Insight Editions · No. 370
What Is the Conscious Process?
Conductivity, Satsang and the Realization of Turiya
Adi Da Samraj
A study edition of Adi Da's 1982 essay on the conscious process, with the compiler's outline of conductivity and supporting readings on breath, the frontal line and the Adept's Transmission.
A study guide to What Is the Conscious Process? by Adi Da Samraj. Shared free for personal reading; not for sale and not endorsed by the author or publishers. Please read and buy the original.
CORE CLAIM
The conscious process (prayer, enquiry, recognition and the Perfect Practice) is the epitome of Adi Da's Way, but it works only when conductivity has first freed energy and attention from the self-contraction, and only within Satsang with a living Adept.
SCOPE
The essay "What Is the Conscious Process?" (Da Free John, 28 October 1982), plus a compiler's study outline of its terms and ten supporting readings from The Liberator, The Dawn Horse Testament, The Aletheon, I Is the Body of Life and The Dreaded Gom-Boo. About 6,800 words of source.
KEY FIGURES
Adi Da Samraj (writing as Da Free John); the Adept Spiritual Master or Siddha as a role; Narcissus as his image of the ego; the "talking school" of non-practising non-dualists as his foil.
BEST FOR
Readers who know Adi Da's slogan "Be Conscious as the Feeling of Being" and want to see why he refused to treat it as a technique, and practitioners of any non-dual path who suspect that insight without bodily discipline goes nowhere.
The Book on One Page
This short text is an argument against a shortcut. Adi Da takes his own summary instruction, "Be Conscious as the Feeling of Being and Realize that It Is Radiant Happiness," and insists it cannot be fulfilled by the waking mind alone. Between the slogan and its fulfilment lie purification, equanimity and the Adept's Transmission.
The source is a compiled study page, not a bound book. It opens with the 1982 essay in full, then repeats it in outline form with a devotee's headings, numbered lists and commentary, and closes with passages from other Adi Da books on conductivity. This edition follows that order: the essay's argument first, the outline's models second, the supporting readings third.
- The aim. Realise the Transcendental Condition of Consciousness, which he equates with Turiya, the "fourth state" beyond waking, dreaming and sleeping.
- The obstacle. Attention is bound by the self-contraction, the ego-bond he calls Narcissus, and by karmic habit at every level of the body-mind.
- The preparation. A regime of secondary disciplines (health, diet, sexuality, intimate life, community, service), all grouped under conductivity, releases free energy and attention.
- The means. The conscious process proper: true prayer, enquiry, recognition, and the first two stages of the Perfect Practice.
- The ground. None of this fruits without Satsang, Communion with the Adept, whose Siddhi purifies and awakens devotees.
The conscious process is the epitome of the Way, but without conductivity it "remains nothing more than a minor psychological and verbal exercise of the waking mind."
| Part | Source pages | One-line payload |
|---|---|---|
| 1. The essay | 1 to 4 | Realisation is Turiya, not the waking mind; it needs preparation and the Adept |
| 2. The outline | 4 to 8 | Hearing, seeing, practice; the forms of the conscious process; the three parts and five secrets of conductivity |
| 3. Supporting readings | 8 to 13 | Breathing-conductivity, the solar-plexus knot, "a hard school", and the warning against "talking school" non-dualism |
The Essay: Not the Waking Mind
Adi Da opens with the admonition from The Liberator (Eleutherios) and immediately blocks the obvious reading. The practice is not "remaining fixed in the conscious or merely left-brained mind of the waking state." It is the realisation of Turiya, and that requires work on everything that binds attention.
The definition and its limit
The conscious process is the name he gives to the whole practice that "ultimately becomes awakening." He first lists its forms: true prayer, enquiry, recognition and the first two stages of the Perfect Practice. Then he adds the condition. Its "ultimate Realization" requires, "as a matter of real preparation," the liberation of attention from the self-contraction, and so from bondage to the three common states: waking, dreaming and sleeping.
That is why his Way has two layers. One is a sequence of preparatory phases of the conscious process itself. The other is a culture of secondary or supportive disciplines, "all of which may be regarded to be forms of the general practice I call conductivity."
