And in that heartbroken moment of surrender, she felt the blessing energy of Avatar Adi Da Samraj, her spiritual master—an energy that suddenly freed her awareness from fearful identification with the dying body-mind, and revealed her true and eternal identity as prior to the body-mind. She told me, in weeping joy, that she knew her true identity to be a limitless field of awareness, of free and blissful energy, of Conscious Light—as Adi Da describes it, Self-Radiant, egoless Love, One and Indivisible and Perfectly Sufficient—Adi Da is that; she is that; everyone and everything is that. No matter what happened, in life and in death, Conscious Light would always be the case. She was gratefully writing Avatar Adi Da to thank him for his profound gift, the gift of “radical” healing (as he calls it): healing that is not achieved by seeking for a cure or remedy, but by a searchless awakening to what is “radical” or at the root; an awakening to what is always and already whole and healed.
She told me, in weeping joy, that she knew her true identity to be a limitless field of awareness, of free and blissful energy, of Conscious Light—as Adi Da describes it, Self-Radiant, egoless Love, One and Indivisible and Perfectly Sufficient—Adi Da is that; she is that; everyone and everything is that. No matter what happened, in life and in death, Conscious Light would always be the case.
But I have never met another healer like Avatar Adi Da Samraj. And I have never read another health book like Conductivity Healing. To my mind, the greatest healer is a person who can guide and help the individual to a state of real healing, to a real cure, in which Conscious Light is realized as one’s true and deathless identity, and all the inevitable difficulties and dissatisfactions of daily life—including illness—are felt within It. In my experience, Adi Da is such a healer.
INTRODUCTION The Purest Healing Source by Daniel Bouwmeester, MD and the editors of the Dawn Horse Press
The Sphere of the “Bright”, Avatar Adi Da says, is “Centerless and Boundless”—in other words, there is no ordinary experience of being the center (or self, or
ego) within a defined experience (or world). The “Bright” Sphere, He writes, is “without ‘difference’, without ‘place’, without ‘other’, without relatedness, without death, without diminishment, without limit, without problem”.
During Avatar Adi Da’s “teaching years”, He brought into the world an entirely new and complete way of living, founded in a profound understanding of Reality—and how any human being, at any time, can respond to and participate in Reality. This way of living is inherently free—that is, it is based on the native State of the being, which is free of the limits of the ego, or the contracted, separate sense of self. It is also searchless—free of effortful, motivated seeking, because Reality is known, responded to, and participated in now, not in the future. Avatar Adi Da calls this way of living the Reality-Way of Adidam. He summarizes this way in His final masterwork, The Aletheon:
The Reality-Way of Adidam is a total life-practice based upon transferring energy and attention from “self” to Reality Itself. That turning—from “self” to Reality Itself—is the Means for entering into the Divine Sphere of egoless Self-Identification with Reality Itself, and (thus and thereby) transcending the illusory space of ego-identity.
Therefore, the quality of the activity of the body (its health and ease, or freedom from dis-ease) has a lot to do with the inherent energy of the being and its relationship to the unified field of all-pervading energy, including how energy is circulated (or conducted) in the body. And this self-evident understanding is used in healing practices—since ancient times, and now.
The Non-conditional Reality is that which is “always already the case”, or that which is indivisible, and therefore cannot be broken down or subdivided.
And, thus, the Reality of the Non-conditional is Conscious Light, or that which always already Is.
The Source In Person What is truly important about this story of Avatar Adi Da and Jane? First of all, it shows what makes energy healing work, what makes it truly effective—submission to a source, without mind, wishful thinking, or even prefigured visualization or intention.
That Sphere Intrinsically and Perfectly Transcends the body, the “world”, and all conditional phenomena.
I Describe That Spherical Field of Energy As Love-Bliss Itself, Self-Existing Self-Radiance Itself, or Conscious Light Itself. That Spherical Field of Energy Is Beyond what may be “experienced” via the body or in relation to the body. That Spherical Field of Energy Outshines the body. That Spherical Field of Energy Is the Divine Self-Domain. —“The Boundless Self-Confession”, The Aletheon
PROLOGUE The Body Is Energy by His Divine Presence, Avatar Adi Da Samraj
Can you feel that the body is only free energy—right now? You can feel a tension, an urge to want to hold something in at your heart. But that is just your stress, your reluctance to relax, your suppression of Radiance, of Love, of profuse Happiness. Let that contraction go, and you will feel the whole body radiate. A universal process of “tuning in” exists which all human beings are involved in, at an invisible level.
Likewise, every other dimension of the human being is not “inside”, but is simply a modification of a universal pattern. The brain and the nervous system are merely transmitter-receiver mechanisms. They are ways of participating in a universal field that is, simultaneously, material and energetic and psychic. And, if the “self”-knot is given up, the physical body will flow with the great force, the great elemental field in which it exists, and will be much healthier and freer.
CHAPTER 1 Energy Healing and the Total Human Structure
The human psycho-physical structure is (irreducibly) part of the Prior and Universal Unity. Reality Itself Is Non-separate, Indivisible, and (Ultimately) One—Beyond all appearances. —Avatar Adi Da Samraj
Everything Is Energy If you rub your hands together, and then hold them close but slightly apart, you can feel the energy between them. You can feel there is a kind of vibratory fluid between the hands.
truly, they are energy-fields. Everything is energy-fields—everything! There is no “matter”. There is only energy-fields. Everything is an apparition of energy-fields. Everything cosmic, everything conditional, is energy only. There is no matter otherwise. What appears to be matter is a mode of energy. If you get close enough to it, you find matter to be energy. If you get more of a distant view, you feel it as “stuff”. But, in truth, there is no “stuff”—there are only fields of energy.
All these locks can be broken through. They can be unlocked. But you have to be very serious about all this. You do feel that you know that it is simply, patently true that everything is energy, right?
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: Even in schools or in common education, this is the presumption. You feel that you know this—yet you do not exist simply as it. Therefore, the secret of everything is that it is energy—but it does not change anything to get the secret told to you. It must become a realization. —February 8, 1997
Healing and the Hierarchy of Energy
If everything is energy, then it is also evident that there is a vast range of energies that comprise all of existence. What range of energy is actually addressed in the practice of energy healing?
Those lights are interpreted and experienced in different ways by different individuals and traditions. In agreement with some esoteric traditions, Avatar Adi Da explains that, when experienced as a simultaneous totality, the display of lights appears as a mandala (or pattern) of concentric circles.
The colors of the Cosmic Mandala, taken all together, represent the full range of possible energy vibrations in conditional existence. This range falls into two broad categories: (1) gross (physical) energy and (2) subtle energy. The subtle energy dimension is further delineated into three categories: etheric, lower mental, and higher mental (each of which appears as a distinct color).4
Avatar Adi Da describes the yellow-red conjunction, or the meeting of etheric energy and physical energy, as the “place” of energy healing in the human body.
You are sensitive to an elemental field in the likeness of your own body. Things that are more solid in their grossness are likewise sensitive to a field in their likeness.
