makes it more intense, more active. It can be felt even on the surface of the body. And even though it may be felt on the surface of the body it will help drive the consciousness toward the Absolute or toward Transcendental Awakening. Love is a state where your relational existence is unobstructed. That means you can relate without any kind of conditions or hang-ups or blockages. Meditation is the state where the mind itself has become totally empty, totally full of its own self or its own nature. What is it that finally unites meditation with love? It's a fire. It's a breath of fire that begins to impact on the physiology. It impacts on the inner bodies or subtle nervous systems, and then finally it explodes into light.

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This process may take a little time to mature and someone who is dedicated to his or her spiritual path will take the time, the loving attention, that's needed to allow meditation to mature. This cannot be rushed. You will know when this starts to really take place, when this final process begins to incinerate you-it's quite unbelievable. It's something that you cannot record, even in your memory. It's beyond everything. You begin to live in that great state which the wise speak about in the scriptures. Great masters have first-hand experience of this realm and it happens in a state of real simplicity and humility. This cannot be achieved by any form of effort. It has nothing to do with gaining. It has a lot to do with losing. You actually acquire a kind of taste for losing as you realize you want to dissolve in That. It is a great mystery, a great gift-how that State is finally arrived at through meditation. You become a fiery mass of raw feeling, a state of being fully exposed emotionally. You can't hide behind anything. You can't hide behind any words or any teachers. You know you have to go through this process-it's your process, it's your world, it's your life. That sense of solitude begins to create a fire in you. First it's very cool and removed and detached but later on it can become a massive fire. If you listen to the birds now you can hear that they're singing-they're singing because they're full of life. They're not meditating. They are meditation. We, in our life purpose, can become so full of the divine effulgence, so full of the divine awakening, that our life becomes a continuous song, something immensely beautiful.

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The Kundalini-Shakti Transmission May 14, 1999- Santa Fe, New Mexico Mother has asked me to talk about the Kundalini-Shakti aspect of this transmission this evening. As you know there are four major avenues of transmission, at least four, that we can talk about at this point, in this satsang. One is the transmission of Divine Light. Another is the transmission of Divine Love. The third is the transmission of the Kundalini-Shakti. And the fourth is the Multidimensional Lights that occur within consciousness. Each of these transmissions has a unique place in the consciousness of the Mother. Meditation takes the awareness down into the Self, the Absolute. The mind becomes completely one with Divine Light in silence. It's a complete transcendence of mental activity. The Kundalini-Shakti is a current, a self-sustaining current of electrical energy which is meant, not to push you down and within, as meditation does, but to take you to the surface of your body. It's dancing light over the surface of the body. It's what light feels like. And this Kundalini-Shakti, if you're sensitive to it, you feel coming into the breath, modifying the breathing process. You also feel it striking down into the abdomen or heart area, and you can experience it as fire. The effect of this Shakti is to rectify the emotions. Upon receiving so much of this Shakti you can find that

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your life begins to really be changed emotionally and internally. You may ask, why would you want to create a fire? Why should there be this intensity of energy? Why should the surface of the body become immersed in that vibration? You see, when you meditate you lose consciousness of everything but That which is at the source of the mind. The Kundalini-Shakti, this current, reminds you completely of the fullness of embodied life. The Shakti transmission is a way to harmonize and balance the emotional life in terms of Divine Awakening. Eventually the human emotions are no longer bound by limiting forces. The human emotions become divinely lit up. Therefore, the Divine is not just somewhere inside, deep in the remote aspect of awareness or separate from the world of perception, thought, and feeling. It begins to wash into the relative. In terms of the maturation of the Kundalini-Shakti experience, it can take you from the surface of the body down to the depths of Being. Then you will find that this circuit is connected, the circuit between the Kundalini and Being. Each person will be in his or her own evolution. One person may experience an enormous amount of the Shakti and have a predisposition to experience It. Another person may spend a lot of time in the depths of meditation. Still another may be devotional, may experience nothing but Divine Love. Each person will have a whole different approach in his or her own evolutionary process. The Teacher is there, basically, just to facilitate and have the student find out what his or her own predisposition is so that one or another of these transmissions can be magnified and finally fulfilled. In the end all categories break down, including the

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description of different transmissions. It's just a way to gain a foothold in your own experience so you feel comfortable with what's going on. If there's an urgency in your life, it could be because of the stimulation of this whole process. What's unique about this transmission is the way in which you can feelingly exist. It's quite amazing. It takes a kind of sensitivity and somewhat of a quiet mind to appreciate what the offering is, what the state of Being is, as this goes on. As all of these transmissions unfold, something remarkable about your vulnerability will begin to occur. It's very electric. If you can persist through the "ins and outs" and the "ups and downs" of the evolutionary process and you remain tuned into this, you will finally have the full awakening. It's inevitable. It's beyond being given or taken. It's like being out in a boat and you're half-way to the other shore. You can't turn back. You just go. The miracle is that the Teacher is sitting there as living proof of having reached the other shore. That's the proof, but that proof will become useful based on the belief of the student, and the strong faith that the student has that his or her Teacher is supremely realized. Otherwise, if you have a doubt about the teacher when you're in mid-ocean, it's not so good (laughter). Questioner: You have to fix the boat by drilling a hole in the bottom (laughter). David: (laughter) The Teacher will do that for you. Put your tools away. Questioner: Thank you. David: You can't do anything and that's part of the great realization, of knowing that you are being carried along, that you are being meditated. The Teacher is not just the embodiment of the full

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realization and living proof of the fully awakened state. He's also the boat which will transport you across the endless ocean of samsara (suffering), of self-generated suffering. Up until the very last moment there is suffering. And after the great, permanent elevation into sahaja-samadhi, invincible state of realization, there's no difference between nirvana and samsara, between awakening and lack of awakening. Then you are meditation itself. You are the force of bliss in this world. You are all scriptures, all Enlightened Ones.

You Are the One May 28, 1999 -

Santa Fe, New Mexico

You can feel the emptiness, voidness, hollowness; it's both on the inside and it's also on the outside. Either you're separate from everything or you're completely merged into everything on the level of that hollowness. There's no in-between. When you feel this vast space then you are love. Otherwise, love is just attachment to what is superficial. You must have a deep, deep inner life-if you've ever been to the Grand Canyon and you look down there's a tremendous sense of depth. If you have that inner depth where you cannot even see detail anymore, your mind has receded into it's source to such a degree that it leaves no subtle traces of itself, then you can love. That's what these birds are singing

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about. They don't sing because they think they want to sing and then they sing. That type of duality does not exist in their life. Only human beings begin to acquire self-concepts and a superficial way of relating. You could listen to those birds for hours and be enchanted because there is, in the back of that singing, this hollowness, this depth of being. The reason why human beings generally don't go into that state is because it opens up too · much vulnerability. There's too much pain, too much loneliness. You are the One. That's how lonely you are. There's nothing other than you.

Beuome aDivine Ulown June 4, 1999 -

Santa Fe, New Mexico

It's a very strong tendency in human beings to separate the light and the dark. This especially permeates "spiritual" thinking. To achieve the light and transcend the dark is spiritual pursuit in the form of the search for enlightenment, the search for liberation, the search to ascend out of this world. But if you look closely at those mechanics you'll find that they are rooted in dilemma and the problem of being separate. Until you're able to merge within your own spiritual realization, the darkness and the light, you will be gripped by this dilemma and you won't understand

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completely the field of enlightenment. Darkness is this field of action, the field of karma, the field .of human relations, darkness is duality. The light is the Void. When meditation becomes pure and perfect your consciousness becomes light. How do light and darkness become one? It is in "sahaja-samadhi," which is the natural state of being perpetually awake. There's no answer to all the pain and suffering that you experience. It's part of "what is." To have merely darkness is ignorance. To have light and darkness requires some spiritual sophistication. But when you transcend even the dichotomy between light and darkness your realization begins to drink the immeasurable. In the final stages of realization you cease to climb in and out of the light. It can be shocking if you understand what the light is and how deeply it absorbs you. It absorbs you completely in the state of mrvana. Sahaja-samadhi is a descriptionless state. You don't know if you've succeeded or failed. Light and darkness merge into something higher so that creation can have its play. Love is this state of total awakening when the darkness and the light begin to meet each other. At that point you have recaptured your total foolishness. You've become a divine clown, which means that your love does not fluctuate in any sense. It's said that the guru is one who sheds light. A guru brings light to where there is no light. He or she brings lucidity into the field where there is no understanding. The guru radiates a kind of light that begins to shatter your attachment to the past. If he or she is succeeding with you, your life should be turned upside down. The purpose of the guru is to disorganize a life that has been put together by fear. He becomes an expert at how to do this with each indi-

