SEVENTEEN COMPANIONS
The Esoteric Design of the Spiritual Process
Devotional Life from Childhood
Book Twelve:
What, Where, When, How, Why, and Who To Remember To Be Happy
A Simple Explanation Of The Divine Way Of Adidam (For Children, and Everyone Else)
This twelfth "Companion" is the first of a series of five books (ending with the sixteenth "Companion) in which the Divine Avatar presents five different comprehensive views of the practice of the Way of Adidam—each from a different perspective, and each including much detailed Instruction for practitioners of Adidam.
What, Where, When, How, Why, and Who To Remember To Be Happy contains Avatar Adi Da's Instruction in the fundamentals of Adidam which are to be practiced starting in childhood. As a Text about fundamentals, this book includes some of His core Communications about the fundamental practice of surrendering the faculties of the body-mind.
The central Text is delightfully written in the manner of a children's book, but is addressed to people of all ages. Here Avatar Adi Da introduces His Argument of Divine Ignorance—that we do not (and cannot) know what a single thing is, and (therefore) we necessarily exist "in the Mystery".
In this "Introduction to Happiness 101", the Divine World-Teacher, Adi Da Samraj, touches lightly on weighty issues of epistemology and psychology, mortality and fear, meditation and equanimity, Divine Ignorance and Witness-Consciousness. He immerses the reader in the magical Mystery of Being, and lets everyone in on the secret of how to be Happy—lifelong.
Rolf C. Carriere
UNICEF Representative
Read Excerpts:
Feel the Mystery
You Do Not Know What even a single thing Is
Positively Effective Prayer
Feel the Mystery
From "What, Where, When, How, Why, and Who To Remember To Be Happy"
Have you heard this is an apple?
Have you been told this is a tree?
Do you think this is the moon?
and this the sun?
Have you told someone this is a little girl?
and this is a little boy?
Well. But you and I can be very truthful to each other. And it seems to Me that, no matter what we name this or this or this or this or this or this, we still do not know what they Are. Truly, you and I don't know what even a single thing Is. Do you know what I Am? See? And I don't know what you Are, either. It is a Mystery. Doesn't it make you feel good to feel It?
Did you ever ask somebody where this or this or this came from, or how this or this or this came to be? Some say, "I don't know", and saying this makes them feel they are being very honest and truthful. Others say something such as "God made it", or "It comes from God". And such people are also being very honest and truthful when they say this.
How can they both be telling the truth? Well, because they are both telling you the same thing in different ways. You see, nobody—not Mom, or Dad, or Grandmother, or Grandfather, or big Sister, or big Brother, or teachers, or doctors, or soldiers, or athletes, or lawyers, or TV stars, or any people who are working, or any people who are playing, not even a President, not even a King or a Queen, not even people who love each other—nobody knows what even a single thing Is. It is a great and more-than-wonderful Mystery to everyone that anything is, or that we are. And whether somebody says "I don't know how anything came to be" or "God made everything", they are simply pointing to the feeling of the Mystery—of how everything is, but nobody knows what it really Is, or how it came to be.
As long as you go on feeling this Mystery, you feel free and full and happy—and you feel and act free and full and happy to others. This is the secret of being happy from the time you are small until the time you are old. . . .
I have always been remembering and feeling and breathing and loving and Being the Mystery. And I was born so that I could be everyone's Friend—by Showing them the Mystery, and Teaching them about the Mystery, and Helping them to remember and feel and breathe and love and Be the Mystery. . . .
Therefore, all My friends should constantly forget themselves, and forget their unhappiness, and forget even what they look like—and remember only Me.
Now, and forever hereafter, those who truly and completely remember only Me will find it easy to remember to Be the Mystery—because I Am the Mystery Itself.
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You Do Not Know
What even a single thing Is
(excerpt)
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: No matter what you may come to realize about anything through experience, you still do not know What it Is. All of you belong to this realm of ambiguity. None of you knows What any other human being Is. You just simply do not know It. In your practical involvement with one another, you know about one another—but you do not know What any other Is. Knowledge, in other words, does not penetrate to that degree. It never has.
This failure is not a reflection of the silliness or stupidity of ancient beings. It is a fundamental fact of your own existence—and also, therefore, of the existence of all other beings who have ever lived. The atoms that are in this ashtray have existed for perhaps fifteen billion years—far beyond the mere five billion of the Earth. Those atoms come out of the conditionally manifested cosmos—from the center of the explosion that supposedly manifested everything, by seeming to divide the Inherently Indivisible Light.
Human beings know very little about anything, ultimately. And human beings do not know What anything Is. Thus, your mind itself, your own apparently individual existence, is totally, unqualifiedly, inevitably, irrevocably, and irreducibly Ignorant! No one, regardless of his or her sophistication or experience, knows What even a single thing Is. Not What anything Is. You see? The presumption that it is possible to know What something Is could have been made at any time in the past, and it can be made at any time in the future. Nevertheless—no matter how much experience intervenes, no matter how sophisticated people become, no matter how much you may know about anything through experience—you still do not, and cannot, know What it Is. What it Is!