If you took a microscope up to your eyelids, for instance, in almost every case there are little tiny entities there, little bug-like entities nesting in the edges of your eyelids—right now—and all over your body.
Therefore, no matter how gross, or dense, or (so-called) “material”, anything appears to be, it is still energy. As energy, it is participating in the lower end of the subtle dimension of the cosmic domain. —Avatar Adi Da Samraj August 19, 1995 Because the gross dimension is in fact energy, no physical form is truly distinct, or separate, from the surrounding energy field in which it arises. Rather, there is a continuous interaction, at the level of energy, between the physical body and its surroundings—and also a continuous exchange of energy within the body’s own physiology.
You are existing in a vast gaseous fluid that is rather invisible. You are very much like fish in the water. In bodily terms, you are moving about in a fluid. …Where does the body end and the fluid appear? Where is the “difference”? …
So, where is “the body”? Where does it begin? What makes it a “the” anyway?
“Have You Experienced A Reality That Corresponds To Your Words?”, My “Bright” Form
Etheric energy is the invisible current or force that animates the physical body. As Avatar Adi Da describes above, this energy pervades the physical body and also surrounds it—effectively forming a personal field of energy directly related to the physical body. This etheric field is associated with the systems of sensory perception and emotion. Additionally, etheric energy is directly tied to the process of breathing, which connects the flow of life-energy to the physical body.
A traditional term based on the Sanskrit word “prana”, meaning “breath”.
but, on the other hand, it surrounds the physical body as a kind of bulb or egg-shape. Where it is rather shapeless or curved or egg-shaped, the etheric is bleeding into, or connected to, the subtle dimension. This etheric aspect of the human structure could be called the “lower subtle dimension”. In some literatures, it is simply referred to as part of the subtle dimension.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: The right way to think of it is that everything is just energy. At one end of the scale, Energy is Infinite, nothing but the Self-Radiance of the Transcendental Spiritual Self-Condition, the Divine Being—and It Pervades the entire cosmos.
First there is a kind of emanation that conforms basically to the shape of the physical. Then, at a certain distance, it begins to become a kind of radiance or sphere. There are many levels of spheres. As you get deeper and deeper into the domain of Energy (or Being) Itself, you develop the capability to be sensitive to, and to observe, the qualities inherent in the different levels. At the level of ordinary human learning, you must become sensitive to the gross personality and its functional aspects, its nervous system, its right and left halves,6 and the processes that keep it in balance. You must also become sensitive to your etheric aspect, the energies that are very intimate with your gross physical personality.
The most you may think is that some chemicals may be floating around in space, because you know that you breathe—but without a subtler awareness, a subtler sensitivity to phenomenal existence, you tend to discount the fact that space is pervaded by energy. Space is continuous. It is not just the distance between “objects”. Rather, space is that within which “objects” appear. In fact, “objects” are space. Space is energy.
The food you take into your body and your general environment support a kind of chemical process that produces the etheric dimension. But the etheric dimension is not merely created by chemical and electrical forces. The etheric dimension also derives from the subtle dimension. The etheric sheath, then, is a limited personal field of energy that (on the one hand) is arising from and supplied by the universal field coming out of the subtle dimension, but (on the other hand) is supplied by the physical body. Thus, to treat the physical body wrongly will decrease nerve-force and weaken the etheric envelope, and it will even have some effect on the more subtle dimensions of the being, such as the psychic part of you.
That is where healing work is done. It is about the connection between the yellow and the red, the etheric-energy dimension and the gross physical dimension—keeping that connection balanced and free-flowing, free of obstructions, free of toxicity and negative accumulations, free of “cause”-and-“effect” patterns that show unwellness and various other life-conditions that are regarded to be negative.
One need not be familiar with complex maps of etheric energy (or other, subtler levels of energy) to use Avatar Adi Da’s instructions on energy healing—although Avatar Adi Da does call His devotees who are professional healers to understand and make use of such maps of the human body-mind-complex in their healing work.
The etheric is immediate to the physical. It is a living, or circulatory, force, not just a static shape. The etheric is a process. It is a living energy. It is a bio-energy-field, immediate to the physical. But the relationship between the physical and the etheric can become complicated, interrupted—it can be a matter of awareness or it can be a matter of zero awareness. Keeping the relationship between the etheric and physical right, balanced, integrated, and conscious is very important for health.
The Causal Dimension and Accounting for Root-Contraction
“Underneath” (or deeper than) all bodily action and sensation, all emotion and perception, all thoughts and experiences, there is a sense of being an independent entity, a separate “self”. Though it is free of any specific personality characteristics, this sensation has a kind of force, actively defining itself and, thus, differentiating from “others”. Avatar Adi Da describes this force as a “contraction”, or “knot”, at the “root” of the being. The “root” (or causal) dimension is the “root” ego-dimension, the dimension of the “root”-contraction. … The feelings of separateness, relatedness, otherness, and “difference” comprise the inherent characteristics of the causal dimension (or “root” ego-dimension) of conditionally apparent awareness. —Avatar Adi Da Samraj “What Consciousness Is”, The Aletheon
The causal dimension is the “place” where awareness associates with the subtle and gross dimensions of the human being and the cosmic domain.
The causal dimension is something like the “stem cells” of the ego. Everything else gets built from it. All the subtle and gross modes of egoity come from this “root”-dimension of egoity. It is “subtle beyond words”, you could say.
The causal dimension of the being—the core presumption of separateness—creates a focal point of awareness, apparently centered in the body-mind-complex and identified as “self”. Then, by means of attention, all experience and knowledge
are “viewed” from this “point” of awareness. But, as Avatar Adi Da points out, awareness is not a separate “thing” any more than the physical body (as energy) is a separate “thing”.
The open hand is the native state of the being, built to explore and participate in relationship with the world. The fist, on the other hand, is closed around a presumed center, cutting itself off from universal participation. The persistent, causal-domain activity of “self”-contraction, or “point of view”—as Avatar Adi Da also terms it—is like forming a fist with the hand. That motion of contracting from relationship not only makes the illusion of separateness seem real, it also registers as a feeling-sense of dilemma and dissatisfaction. In fact, “self”-contraction is the fabricated source of all apparent problem and the motivating cause of all seeking for solutions. It is, in some fundamental sense, the principal form of disease that all human beings are enacting. Why is there suffering all the time? … There is compulsive activity, automatic activity, unnecessary activity. There is compulsive curvature, bending, contraction at the causal “root” of conditionally manifested existence. … The activity of “self”-contraction is merely the obstruction to life, an illusory pattern within life—but that activity is utter, fundamental, all-inclusive.
Therefore, “self”-understanding must take place at every level—down to the cells, and penetrating even to the “root”-sense of separate “self”. On every level where “self”-contraction occurs, “self”-understanding can also take place.