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vidual life--he knows exactly this point, this point upon which the whole ignorant consciousness rests. He knows how to locate it and then he does something to dismantle it. Then everything should fall apart, and never be put back together again. Now what about the darkness? There was the darkness of this individual life that had put together a false understanding and lived within that understanding. But there's a wider sense in which darkness can be grasped. And the urgent sense in which it can be grasped is that everything is changing. Everything is heading toward dissoluThe most tion. Here you are with this human exalted state of nervous system but in a few years it's consciousness going to start to deteriorate. What are is extremly you going to do? That's darkness. Gradually, over time, through the loving, sociable; mechanics built into life itself, your it's kind, body is going to be called back into its available, dysfunctional state. It's going to be not aloof. forced to stop functioning. We should never forget how little time there is in this birth. Otherwise you'll walk around in ignorance, not having any sincere attention to give to anything or to anybody. This fire of love can only burn you intensely the more you touch this darkness. The more you touch the reality of change the more intensified your experience of life becomes. To merely achieve some kind of samadhi, some kind of transcendental awakening, and then to attach to that-that's not awakening. It's very common. The most exalted state of consciousness is extremely loving, sociable; it's kind, available, not aloof. It's very

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powerful. You can take your realization right into your sexual functioning. Not vulgar, "porno" sexual functioning. I'm talking about taking the sacred, divine quality of SelfRealization and making it coexistent with the most gentle exchanging form of union with another human being. The grace of the spiritual master comes to rectify, first your attachment to darkness, your identification with it, so that he separates you from your darkness and gives you the experience of pure light. Then he brings you back together with the darkness. You know how they say, first mountains, then no mountains, then mountains. First there's darkness, then there's light and then there's darkness again. But it's a darkness that has been "divinized," it has been resuscitated with divine light .

• ·~ @]

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@]

You will remember that there were two men with Jesus on the last day. One of the men said a few words that sounded like peifect surrender, to Him, the Lord of Creation. And He turned to him and said that when today is over you will be with Me forever.

@

]

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. @]

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Beyond Attainment, Therefore Beyond Losing June 6, 1999 -

Santa Fe, New Mexico

This ability to give "satsang," to transmit this Radiance, to be present as the Self, in a state of devotion, first began to dawn when I was in Southern California in the beginning of 1996. What began to happen was there was no screen, no filter, between myself and another person. It was remarkable. I was shocked into the realization that I was experiencing relationship. I began to see that I had gone beyond all the meditative states that yogis and spiritual gurus emphasize in their teachings. I was free from the necessity to go inward to find the Reality. I had "transcended" even my relationship with the state of Being Itself. When I began to sense this I knew I was in a intoxicated state that the Beings in India talk about as the state of the "Avadhoot." Anything I did, anything I said, was a direct expression of that immensity of Consciousness. It began to affect people in very strange ways and was beyond not being noticed. I would walk into places and people would start weeping! It wasn't an eradication of individuality; it was the blossoming of everything individual. I had "attained" a state of suprapersonal individuality, and I knew that there was nothing to take this away. This was most shocking. This was unconditionally given as a gift; beyond attainment, therefore, beyond losing. I knew that there was no falling from this "state." I also knew that I could work with any persons

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on any level of their experience. The purity of this was overwhelming. Even if a typhoon crosses the ocean the ocean just sits there. The ocean had risen up from within itself in the form of this form. I began to accept this state, as extraordinary as it was. This unity with the Divine Mother had become complete. And there was a phase (after this) when I was pushed into this initiatory functioning, it was unbelievable, it was the raw power of the Shakti. There was the awareness of being completely beyond time and space every second. Lucid awareness of transcendental bliss, cosmic reality. This is the invitatio n-to sit in That, to be That. It's a day for you to discover within yourself, without any authority, without anybody looming over you, your awakening to the inner Self, and feeling Her as Mother Shakti.

Multidimensional Lights of Consciousness July 4, 1999 - Santa Fe, New Mexico This being the fourth of July makes me think of the multidimensional lights of consciousness, the transmission which comes out of the Heart of the Divine Mother. The path that spiritual masters generally teach is ascending into Light or becoming one with the field of nonduality. But this teaching

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engages every aspect of the human being (as well as the subtle realms which human beings can experience). Therefore, the multidimensional lights or the different flashes of color that can come within meditation during this satsang are very important. They infuse us with the vibration of every single realm of experience, and therefore, detachment in the Light is actually excluded as a final result of this satsang. White Light or that yellow-tinged golden Light is associated with the very top of the chakra system whereas the other lights-the purple, the reds, the crimson, the violet-hav e to do with a particular vibrating current, a particular mode of perception. There's no aspect of experience that could ever make us happy. Happiness is not an experience. Happiness is Love. Love produces "ananda," satisfaction." Ananda" also means bliss. These birds are not having a problem right now. You can hear them singing. They are love. They go on being who they are. And it's that song that describes what they are on the inside and it's identical to what they are on the outside. When there's no more discrepancy between what you are in your inner subjective realm and the outer way in which you express yourself, in your life, then you can say that your life has come together in wholeness. The highest form of energy can manifest as a kind of voidness, a lack of enthusiasm, no motive to perform action. When you act spurned by sorrow or anger, then there's an origin to your action. Anything which has a cause has an effect. Cause and effect do not radiate the highest level of energy and love. When you are as unpredictable as the birds then you don't know what you are going to do from moment to moment. Your life is constantly ebbing into that ocean of Divine Consciousness.

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We radiate our life into the Spiritual Master, into the words, into the feeling of what it means to be with the Spiritual Master. That becomes our living connection to the Divine Reality. Once the connection is made on the relative plane of life, the Spiritual Master's consciousness and our consciousness become one.

Meditate on the Form of the Beloved July 25, 1999 -

Santa Fe, New Mexico

The sweetness is such that there's not much to say. Sometimes words can complicate things. The experience of nonduality or the Self is just a fraction of Mother's consciousness. The experience of "turiya" or the transcendental reality comes about through innocence and love. You can practice spiritual techniques for many years, even for many births, but the Freedom may not come-beca use there has been some strategy to attain. Consciousness is ever-expanding. There is no end to spiritual experiences. That's the nature of reality. Craving can enter into the whole movement of this awakening so that you can be conditioned even by your own process of awakening. This is the last form of conditioning. This sense of subject-object consciousness penetrates deeply into even a mature aspirant's spiritual practices. Whereas the urge for attainment has a strategy, love has

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no strategy. Whether you practice spiritual practices or not is really not the point but whether you perform them with love and innocence. There is one spiritual "practice" which is most sublime and that is meditating on the form of the Beloved. It goes right to the surface of the body and will light you up with a fragrance which will make you forget about all attainments, so that finally you enter into "sahaja samadhi," which means naturally abiding as the Divine Itself. Then you become like these flowers. The field of desire is an expression of the field of desirelessness. This love which has no beginning or end will bring you down to your knees in adoration of both the limitless subjective reality of consciousness and the objective reality of the Lord's playground. "You are That" means you are this changing world also. Don't get caught in the trap of "I am That." It's the worst trap. I am also this, I am also this. There's no shirking from relationship. This kind of compassion comes with transcending even attachment to the Self, even attachment to your own limitless consciousness. Desire is nothing but the joy of life, the vibration of being embodied. It's what the Lord does when She wants to play. This is how She knows Herself, how She touches Herself. It's an immense garden, this relative garden we've been given. It's not recognized as that but that's what it truly is. The tendency to want to ascend, to transcend, to go beyond, becomes a problematic situation in this birth if you don't know how to flow lovingly into your desiring body, your desiring nature, to feel it through and through, to feel right into its transparency.

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It's All About the Heart August 13, 1999- Santa Fe, New Mexico David: Any questions? Questioner: I feel myself in that expanded state and I kind of know, it's not that I sense it with my nervous system-the love-and I was just wondering if that's the space I'm supposed to be in or if I'm hiding? David: Just be where you are. Questioner: At a certain point I didn't feel the intensity but I knew the intensity. It was getting too much. David: Is there any difference, really, between feeling and knowing? Questioner: I do sense a difference between them. David: I understand Questioner: The mind can still think in this expanded state. It can even wander off. David: That's correct. Of course, the whole creation is taking place from that state, so it must be capable of everything. When it finally comes down into the physical realm there's such a delicacy. It's all about the Heart in a human birth. Questioner: So how do we manage to keep our heart open. David: What's your name? Questioner: (Inaudible) David: Whenever you stop feeling or when you start to feel anger and pain it means that the relationship with the Divine is being muddled There's a different kind of pain which has to do with intense longing. It's a sweet painfulness and it makes you feel fully alive.

