On June 22, 1972, Adi Da gave one of his earliest and most useful metaphors for the process of Divine Enlightenment in His talk, "The Gorilla Sermon", as a process of Waking Up:

The reason the talk is called "The Gorilla Sermon" is because, if you are being chased in a dream by a gorilla, and you are experiencing great fear, all that vanishes the moment you wake up from the dream:

So the process of God-Realization is one in which one awakens to one's true identity as the One Being in Whose Consciousness this entire universe is being "dreamed". In the "dream", we feel ourselves to be a mortal, limited being that can suffer and die. In contrast, when we Awaken from the dream and Realize the Divine, we exist in a state of Infinite Happiness and Perfect Freedom, untouched by whatever is going on in the dream.

To call the universe a "dream" is a metaphor. But it also is more than that. Let's explore a little more deeply the degree to which the universe is in fact a dream.

The usual dreams we have at night are personal and private — there may be other characters in them, and sometimes those characters are actual people we know. But generally, if we go to someone the next morning and say, did you have a dream last night where I was with you, and where X, Y, and Z occurred, they will say "no", because (most of the time) they didn't share your dream.[2] The dream that is the universe is a little different. It is a shared, "consensual" reality, and if we have experiences with others, they will generally be able to remember them the next day, and confirm the shared experience. So the universe is not a private dream, but a shared dream.

And that is a clue to where the universe is coming from. God is the Consciousness in whom the universe is arising. So God is the substrate of the universe: everything is made of that Divine Consciousness. But "God" is not an entity creating and running the universe. Rather, together, all the beings in the universe, in the dream, are co-creating the dream universe together. This notion of co-creation is an increasingly common idea in "New Age" spirituality. However, it tends to be misinterpreted: since you're co-creating it, then you can change it however you like, goes the common misinterpetation! But of course, a little thinking shows the flaw in that viewpoint. You are co-creating it. But you are only co-creating it. You therefore have some power over the universe, but so do all the co-creators. And some of them have immensely more power than you or I. (Some even have godlike power at the level of being able to create worlds.)

Any of us can Awaken from the dream. When we dream at night, and awaken, the dream disappears. But because the universe is a shared dream, co-created by all the beings in the universe, the dreamed universe doesn't disappear when a single person Wakes Up from it. It persists because of all the other co-creators, who are as yet un-enlightened and have not yet Awakened themselves.

Because the universe continues to exist, it is not unusual for a person who Awakens from the dream to still be associated with the dream and their "dream character" (their body-mind), after awakening. But they are now Awake, and are like lucid dreamers. They know this is a dream. They directly recognize everything as a modification of their Own Consciousness. And so they are not bound by the dream and its implications of suffering, mortality, etc. Their body-mind can die and it doesn't matter. They are aware of their Real State — the Waking State of Unconditional Reality — and so are directly aware of the non-necessity of the entire universe. Their Own Existence in no way depends on anything in the dream, and does not require the dream to continue for a second longer.

But the dream universe does persist, until the Divine Emerges sufficiently in the dream (through the Awakening of a great many beings) to dissolve the dream, and Translate the entire universe into the Divine.

The Divine incarnates in the dream with the purpose of Awakening everyone from the dream. Adi Da's body serves as a "portal" — a doorway to the Waking State, to the "Sunlight". In a sense the practice is very simple: turn to the Sunlight in every moment, and allow yourself to be awakened by It over time. The problem is that we have been asleep for a very long time — a very large number of lifetimes. We have developed habits and lifestyles that serve our surviving and succeeding in the dream. Even if we have a moment of recognition of Adi Da as the Divine, and feel His Divine State — in other words, we glimpse the Sunlight, the Waking State — our tendency, shaped by lifetimes of habit, is to treat it as an experience — even a unique experience without precedent — and then turn over and go back to sleep.

The practices of Adidam counter those "back to sleep" tendencies. The core is Adi Da Himself, Who serves not only as the Sunlight of the Waking State, but as something like an Alarm Clock ringing in the Awakened State. What do people do when the alarm clock goes off and they don't feel like waking up yet? They stuff pillows in their ears! They press the "Snooze" button on the alarm clock! And if they are too deeply asleep to do these things — and that is our situation — they instead just focus on what's going on in the dream itself rather than on the Sunlight, the Alarm Clock, and the Waking State. If we're listening to loud music in the dream, we can't even hear the alarm clock. If we're partying in a basement night club in the dream, we can't even see the sunlight.