The Fundamental Condition Is Conscious Light (or Consciousness-Energy) The whole body is the body that includes not only the physical but the etheric, the emotional, the mental, the conscious awareness, and the “root”. The environment of the whole body is like the whole body, since the whole body arises from and within it. The environment of the whole body is Light, or Radiance. The Very Condition of the whole body and its environment is Truth Itself, or Reality Itself.
if it still makes sense to talk about “matter” or “materiality” as if “it” were a “something”. Truly, “matter” is not a “something” at all. There is only Continuum, only Non-separateness, only Indivisible Reality Itself—only the Single and Self-Evidently Divine “Substance” of Conscious Light Itself.
• Non-conditional Reality • the “Bright” • Reality Itself • the Divine Self-Nature, Self-Condition, Source-Condition, and Self-State • Self-Existing Self-Radiance • the Divine Reality • Love-Bliss-Light • Conscious Light • Consciousness Itself and Its Own Radiance (or Energy) • Real (Acausal) God Avatar Adi Da describes the Indivisible Conscious Light as “Prior”—not in the sense of “existing earlier in time”, but in the sense of existing “always and already”. Regardless of changes in the conditional domain, Indivisible Conscious Light Always Already Is—Non-conditional, Unchanging, Perfect, Love-Bliss-Full.
Part of My Work, part of My Reality-Teaching, is an effort to help you break out of the enforced model of Reality that is preventing you from being sensitive to your actual Condition and to dimensions of your existence that go beyond, and ultimately even transcend, material existence and all forms of limited, egoic, conditional existence.
Be sensitive to your psyche. Be sensitive to the contents of your conscious awareness. Permit yourself to “experience” the contents of your conscious awareness. Do not shut them off. Become capable of dreams, of reverie, and of being psychic. Be sensitive to your archetypes, the poetry and metaphors of your conscious awareness.
In other words, legitimize “subjective” existence. You must legitimize it before you can transcend it.
Human beings are not here merely to grow wheat and make computers! To be socially productive is just one aspect of human existence, and people have no business being devoted to it exclusively. You must develop a free human existence and be free to grow in dimensional terms. You live as energy. You live as light. You live in the Infinite Domain of Real God. This is self-evident when you become sensitive enough to break out of your mind-set.
It is not by making this kind of learning taboo, but by making it, in effect, obligatory, necessary, real, and truly available in a fully human and Spiritual context, that human beings will stop destroying one another, stop undermining the process of existence in this plane, and allow humanity to devote itself to its right developmental course. Human beings are all enchanted. You are already modifications of Reality Itself—and, yet, you explore existence as modifications. You do not see how modifications arise. You do not see That in Which modifications arise. You are limited to modification itself, to what you simply appear to be. And you break this spell only if you are free enough to thoroughly investigate your circumstance, your condition, your functioning being, all your parts, all your aspects, and begin to “Know” Reality in an expanded sense, beyond what you presently appear to be. The more you go beyond these limits, or the “point of view” of contracted being, the more directly you can intuit the Condition of conditions.
Conducting the Flow of Natural Life-Energy The secret of “conductivity”: Treat or relate to the phenomenal “world” and “self” (or the body-mind-complex) as energy rather than mere matter. And treat or relate to every condition of the phenomenal “world” and “self”—positive or negative, high or low—as the same Ultimate and Total Energy (or Self-Radiance of Transcendental Spiritual Divine Being). Body and mind are the same energy. Use every condition or circumstance as an incident of transmission of energy, continuous with the Radiant Principle of Divine Being. Open to energy, contact it, and circulate it. And communicate it in all directions and relations through love. —Avatar Adi Da Samraj “Treat Everything as Energy”, “I” Is the Body of Life
Thus, natural (etheric) life-energy is itself a healing force. Conducting natural life-energy through the body rejuvenates even the cells of the body by encouraging their innate functioning, including the release of toxins and degenerative stress-patterns.
Avatar Adi Da’s essential instructions on how to magnify one’s participation in the etheric-energy dimension are summarized below, by considering how the whole body participates in etheric energy, via each of the faculties, or fundamental functions of human aliveness: feeling (or emotion), breath, body (via physical touch), and mind (or attention).
“You cannot feel any better than you can feel”3—in other words, your well-being is dependent on your capability to freely exercise the faculty of feeling. Additionally, feeling is a form of non-physical communication of energy between “self” and “others”.
To exceed the ego-trap—and to be Refreshed at heart, and in the total body-mind-complex …, it is necessary to feel and swoon Beyond the “center” (or Beyond the “point of view” of separate ego-“I” and separative body-mind-“self”). —Avatar Adi Da Samraj “Do Not Misunderstand Me”, The Aletheon
Your single obligation is at the heart. It is in your feeling that you become ego-possessed. It is in your feeling that you betray the Real and Ever-Living God and all your relations. It is in your feeling that you are unhappy. It is in your feeling that fear, sorrow, anger, doubt, shame, lust, and all egoic obsessions are arising. Therefore, it is in your feeling alone that you will be healed.
Feed on Life-Energy with the Breath The pranic body … [is] centered at the heart (or the emotional, or feeling, center)—and it is functionally associated with the cycle of breathing. —Avatar Adi Da Samraj “The ego-‘I’ Is The Illusion of Relatedness”, Santosha Adidam
Thus, in “conductivity” healing, one must do more than simply engage the unconscious (or automatic) in- and out-flow of air. Feeling-breathing is the means to participate in and literally “feed on” the field of natural life-energy.
The true food is life itself, which you may breathe—but only when breathing is combined with unobstructed feeling of the universal life-energy and the All-Pervading Force of the Divine Reality. Feed on life-energy, through feeling-breaths, relaxing the entire body, including the brain, into that current of life-force. Receive that life-energy through inhalation to the vital organs of the lower body. And then release that force, through exhalation, to the entire body, and via the entire body to Infinity. This is the native “diet” of humankind. You are always eating and sustained by life-energy, through every truly and openly feeling breath. But if you contract in your feeling, you also contract bodily and mentally. Thus, you become ego-possessed, suffering reactive emotions, bodily tensions, and chronic mentalizing. Through the “conscious exercise” of the wholly feeling breath, you are fed and sustained and healed and transformed by the Self-Radiant Divine Reality. —Avatar Adi Da Samraj “The Transcendental Diet of Man”, The Enlightenment of the Whole Body
In the practice of “conductivity”, the breath is intentionally engaged as this cycle of reception and release.
The reception-release cycle of the breath is not meant to be practiced rotely, or as a repetitive technique. Rather, Avatar Adi Da describes such right breathing as an artful matter, to be engaged randomly during daily life and “conductivity”-healing practices. It is engaged spontaneously, in living communication with the universal field of life-energy.
The distribution of the life-force to the whole body through conscious participation in the natural cycle of the breath …, under all conditions, in all activities, and in all relations, is the key to the health and rejuvenation of the body-mind-complex. In general, the cycle of feeling and breathing from moment to moment is a “conscious exercise”, a general attitude, or mudra, of the entire body, in which the body is constantly purifying, rebalancing, and regenerating itself. Thus, every breath should be the feeling-breath of “conductivity” of the universal etheric energy, or the process whereby the bio-energetic field in which the body exists is contacted and the life-force is conducted to the entire body. On inhalation, one receives the etheric energy, or life-force … into the vital center of the body. On exhalation, one then releases the life-force … and allows it to pervade every part and function of the body, and even the “world”.