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Questioner: I guess I'm not sure. David: Are you sure about your path? Are you on a particular path? Questioner: I'm on a path to keep my heart open. David: Do you engage in any formal practice? Questioner: I've been meditating with a teacher. David: Have you stuck with one? Questioner: I guess that has been a path. David: Stay with that. That can lead you there. Sometimes the heart can be shut down because of past experiences, as you know. Don't ask for anything. Do you understand? Even if that greatness comes for a second you've attained everything. I know people who have been practicing for many years and they don't get it. The reason is that they practice with a demand, with conditions. You know, it's more about losing. When Mother swallows your heart you can't remember anything. She'll take everything. Isn't this what you've been praying for? Or have you? Does anybody else have a question or a feeling? It's nice to see you. Questioner: What is the approach to spiritual practice? What is the key? Emphasizing that it's a gift, should there be just the waiting or is there participation, too? I wonder because I have a feeling that when I'm just waiting I'm hiding. I don't really give my energy to that. David: There's a time to wait and a time to participate. I'm inclined to talk about participation right now. This engagement, for example what is going on this evening, is an engagement where every aspect of the feeling process can be ignited. It's not just through silence or meditation. It's through hearing, through seeing. Your eyes need to adjust to a perception of the full reality. If you go from daylight to darkness, the eyes have to adjust. If you have been

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living in darkness they need to adjust to that Light also, to that transcendental reality-which is beyond the waking, dreaming and sleep states. Right? If there is any aspect of your life that does not shine in that fullness and you really wish to work on it, go to a Teacher, engage yourself in a relationship with that Being. Whether it's in the form of a hug and a kiss or in the form of listening or through meditation-regard less of what angle you take on it-there's a way to grasp the totality. If you're not patient you can't look and listen and receive, know that you've received. If you're impatient you "take" or just impose yourself. It's a very loving thing. It's not about authority. It's not about someone demanding that you live a certain way. To receive the benefit of the Work it's necessary to reach a state of receptivity, which is, essentially, love. Then you'll feel this fire all the time. It will burn you day and night. It will burn you into coolness, into detachment, and then warm you up into loving-attachment. Attachment is not a bad word! Attachment is the inevitable outcome of subject-object relations. The problem is generally that you are not attached enough, not that you're too attached. Questioner: That's what I'm missing lately is the subjectobject relationship- the one who is feeling is disappearing. David: Good. Enjoy it. That's liberation. Questioner: I'm trying to feel love, I can't make myself feel it. David: Just be you, be natural. Many people practice many years to have that experience of going into dissolution, into transcendence. Then, when we get it, we don't want it. Do you know why? Because there's nobody there to enjoy it! (laughter) Questioner: I actually asked for it at some point. David: But if it's given you won't be there. (laughter)

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Questioner: How can I get... (interrupted by David) David: You've lost me. It's getting complicated. Questioner: I try to go beyond everything. David: You can't try to go beyond anything. These strategies to go beyond, to try to go beyond-f orget it! Questioner: But something could be beyond! David: OK. If you're beyond then you're beyond. Hmmm? (laughter) Questioner: It would be easy to sit down somewhere and vanish. David: No! You will still miss yourself in that experience. You think there will be somewhere you end up holding onto yourself, where you're liberated. It's a state of total

release of self. Questioner: Is it possible to feel? David: It's not a condition.This dissolution is not a condition. Being dissolved into God or into Consciousness is not a condition. It is not a state. It's love. Love is the residue of even dissolution in the void. That's my experience. Come on, I'm waiting. Questioner: I can't even follow that mentally. It doesn't make sense anymore. David: Good. I hope not. (laughter) Just be very simple. It's not an extraordinary calculation in the achievement of some great piece of knowledge. It's not weaving out of all your dilemmas and then finding what's outside all your dilemmas. It's not the opposite of anything else. Hmmm? What did you say when you were cutting the vegetables yesterday? "No problem," right? In that state of emptiness action can still exist. And that action is sublime, it has the sweetness of Divine Love in it. When you feel like all of your actions are spontaneously offered at the Lord's Feetthat's the state of being the gift-of everything having

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already been given to you. You won't be able to make a practice out of anything I say. If you do you'll feel frustrated. It's good that you practice on your own and practice with great intensity. But when you come here just listen. The Guru can do more for you in five minutes, if you really listen, if you're really patient, if you come with love, if you come wanting to discover the secret of true love, five minutes, ten minutes, can create more light than hours or days or years of practice. All the Great Beings have practiced-mo st all of them-they will chant the Name of the Lord or go deeply into meditation or liberate themselves through action alone-or they're just born that way. I can assure you that everyone in this room has a special relationship with the Divine. The question is, will you let it linger and not insist on a conclusion? Will you let your lives linger in that subtle fire, subtle passion, that has no external fulfillment? It doesn't mean that you hypnotize yourself into not wanting things or not desiring. I know the way the mind functions. I know exactly how it moves. There's no way out except for love and grace. Other than that it's a fairly hopeless scenano. I encourage people to look lovingly at "what is" in their life. The secret is in you. The Love is in you. The more you move into this state of "what is," the more I can be of help to you. But by "I," I don't mean this body-mind. In this moment you just feel that fire. Not in some other moment, not at the end of your practices. Questioner: Can the revelation be that things come up-you become very aware of something in your life such as your own negativity? David: Yes, of course. Everything goes into fruition.

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Sorrow, fear, desire, lust come into fruition. There are no games in this yoga. You can't try to be a saint. All you can do is look at your life with absolute honesty, form a loving attachment to a Teacher, form an insane attachment to a Teacher, and don't let go until he or she gives you everything. Time is going by. Ignorance is not a sin. It's just a state of consciousness. To see right you have to know that you are God. It has to become absolute revelation without fluctuation. How are you doing tonight? Questioner: Very well.

The Silence of Innocence August 17, 1999-Santa Fe, New Mexico I'd like to say a few words this evening about meditation. When practiced correctly, which is, innocently, with no desire to gain, or to lose, the mind becomes fully absorbed in silence. Through innocence the mind is led down into the interior of its being and merges into an ocean of Divine Silence. This silence is not an experience. It is what you are. When this experience becomes complete you have a profound peace that permeates even the cells of your body. This silence is love. As you learn to feel yourself as that, you become empty. In that emptiness you become nothing. Your identity merges into that silence. There is also an energy that comes out of this nothingness. This energy is not in space or time. It's the energy of Life. The whole creation comes out of this energy.

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Therefore , the whole creation is empty. Life is moving in this emptiness just the way a fish moves in water, with no conflict.

Mother Kundalini August 20, 1999 -

Santa Fe, New Mexico

Tonight was a meditatio n on Mother Kundalini, Mother Shakti, which is that vibratory current, that bodily bliss. This is the energy of meditation. It initiates, stimulates and climaxes meditation. Your whole body should be on fire with it, dancing, tingling, alive; the clearer you are in your spiritual practice the more you take this in. It leads to a great clarity in consciousness and bodily happiness. Sexual love, when it's unobstruc ted by fear, guilt, shame, the wounds from abuse-w hen the psychology becomes established in the Absolute -then sexual play becomes the movemen t of the Shakti. Breath and feeling move together allowing the bodily bliss to culminate. It takes one out of the realm of fantasizing. What we experience in the Kundalini-Shakti is a doorway into infinite sexual potentiality. The difference between becoming intoxicated in meditation and a sexually intimate situation is that the lovers feed the shakti (life-force) to each other-th ey feed each other in the Divine Radiance, the build-up of the lifecurrent as desire. The key is to linger in the feeling of

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desire, to linger and express desire, a desire that's full of feeling. I'd like to open it up to anybody who has a question. Questioner: Is it true that orgasm depletes energy? David: If you are not stabilized in a unified state where subject and object are always perceived in oneness then physical orgasm can be depleting. In divine sexual union the partners (homosexual or heterosexual) are part of a mutual initiatory transmission-they are actually initiating each other with the shakti. Both are free from the mental or sharing the mental until it becomes communicative bliss. The field of touch has its own dimension of communicative happiness. Questioner: Even when it's not sexual? David: Even when it's not sexual. There's a kind of painfulness about existence when it's lived in solitude. This painfulness tends to be washed over with the waves of happiness that happen in this divine sexual yoga.

