One evening, Adi Da Samraj was seated in His house surrounded by a small group of devotees. He was humorously, compassionately, and lovingly engaging one devotee, Daniel Bouwmeester, in a dialogue — pressing Daniel to inspect the root of the conventional references "us" and "I".
DANIEL: A number of us had questions tonight.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: "A number of us" — just what do you mean by that, Daniel?
DANIEL: Individuals. Us.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: Are you talking about a real experience of yours — that you are one of something there can be a number of?
DANIEL: Oh, yes.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: What is that experience?
DANIEL: Well, it is a sense of there is me and then there are others.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: Nonsense! Yes, and what are "they"?
DANIEL: As You have said, there are presumed "others" who are similar to or even the same as myself.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: I mean, what is that? What are you referring to?
DANIEL: Generally, other bodies, other entities, but also individuals.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: Yes, but you declared yourself to be virtually identical to all these others.
DANIEL: Something similar. "Us" is just a language convention.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: So what exactly are you referring to? You cannot just refer to "they are all bodies" because you said you are one of those, and you do not refer to your own body from without. So when you say "I", you mean something different than they mean when they say "you".
DANIEL: Yes.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: Well, what is that? Is that what you were referring to when you said "us"? Were you really speaking about yourself, or just using language?
DANIEL: Using language was one part of it, but when You asked me who are the "us", there is just a presumption that there is another person, a physical body . . .
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: As a convention of speech, yes. But do you mean altogether what you are saying, or do you just use conventions? I mean, are you actually referring to a something when you say "I"?
DANIEL: No. When I refer to the "I", no.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: Well, what are you referring to when you say "I"?
DANIEL: The totality of my sense of myself, and also all my experiences as well . . .
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: But who is the "my", the "me" behind the "my"? Is there a someone other than all those experiences that are remembered?
DANIEL: Yes, yes. I guess it is a sense of essential self, myself. It even seems to be not really definable.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: Right now you are referring to it as an "it". But is there a someone other than all those thoughts and memories and such?
DANIEL: Yes.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: So what is that?
DANIEL: It is basically just a feeling, a thoughtless feeling.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: Yes, yes. You are a thoughtless feeling. It is so, isn't it?
DANIEL: Yes.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: But if you just attach yourself to the conventional mind, you think you are referring to what people can observe, or expressions on your face or something "other" — things that are objective to them.
But when you examine what you are really referring to as "I", it is a thoughtless feeling, as you say. It does not have any mind or body. All experiences of mind and body are objects to it.
The being is, as you say, experientially a thoughtless feeling. Therefore, if you simply feel yourself as such, as you are, what can you say about it? Is there anything else to be said about it, other than "it is a thoughtless feeling"?
DANIEL: It also feels radiant. There is a sense of radiance, but it is not limited by the body. It is not limited by thought or any of the other objects associated with the body.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: Do you feel that every being here represented by their bodies is a different thoughtless feeling than you are?
DANIEL: I do not know if I can answer.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: What do you feel about it? If you didn't just look at them and focus on them as individuals or think about them, but are just here among them — so-called "them" — do you feel yourself to be a separate thoughtless feeling? Or the same thoughtless feeling that all could refer to?
DANIEL: The same — because when I want to limit it, it seems to be greater than that.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: But as soon as you start using the faculties to perceive everyone, not only do you see lots of bodies and suggest separate persons but you begin to create a whole complex of associations and presumptions based on that.
In other words, you abandon the position of the thoughtless feeling, and your knowing is all about these perceptual and conceptual complexes, which are otherwise simply Witnessed by you.
If you are to maintain that thoughtless feeling-being, unagitated, how would you live differently — since presently all of your thoughts and feelings and actions and perceptions are a kind of invention that is dissociated from your actual being? You are talking all the time about something that is not Truth.
You would have to remain established in the Native State of Being and Radiate from That in the form of life, to be true.
DANIEL: This is What we have all been drawn to in You, Beloved Master. It is a fundamental reason why we all came here.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: Tcha. You must become relaxed from your agitated, contracted identification with the body-mind and its play, and become capable of simply Standing in the Native Position.
Then all that Radiates from that Position informs the body-mind, informs the life, and you do not lose Reality in order to be alive.
So " thoughtless feeling" is a simple way of describing what is Realized — Self-Existing, Self-Radiant, Non-conditional. Everything is Divinely Self-Recognizable in Reality — no longer the lie, the invented life made by dissociation from the Native State, but everything seen in Truth in and As the Divine Self-Condition, unobstructed Light, unobstructed Consciousness, One with all Transcending all, in a flash of no time whatsoever.
To recover What Is, forgetting the separate "I", even for a moment, is more than a matter of following the thread of meaning in this dialogue.
When one is Graced to sit at the Feet of a Master, one is stepped out of the world and entered into the sphere of the Master's Radiance, the "field" of his or her innate Transmission of the state of Realization.
The Words of Adi Da Samraj, as all His devotees can confess, carry a potency that is vastly beyond the verbal meaning, a force that activates fundamental transformations in the being.
This potency is not restricted to hearing Him speak. He invests Himself Spiritually in all of His Writing, also, and that Transmission of His Person can be received through reading this book.
The Great Reality-Teaching 