However, in a condition of health and well-being, one is naturally, from moment to moment, allowing the life-force to pervade the entire body, so that the body remains full and not obstructed. —Avatar Adi Da Samraj “The Four Stages of Your Bodily Regeneration In Real God”, The Eating Gorilla Comes In Peace
Touch-based “conductivity”-healing practices cultivate awareness of and sensitivity to one’s own etheric-energy field, the etheric-energy field of others, and the universal field of etheric energy. In addition, the sense of touch—as an extension of the faculty of feeling—is integral to direct awareness of the Divine Reality, beyond all forms of contraction. Touch is precisely the dimension in which you must become awake. But, as touch, that condition is blind, in the sense that it is prior to the usual body-sense, prior to all the intellectually organized complexity of inwardness. With touch, inwardness vanishes, and what is “seen” is at the skin level. The “self”-contraction from Infinity can possibly even be measured in terms of electrical activity at the skin level. It is only when the sense of touch becomes Enlightened that the subtle activity at the level of the skin is freed from the effort of contraction and permits bodily participation in Infinite Radiance.
The lower mind is represented by the white band in the vision of the Cosmic Mandala (see color plate in chapter 1).8 In a sense, then, the etheric body is “sandwiched” between the physical body and the sensory-based mental field, and there is a continuous interplay between awareness of experience (via mind) and the experiences themselves (via physical-etheric perception).
The Circuit of “Conductivity” When one is sensitive to and participating in the field of etheric energy with all the psycho-physical faculties, one can also perceive the manner in which energy flows or circulates in the human system.
I have often Described to you the functional structure of apparently individuated life. There is the descending Force, which is manifesting life, and the ascending Force, which is returning to the Source of life. The “Root” of the entire Circle (or Circuit) of the conditional manifestation of your individual life is the True Divine Heart, the Divine Self-Nature, Self-Condition, and Self-State of all-and-All.
The Circle of “Conductivity” I have Described this process in terms of the physical body of the human being. The Current of Energy descends via the frontal line of the body-mind-complex and ascends via the spinal line of the body-mind-complex. —Avatar Adi Da Samraj
Avatar Adi Da calls this circuit of energy “the Circle”. Magnification of the flow of natural life-energy in the body-mind-complex is magnification of “conductivity” in the Circle.
The process by which you appear is not within you, nor does it originate in you. You are simply a reflection of a great pattern. That great pattern is expressed everywhere—in the form of all processes, all individuals, all the cycles that are everywhere to be observed.
My entire body seems receptive and alive with Energy and is filled with Bhagavan Adi Da’s Transmission of Light and Love.
Spiritual Energy Spiritual Energy is the immense Force, or Radiance, of the Divine Reality, which Pervades all of the cosmic domain and of which everything that appears is a modification. Avatar Adi Da also describes the Energy of the Divine Reality as “Self-Radiant Love-Bliss”. References to Spiritual Energy appear in both Eastern and Western traditions, by various names—such as “Shakti”, “Divine Bliss”, and “the Breath of God”. The most developed Spiritual traditions involve the Transmission of Shakti, or Spiritual Force, from an authentic Spiritual Master to a prepared aspirant.†
The Transcendental Spiritual Divine does not merely pervade time and space. Rather, the Transcendental Spiritual Divine Is the all-and-All-Transcending Context of time and space—Prior to ego, Prior to “point of view”, Prior to all cosmic measures, Prior to anything that goes through change in time, Prior to anything that moves in space, Prior to all limitations. … My use
The energies that are engaged, manipulated, transmitted, or exchanged within the Great Tradition originate within the cosmic domain and they make use of portals or structures in the body-mind-complex. If you are sensitive to transmitted energies, you can feel where they come from, where they originate in the structure of the body-mind-complex, and (therefore) how they are associated with the cosmic structure. The “Bright” Is Beyond. The “Bright” does not originate in the cosmic domain.
The Frontal Line Must Be Open Right “conductivity”-practice is to constantly keep the frontal flow pleasurably downward, with open-hearted feeling. —Avatar Adi Da Samraj May 6, 1996 Avatar Adi Da makes clear that blockages in the etheric and physical dimensions (or in the yellow-red conjunction itself) manifest as “knots” in the frontal line of the Circle of the body-mind-complex. These knots restrict the flow of natural life-energy in the descending current.
When it is simply open, you feel good—and not just physically, but emotionally, altogether. You have a sense of well-being. When you have a sense of well-being, this current that registers itself in the frontal line of the body is open. When you do not feel completely well, it is constricted to one degree or another.
you “experience” a more or less chronic sense of contraction over the solar plexus, and a feeling of weakness also, as if you had a hole in your navel. In that case, there is weakness, there is tightness, there is a cramp, there is discomfort, there is disorientation—altogether, a sense of being out of balance.
In principle, what is “conductivity” about? It is about not indulging in obstructions, not indulging in breakages of the circuit but keeping it continuous, round, full, unbroken, unobstructed, a whir of wind, of feeling, of energy, with no obstruction, no breakage. That is what the whole art of “conductivity” is about.
The whole point is to not break or obstruct the circuit. That is it. The super-conductor! Let it be so. —Avatar Adi Da Samraj March 11, 1993
It became clear to Me that the “self”-contraction is the complex limit on natural bodily energy, and (in the case of the degrees and stages of Transcendental Spiritual Awakening) on The Divine Transcendental Spiritual Energy, in the Circle of the body-mind-complex. —Avatar Adi Da Samraj “The Way of Me”, The Aletheon
This is why part of helping to heal another is the responsibility to simply be love—or unobstructed free feeling-attention—thereby giving the person loving, attentive energy.
The heart is the central seat of the central current. Thus, it is not merely in the frontal line, nor is it absent from the spinal line. It is the feeling-attitude of constant radiance, constantly transcending contraction and the limits on radiance. … Therefore, practice “conductivity” on the basis of the free feeling-attitude of the heart. …
Surrender as the total body-mind into the All-Pervading Life-Current via the radiant feeling-attitude of the heart. On inhalation, open the entire body-mind with the feeling heart and so receive the radiant descending life-energy (and, ultimately, the Love-Bliss-Energy of the Divine). On exhalation, release the feeling heart in blissful love-aspiration, thus radiating the life-current to Infinity. Do this breath after breath. —Avatar Adi Da Samraj “Open and Release the Feeling Heart”, “I” Is the Body of Life
If you observed this frontal current for a few days, just agreed to keep your attention on it quite regularly, you would observe certain symptoms relative to the energy in the frontal line of the body. You would observe that these symptoms change from hour to hour, change in different circumstances, change in the presence of different individuals, and so on. When this channel is open, as it is supposed to be, characterized by full in-breath, full bodily realization, full feeling, then you are tending to be in a state of well-being. If you kept that channel consistently open, and, of course, observed various intelligent practices in life, you would maintain a general state of psycho-physical well-being.