There is No World August 24, 1999 -

Santa Fe, New Mexico

Mother is here this evening. I'd like to welcome everyone. All that remains is Love. The "path" of the Mother is a oneway ticket into the Heart. It even transcends meditation. It is not a state. It's an intoxication with feeling. To remain in this intoxicated state

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makes you a fool to the world, because there is no world. When you live in this divine foolishness you are this emptiness that must have its own way. Can we cast aside our sense of self-importance, all of our attainments, spiritual and otherwise, and just be present as the Heart? Do we know how to do that? You will become smaller than the smallest and larger than the largest. You become the grains of sand undernea th your feet and the shining stars which are trillions of light years away, established in that directionless, all-pervasive lovingness. You become your Guru. . We could say that knowledge leads to devotion. Action leads to devotion. Meditatio n leads to devotion. And devotion leads to more devotion. You have so much of this that you cannot bear it. Do you feel it spilling into the room this evening? You find that there are all these apparent paths to the Divine. But they're just one, just this Heart-Sp ace with this radiant bliss, everlastingly spilling into the relative plane of existence. If you want to become Love you look to the greatest lovers and find out what made these mad people tick. What gave them the courage to throw everything away and become That completely? Stay with the enlightened ones and through osmosis and Divine Radiation, over time, you become them. Mother does everything in this yoga. She will supplement your own efforts and make the fulfillment happen. You're like a seed, a flower comes out of the seed and has its own blossoming time. Love makes it grow. This is a room where people come and I invite them to breathe and feel in their naturalness. I want them to forget all about themselves, their concerns, their dilemmas.

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Love is aMood August 31, 1999-S anta Fe, New Mexico Love is a mood. The word for mood is "bhava." It is mood written with a big "M." Sometimes people can be "moody." That's not what I mean. If you think about any word long enough it will seem empty and meaning less-so offer this word as a way of feeling into this reality. This mood involves trust and innocence. It also involves pure consciousness. The word "mood" usually connotes psychological mood; it usually means some mental quality. This mood of love is bodily. It's a state of total bodily innocence. That means that you touch from a field where there is no knowledge. It's so beautiful. The mind is almost always engaged in its knowing process. When this mood begins to descend your thinking becomes very slow. Your breathing becomes conscious spontaneously. Your solar plexus has a warm, diffused feeling, feeling safe, feeling happy. You are therefore ready to share without inhibition. It's inhibition which destroys human relationships. In this mood of Love there are gaps when nothing happens. It may seem like you're not paying attention. It may seem like you're somewhere else. But that's not the case. When you give your whole attention, it's 360 degrees. It's like a ball or circle or a sphere. It's a softness of intimacy that will not create an object of that other. In this mood the "two" who are relating begin to breathe in trusting openness with one another. They share their "prana." We generally don't think of sharing "breath-

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ing" with someone. We think of sharing our feelings, our secrets, to get close to someone. You can feel the moveme nt of the breath of that other. It's so sweet. The sense of pain that we carry from the wounds in our hearts has to do with someone who has distanced us in some way-wh o has convinced us, somehow, that there are "two." This is duality. With a Teacher you can enter this sense of Divine Intimacy and for the first time allow your heart to come open. There's somethi ng very precious that begins to happen between the student and the Teacher. Once it happens in that location it can start happeni ng everywhere. There is no mood of an other. I want to give this to everyone. @) ~ @)

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OM The sound of sound heard not in the mind but touched with the fingers brings the hands to the face. The naked ones call. Put sound to sound, call upon the Light, dance to the open fire.

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Realize Through Everything September 3, 1999 -

Santa Fe, New Mexico

The bliss of meditation can become so pronounced that you can become conditioned by that experience of going within as you are attaining that State. Meditation is just a door. It's good, this silence. Because in order to go into knowledge it's important to feel as if there is no question, that there's nothing irking you inside. When you come to a teacher and you start asking a lot of questions it means that you're emotionally upset. But when you move into this kind of receptivity, this listening, then the Observer becomes diffused and expanded spontaneously. We can also become conditioned by our Teachers, which means, the Teacher who transmits awakening to us; we can become conditioned by their presentation. And then we put them on a pedestal. The garbage collector could be in Unity Consciousness and you won't notice it because you're worshiping pictures. This is very dangerous, dangerous because it will prevent you from accepting your own state. Practices may be required for many years. If you're practicing correctly, with humility and love, then you will be prepared to "accept" the immeasurable, which is not an attainment. You cannot practice your way into it. Questioner 1: It speaks to my heart. David: Say more. Questioner 1: I grasp it with my feeling, with my heart, not with my mind.

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Questioner 2: How can we bring silence into our activity? How can we feel it more? David: I don't think the answer is either in the field of silence or activity. Have you ever been in love? Questioner 2: Yes. David: Does the love fluctuate? Questioner 2: I think it does. David: (pause) This sense of action and silence coming together is in lovingness. To look for silence-that's not it. Right? Questioner 3: What to do when rage comes? David: What is the rage generated by? Questioner 3: Fear. David: Is fear a bad thing? Questioner 3: (inaudible) David: Sometimes the ocean is very quiet. Sometimes the waves come and they cause violence on the surface. We have to be prepared for the full spectrum of feeling in this human existence. We can't say it's good just to be peaceful; it's good just to be in bliss. Otherwise you won't understand that nirvana and samsara come together. The realm of change and the world of unchanging bliss are one. No one will be around to perceive that but it will be realized. You must realize through everything or you won't get to the end of all this. It will not be a state. It will not be a condition. It will not have a quality. Questioner 1: I like that image of the ocean. It's changing and unchanging at the same time. David: There. Changing and unchanging all at the same time. When the experience of the unchanging begins to peek through it's quite overwhelming. You get saturated with this sense of bliss which is immeasurable. You feel like

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you're dying into it. If you have a sense of "bhakti," you feel like it is making love to you. What other feeling could accompany going beyond everything? There's no state that defines you. You transcend all states. This is very hard to grasp, it seems, for many people. We go around the merry-go-round of experience, whether it be in yoga or our job. Experience will be completely transcended in this final condition. Questioner 1: So the essence of being is like the ocean. David: Changeless. Questioner 1: So whatever happens on the surface ... David: It's eternal, too. The void is not just a refuge from the field of experience. Questioner 1: Whatever is happening in my outer life is passing and the essence remains. David: Yes. Questioner 1: Lately, I seem to work through whatever it is that comes up. David: Because you're relating to it. You're not hiding. Relate to whatever comes up. If you sense what's happening in the dynamics of our conversation you can feel the infinite energy in this moment. You can feel the body vibrating in It. Questioner S: A while ago you said that there will not be anyone there to perceive it. Could you say more about that? David: Can we be this fully and still forget? Yes? Questioner S: It's ok to forget? David: The mind remembers and the mind forgets. The mind is in the field of opposites. Questioner S: It's not like we have to become fully conscious of our experience? David: Forget that! You want to succeed all the time. Have a taste of failure and live with it. Be honest with yourself,

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your life. How many times has a sour relationship turned you into a whole new direction? Questioner S: (inaudible) David: You live in failure. People go around saying "you are That." Will they say that you are That? No. The Mother is described as the maker of Gurus and Avatars. All the different teachings come out of the limbs of Her Being.

The Union of Silenue and Energy, of Shiva and Shakti September 7, 1999 - Santa Fe, New Mexico Love has extreme tenderness in it. It also has extreme vitality, power. Love is empty and love is full. Love is full of bodily vitality, which is this current of the Shakti. It should open up the natural conduction in the body. If there are any blockages they will be thrown out along with the emotional residues. To find love is the nectar that comes after meditation is perfected. Then, when you love, you don't love merely as an individual but as that cosmic force, that Shakti. The key is to keep opening into It, welcoming It, feeling It, breathing It. When meditation becomes pure and perfect you become like an overflowing vessel of this Divine

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Energy. It is incessant, without begining and without end. This Shakti also burns out attachment to that which is superficial; it releases you from your conditioning. It resurrects you as the life force itself. It also protects you against forces that would antagonize or hinder your development. In the end it becomes like a blaze. It will consume you, if that's what you want. Then there will be no more Meditation is residues of selfishness. "I-ness" will primarily become "am-ness." You then dwell concerned permanently in the beyond, which is right here and right now. with expanding I'd like to open this up into a the mind dialogue at this point into its Questioner 1: How can we facilitate Universal the opening of the Heart? And why is Consciousness. it that we experience the heart and head as two? When That David: The answer to your first quesis awakened, tion is, through meditation and devotional practices, or just by being in you can sense natural state. your compassion. a Questioner 1: What if meditation does not facilitate the opening of the Heart? David: Meditation is primarily concerned with expanding the mind into its Universal Consciousness. When That is awakened, you can sense a compassion. That's the heart. The Heart becomes full when feeling is unobstructed. The mind becomes full when consciousness is unobstructed. Consciousness drinks that Light which illumines it or allows

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the mind to go beyond. In that rapture of full feeling the body is stimulated. There's a hunger to love and be loved that comes out of that State. It's the willingness to feel your hunger to love and be loved, in vulnerability, which begins to open the door of the Heart. There is a state where the mind and the Heart are One, and that's when you go beyond both. How are you doing? Questioner 2: I'm very peaceful. It feels very sweet to me tonight. David: Feel the total body in a state of equanimity and bliss. It's the natural state of the body when everything has been purified. The mind is established in silence. The body is established in that Current. Then it's the union of Shiva and Shakti-the union of the absolute and the force of feeling. That can be your perpetual object of contemplation-the union of silence and energy.