- The conscious process. True prayer, enquiry, recognition, and the first two stages of the Perfect Practice. It works directly on attention and the feeling of separate self.
- Conductivity. Functional and relational disciplines: general health, diet, sexuality, intimate society, community, set inside devotion, study and right relationship to the Adept. It frees energy.
Why insight alone fails
The secondary disciplines are "a secondary but necessary supportive regime." Their job is to release energy and attention from the ego-bond "in every kind of functional and relational context." Without them, he says, the conscious process stays a "minor psychological and verbal exercise." Only to the degree that conductivity sets energy and attention free can the conscious process "enter profoundly into the Real Source of life and attention."
His target is what he calls the "talking school": people who read, write and lecture about the primacy of consciousness, "as if they could, merely by analyzing consciousness out from the mass of thinking, knowing, and experiencing, achieve" Jnana. He calls this "the mediocre chat of the waking mind." The remedy is total psycho-physical submission into the Life-Current.
| "Talking school" | Adi Da's Way | |
|---|---|---|
| Method | Identify with awareness now; analyse it out of thought | Purify attention first through conductivity and the conscious process |
| Body | Irrelevant | Must be surrendered into the Life-Current |
| Teacher | Unnecessary | The Adept is "the Primary Principle of the Way" |
| Result | A mental stance | Turiya, the "fourth state" |
The Adept as means, not ornament
The disciplines are "the responsibility of each individual devotee." But the Way is not "self-generating these disciplines." It is Satsang, "Transcendental Spiritual Communion with the Adept in God (or Reality)." The practices are only the means by which devotees enter that Communion moment to moment; the Adept provides the "Ultimate Means" that makes them fruitful.
He criticises two errors at once. The first is the "heady non-practitioners" who deny any need for a master. The second is "ego-based, childish, adolescent, merely cultic, and false" attachment to a master, which he says he criticises "more than any of those who merely damn" the relationship. The true Adept is a Siddha, "a Living Agent of Help and Awakening," present "to Transmit the Power of Awakening."
- Hearing. Beginners must first listen and "hear", that is, understand the Teaching. Their right relation to him is a formal relationship to the Teaching Source.
- Seeing. As practice matures, devotees "find" him, locating his Transmission in daily life; he then makes himself available "in various occasions or gatherings devoted to the Magnification of my Transmission."
- Testimony. He points to "countless remarkable and extraordinary stories" from mature devotees and "at least many hundreds of individuals thus far" as evidence.
How the purification works
When an Adept "Awakens into his Function for others," the Siddhi "achieves universal Agency." Contact through practice sets off "a Work that purifies, balances, and ultimately Awakens." Karmas, meaning self-based habits, act "at every level": physical, emotional, mental, waking, dreaming, sleeping, and beyond the individual to "others, objects, and environments."
This is the essay's sharpest doctrinal point. Because karma is that pervasive, "it is not at all possible merely to invert upon and identify with the self-essence (the atman)" and call that Enlightenment. The inner self is not identical to the Paramatman "unless it is Realized to be Such," just as nirvana and samsara are not identical until realised to be so.
Non-duality is a realisation, not a premise. Adi Da grants the Advaita equation of atman and Brahman, then denies anyone the right to assume it in advance. The bridge is purification of attention, which is why his "Way of the Heart" keeps disciplines that many neo-Advaita teachers drop.
The picture of completion
Each day, devotees' tendencies combine with real practice in his sphere of Communion, and "a purifying, harmonizing, liberating, and Awakening Force" works on them, so that "karmic accumulations ... are gradually lifted off and absorbed or eliminated by my Agency." He dates his acceptance of this function to the Event in the Vedanta Temple (his 1970 Realisation, told in The Knee of Listening).
The end state is concrete. All content of consciousness "will gradually rise up," be inspected and released; then "attention will stand bare," energies "collect in the locus of the right side of the heart," and consciousness identifies with what is "prior to the body-mind and all of Nature." Hence the closing warning: "do not think you can take Heaven by storm." The "I" is "Narcissus, more than a thought, but a profoundly complex pattern of destiny."