Healing another is fundamentally a matter of working on this frontal current, helping to bring the person—not just physically, but in every way—into a condition of openness to the descending current of life-force, so that there exist no relational, physical, emotional, psychic, or mental obstructions or reasons for contraction that limit the flow of force. If this force is simply open and free-flowing, it cures everything. It restores everything to well-being, including relationships.
“free feeling-attention” to describe the most basic form of “conductivity”, in which feeling and attention come together in bodily action. In a simple act such as watering a houseplant, I could see the difference between being present as free feeling-attention, in which mind and emotion were focused and harmonized, and when the mind and feeling were scattered and abstract. I could feel that when I was present as free feeling-attention to another person this was the same as being present as love.
When there is simple, direct, and native participation in the state of life, there is no reactivity, but a pleasurable, relational force and radiance.
The cycle of breathing is a reflection of the present state of “conductivity”, and (thus) responsibility, of the individual. Indeed, the cycle of breathing, or “conductivity” of life-energy, is senior to all “subjectivity”, all reactivity. Breath and emotion are identical.
You feel and breathe simultaneously, as a single event. Unobstructed feeling, or love, is senior to the physiological action of the breath, but simultaneous with it. Love is “creative”, or “causative”, relative to breath and life.
Reactive feeling, or negative and “caused” emotions, are secondary to the physiological action of the breath. Shocks of life modify the breath-life pattern directly, and create contracted emotional patterns, as well as the sense that love and good feelings depend on reasons or circumstantial stimulation.
It is the Law of “self”-sacrifice, or love, that is hidden in every breath. If you abide as love, with free attention in all action, then you remain in the responsible position relative to life, breath, action, and the process of Realization.
Feel Without Obstruction The physical body is always already fully permeated by all-pervading energy, or life-force. It never becomes empty or filled, but it is only either more or less directly and presently in a condition of communication, or communion, with the universal life-force. You fluctuate or “phase” in your state of feeling, moment to moment. You also chronically feel reactive or contracted and negative emotional conditions—from fear and sorrow and anger, to relatively modest anxiety and sadness and despair, to depression and dullness and boredom. Therefore, you are also chronically tending toward a condition of non-communication of life (or energy), on the basis of the effects of “experience” or (otherwise) reactions to “experience”, in every moment.
The only way to realize a present degree of maximum intensity, communicated in, as, and through the whole body-being, is to feel without obstruction, or contraction. Then you abide in the inherent intensity of the universally present energy, life, or light. That feeling is named “love” and “sacrifice” (or “surrender”). It is the unlimited feeling and the inherent intensity of the whole body-being that characterizes you when you simply look and feel and are and act completely happy.
feeling. Thus, only in the rare moments of good fortune or fulfillment, the moments equivalent to suddenly getting a gift of a million dollars, do you consent to feel and to exist as that inherent force.
This is the chronic “problem” of humankind—that human beings do not consent to feel as they are, but only as they are “caused” to feel. You feel according to your present circumstances rather than your inherent force of existence. The Spiritual obligation of every human being is to realize the inherent intensity of life in every moment. And this is possible only if there is true, present, and “radical” understanding of the evidence of Truth and of life itself. Only then will you consent—or even be able—to look and feel and be and act completely happy, under all conditions.
in every moment. And this is possible only if there is true, present, and “radical” understanding of the evidence of Truth and of life itself.
And feeling, as you see, is the key to the functional wisdom of the whole body. Feeling unlocks the contractions of the reactive body-life, and permits a free communication between attention and action. …
Reception/Release and Prior Fullness
You become ego-possessed, confined to “subjectivity”, negatively emotional, vitally weak, and self-defeating in action. Then expansion (or release) is confined to patterns of mere “self”-indulgence—such that you are constantly emptied, until death.
It has already been “considered” how the inhalation of breath (or life) is associated with reception, in-filling, and natural “conductivity” (or movement) toward the whole body. Likewise, the exhalation is associated with expansion, or release of the wastes, the accumulated contents, or old circumstances and
adaptations of life (not the release, or emptying, of life itself), and natural “conductivity” (or movement) from the whole body outward. This dual cycle is generated from the heart (the feeling center), and enacted between the apparent entrance of breath at the nose and the vital (or abdominal) center below. The cycle of breathing moves to and from the vital abdominal center.
When you breathe, you should breathe with the sense that the whole body rests (or abides) always and already in the universal, all-pervading life-field. Thus, the vital center and the head are both—equally, and always—in perfect and constant contact with the light of life. When the cycle of breathing is generated, it should not be felt that life only enters the nose and then goes down to the vital center, but that the whole body breathes, or communes with the universal life. The nose, throat, vital center, and heart are simply mechanisms, or parts, of the conversation between the whole body and the all-pervading life. …
It is only because the life-force is associated with the incoming and outgoing cycle of the breath that you feel life itself comes and goes—whereas, in fact, life is constant, and the cycle of breath is only a play of feeling-attention on the universal energy that always already pervades the whole body, the vital center, the heart, and the mind.
feeling can be full and constant, then it is no longer subject to the apparent cycle, or “phasing”, of the breath. Then your eternal position begins to become clear—at the heart, prior to mind and body. Therefore, you are constantly obliged by the Law of “self”-sacrifice, love, or radiance. The sense of the prior fullness and eternal conservation of life, or light, may be presumed to be simply or factually true on the basis of “consideration” of science and “experience”.
CHAPTER 3 Healing the Whole Bodily System—and the World
“Conductivity”-Healing Practices Serve the System, Not the “Problem”
Disease Is Presumed To Be The “Problem”, Then “Cure” Is Presumed To Be The Only Possible Resolution Of Your Situation—and You May (Therefore) Tend To Become (Irresponsibly) Involved In The “doctor-patient Game”. When “Cure” Seems To Be The Only Answer To Your Suffering, You Become Obsessively Involved In The Search For something that (You Hope) Will “Cure” (or Excise) Your Apparent “Problem”.
Rather than reinforcing the idea of a “disease” that needs to be “cured”, Avatar Adi Da calls for a “systems-based” approach to healing, founded in an understanding of the total system of the body-mind-complex.
For the healer, right healing is a humble matter, because you are subordinating the mind (and the ego) to what is greater than itself. Such subordination is a characteristic of right esoteric practice as I have Described it altogether.
Wellness is the province of the domain in which the body lives. As a healer, you must be subordinate to that and find out how it works and serve that.
If you are busy diagnosing the system and then coming up with a remedy to attack a “problem”, you are not taking into account the whole system. You are just using your analysis, which is detached from the whole.
Healing is about the entire system and what it is going to do itself. It will self-organize. It will self-purify. It will self-correct. You simply must help the system to work. That is the right intention and approach. It is a different kind of thinking about healing. It is whole-body thinking, non-seeking thinking.
This is the logic of working with health issues that I am proposing. My approach to health and well-being is about how you manage health in a searchless manner, trusting the system to work. —Avatar Adi Da Samraj September 9, 2008 When one presumes that the body is a “problem” to be “solved”, rather than a system to be lawfully managed, then exaggerated and systematic efforts to “cure” the body only interfere with the body’s self-healing ability.