At the Surface and the Source of Your Being September 10, 1999-Santa Fe, New Mexico I guess I should speak. This energy of the Heart does contain the transcendental reality. However, it is Mother's way not to display that so much as compassion. That is more to Her liking.

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If you are drowning in the ocean the Teacher will throw you a line. That line could be a mantra, a yoga practice; it could be the question, "who am I?" It could be a pranayama technique; it could be a kundalini-shakti transrmss10n. With Mother's Heart all the paths converge and find fulfillment. This is the nature of an Avatar, they are not gurus. They are born in the radiant condition and they teach on that inborn quality which is free from all paths. They may teach a path or technique, but it's just to throw you a line. They can aid your sadhana so that whichever path you're on, if you practice with love and humility and sincer- , ity, they will guarantee you the final goal of your spiritual path. Mother enjoys holding the hands of Her children in Divine Friendship. It appeases the intense longing in the human heart for companionship, for intimacy, for the sweetness that only love can bring. It's not just attachment to Her Form that brings this Divine Friendship or this Yoga of supreme fulfillment. It's the invitation to love in a way whereby the hunger to love and be loved is stimulated and intensified in Her Divine Radiance. Just as Mother Herself has inclinations, Divine Oneness, so do you. Therefore, to attain void-consciousness or nirvana, is really just the groundwork for finding the ultimate fulfillment of bringing Shiva and Shakti together in full ecstatic union, both at the surface and at the source of __;;_ your being.

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Expansion into and Ont of the Heart September 14, 1999- Santa Fe, New Mexico Even though the "state" of "sahaja samdhi" transcends meditation, there's something infinitely sweet about the silence that's generated in meditation. I think that must be because the real state of meditation, like love, is a relationship. It is not exclusion and retraction back into oneself. It's expansion into, and out of, the Heart, so that there is only the Heart, there is only my Self. What is it that makes meditation a relationship and not an act of inversion? It's naturalness. Naturalness has no inside and it has no outside. Meditation is the natural conduction of the force of feeling all over the body. Naturally you will be drawn into a mood of silence where there is no sense of "otherness." You sink and dip into this lucidity of perfect awareness, absolute bliss, unfragmented consc10usness. We can delve deeply into our psyche, our soul consciousness-ei ther in meditation or through contemplation of an "object" which is radiating total feeling. It's this second quality of learning how to meditate on total feeling, in the body of the Spiritual Master, which will free you from the process of inverting in order to meditate. To enter into this feeling-relatio nship with the Spiritual Teacher is one of the more beautiful qualities of "sadhana," the spiritual path. The reason is you cannot turn

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the Teacher into an object nor can you limit him to the sense of infinity you find even in an awakened subjectivity. He will dance around any frame of reference that you have; he's nothing but aliveness. He has transcended the compulsive state of choosing life over death. He is on fire with this maddening quality which would like to consume everything with devotion. It's not a formal or stiff atmosphere that's welcome, but an atmosphere where there is no inhibition among or between us. There's no "enlightened one." You can feel the love racing out, filling the room, pushing beyond everything. One interesting thing that can happen is that the feeling process, the process for ultimate relationship with the source of existence, is amplified. If you've been merely conditioned to go or inquire within, to the nature of the "I," you might be shocked to find that you float beyond all processes of inner investigation. All spiritual practices are transcended by the Spiritual Teacher-not because he has come to this conclusion intellectually or because he has an emotional feeling about itbut because he has entered into the state of "sahaja ·samadhi," which is the natural quality of abiding easily with what is awakened, full of bliss, vitality, love. "You are That" may sound familiar to some of you. But you really must feel It, both on the inside and on the outside; without turning some corner in your psyche you find It, without falling down some tunnel of inversion to locate It. What I find extraordinary is not that "I am That," but that I could be so tender to come out of That. How am I

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going to meet you if I stay in "That?" My enlightenment is inconsequential to me. Can you live in this state of recklessness? Do you love me? That's the bottom line. Will or can you love something regardless of the consequences? Can you be that foolish? This Teaching penetrates right into the prana. It penetrates right into the shakti, the feeling-vibration your body is emitting spontaneously. It's a relational, supreme "yoga" of lovingness through pure existence. Sometimes the wounds in our life can give us the sense of "otherness." That's the only thing that keeps you from this state, truly. It's a Heart that's become broken in its feeling. You can contact the Absolute feelinglessly through meditation but you will be ravished completely ifyou relate to It through your emotional vehicle.

There is No Purpose to Ureation September 17, 1999 -

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This is a natural "yoga" or way for achieving divine union. There is really no need for any effort. Effort is necessary in the mechanical field when some form of skillful action is necessary. We need to concentrate, we need to practice, to perfect a skill. In this "yoga" of the Divine Mother it's the Divine Mother that's learned. We are already That. Nevertheless, it

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also happens. It's a great mystery, how something which is already the case can become palpably experienced. It's just remembering your actual nature. There's something more sophisticated about being in a human nervous system than just being here. It's a place where all the different dimensions come together, the different forms of awakening, the different modes of perception. This is also a place where evolution occurs. The creation is the ecstatic participation in its own reality, in its own bliss. There is no separation of the creator from his or her creation. There may be no purpose to anything. Are you prepared for that? Again, purposes happen within the mechanical phase of perception. Cause and effect, sequential developmental unfolding, are always in terms of a perceived purpose. But what if there is no purpose? The sound of this fountain, what's the purpose? There is no purpose. Suffering comes from wanting to perceive purpose in a field where there is no purpose. There's this insistence, demanding explanations, reasons. If you can just come out of that for a while you'll see what this whole creation is about. We just find ourselves looking at each other in this dimension. It's very funny (laughter). Time is also inconsequential. Again, time arises when we want to perform action and see a result. Time is created out of sequential perception. We can become very serious with our purposes. "I'm going to save the world." Divine Love is this sense of being loved outside of experience. And that truly takes away what is perceived to be suffering by the wise. It's something loving itself outside of time and space.

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Knndalini as aWildfire September 18. 1999 -Albuquerque, New Mexico It's nice to l?e here today. The Kundalini-Shakti is like a wildfire. It's a kind of burning/coolness. This is one aspect of Mother's transmission. Even those who have practiced meditation for a long time will know that a kind of subjectivity is created through meditation; there's a sense of self, whether that self is written with a big "S" or a small "s." It still designates a place. The last form of reference is the Self. It's the last reference point before you move into "sahaja samadhi,'' which means the natural, fully awakened condition of being the Divine (not merely contacting the Divine). In "sahaja samadhi" human spiritual evolution climaxes. The life of meditation is an endless odyssey of experiences in the subtle and transcendental realms until you tire of it. So my question today is, how tired are you? The Kundalini-Shakti, when it is simply received, without inhibition, in relationship, in Divine Relationship, begins to incinerate even the location of the Self. You become the Gift, the means of liberation. Anybody, anything, can then cross over through you. It's a thrilling place to be. Love is the final resting place beyond laughter and tears. "You are That" means you are also the realm of suffering and death. Everything happens in You. You can practice spiritual techniques for many years-even decades-and not get to this. It's a gift, not an achievement.

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Devotion September 21, 1999 -

Santa Fe, New Mexico

I'd like to welcome everyone here this evening. It's a great honor and privilege for me to be with you. I thought I would talk about a very delicate and deep subject. That is Divine Relationship and its connection to the life This is really of meditation. a meditation After the connection of the mind to the inner Self, after that has become comon Love. plete and you are awakened to ConsciousIt's meditated ness, meditation becomes transformed. It by Love and is then the feeling-mechanism that begins to take over the process of meditation. It arrives What begins to be meditated is your at Love sphere of relationship. This is done through Immeasurable. the delicacy and vulnerability of your feeling nature. This is going. beyond detachment. For meditation to become full at this point, it's about the transmutation of human emotion. For that to happen there must be a great fire in the field of lovingness, in the field of your ability to feel. It's about Divine Love. Divine Love begins to meditate you. You can feel It. You can feel the power of that radiance, pushing, bringing the attention out of the head, and ultimately coming back down into the circle so that the whole being is revolving in the Absolute Being and the vulnerability of a Heart that has been shattered in devotion. Then you stay in this fire all the

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time. This is the really awakened life, not getting lost in the Void. It is willingly, ecstatically participating in relationship. It is very hard to translate this into language. This is really a meditation on Love. It's meditated by Love and It arrives at Love Immeasurable. You transcend all your inhibitions. There is a phrase by the Buddha: "Gate, gate, paragate, parasamgate, bodhi swaha." Gone beyond, beyond even the Beyond. Hail tq the Enlightened Ones.