The essay's case for the master rests on testimony from his own devotees, which is not independent evidence. Adi Da's later community faced well-documented allegations of abuse and coercion in the 1980s, the very decade of this text. A reader can take the argument about disciplined attention seriously while treating the claim of a unique, universally effective Siddhi as a matter of faith, not demonstration.
The Outline: Terms and Models
The compiler restates the essay as a set of nested lists, adds headings, and pulls in short quotations. This is the most useful part for study, because it turns a dense paragraph style into explicit models.
What realisation requires
- Real preparation, the release of attention from the self-bond:
- Hearing = understanding.
- Seeing = conversion, emotional and spiritual response to the Adept.
- Practice = "the Artful Science of Equanimity": self-discipline, service, conductivity, real meditation.
- Liberation of attention from the three common states: waking, dreaming, sleeping.
Conductivity is defined as "the capacity of the body-mind to conduct, or be surrendered into, the All-Pervading Life-Current." It harmonises body and energy into balance or equanimity, "a necessary base for the conscious process." It "is not a fourth or a fifth stage practice," meaning it is not a Spirit-religion goal in itself.
The forms of the conscious process
- True prayer. "It may at first take the form of true prayer, but it must ultimately take the form of enquiry."
- Enquiry. "Real meditation"; the classic form in his early teaching is "Avoiding relationship?"
- Recognition. Seeing each arising state as a modification of Being.
- The Perfect Practice, whose three stages all occur "in the Domain of Consciousness":
- Be Consciousness.
- Contemplate Consciousness.
- Transcend everything in Consciousness, recognising all objects in and as God.
The essay assigns only the first two stages to the conscious process. The third is the seventh stage, which in his scheme is no longer a practice.
Conductivity in parts and secrets
- Feel-surrender into the all-pervading Life-Current "in all directions from the heart."
- Relax into the Life-Current bodily, base toward crown.
- Breathe the Life-Current to and from the vital centre.
- Treat the world and every condition as Energy.
- Keep the head cool and the vital warm.
- See all forms in the Transcendental Being.
- Use every circumstance as an incident of Transmission: open to it, circulate it, communicate it.
- Stay physically, emotionally and mentally relaxed and balanced.
The subtle error
As conductivity matures, extraordinary experiences arise. The trap is to "become enamored of them," so that "practice becomes meditative submission to the potentials of experience." Conductivity serves the conscious process; it does not replace it. Adi Da also warns against the reverse error: emphasis on understanding is no excuse for "contempt for the spontaneous and subtle events," or for thinking oneself "superior to the Siddhas."
Conscious exercise is not gym work
Quoting The Aletheon, the outline separates "conscious exercise" from ordinary fitness or yoga postures. The poses are "simply structurally correct models," and become conscious exercise only with "the simultaneous discipline of mind, emotion, and breath" in "ego-surrendering ... devotional Communion with Me."
| Conductivity | Conscious process | |
|---|---|---|
| Sees everything as | A form of the Radiance, Life-Current or Shakti of God | A contraction or modification of Being |
| Response | Relax and surrender the body-mind into the Love-Bliss | Recognise it, moment to moment, "and so be Free" |
| Faculty | Energy, body, breath | Attention, intelligence |
He says the two "coincide in every moment of true practice," and their simultaneity expresses the tacit realisation that every condition is "a transparent, nonbinding, temporary, and unnecessary modification" of Radiant Being.
Supporting Readings
The final third assembles passages from other books that make conductivity practical: a breath cycle, rules for the frontal line, a technique for the knot in the solar plexus, and a reminder that the Way is "a hard school."
Breath and the frontal line
From I Is the Body of Life: on inhalation, open the body-mind with the feeling heart and receive the descending Life; on exhalation, release the heart in "love-aspiration," channelling the rising current "to its highest place." Do this "breath after breath."
From The Dawn Horse Testament (chapter 20): breathing-conductivity is done through the nose, tongue lightly on the roof of the mouth, so the breath circuit stays closed. Occasionally press inhalation "fully to the abdomen, while pulling up internally at the bodily base," to open the chest, solar plexus and lower abdomen; let exhalation relax down the frontal line or up the spinal line.