The body is a food-process. … Fundamentally, it does not need to be cured. One needs simply to stop bothering the body with “self”-indulgent habits of life, stop throwing it out of balance, stop maintaining it unlawfully.
People are always ready to work on their “problem”, whatever it might be. In reality, you are your own “problem”, and that is why you are always functioning as if you have one.
When you accept the discipline of lawfulness that I describe, healing is a spontaneous manifestation of the bodily life. Fundamentally, you leave the body alone. You observe its signs, rather than trying to manipulate it into well-being.
is in whole bodily conversion, or the “turnabout” of every aspect of the body-mind-complex, from ego-possession to ecstatic Communion with the Divine. The most rudimentary form of such Divine
That disposition is the one of total, profound, and free feeling-attention and love, relaxing the total body-mind into the All-Pervading and Intrinsically Free Force of Reality Itself.
It is not that matter exists in energy. Matter is energy. To make a global culture of people who are only thinking and perceiving in terms of sheer physicality is to have established a gross culture that is going to destroy itself.
conflict. To describe the ego’s obstructing effect on systems, Avatar Adi Da uses the analogy of sticking a large pole, or “stave”, into the wheel of a moving cart. If you do so, you interrupt the wheel’s ability to do what it is built to do—and the cycling of the cart wheel comes to an immediate halt. The removal of this “stave” of egoity for the world as a whole requires responsibility at the individual level.
The ego is essentially predatory. It looks to focus its attention on something “problematic”, and then it attacks it—in order to control it, get rid of it, solve it as a “problem”, and so forth. That is “ego-picking”—which perpetually creates more “problems”, and then treats them in the same manner.
A symptom is a condition of disease that has become so acute that one has started to notice it—but the disease exists long before the symptom appears. Obstructions in the organs of the body accumulate long before exaggerated symptoms arise.
The failure to practice right life is the disease. The failure to fulfill the Law of “self”-surrender is the disease. Once an individual begins to act in violation of that Law, it is merely a matter of time before symptoms appear. People usually do not even begin to entertain the possibility of taking responsibility for disease until the disease has already manifested as symptoms.
Truly, however, life and death are a single process, which is Real Life—which does not exist apart from “self”-sacrificial activity, or love. Therefore, when death is viewed in Truth, then the life-drama lived by the usual person is already undermined. You must become a sacrifice while alive.
The force of life rounds the heart, like the planets round the Sun. And the True Divine Heart Is the “Sun” of the living human form.
When that Fullness is felt, there is no more rejection (or “ritual vomiting”) of the Current of Energy. Rather, by means of spontaneous “conductivity”, the Current (of natural life-energy and, in the case of My by-Me-Transcendentally-Spiritually-Initiated devotees, of My Avatarically Self-Transmitted Divine Transcendental Spiritual Energy) is turned and re-turned—in a spherical Cycle that is completely at ease, without dilemma.
“Relationship and Association”, My “Bright” Word This responsive Communion (or whole bodily participation) with Avatar Adi Da unfolds from the “Place” that is Prior to the presumption of “self” in the causal dimension. In other words, devotion to Avatar Adi Da “happens” in the egoless Position, Prior to all levels of the human structure. And Standing in that Prior Place is also what truly heals the human being.
Forgetting “self” is, in effect, removing “the stave in the wheels” of the human system (as discussed in chapter 3).
In the anxious ego, there is always an effort to animate body, emotion, mind, and breath for the sake of survival. Based on anxiety, there are all kinds of seeking, and so on. But when there is surrender of heart—when there is true “self”-surrender in Communion with Me, all the faculties turned to Me—the agitations of body, emotion,
mind, and breath relax. This relaxation is a characteristic, then, of devotional Communion with Me. If there is true surrender to Me, forgetting “self”, surrender of all the faculties, then Yogic signs appear, in Communion with Me. Basic ones are a calming of the physical, a calming of emotion, a calming of mind, and (likewise) a calming of breath. Thus, a Yogic state of equanimity is realized in the practice of devotional Communion with Me. —Avatar Adi Da Samraj July 23, 1995 As Avatar Adi Da indicates in the quotation above, the devotee actively participates in devotional Communion with Him by turning, or yielding, all four of the principal faculties—of body, emotion, mind, and breath—to Him. This turning is responsive, integrated, and ego-transcending.
Faith-Full Resort Is the Basis of Healing The All-Pervading Divine Life Itself lives as the individual body-mind-complex and sustains it. If only the body-mind-complex will open into the Current of Radiant Life, with full feeling and without thought, it will be liberated from the ego-possessed games of tension and release of tension. Then there is only Fullness of Life. Such psycho-physical opening into the Current of Life is faith, in the highest sense. It is the bodily confession of dependence on the Living Divine, Prior to both fear and mere belief. It is bodily cooperation with Reality Itself, prior to all “subjectivity” and “problem”-centered efforts. —Avatar Adi Da Samraj “The Transcendental Diet of Man”, The Enlightenment of the Whole Body
As My Devotee, You Are Never (In Truth) A “Problem” (or A “Disease”) To Be “Cured” (or a “hopeless sinner” To Be “Saved”). Rather, As My Devotee, You Are Called (By Me) To Always Act In An Appropriate and Responsible Manner, To Always Live On The Basis Of Inherently Faith-Full Resort To Me, and (Thus and Thereby) To Always Allow My Perfectly egoless All-Accomplishing Power Of Divine Transcendental Spiritual Conscious Light To Manifest Itself In The “Play” Of (Apparent) “experience”.
Such Faith-Full Resort To Me (or The Exercise Of Constant Intrinsically ego-Surrendering Resort To My Prior Perfection and Perfectly egoless All-Accomplishing Power) Is The Fundamental Basis Of General Health and Well-being, and All Healing, In The Only-By-Me Revealed and Given “Radical” Reality-Way Of The Heart. If You Are My Devotee, That Constant Whole-bodily-Surrendering (and Intrinsically ego-Transcending) Devotional Resort To Me Must Be Your Really Practiced Disposition If You Are To Fulfill The Necessary Conditions Of The Process Of “Radical” Healing and Live In Real Devotional Communion With Me. All ordinary “Cures” (or changes of psycho-physical conditions, Produced As the “effects” of “causes” Exercised, Apart From The “Root”-Exercise Of The “Faith Presumption” In The Context Of Intrinsically ego-Transcending Devotional Resort To Me) Are Merely Superficial (or limited and ordinary), At Best Compassionately Intended, and Even Potentially Deluding. —Avatar Adi Da Samraj The Dawn Horse Testament
You could say that the “faith presumption” is the first healing “practice”—because (as an expression of devotional Communion with Avatar Adi Da) it undermines the otherwise automatic tendency to turn any healing practice into a form of seeking.
Searchless Right Life Supports Reality-Realization
To participate profoundly in the Yoga of devotion to Avatar Adi Da Samraj, the total body-mind-complex must be available.
