The Cosmic Mandala, continued 2
QUESTION: Beloved Adi Da, you have mentioned that there are worlds for each color in the rainbow. People have said, for instance, that they have gone to green worlds.
ADI DA SAMRAJ: Yes, every kind of possibility exists. Everything that mind can be can also be objectified as a world. And in each realm, each stage in the Cosmic Mandala, all the colors are potential.
When you enter into the subtler energies or mechanics of the visual system of the brain, you may visualize this Mandala. That visualization is not the same as the viewing of the Cosmic Mandala Itself. Under certain conditions of relaxation and dissociation of attention from the body, it is possible to see this Mandala by pressing the eyeballs and concentrating toward the Center of the brain. What you see then is the Cosmic Mandala, but it is the Cosmic Mandala represented at the level of the structure of light associated with the brain and the nervous system. It is a kind of personal version of it, therefore. Because the Cosmic Mandala is duplicated in every fraction of all appearances, it can be visualized in the structures of your own brain. But after you pass through that limiting structure, you see the same representation of light beyond the brain, through other media of phenomenal appearance.
People who are near death and people who are having a low-grade mystical experience will see the Cosmic Mandala in, and limited by, the plane of the brain. The vision of the Mandala would not appear if the brain were not still active, or if the conscious being were not still attached to the body. But if, when you see that representation (as you may in certain mystical states and in the transition to death), you concentrate upon it and hold to the Center, then you will also pass beyond the brain into the cosmic dimension of light outside the brain. By concentrating on this representation of the Cosmic Mandala in the brain, you can move beyond the brain, even while alive, to see structures beyond the brain, in the realm of mind, or psyche, that is cosmic in scope.
If you do not hold to the Center as you concentrate on this Mandala, you will not see the complete Mandala. At first you may not see it at all. You may just see a dark field, with flashes of light, or lightning, or geometries. Then you begin to see the Cosmic Mandala appear by degrees. You may at first see a golden, sunlike light, or you may see a silvery-bluish, moonlike light. Or you may see a reddish light, or lights of any color. They may appear as a relatively diffuse or generalized field, rather than a spot at the center. The degree of concentration and freedom of attention from the body and the diffusing mechanisms of its brain determines the degree to which you will clearly see the Cosmic Mandala in total. Whether the entire Cosmic Mandala or only a portion or a representation of it appears, if you do not continue to hold to the Center, you will not see the rest of it, or you will not see it clearly, or you will stay in the periphery and not go to the Center. To the degree you do not hold to the Center, and to the degree you do not visualize the Cosmic Mandala completely, you will tend to gravitate as attention, or as mind, into representations that develop in the different fields of the Mandala.
Thus, if attention is held in the golden-yellow field, visions will begin to appear in a golden-yellow field. Or you may pass through the tunnel of the indigo into the blue field. But then the blue field itself, instead of appearing with the White Light at the Center, will appear to be a room or a place at the end of the tunnel. Originally what is seen in the blue field, apart from the White Light that appears in the midst of it, is a place of churning forms, a kind of bluish plastic. But other, very strong, clearly defined, primary colors and shapes also appear in it. It almost seems like a clearly defined room when you first see it, but then, when you clearly visualize it, you will see that this blue field contains something like distinct forms, but that they are not really separate from one another, and they are moving around. As soon as you dwell upon the blue field, the mind will cause it to turn into particularized forms. Attention will move via mind, in that particular plane of the Cosmic Mandala, into places, visions, and environments. Environments may thus be entered into in the blue, or the golden-yellow, or any range or representation of this Mandala.
This is why I have recommended to My devotees that the best discipline at the point of death, or in the midst of the death process, no matter what they have done all their lives, is to relax and to release all hold on the body and the mind and states of attention through feeling-Contemplation of Me. Transcend fear through such surrender, and ultimately a visual representation of the Cosmic Mandala may appear. If it does, keep your attention to the Center of it. Do not be satisfied with lesser representations of the Cosmic Mandala, such as a golden light, or a bluish light, or any other light. Keep holding to the Center until the entire Cosmic Mandala appears, and keep holding to the Center until you move into the White Field. Even though this exercise will not be sufficient for moving permanently into the White Field, it will be a purifying gesture that generally will serve your transition and that is, therefore, positive.
In any case, attention will tend to gravitate from the White Field back into lesser planes and visions. You will see other individuals. Helpful people will appear, and you will move into another condition quite naturally and easily. It happens in every case.