The knot in the stomach
The longest reading, from a talk collected in Conscious Childrearing, gives a precise technique. The most common frontal contraction is "a cramp over the solar plexus," a reversal of the current "a little more than halfway down the frontal line," akin to nausea, weeping and anger.
- Don't fight it. Trying to relax the knot keeps attention there, and "attention gravitates toward the contracted states."
- Go lower. Place attention below the navel, in the vital or genital region, or at the perineum, "where there already is no contraction."
- Find the leak. Some current always passes the knot, so there is "a residual sense of pleasure" below it; rest attention in that.
- Resume. Return to the devotional disposition, breathing and relaxing. The knot "will tend to relax."
Responsibility and the hard school
Two short quotations frame the rest. From The Aletheon: "You must be responsible for yourself at the human level ... You yourself must be love under all ordinary, daily conditions ... nobody else can do it for you." That ordinary responsibility "simply prepares you" for the relationship to the Adept.
And from the outline's own close: "This Way is a hard school ... a life of Grace" that "requires great responsibility." Fulfilment of the admonition can, he grants, sometimes happen "instantly by anyone who hears it," and one can sympathise with it to the extent of one's self-understanding, "but you cannot fulfill it fully because the purification is not complete." The gentler counsel ends the readings: "Don't punish yourself with practice. Develop your understanding through study, and gradually and progressively adapt."
The compiler's outline adds its own polemic against present-day "non-dual" teachers who "presume Enlightenment." That reading fits the essay but goes further than it: Adi Da names no one here. The compiler's notes also mix his words with paraphrase and contain transcription errors; check quotations against the published essay before citing them.
Master Takeaways
What this short text settles about Adi Da's practice, and how it sits beside the non-dual traditions he drew on and argued with.
Takeaways
- The conscious process is the epitome of the Way, not the whole of it. Prayer, enquiry, recognition and the Perfect Practice need a body-based foundation.
- Conductivity frees energy; the conscious process frees attention. Both are required, and they "coincide in every moment of true practice."
- Turiya, not the waking mind, is the target. Holding a thought about consciousness is not realising it.
- Atman is not Brahman until realised to be so. Adi Da makes non-duality the end of practice, not its premise.
- The Adept is the "Ultimate Means." Disciplines are how devotees enter Communion; the Adept's Siddhi makes them fruitful.
- Both anti-guru and cultic attitudes are errors. He criticises the cultic one more harshly.
- Karma works at every level, including dreaming, sleep and environment, so purification must too.
- Extraordinary experiences are a trap if they become the object of meditation.
- Keep the head cool and the vital warm; treat every condition as Energy.
- Don't fight a contraction; place attention below it and let the current that leaks past relax it.
- Breathe through the nose, tongue on the palate, so the circuit of the breath stays closed.
- Conscious exercise is posture plus surrendered mind, emotion and breath, not fitness.
- Practice matures in stages: hearing (understanding), seeing (response to the Adept), then the Perfect Practice.
- Completion is concrete: attention stands bare and energies gather in the right side of the heart.
- Don't punish yourself with practice; adapt gradually from understanding.
Frameworks and mental models
| Name | What it says | Use it when |
|---|---|---|
| Two layers of practice | Conscious process plus conductivity | Diagnosing a practice that is all insight or all technique |
| Three parts of conductivity | Feel-surrender, relax base to crown, breathe to the vital centre | Setting up a breath-and-body session |
| Five bodily secrets | Energy, cool head and warm vital, forms in Being, use circumstance, balance | Daily conduct |
| Perfect Practice | Be, contemplate, transcend in Consciousness | Locating where the conscious process ends |
| Two coinciding attitudes | Everything is Radiance; everything is a modification of Being | Holding devotion and discrimination together |
| Below the knot | Shift attention beneath a contraction | Acute anxiety or abdominal tension |
The argument for disciplined attention is strong and matches long traditions in yoga and Buddhism that pair insight with ethical and bodily training. The weaker part is the exclusivity: the essay presents one living teacher's Transmission as the necessary means, supported only by devotees' reports. Readers outside Adidam can use the models of conductivity and attention without accepting that premise.