Therefore, Avatar Adi Da gives His devotees practices that enable this purification and reorientation of the total psycho-physical being. These practices fall into two categories: “conductivity” practice (related to the energy dimensions of the being) and the “conscious process” (related to the awareness dimension of the being). The entire body-mind-“self” is engaged through these two forms, which reflect the principal Reality-characteristics of Consciousness and Energy.
“conductivity” demonstrates Avatar Adi Da’s Revelation that Consciousness and Energy are Indivisibly One.
One could say that, altogether, ego-transcending practice is basically “self”-purification. It is not the Divine that must be found. It is the things that you are deluding yourself with that must be released. The Divine Is the Very Context of existence. The “self”-contraction has taken on all kinds of forms, the summary of which is non-awareness of the Divine Self-Condition.
In and Of Themselves, All Manipulations and Exercises Of A psycho-physical Kind Are “cause-and-effect” Devices For Stimulating (or Otherwise Achieving) Some Kind Of conditional Result. However, The By-Me-Given Right-Life Disciplines Of The “Radical” Reality-Way Of The Heart Are Not, In Fundamental Principle, Search-Purposed (or Effort-Bound) To “cause” Any Result. Rather, The Right-Life Disciplines Of The “Radical” Reality-Way Of The Heart Are, Fundamentally, Simply The Intrinsically Searchless Right-Life Demonstration Of Always Prior (or Always Already Existing) Devotional Communion With Me and Always Prior (or Always Already Existing) “Conductivity”-Communion With Me, In Always Whole bodily (or Total psycho-physical) Devotional Recognition-Response To Me. —Avatar Adi Da Samraj The Dawn Horse Testament
All the right-life disciplines Avatar Adi Da gives are engaged in this “searchless” manner. He Reveals that Perfection is Always Already (or Priorly) the Case. And (therefore) the perfection of any condition—bodily or otherwise—is not only impossible but also unnecessary.
• On exhalation, release all hold on the energy of the breath, allowing it to radiate out from the vital center (and the whole body). Exhale fully, with deep feeling, allowing the energy to pervade the body and the universe, and releasing all conditions.
vital center / vital region / bodily “battery” These terms all refer to the region where “vital energy”—or the natural life-energy that pervades and animates the physical body—is centered. Also known as the “hara” in Japanese culture, Avatar Adi Da defines the vital region as extending from the diaphragm to the bodily base (or perineum), with its focal point, or “felt center”, being the crown of the lower abdomen (approximately 2 inches, or 3–4 finger breadths, below the umbilical scar).
You should be able to respond, with full attention, feeling, breath, and body, to the events of life, but always from a disposition of Prior Fullness that exceeds all the possibilities that would otherwise empty or suppress you.
One thing you should understand relative to breathing-“conductivity”: It is not really a matter of breathing Me in. It is a matter of breathing in Me. I am All-Pervading. Therefore, inside the body and outside the body, what you are doing with the breathing, founded in the heart-disposition, is allowing the body to move into a state of equanimity in Me. —Avatar Adi Da Samraj July 23, 1995
Initiate the Breath From the heart Breathe Via the nose, Characteristically with the mouth closed. Initiate the breath From the heart—The Conscious, Feeling, psychic Core Of the bodily being. That Is To Say, Initiate the breath With The Force Of Whole bodily Feeling—Through and With the throat, To the navel. Inhale With the Whole bodily being When inhaling, Draw In, Relax Into, and Conduct The Natural Life-Energy Of The Universe (and, As The Case May Be, My Avatarically Self-Transmitted Divine Transcendental Spiritual Energy), With the Whole
bodily being, Even Through the entire skin-surface of the physical body (head to toe). Thus, inhale Into the vital center, or The Great life-Region—the felt center Of Which Is “Rooted” In the lower abdomen, three to four finger-breadths below the umbilical scar and immediately under the skin. Inhale Fully, With Deep Feeling Of heart and body—Completely Filling the lungs With air and the entire body With Natural Life-Energy.
Exhale With Deep Feeling Of heart and body When exhaling, Do Not Discard The Energy Itself or Allow It To Dissipate, but Release and Relax All Hold On It, Allowing It To Radiate From the vital center (and the Whole body). Allow The Pleasurable Feeling Of the heart’s Circulation Of Energy Throughout the entire body (the limbs, the belly, the sex organs, the head, the teeth and hair and nails, and so forth) and Even (Tacitly) Throughout The Universe. Exhale Fully, and With Deep Feeling Of heart and body. Let The Energy Pervade the entire body and The Universe To Infinity, and Release (Via That Radiating and Expansive Energy) all Accumulated conditions, Whether Positive Or Negative—So That inhalation May Bring What Is New and (Thus) Become An Instrument Of Change and Refreshment.
Three-Part “Conductivity” 1. Radiation from the heart. Persistent whole bodily turning to Avatar Adi Da, demonstrated as whole-body feeling-radiation in all directions, generated from the heart. 2. Relaxation of the frontal line. Persistent relaxation of the frontal line of the body from the crown of the head to the bodily base (and even to the toes) for the sake of right natural polarization. 3. Lung-breathing “conductivity” • Inhalation-reception—down the frontal line to the bodily “battery” (just below and behind the umbilical scar). • Exhalation-release—radiated diffusely, in all directions, within the entire body (or radiated either upward in the spinal line or downward via the legs to the soles of the feet, but not beyond the soles of the feet).
By engaging the body-mind in this simple exercise under all circumstances, there is a sense of letting go of separation from others and things, and, instead, being part of a great unity. The same is true for the three-part “conductivity”, where, in Communion with Bhagavan Adi Da, the heart radiates to Infinity and the body is relaxed crown to toe, while the cyclic breathing process allows participation in the universal play of reception-release.
The bodily “Battery”, and Then Released Downward From The bodily “Battery”, and, Thus, Radiated, Via the legs, Into the soles of the feet—but, Always, or As A Consistent General Rule, Without Any Intentional Concentration Of attention In any part or Any Station In or Above the head.
Engage the prayer in the cycle of breathing-“conductivity”: ♦ Exhale-release identification with the negative conditions and release all doubt and concern. ♦ Inhale-receive the intended positive condition with heart-feeling, presuming and picturing the intended outcome, via mind and emotional disposition.
Remain sensitive to the sensations of energy. While feeling-breathing-massaging, notice the feelings and sensations of energy that arise—in your own body-mind, and in relation to the recipient’s body-mind. Such sensations might include heat/cold, flow/stagnation, attraction/repulsion, numbness/pain, or “bogginess”/pulsation.
Pranayama Pranayama literally means control, restraint, or regulation (yama) of life-energy (prana). It is an ancient practice of controlling the breath and, via the breath, the life-energy in the body-mind-complex. When practiced with great feeling and concentration, pranayama brings balance and energy to the entire body, including the nervous system and the Circle, thus supporting the yellow-red conjunction.
The right nostril is connected to the left side of the brain, which is associated with the conceptual/logical function • The left nostril is connected to the right side of the brain, which is associated with the perceptual/intuitive function In traditional forms of pranayama, inhalation and exhalation are controlled in precise ratios (such as 1:2), by counting the length of each phase.