The Spiritual Master is aLiving Riddle September 24, 1999-Santa Fe, New Mexico Kindness can seem like cruelty. Love can seem like hate. Victory can seem like defeat. The Spiritual Master is a living riddle. He defeats every logical category. In his ecstatic radiance the lies of worldly existence are burned out. The lies that truth can always seem like truth, that victory can always seem like victory, and that kindness can always seem like kindness. He burns out the lie of logic and reason. Therefore, he's a fire that destroys the world. Laughter may seem like sorrow. That which makes sense can seem like absurdity. Tenderness may feel like pain.

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The last offering to give the Supreme is your own mind. The best offering to give the Supreme is your attachment to meaning. The quickest way to reach the goal is to give up linearity. I am not attracted by the heavens. I am not repulsed by the hells. When I am most hungry I am most satiated.

The Beloved Meditates You October 2, 1999 - Sedona, Arizona It's a great joy for me to be in Sedona this evening. The meditator "achieves" Self-Realizatjon when he is dissolved into the Source. When there is no more meditator left, then in Supreme Devotion, the Beloved meditates you. Self-Realization is not an end in itself; it's a door into the Heart of the Beloved. In this ecstatic embrace the errors, the misperceptions of worldly existence, are incinerated, and what remains is a flame of Divine Love. The state of nonduality is really just a normal state of living without mental error. It's not an end in itself. When the meditator is dissolved in perfect meditation there's nothing left. But when the Supreme Beloved enraptures you in Supreme Devotion, then everything is what's

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left. So please don't get stuck in the void. The fruit of meditation is devotion until meditation becomes perfect and the devotee dissolves. The fruit of action is devotion. The fruit of knowledge is also devotion. The fruit of devotion is more devotion. "You are That" means, you are not only the unchanging source of pure consciousness. It also means, you are the progressive evolution of the changing world. You are the field of that immaculate, uncreated pure existence, without the slightest trace of relativity. You are the field of excruciating mortality and death. Not even the blinking of an eye can separate them. May your lovingness penetrate into that everlasting field. May you be brought into the arms of supreme devotion, that maddening love that does not care for any consequence. May Mother Herself find you. Just a few tears at the Feet of your master is better than years of meditation. Kali Herself will come running to you and will intoxicate you. It's made very simple here. Just see me and feel me. Don't worry about losing the Self. You never had it to begin with so how are you going to lose it? You see, it's a gift, not an attainment. It's love, not a bargain. You'll find that the deepest "vasana" (psychological tendency) is the reluctance to feel completely. There will be some caution exercised in that area, out of fear, that you will be humiliated, destroyed, used or abused, toyed with. But when you acquire a taste for this kind of surrender then you transcend the fear of that vasana. Then the force of reality even comes into your sexual functioning. You see how hungry you are to love and be loved and that, and not detachment, is what will dominate your awareness.

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Song of Divine Love Part 1 Divine Love is the song of the Heart. Its melody is enticing beyond words and leads one to the state ofAbsolute Silence. After this there is the tenderness of the Absolute Touching the Relative and the expression ofpure, undiluted Love. Love is the Supreme Master. It is Her, the Goddess, And Her alone Whose Love is unfathomable Like the sea and wide like the sky. Everyone who comes to drink from Her Source enjoys the tenderness that breaks the human heart once and forever. Then, We bleed Her deep b~auty always; we are lived out of, and beyond our imagination. Before the beginning of time I have been loved. I am Love Itself, Divine, Seif-Effelgent Bliss, vibrating and expanding, pushing beyond into the Totality. I am She, I am the Mother.

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Field of the Awakened Heart October 3, 1999 - Cottonwood, Arizona Some of you don't know me. My name is David Spero and I am from Santa Fe, New Mexico. I'd like to welcome you this evening. Sometimes I use the words "I," "me," or "mine." Please don't be offended. It's just a word. The "I" is not a thing; it's just a feeling, a bodily feeling. If you say there's no "I," you should also say there's no body either. For me, there is a body and it's not a problem. . The transcendental reality underlies all phases of matter, both the subtle and the gross. It underlies the waking state, the dreaming state, and the sleep state. It is neither waking, dreaming, nor sleeping. Vedanta is also everything that is not Vedanta. Christianity is everything that is not Christianity. Love is everything that seems like "unlove." Let's not get caught up too much about the logical consequences of our language. Let's understand that we function in duality, but we're also free from it. And what transcends this duality is the radiant, blissful, ecstatic field of the Awakened Heart. In this satsang it manifests in three major ways, which is the transmission of Divine Light, Divine Love, and the movement of the Kundalini-Shakti. You've had a life of profound meditation when your awareness is established in that nondual reality. It's the Kundalini-Shakti which brings the force of awareness back to the surface of the body-in a liberated condition, not in a bound or suffocated condition. There's a feeling of being

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alive as bodily bliss, not merely as the witness consciousness, the Self. Love has no borders. It has no inside or outside. This "stage" of awakening is free from duality, completely, and yet it also effortlessly engages one in the Love-Field. We don't shirk from relationship if we're established in this radiant bliss. The body begins to produce "amrita" or nectar, which changes the whole func"I am That" tioning of the physiology. Food becomes, is a sad in its final digestive process, the absolute ending to a reality of Divine Sweetness. I caution those veterans on the beautiful spiritual path, and say this with love, try story. not to get stuck in the void. The whole Love goes on meaning of the Avatar is that Consciousness has become embodied humanly, in and on even human form. Therefore, the highest form after That of spiritual practice is to simply behold someone who is utterly divine, by the has been literal fact of his or her existence, which is realized. that absolute sense of radiant energy, radiant bliss, full consciousness. Ultimately, you dissolve in It. What is left is a matter for you to discover in your own personal experience, through the way you want to live your life in its uniqueness; in other words, whatever makes you happy. Many people feel like their personal inclinations prevent them from living in this Divine Impersonality. It's up to those persons to find the final One who can be of service in helping them to realize how their individuality merges into

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their universality. No matter how profoundly Self-Realized you are, it's still a location, it's still a place. To transcend the Self completely, and to remain in an ecstatic and free-flowing condition, without any inhibitions, is a great Gift that's bestowed. It's not an attainment. "I am That" is a sad ending to a beautiful story. Love goes on and on even after That has been realized. Meditation takes you across the ocean of misery. But once you get across the ocean you should forget about both sides; it should become indistinguishable bliss. Nirvana and samsara are absolutely, without any shadow of a difference, one. Then you'll be intoxicated with the Lord. And it won't stop. You won't have any questions about, "am I really realized?" All that will be washed away in this Divine Silliness, this Love. This evening some of us need Divine Love and some need the Kundalini-Shakti. Everything will be given. You are all scriptures, all Enlightned Ones. lfil

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Song of Divine Love

I I I I I I I

Part 2

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Divine Light is the essence of nonduality, the Paramatman, alone and unchanging. Deep in the head He finds His way out above into the ether-sky like lightening on a winter night. Then there is no "other. "

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5 Sexual Yoga Expressing sexual love is the energy of Divine Play. Innocence of touch and innocence from the field of knowledge allow us to play in this Divine Garden. We are neither male nor female. Deep within the body is psyche, the core of existence. Sexual love is a bodily play where the deepest level of feeling comes to be expressed. In the height of sexual embrace the waves of Shakti engulf, purify and transform our lives into Divine Consciousness. Breath, feeling, and contemplation of the source of beauty all merge in Divine Sexual Love. The Yoga of Sexual Love is no different than any other worshipful act. When the Supreme Beloved is felt and seen in the human face of your beloved, then the natural urge toward ecstatic transcendence can be stimulated and fulfilled. Waves of Divine Bliss (ananda) usurp the individual lives into One Consciousness. It is necessary in Divine Sexual Yoga that human desire become yoked to the Kundalini-Shakti through touch, breath and meditational consciousness. The source of beauty shines through the activity of sexual play and the

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purity of the lover can glisten like the moonrays on a clear winter night. Each person must become both Shiva (pure awareness) and Shakti (divine energy). We cannot assume a limited psychological identity and participate ecstatically. As we move into our emotional vulnerability, we find a child, parent, mother, father, brother and sister wanting to love and be loved. It is not possible to move into divine sexual ecstasy unless there is this vast spectrum of felt lovableness and infinite tenderness. · Sexual love draws us into the ultimate dimension of our spiritual life; it fills the body with the Shakti, the vibrational power that manifests this whole universe. Celibacy is a natural condition for some spiritual aspirants. For others it is unnatural. It is natural for those in whom it comes unforced and it is unnatural when it is accompanied by effort. Celibacy is often used to avoid emotions which are disturbing or make one feel too vulnerable. Any genuine spiritual path of full awakening will take you through your holdings and unnaturalness. Celibacy should not be a desired condition. It has no inherent superiority over a sexually active lifestyle. The description is not the described. Even the Vedas do not accurately or fully describe the state of total awakenness. Full awakenness is not a state, but a relationship. It goes beyond knowledge of the absolute. It is like living in a