The ego always want to turn back to itself: to its life, to its world, to its enjoyments and concerns. Narcissus is always turning back to the pond, the world of dreams and illusions, and putting off looking up from the pond, putting off Waking Up.

So the practice of Adidam is all about countering those egoic tendencies, serving the Waking Up process, and getting the "self" that wants to go back to sleep out of the way:

• Radical Devotion: Recognition/Turning. Instead of turning back to the dream, we turn to the Sunlight in every moment, by turning to Him and recognizing Adi Da as the Waking State, and then being absorbed in His State of Divine Happiness in Divine Communion.
  
  
• Disciplines. The disciplines we engage in the Way of Adidam help diminish the dream's power to delude:

  Live this Satsang, learn the real conditions of spiritual life, observe your resistance to it, be purified of your seeking, understand and surrender this search. Lead an ordinary, pleasurable life. Remove exaggerated, self-toxifying practices in life, all the absurdities, the forms of self-indulgence. Become more sophisticated with your desire.

  Avatar Adi Da Samraj

  Because of the dream's power to delude, Adi Da characterizes His Own Function is "Breaking Through the force of dreaming":

  I am like the sunlight in the morning. I intensify the light of morning until you Awaken. Until then, you continue to dream, try to survive within the dream, pursue all kinds of goals, searches, none of which Awakens you. I, Myself, the One Who would Awaken you, am not an individual within the dream. I Am the Conscious Light, the True Divine Heart — Breaking Through the force of dreaming. I Am your own Most Prior Self-Nature Appearing within the dream in order to Awaken you.

  Avatar Adi Da Samraj
  "The Gorilla Sermon" in The Ancient Walk-About Way

  The disciplines help turn down the noise in the dream so we can hear the Alarm Clock better, and see the Sunlight better. All the disciplines in the Way of Adidam have this form. For example, our diet is a "minimum optimum" one, for these reasons. The point is not to eat less in the dream. The point is to Wake Up from the dream! But if we are recognizing Adi Da and turning to Him, eating less means that the body is less disturbed by one's diet, and that allows us to put more attention and feeling on Adi Da and the Waking State (instead of on the body that's not feeling great and is therefore distracting and binding one's attention and energy). And eating less means we are not indulging our tendency to use food as a means of satisfaction altogether — which is why Adi Da refers to the dietary discipline as the "searchless diet": we are not trying to become happy through food.

  You will perhaps be bored with this vegetarian diet, which, when compared to the great cuisines of the Chinese and the French, is extremely boring. But after a while you also begin to realize that there is nothing written that food must be interesting. . . Even a fine meal with fine wine and traditional accessories is not God-Realization. How good does it feel? It feels good for only a few minutes. The hours and days that follow are filled with physical discomfort and aberrated energy and inclinations.

  Avatar Adi Da Samraj
  "The Fire Must Have Its Way", July 17, 1978

The disciplines are not "ascetic". One doesn't eat less to the point of discomfort, or to where you begin to feel hungry — which would defeat the purpose of freeing up your attention for Waking Up, since your attention would now start fixating on the sensation of hunger instead. That is why Adi Da refers to the disciplines as "minimum optimum" — they strike a balance that best serves Waking Up. In the case of diet, this is done by focusing on what the body actually needs and what best serves its health (as opposed to what maximizes pleasure for our tastebuds). And if you persist in such a diet, you reach a point of rejuvenation, where the diet feels good — because you've weaned yourself off of your addictive taste preferences and have adapted to what your body actually needs, which now "feels good".

But as you persist in the discipline, eventually the natural pleasurableness of the diet appears, and the desires that previously motivated you in your eating and drinking weaken. The chemistry of the body changes, the blood chemistry changes, the cellular life is transformed, and the purifying phase begins to come to an end. Then you begin to observe the regenerative power of this way of diet, and you start to feel good. Thus, it no longer matters whether the diet is interesting or not. It is the same with this practice altogether. There is simply a right way to live.