In contrast, Avatar Adi Da’s recommendation to His devotees is “to breathe each phase of the cycle fully, equally, and with feeling”.
Furthermore, the practice of pranayama recommended by Avatar Adi Da is not intended to produce any particular experience of the body-mind-complex. Certainly there may be purifying effects in the body-mind-complex, and possibly blisses and elevated states may be experienced in some cases—but the practice of pranayama for His devotees is simply an expression of whole bodily participation in the universal field of natural life-energy and the Radiance of Avatar Adi Da’s Divine Reality-State.
The exercise itself is to be performed on the basis of a prior sense that life-energy is full, constant, and all-pervading, regardless of the present state of relative fullness or emptiness sensed “experientially” (and, secondarily, in the phasing of the breath). … Inhalation, in general, represents the tendency of contraction (or centering) because inhalation is a motion toward the body (or an in-filling). Exhalation, in general, represents the expansive, relational tendency. In the usual person—adapted (as people are) to “experience” itself, rather than to the Divine Condition and
When to Practice Pranayama Daily, as part of the formal disciplines given by Avatar Adi Da to His devotees. An optimal time to practice pranayama is in the late afternoon or early evening, after Hatha Yoga poses (after completing the dead pose, at the end of the Hatha Yoga series). Optimally, when the body is already relaxed and full of energy (although not limited to such times). The beneficial effects of pranayama are maximized when the breath cycle is at ease, and attention and energy are free to notice and participate fully in the flow of natural life-energy.
Practice pranayama on an empty stomach. Generally, you should not practice pranayama less than an hour after a meal (so that circulation is general to the body and not concentrated in digestion at the stomach). Use natural, non-synthetic materials for your cushion or chair, and for clothing. These are preferable because they best conduct the living energy that pervades the body, the environment, and the atmosphere.
Practicing Pranayama
Simple Form of Pranayama Repeat the breath-cycle described below in a single sitting of 10–15 minutes.
Inhale fully, with whole bodily feeling, consciously receiving life-energy. ♦ Feel that you are gazing into and resting in the field of all-pervading life-force, or natural life-energy. ♦ Initiate the breath, with feeling, from the heart—breathing via the nose, to the bodily battery. ♦ Slowly fill the lungs with air and the body with life-energy—as much as you comfortably can. Do not strain or force the breath beyond your capacity.
The chin should be slightly lowered, so that the windpipe is opened and the flow of air and life-force is directed against the back of the throat,…
The slow intake of breath should make a slight “rasping” sound against the back of the throat. This practice stimulates the chakra (or energy-plexus) at the throat. ♦ You should notice that, as the breath naturally moves downward to the vital center, it presses first upon the region of the solar plexus, then swells out the whole lower abdomen, and then fills the entire body, above and below, from the throat to the perineum, finally permeating even the head and legs and feet with vibrant force. ♦ Breathe from the heart to the vital center below, with full emotional and physical feeling of the whole body. ♦ Completely relax, opening the entire body to the intensity of unlimited energy. Do not be concerned about upward or downward energy currents in the body, but simply allow the faculties to…
Hold the inhalation for just a few seconds before you begin to exhale. ♦ Do not attempt to prolong this retention. Do not strain yourself in any way. You will simply find it natural and enjoyable to pause between the two phases of the cycle of breathing. • Exhale fully, consciously releasing all physical, emotional, and mental toxicity. ♦ As you start to exhale, open your eyes again. Continue to feel that you are gazing into and resting in the field of…
♦ Exhale for a period about as long as you inhaled, and exhale about as much breath content as you inhaled. ♦ Like the inhalation, the exhalation should be slow and deliberate—not ragged, nervous, or forced. (Exhaling too quickly may tend to throw off life-force, limiting the positive effects of the exercise.) ♦ Feel that you are eliminating not only biochemical waste (by physically emptying the lungs), but also psycho-physical waste: negative thoughts, unhappy emotions, bodily tension, and disease. ♦ As you are completing the exhalation, allow the stomach cavity to be drawn in and up slightly, to help expel all the air that you inhaled. • Pause for an instant before beginning the next cycle of the breath. • Relax and reintegrate. ♦…
3. Hamsadanda (or Short…
The hamsadanda,14 also called the “short crutch”, is a T-frame typically made of wood or some other natural, energy-conducting material. Used by Indian Yogis for thousands of years, the hamsadanda works directly with the nostrils and the breath to balance the…
Not only the pattern of breath, but the pattern of attention changes with that pattern of breath.
- Water Immersion Immersing oneself in water is an important energy-healing practice that Avatar Adi Da describes as essential to whole bodily well-being.
Immersion in water is an effective energy-balancing practice in part because of the energetic properties of water. Those who intensively study the qualities of water have discovered that water is a highly conductive and responsive medium.
When to Practice Tensing-and-Relaxing Daily. Several times a day, and at random, to serve and maintain full “conductivity”, and (thus) a state of overall bodily well-being and balance.
If you forget to do that, and merely become involved in the dynamics of “experiencing” itself, you become ultimately frustrated by changes, by one-sidedness. All one-sidedness is always threatened by its opposite. Everything passes. Everything changes in the “play of experience”.
Sources: The Basket of Tolerance and Eleutherios.
APPENDIX C The Three Phases of Healing Avatar Adi Da describes the practice of healing (and health maintenance) as unfolding in three phases: 1. Purification 2. Re-balancing 3. Regeneration
- The circulatory system principally serves the purification phase. 2. The nervous system principally serves the re-balancing phase. 3. The endocrine system principally serves the regeneration phase.
Abandoning contracted (or reactive) emotion, engaging free feeling-attention Note: This practice is directly related to the etheric body. Avatar Adi Da states in The Dawn Horse Testament. “The emotional condition of the body-mind-complex Directly Affects The Energy Of the etheric body, Including The Energy Of the bodily-Based being In General. … In its usual condition, the body-mind-complex Contracts emotionally—and The Resulting emotional Obstructions Have Their physical Counterparts In the organs of the body. The Processes Of Assimilation and Elimination Are Interrupted—and, Instead Of Simply Being Nourished Through The Process Of breathing and eating, the body Is Made toxic (Primarily, By the Obstructed emotional condition of the body-mind-complex).” Therefore, abandoning emotional reactivity is key to the purification phase of health and healing.
The formal exercise routines of “conscious exercise” are engaged in devotional response to Avatar Adi Da and include: Da Namaskar (a form of the traditional Surya Namaskar), Da Fours (a simple physical exercise created by Avatar Adi Da, with feet and hands placed on the ground), Da Chi Gong (a form of Chi Gong created by Avatar Adi Da), a recommended sequence of Hatha Yoga poses, and a recommended sequence of calisthenics.
The Solar Plexus or Abdominal Brain, by Theron Q. Dumont. Des Plaines, IA: Yoga Publication Society, 1974.
The Seven Day Mental Diet: How to Change Your Life in a Week, by Emmet Fox. Originally published New York: Harper and Brothers, 1935. Numerous editions of this brief pamphlet are available in a variety of formats.