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riddle. The riddle was just a question created out of fun, out of love. Would you like to solve this riddle? Then go and express Divine Love. The closest image and metaphor for Divine Love and Total Awakening is Expressing Sexual Love. The most intensely fragile moment for human life is when two beings are breathing and feeling the Shakti (Divine Energy) as each other. Both homosexuality and heterosexuality come out of the total void. Unconditioned energy is absolutely sexual. Spiritual life and bodily life are one. Who said that celibacy was the only grammatically correct noun in the unquestioned, dogmatic sentence on spirituality? I am tempted to say that if you cannot maintain your Self-Realization in the posture of sexual love, then you are not truly enlightened. Have you ever seen the expressions of Shiva and Shakti in the iconography of Hindu spirituality? You can see expressions of unfathomable tenderness, to the point of pain. It is not the sex act that is creating this pain but the perception of immense beauty and the attempt to express it bodily. When the dream becomes impossible to stay in, we fall apart piece by piece and wake up. Then night becomes our friend, our lover, and we walk along an uncharted river of feeling, a primal path of longing. Then, now, we are on the inside of what's outside, soft and warm, dark and deep, round and full of Love. Devotion is endless love of God. To love beyond duration produces a state of divine insatiableness. Then we

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begin to know that we are being loved by That which loves us. In Divine Sexual Love, when both the body and emotions are yoked to the breath, which is established in the field of pure consciousness, Supreme Love (Parabhakti) becomes expressible as human touch. Sexual love naturally contains meditation and devotion within it. Divine Touch, or sexual lovingness at the ground of existence, naturally draws us into the deepest part of our being. We offer what we are bodily, in kindness and delicacy. To the one we love we· become a doorway to the Supreme. Mercy and forgiveness are natural qualities in real sexual intimacy. We must become humbled by our own vulnerability.

It is not possible to have deep sexual love for another unless there is total clarity about one's sexual feelings. Divine Sexual Love is not a "sex act." It is total surrender into one's Feeling. It is not mechanical pleasure or "successful," sexual relations.There is no "sex act" because the whole field of action is winding down, disappearing as one melts into one's Beloved. Sexual hypocrisy or emotional-sexual phoniness is one of the great diseases of our time. Sexual hypocrisy originates in bodily-sexual ambiguity in the field of touch and deep ignorance of one's emotional nature. Functioning in such an unclarified state produces lukewarm sexual relations and

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robs the being of ecstatic sexual participation and transcendent experience. What is it that allows such a vast compromise? Convenience, adherence to (or rejection from) social norms, and the terror of seeing and being seen in the nakedness of Love. The "chakras," or "wheels" which distribute the flow of Shakti, the force of life/feeling/energy, are not confined to the ancient "maps" of six, seven, or eight centers. Their influence supercedes the scope of any map. The genitals are among the areas where this life/feeling/energy condenses. The genitals are precious jewels or divine apertures of light, love, and energy. Therefore, any form of unnecessary surgery (such as routine circumcision) in the genital areas could have enormous and/or fatal repercussions on the physical, psychological, emotional, and spiritual well-being of a person. @] ~ @]

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Song of Divine Love Part 3

The Kundalini-Shakti pushes up and down through all the nerves, vibrates the brain into pure light opens the heart with pure love and then quietens, like a bird landing on a twig, ready to spring off at any second.

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6 The Divine Mother I met the Divine Mother in a vision before I knew of Her being in any human form. I was on a long meditation course, a course which was coming to its end. During "sleep" this small woman came to me. She was sitting on a dais in front of many people. To myself, in my "sleep,'' I thought "I must be in the realm of the dead. This Great Being is giving darshan. I must ask for Her Blessing." She looked at me from the dais with round, dark eyes (I will never forget them) and from this gaze I began to experience Her waves of intensified Bliss, Her transmission of the Shakti. I could feel my body, being "drilled" by this immense energy, moving about in the bed. I became terrified. I felt that this energy would destroy me. I asked Her, "please stop this, it is too much." At that moment the energy stopped and I found myself transported to Her Lap, my head resting on Her Thighs. She was stroking my head and had some water beside Her. She placed Her Hand in the water and sprinkled it all over my body, starting with my feet and ending with my head. At that moment I awoke and found my face drenched with tears. Later on in my sadhana, She unleashed the most acute perception of Divine Unity. There was only That (unman-

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ifest pure consciousness) for weeks on end. I was lost in it and all I could do was weep. She drove me to the very edge of my life and kept me there like a bird perched on a branch. I wondered if my human nervous system would just burn out and die. She would just say, "You are Me, why be concerned?"

Devotion is endless love of God. To love beyond duration produces a state of divine insatiableness.

Later I drove from Santa Barbara to Montecito. As I drove up the winding roads to this mountainous place, I began to have one of the most shocking and unparalleled experiences of my entire life. I was in a state of intense devotion and I noticed that the foliage by the side of the road was radiating a kind of spiritual light. I began to see that the "external" physical world was being dissolved by the light of the Paramatman, the Supreme Consciousness; it was a state of unconditional Voidness, bare of all attributes. Yet it was not only this. Something else had occurred; everything was God, everything was Her.

What continued to unfold expanded into another level of Voidness, as though consciousness was revealing its ultimate fabric of intimate beauty to my spiritual eye. I sensed _that "It" was coming down. This was completely beyond anything I had read about in any spiritual text. I began to experience the complete descent of Mother everywhere. This was no longer an experience in consciousness. I was completely transcended out of the known. It was like being catapulted to another realm but the effect was that

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this realm, the earth, was completely "divinized." Everything in this world was transcended in and as It. How do I describe this? Every realm was here. There were no other worlds. Ascension through evolution was made obsolete and there was nowhere to abide. I continued to drive the California coast intoxicated by Mother's Divine Presence. I felt so possessed by Her Love that everything had been taken away from me, even my life. My breath was Her Breath. My inner Self was Her, the Atman. Yet even more than this was Our Unity, which went beyond the worlds and then still farther out. I drove my van and while driving felt as though the entire van ascended out of the physical world. For almost two hours I sat driving on a highway in a state that completely excluded any sensory perception. I was lost in Her Ocean, in Her World. When I came out of this state the van was being driven by her omniscient voidness. She showed me the paths of all the yogas in a brief fashion so that I could see that they were only paths to the Absolute and that I was beyond all of them. Within five minutes she showed me the path of "bhakti" or devotion and how the immense pain of unfulfilled longing could catapult one to the Lord. Then she said, "now allow yourself to be led by Me on the path of Knowledge; ask Me anything." I asked "Which is the highest path, knowledge or devotion?" She then showed me internally how the energy within each yoga was contained within the other. Nevertheless, simultaneously, she engaged this Self-Inquiry to the point of complete dissolution in consciousn ess-and then said, "All the Yogas are equally dear to Me."

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When I was lost in the Ocean of Her Love I would weep for hours. It is a wonder I did not have an accident with my vehicle. The tears poured forth hour after hour, day after day, week after week, and like a river flowed into the Ocean of Her Being. I learned to cry like Her Child, and Only She cried. She cried and I disappeared. I reappeared and there was no e)ld, no beginning. At this point I realized that the Divine Mother was the Suprem e Lord Himself . I could not differentiate between Her (Supreme Devotion) and Him (Transcendental Realization). Love has no I felt Her as pure Devotion, but then I inside or coguized Krishna as pure Light. My van was was outside, no top the chariot and She was Him. She my Vasudeva, holding my hand, breathin g or bottom. life, around every curve. And at the end of all these experiences she said, "You are Me." We think of

nonduaHty as a mental, rather than an emotional realization.

Love has no inside or outside, no top or bottom. We think of nonduality as a mental, rather than an emotional realization. Yet if you could experience compassion completely you would find it present even on the level of perception. One day, in Chicago, on a meditati on course, I went to the dining hall and looked around with amazem ent. Everything became compas sion-the dishes, the food, the people carrying the plates or throwing their garbage away into the trash cans. When I would meditate She would absorb my prana

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(breath) for several minutes at a time and then merge it completely into Her State. Then she would radiate the full force of the Shakti to Infinity. The intensity of Her transmission was beyond everything. I knew that I was not meditating but that She was meditating me. As time progressed in the spring of 1997, I began to meditate on Her Bodily Form with open eyes, without an inverting process that excluded sensory perception. She appeared internally in my "Heart Screen." The Heart was meditating Itself. It was the most profound awakening of Divine Love. She led me forward and followed behind me everywhere.