These transitions after death are not all pleasurable, however. All kinds of uncomfortable apparitions and apparently hellish circumstances may appear. Circumstances may arise that apparently will justify fear and sorrow and anger and desires of all kinds, and you will tend to locate there for a time. The secret is to keep surrendering these reactive emotions and their desires and keep holding to the Center, not fixing on these visions but understanding them as mind, as possibilities determined by your own habit of attention. Relax that habit of attention. The more you do this, the more you will release the quality that is tending to arise, and you will minimize the stresses that may be associated with the transition.
In any case, sooner or later a relatively fixed condition will arise based on the limits of your ability to release and transcend the mechanism of attention. In that condition, whatever you may or may not remember about your practice of surrender, or self-transcendence, you will be embodied, fixed, related. That is precisely what has happened to you here.
If you can achieve a state of Spiritual maturity and responsibility in life, then you will not experience the utter lapse from responsibility and general intuition of the Awakened Condition at death and after death. You will possess the arms to transcend attention in whatever condition arises after death. Likewise, you will have those arms during this lifetime if you will "consider" the Way of Adidam and take up its practice. Your experience will more and more authenticate, verify, and justify the Way of Adidam.
However, the experiences associated with Spiritual practice are not significant in and of themselves. They are, in general, just objectified states of attention, or mind-forms, states of energy. You must understand them, release them, and move beyond them.
Until attention is Free in its Source, it cannot remain in the Divine Self-Condition. You are brought into that Condition at death, but you do not and cannot remain There, in spite of your belief in It and your desire to stay There, unless you have done the sadhana, or real Spiritual practice, whereby you become responsible for the habit-energy of attention and Realize its Source-Condition. That Realization requires profound clarity, devotion, commitment, and practice.
Thus, it is very unusual for any living being to pass from this world, or any other world, into the Divine Self-Domain and to remain in that Source-Condition. People can have temporary experiences of It, however. For example, in near death and death, experiences of this Mandala of Origination can be generated, or a temporary perception of this Origin may be experienced. It is always there to be glimpsed.
At death there is a movement into the Clear Light, and there may be temporary experiences of the Clear Light while you are alive as well. But you will not have the ability to remain in that Condition, or even to Realize What that Condition Is, except to perceive a Clear Brilliance and feel a sense of temporary freedom, unless you are responsible for the movement of attention. In spite of any secondary desires to remain there, you will automatically drop back from the position of the Clear White Light into the planes of existence, through the blue and the yellow into the gross condition again. This is absolutely inevitable. There are no two ways about it.
No vicarious means exist for escaping that inevitability. No mere belief in Jesus, or God, or any superior power is sufficient to move you into the Divine Self-Condition. No amount of knowing about the mechanisms of that transition, no amount of knowing about the mechanisms of the arising of experience, is sufficient to enable you to move beyond these limitations into the Divine Self-Condition. Only the actual practice of the transcendence of attention, wherein its limiting tendencies are overcome and it achieves the freedom to "Locate" itself in the Divine Self-Domain, is sufficient. There is absolutely no other way to be Liberated from the binding conditions of the cosmos.
To casually presume you will begin with a little improvement of life and a positive aspiration and belief and hopefully awaken to the capability for Liberation is a weak proposition. It is an excuse not to practice. If you truly understand the process, you will realize that you have no option but to deal directly with the mechanism of attention. The Way of Adidam is not the piecemeal path of the progressive stages of life. It is not the path of the devotion of attention to phenomena, high or low in the scale of conditional Nature. As soon as attention is devoted to objective manifestation, either in the form of this apparent gross realm or in the form of any subtle apparition, it is subject to the binding power of the objectified force. The objectified force of conditional Nature, even the objective White Light, has the effect of binding you until you are free of the egoic significance of attention.
Therefore, the Way of Adidam is most direct. It is not the path of the stages, fulfilled by moving attention into subtler and subtler dimensions of objective existence. It is the direct Way of returning attention to its Source. If the Way of Adidam is taken up, then the path of the stages is bypassed. In order to take up the Way of Adidam, however, it is necessary to be prepared for such direct practice. You do not become prepared for it by taking up the practice of the stages of life. You prepare yourself by restoring equanimity to the body-mind and freeing attention from the binding concerns of the body-mind, through self-surrendering, self-forgetting, and self-transcending feeling-Contemplation of Me.
This is a much simpler proposition, and it forms the basis of the culture of practice in the Way of Adidam. This culture of practice is a culture of preparation relative to the first five stages of life, wherein the body-mind is restored to equanimity, and attention is freed of its binding association with the body-mind. Then, when the body-mind is thus balanced and attention is thus freed, you can actually take up the practice of the direct submission of attention to its Source.