Avatar Adi Da Samraj
"The Fire Must Have Its Way", July 17, 1978

As seekers, we are always combining all our functioning — eating, resting, etc. — with also trying to stimulate and pleasurize ourselves at same time. So we don't just eat the ordinary food needed to fulfill the body's requirements. We eat junk food, food that "tastes great!", etc. to feel good as well. In the Way of Adidam, these two things are separated out: we get our Happiness from the Divine.Therefore, we don't complicate or burden all our functioning with requiring it to pleasurize us as well. Our diet becomes "ordinary" rather than "stimulating". It is no longer a seeker's diet but a "searchless diet", aimed simply at what serves the body and the practice of Adidam best. Hence Adi Da's Admonition to "Be Ordinary":

You Must Never Fail To act. Every moment of Your life Requires Your particular Right action. Indeed, the living body-mind is (itself) action. Therefore, Be Ordinary, By Always Allowing the body-mind its Necessity Of Right action (and Inevitable Change).

Avatar Adi Da Samraj

It is important to note that the disciplines by themselves won't serve the "Waking Up" process. They only serve the "Waking Up" process if they are coinciding with recognizing Adi Da and turning to Him:

So the disciplines don't cause us to wake up. Nothing in the dream causes us to wake up. But simplifying the circumstances of the dream allows us to put more attention on that which does awaken us: the Sunlight of the Waking State. So disciplines aimed at such simplification of our dream life are necessary to get "self" — its patterns, its distractions, and the binding consequences of identification with the body-mind — out of the way so that the Waking Up process can occur and make progress. Because they are all about getting "self" out of the way, Adi Da also refers to them as "counter-egoic" practice.

Another way Adi Da expresses this point is to remind us that we don't do the disciplines in order to "become happy", as though disciplines were capable of making us happy, or causing happiness. The Happiness we feel in our practice comes from recognizing and turning to Adi Da — it is the Happiness of the Waking State. So "radical devotion" — that moment-to-moment turning to the Sunlight — is the primary process Waking us up; the disciplines are secondary and supportive practices. They are expressions of that Happiness, rather than causes of it. We do the disciplines when we are already Happy — when, independent of what's currently happening in the dream, we know how to directly locate Happiness in any moment by turning to Adi Da and the Waking State. The disciplines simply help us remove the things that distract us from that turning and that Happiness.

The Waking Up process is not caused by anything happening in the dream; but it can be mightily held back by things happening in the dream, which distract us from the Waking Up process. One of the most interesting observations Adi Da had upon Re-Awakening on September 10, 1970, was that, before His Re-Awakening, what He did in conditional existence (i.e., in the dream) still had an impact (positive or negative) on the Awakening Process. But once He had completely Re-Awakened, nothing He did "in the dream" had an effect on His Realization. The Realization was permanent. He was completely Awake, and so completely free of the logic and implications of the dream. But as for the rest of us, until we are God-Realized, the disciplines matter a lot.

Now let's look at the Waking Up process from the Divine Perspective, the viewpoint of the Waking State or Unconditional Reality or Consciousness Itself.

The conditional universe is arising in the Unconditional Reality, which is Consciousness Itself. The conditional universe only apparently exists, in much the same way as a dream in our consciousness at night only apparently exists. The conditional universe could disappear completely — just as a dream disappears completely when we wake up — and nothing would change in Reality Itself.

There is only one Being: Consciousness Itself. All the beings in the conditional universe only apparently exist, and only apparently suffer their limitations. All the while, there is just the One eternally Love-Blissful Divine Being.

The Waking Up process is "acausal" in the sense that it is occuring in Consciousness Itself, and nothing actually is "happening" in Consciousness Itself during the entire Waking Up process. All apparent happenings are occurring in the dream world — the "cause and effect" realm of conditional existence. All that really "happens" in the Waking Up process is that Consciousness Itself, in the apparent form of one of us, stops believing it is a limited form, and Realizes that it is and always has been the Infinite Consciousness, and it never suffered. Nothing causes that Realization. It is simply acausally Revealed to be always already true. We simply Wake Up.

Nothing done by the one who wants to awaken can cause Awakening. On the other hand, the Waking Up process does depend on the person being awakened to be aware of and cooperate with the Waking Up process. The Divine Consciousness is the primary Agent of Awakening:

Adi Da uses the metaphor of "grabbing the tail of the Horse" to describe the devotee's part in the division of labor in the Waking Up process.

Part IV-A, Chapter 2

FOOTNOTES

Part IV-A, Chapter 2