Driving in the high desert of New Mexico, I began to "remember." It was a swift, sudden descent into Her Being. Everything opened up. From that moment on I remembered myself to be Her and Her alone. It went back millions of years. Not only was I with Her, in all those births, but I was Her, birth after birth, always coming back as the Divine Mother. It was excruciating. My body-mind broke down in a torrential sorrow. It was Her sorrow, Her longing, for the liberation of the whole human race. My life, which once overran itself in the ocean of Her compassion now found itself in the desert of Her Divine Fury. She reduced and expanded me into the depth and height of being nothing and everything. It was a time, in the spring of 1997, of being consumed by Her Divine Energy. I was on fire and out of my mind, driven in a blizzard of Divine Light. I was lost in Her Oneness and absorbed into the state of the "Avadhoota," one who has lost his sanity in

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God. One evening I began to feel the waves of Shakti engulfing Southern California. It was the Light of my own Heart. I comprehe nded instantly that this completely transcended the state of Self-Realization. In the way daylight can be discriminated from darkness, Mother's Divine Consciousness is completely uninvolved in any state of liberated consciousness (moksha). She is beyond scriptures, the states of Gurus and Avatars, the states of a Yogi or Yogini. Mother's Consciousness transcends the formless realization of the Paramatman, the state of the Supreme Self. Her state is without compare and indescribable. She gives the unending sweetness of Pure Love for Its Own Sake. The Divine Mother, in a human form, does what She likes. She is completely unpredictable. Her divine inclinations are Her Momenta ry Tastes. It is the greatest of joys to see Her behave in time and space. Everything She does has the taste of Eternal Life. It is not easy to express how special it is to be so close to Her. Her Body is nothing but Love. She is the Lord, the scriptures, the different levels of realization.

To embody the Divine Mother is the most auspicious of all Divine Realizations. In this profound state, even the body becomes gripped by Her Omniscie nt Tenderness. The body itself becomes like a puppet in Her Hand. Not only is there only Consciousness, both on the inside and outside, but the body itself becomes delivered into a state of miraculous, transfigured illumination.

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Don't ask me how I got in, against the sand I could hear and maybe even feel a deep silence

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set off by the waves (of desire) crashing against bodies ofsolid rock

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from here I motioned, stood poised and yet no one understood that they too though we would be mute and blind here, were to enter: past the lesser gifts through the dimmer lights beyond the peifect swoop of a seagull to a small landing at the edge of which a sudden spray splayed my face and a sound, a deep thud like the striking of a human abdomen reminded you that still there was a whole world to be perceived in all This.

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128 -AN ESSAY

7 An Essay Beyond Memory and Self Consciousness A genuine devotee or spiritual aspirant lives for the breakthroughs in realization. He or she discerns, in the depth of that life, the doorway which passes through his or her individual life. Eventually the doorway becomes known so well that there is a permanent exit into the beyond-th is is nirvana, establishment in the field of nonduality. Each person will discover how to exit into the changeless through some kind of meditation, whether it be learned formally or grasped intuitively. They will discover the gateway to fluidly passing through their interior consciousness to the one Great Void. Almost anything can happen between the inception and completion of this way. The purpose of a Teacher is to guide an aspirant through the precarious times of transition. That is Supreme Consciousn ess, Supreme Bliss, Supreme Light and everything eventually dissolves into It. There is no sense of otherness in this Greatness, this Revelation of God-Consciousness. Since it is Supreme in every aspect of Its revelation, everything which is less than that will be reduced to nothing. It is a one-way ticket into itself and when your awakening becomes mature you are catapulted completely and forever beyond memory and self consciousness.

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8 Experiences y first experience with David was adjusting to feeling Mother's Presence. Once I transitioned that, I then relaxed into the blissful energy he exudes. He was talking about Mother and his experience of higher levels of consciousness and then the room started to be filled with a "liquid-flowing" Golden Light. I kept blinking and It didn't go away. The light seemed to last a long time. When It left I was still focused on what David was say:mg. I recognized that I had made a connection with a Being that is going to help me achieve a higher level of realization. I found that my activity has a new sense of peace and calmness that is allowing me to make clearer decisions. My body is feeling stronger and healthier and less susceptible to ups and downs.

M

Celeste Taylor Albuquerque, New Mexico

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met David in August of 1998 in the public library in downtown Santa Fe, New Mexico. I have spent many hours with David as a Teacher, as a friend, and as a secretary for his work. My experiences have been many and I will attempt to explain them. I was never a religious person. I was baptized a Catholic. As a teenager (13-16 years old) I attended a Congregational Church. In 1987 I started to attend another church in Naples, Florida. I never studied the Bible or any eastern religions. Therefore, I am not really knowledgeable about religion or "spiritual matters." The first night I sat in satsang with David it was so amazing. I felt a "spot" open up in my back and the energy was just flowing out like a faucet that had been opened up. I then started seeing David two evenings a week. I began to "feel" the energy flowing in my body. During this time I had an experience of smelling roses during David's satsang. There was not one fresh flower in the room. David calls this "divine fragrance." It has happened so many times that I can't tell you. Sometimes I smell other fragrances as well. I also started a friendship with David at this time. We would have meals together, take drives into the mountains of New Mexico, etc. I can remember two incidents. One Saturday afternoon we had lunch together and we sat on the porch to meditate. We went into a space I had never gone into before. My meditations had become quite deep and pleasant by that time, so this experience was quite special to me. I am sitting and I am aware that David is next to me. The wind and the smell of the cool air are there too, then in my inner vision I saw this beautiful, white, sparkling ringI acknowledged it and it grew bigger; then the inner part of this circle drew me in-it was endless.

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Being around David or in the space of his gifts doesn't mean there won't be other things that come upfar from it. But I know now that I have the everlasting love and suppor t of someone who can and will help me ifl open that space to him. I have had many other experiences since I met David. I "hear" energy. My healing ability in my hands has increased tenfold and is expanding to the point where I can do this as "work." My body feels the energy; it's like a dull "hum" sometimes, like a "great flow" other times. It's always there now. I often get awakened in the middle of the night by It. I acknowledge It. It soothes me and I go back to sleep. I meditate at least one time a day. During medita tion, the space I go into now is "witnessing." I know where I am, I know the surroundings I am in, my body gets light (the heaviness of gravity is gone) and I'm in this space of "white-cool light"- it is so marvelous I want to stay there forever. In working with David, this has all been perfec tedevery so often someth ing more spectacular happens. When sitting in David's presence, I would feel the energy flow from his body to mine and back to him in this wonderful movement/dance. Most often my internal body temperature would increase. The knowing of great Love would fall over me-mo st often I do not have any words to describe it; there are none. Withou t dieting I have lost over 2 5 pounds. He has blessed my life and I choose to be there for him and to suppor t his work.

Karlene M. Jordan Santa Fe, New Mexico

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t is in that space of unconditional love which David provides that I feel welcomed and wanted. I am noticed and received individually and universally. And it is in that space that I am given a reflection of my own vastness.

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Natalya Zamora Santa Fe, New Mexico

D

uring an emotionai dilemma, I spoke with David and Mother's energy enabled a deep, silent meditation. Afterwards, a beautiful, warm glow filled the room, brightening with David's essence. He truly facilitates Divine Love.

Jean Fascitelli U7aterbury, Conneticut @ ) . @ )

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David Spero is available for satsang programs, ~ meditation intensives and retreats.

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David Spero P. 0. Box 2622

Murphys, CA 95247-2622 [email protected] www .davidspero.org l~I

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I The Feeling of Oneness II I The hunger to love and be loved is I one with the urge toward I I self-transcendence. Samsara and I nirvana are one. Duality is just I the feeling of oneness. There is no I "other. " There is only pain I and death and suffering. I I Those who point toward the I Self ask you to contemplate the I Witness, the source of the mind. I Those who ask for virtue and I I kindness point toward the I doorway of devotion. I Therefore, when you achieve I full Self-Realization you will begin I I to feel a great ache in your heart I for the Other. The Other is neither I an object nor freedom from objects. I Everything is exactly as it is. I I o o •I @I

136 -NOTES

PLEASE NOTE: David is not affiliated with any teaching, method, tradition or ideology; he is not part of any movement or organization nor has he been sent out by anyone to teach . David is an independent writer, teacher, speaker and poet who has no spiritual affiliations. He has no guru nor is he endorsed by one; he is not anyone's disciple, devotee, representative or student. As used in this book, the terms Divine Mother, Amma and Devi do not refer to any person living or deceased; they refer to the pure consciousness that exists within each individual.