What Is a shape? What Is a place? Where Is it? You do not know That. That is not what you know. You presume knowledge. But, in fact—or, indeed, in Truth, or in Reality—you do not know. All that may be said about human understanding, human belief, human experience is this: Not now, not at any time in the past, in any civilization, even the most magnificent beyond belief, nor in the future on this Earth in any great moment, nor in any other occasion, on any planet, in any place, in all of the manifestation of existence, does any individual know What anything Is!
Divine Ignorance is the Foundation-Principle of all knowledge—and, indeed, of conditional existence itself. This is absolutely true. You do not know What anything Is. In Truth, you are totally mindless, and totally beyond consolation or fulfillment—because there is no way to know What anything Is. The only thing you can know about anything is still about it. But you do not know What it Is . . . Is . . . Is . . . or why it happens to be. You have not the slightest knowledge of What it Is. And no one has ever had such knowledge. Not anyone. Not Jesus, not Moses, not Mohammed, not Gautama, not Krishna, not Rama, not Ramakrishna, not Nityananda, not Ramana Maharshi—not even Me. No one has ever objectively known What a single thing Is. Not the most minute, ridiculous particle of anything. No one has ever known It, and no one ever will know It—because human beings are (inherently, and most basically) not-knowing.
You do not know What anything Is. You are always already not-knowing. The intrinsic Nature of your existence is Mystery—absolute, unqualified confrontation with What you cannot know. And, no matter how sophisticated you become by experience—This will always be true of you.
Therefore, This Wisdom-Teaching of Divine Ignorance, Which I Reveal and Give to you, will never be exceeded. Upon this absolute Truth you must build your life. This Truth is Summary, Unqualified, Indivisible, Irreducible, and Absolute. It can never be changed. No matter what sophisticated time may appear, no matter when (in the paradox of all the slices and planes of time, in any moment when beings may sit together as we do now), no matter what time may appear in which people "consider" the moment—no one will ever know What anything Is. That Is the Seat and Substance of the One Truth.
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Positively Effective Prayer
From "True Prayer" Versus False Prayer
For My Devotees, True and Positively Effective Prayer Is Not The Habit Of Pleading With The Divine (or, Really, Toward or At The Divine). For My Devotees, True and Positively Effective Prayer Is Not Based On The Un-Happy (or, In Any Manner, egoic) Sense Of Separation From The Divine. For My Devotees, True and Positively Effective Prayer Is ego-Transcending Love-Communion With My Avatarically Self-Revealed (and By-My-Avataric-Divine-Grace Heart-Evident, and Self-Evidently Divine) Person. And That True and Positively Effective Prayer Of My True Devotees Expresses (and Magnifies) Faithful (or Always-Already-Happy) Affirmation Of psycho-physical Intimacy (or Oneness) With The Inherent Love-Bliss Of My (Avatarically Self-Revealed, and Self-Evidently Divine) Person—and, Thus, With The Inherent Completeness, and Inherent Perfectness Of Self-Existing and Self-Radiant Being (Itself).
Un-Happy (or ego-Based) Prayer Is The Search and The Plea (Full Of Doubt) For Remedies (or For Consolation Of the conditional self). The True and Positively Effective Prayer Of My Devotees Is Also Generated In The Midst Of conditional Existence, but It Is A Process Of Devotional self-Surrender and Effective Opening Of the body-mind (From The Heart) To Commune Directly With My (Avatarically Self-Revealed, and Self-Evidently Divine) Person Of Love-Bliss-Happiness.
False Prayer Is an egoic (and Fundamentally Un-Happy) act (and Search), but The Secret Of True and Positively Effective Prayer Is That The Heart Itself Prays, and The Heart Itself Is The Prayer, and The Prayer Is Happiness Itself. . . .
Conventional Prayers Are Weak (or Negatively Effective) Counter-Proposals. They Only Wish That some particular Undesirable condition (Presently Under Address) Will Change. Therefore, In conventional Prayer (or egoic Wishing), the image Deep In the mind (or the condition that Is Most Deeply and Most Consistently emotionally Affirmed, and, Therefore, Most Effectively Re-Created or Continued) Is Not the one Desired, but it Is the one that one Desires To Be Changed, and (Thus) it Is the one that Is Least Desired (and Even Most Feared).
In conventional Prayer, the verbal mind Wishes For Positive Change, but The perceptual and Deep Levels Of mind Only Address, Fear, and Compulsively Affirm The Continuation Of The Negative.
Therefore, By Truly Practicing The Only-By-Me Revealed and Given Way Of The Heart, Observe and Transcend The Process Of Ineffective (or Negatively Effective) and egoic (or Separative) Prayer, and Awaken To The Process Of True, Positively Effective, and ego-Transcending (or Participatory) Prayer.
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