AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: The ancient legends of Krishna and his gopis are an allegory of Divine Distraction. As Krishna wandered about in the fields, the women who tended the cattle would see Him from day to day, and in spite of themselves they would wander away and leave their posts. They completely forgot about the cattle. They forgot to go home and cook for their husbands. They wandered about where they thought they might find Krishna, and when they found Him they gazed at Him as He sat in the distance somewhere. This legend is a play upon the romance between Krishna, or the Divine manifest in human form — the Spiritual Master in God — and these ordinary women, who became madly involved in an absolute attachment to Krishna, and who, as a result of this attachment, became more and more ecstatically absorbed in the God-State.

The foundation of the practice in My Company is exactly that attachment. If it does not develop relative to the Spiritual Master in God — not cultic attachment, but Divine attachment — if that attachment is not there that overwhelms the life completely, distracts you from the conventional destiny to which you are disposed through the medium of your desires, inclinations, and circumstances, then this practice of real or Spiritual life cannot exist.

The cattle that the women abandoned represent the force of the tendencies of life. The husbands they left are the fundamental attachment to separated existence, to existence in form, to bodily existence, individuated existence, egoic life on its own, motivated toward survival and distinct from the Divine in Consciousness. Thus, in the allegory of the relationship between Krishna and His gopis, we see a fundamental description of the principle of the sadhana [spiritual practice] of the Way of Adidam. Sadhana is not about bearing down and being motivated by problems in your life, by some sort of philosophical detachment or some inclination to have Yogic and mystical experiences. Nor is it about doing what you have to, in order to produce the changes that you desire. This sadhana is about distraction from the life of tendencies. It is a distraction from that life. It is not a motivated kind of detachment from your life of tendencies or an effort relative to them or the taking on of conditions to stop tendencies from arising or lifetimes from occurring. It is not a method of the ego. It is not characterized by any kind of effort relative to tendencies — for such a path is completely hopeless.

There are innumerable conventional paths that involve self-conscious efforts or hopes to produce changes, high and low. These efforts and hopes are themselves forms of tendency that may be realized and suffered in human and other terms. They are not Liberating in the fundamental sense. They are not God-Realizing. They are themselves expressions of the movement toward fulfillment. The Way of sadhana, the Way of Truth, is the Way of complete distraction from the tendencies that produced your birth and that now produce the drama of your existence from day to day. Only when there is complete distraction by the Guru, by the Divine, from the way of life that is producing your experiential destiny, do your tendencies become obsolete. They do not become obsolete when you direct effort against them. It is only when that distraction appears in the midst of the affair of your life that another principle, another process, is established.

The gopis simply left the cattle. They did not say, "I'm not going to tend cattle anymore! I'm not going to submit to my desires, my tendencies, my job!" They did not make any such decisions. They simply forgot about the cattle. They were so distracted, so in love with Krishna, so ecstatic, that they just forgot to go home. It never even occurred to them to go home. They never worried about "Should I go home or should I stay here? Should I watch the cattle or should I go look for Krishna? Should I discipline myself?" They did not create a problem out of their sadhana or out of their relationship to God.

Anybody who approaches Me is obliged to involve himself or herself in just this kind of ecstatic Spiritual relationship. When that devotional relationship to Me becomes the condition of your conscious existence, fully, through all of the conditions of life, then the force of limiting tendencies us weakened — not by doing anything to it, but by virtue of the fact that you are no longer even involved with it. If your relationship to Me is essentially ordinary, mechanical, mediocre, not Divine, not a form of Contemplation of Me, then you are not doing sadhana. You are intending to do some other kind of conventional sadhana perhaps, but you are not doing this sadhana. You are not involved in the sadhana of Truth, you are not involved in Divine sadhana, you are not involved in that opportunity that is made available in human time through the Function of the Guru.

The Guru is not simply present to rap out a philosophy or distribute techniques that you may apply depending on your intelligence. The Guru is present to enjoy a Divine relationship with all those willing to assume such a relationship, with all those who have the capability for distraction by the Guru in an absolute love-relationship that is more and more distracting. But if that distraction is not present, if that love-desire distraction is not present in an individual's life, then the form of this sadhana is not initiated. It cannot begin.

There is no point in even discussing the technical and abstract aspects of the development of this sadhana until the individual has begun to enjoy an ecstatic relationship with Me, a Spiritual relationship — not one that is in the air but one that includes the whole of life, that draws the emotion, that awakens the love, that awakens the heart. That distracting relationship that is the principle of this sadhana must be established. On its basis the individual may begin to assume life-conditions, turn them into service to Me, and realize that service in more personal and complex ways over time.

The foundation of this sadhana is the distraction that is described between Krishna and His gopis. You must flee to Me from all your life, from all your tendencies — not from your obligations, that is not what this allegory is all about — but from your tendencies, from the foundation of distraction by yourself, by your own thoughts, your own conditions, your own belongings, your own beliefs, your own reading, your own mystical intentions, your own philosophical presuppositions. You must flee to Me from all that. It must be completely uninteresting to you. It is certainly not interesting to Me!

You cannot argue a woman into loving you. And you cannot argue individuals into the Divine Satsang of distraction. Satsang can be offered and a circumstance provided in which people can approach and become sensitive to that communicated Presence, that Siddhi. But apart from making it available openly and providing a way of approach to Me, there is no argument whatsoever. I am completely without argument. There is nothing I can do to convince you of the Truth of this Way, nothing I could do outwardly or verbally that could in itself fundamentally convince you of the relationship you must enjoy with Me in order to fulfill this sadhana. It is like falling in love with someone, in conventional terms, in life. It is not something you argued yourself into doing. It was initially a form of distraction, of absorption, without any reasons, and, perhaps, if you examined it to find a reason for it, it would seem unreasonable to you, not justified. You know, your lover does not look the way you wanted him or her to look. And in many ways I do not look and act and talk like the conventional, cultic guru is supposed to!

Once there is that distraction, the theater of your evolution is in the hands of the Divine. The gopis did not have an elaborate life. They were distracted by Krishna. Krishna played all the games and created all the circumstances for their play with Him. They were only attached to Him. Their lives had all kinds of theater and drama after that, but Krishna created it all. They did not create anything. They did not think about anything. They did not create an elaborate system of philosophy and belief and self-meditation and self-manipulation. They did not care about making life work out right. They did not even know What He was!

They were just distracted. They were in love. And their love for Krishna became the principle of their lives. Krishna played upon their distraction and taught them. By Grace, they learned. But all they learned was to be more and more absorbed in God, totally beyond their attachment simply to the [human form] of Krishna. Their minds became overwhelmed by this distraction, and all their petty tendencies to return to their solid and secure positions, in life or in themselves, were always undermined. There is no insurance. There is no guarantee. There is nowhere to go. There is no end phenomenon in the love of God. That love is in itself the Truth.

The same approach is necessary for all, and it is represented in the allegory of Krishna and His gopis. Without that distraction by the Guru in God, there is no sadhana in any form in anybody's case. Once that distraction exists and the movement of the individual begins to become governed by the intuition of the Divine, the enjoyment of the Divine, then all the disciplines, the theater, the lessons, the responsibilities, the Teaching, and all the rest begin to appear, according to the individual's capability and state of existence.