The Broken Yogi Samyama

Patience

2011-04-05T13:32:00.000-07:00

Just a quick note to say that I'm sorry if I haven't been able to follow up on the last series of posts, or on the new politics forum. I've been very busy moving, and will be mostly out of commission for another week or so. By the end of the month things should be settled down and I ought to be able to do more posting as intended, and to announce some new writing plans I have in mind for the future, using these blogs as ground zero for feedback. Thanks to those who check in every now and then to see if I'm active here, and to those who just seem to drop in out of nowhere. Ho'oponopono to you all.

New Blog

2011-03-28T19:09:00.000-07:00

For no particular reason other than sheer silliness, I've created a new blog, Broken Yogi Politics, to post the kinds of thoughts and ideas I often have that don't have much place here, but which I end up thinking about anyway, and waste time posting about on other sites. Here at least I can keep my thoughts on these matters more contained and slightly disciplined, and waste my time more effectively. There will be some spiritual slant to the new blog, sometimes a little, sometimes a lot. I may post there more than I do here, which isn't saying much of course. Feel welcome to join in and comment colorfully, or as you wish.

Notes From Underwater

2011-03-27T18:43:00.000-07:00

That was fun, wasn't it?

I gather some questions remain. Did I just channel Da? Do I believe I just spoke to Da? Who is Da? And who is "Diane Jackson", and why does her voice change so dramatically in the course of a dialog?

I hope this last series of posts helps to demonstrate the impossibility of finding out who the "real Da" was, is, and will be. Likewise, the impossibility of knowing who our "real ego" is, or anyone else's for that matter, including Da's. Or even if there is such a thing, or if Da was such a thing, or any of us for that matter.

So, to answer the obvious, maybe, maybe not. What is the imagination but a way of constructing personhood and world-in-which-the-person-arises from the raw material of mind and life? Imagination is a powerful, powerful force in this world - perhaps the very force that creates this world. And from what? A snake created from a rope lying in the dark? Imagination works in the dark to create what wasn't there from not only our fears, but our hopes, our aspirations, our desires, and our aversions. We create the very thing we are most averse to, and then avoid it. Avoiding relationship?

Where would we be without our imaginations? Alone, perhaps? How unbearably miserable. Thanks God we can create Da and self from that dry wood, ignite a little fire, and have someone to talk to. It is said by some that God created the world and all the beings in it so as not to be lonely. Probably some ego said it, though. Others say we created God so as to have someone to listen to us. Just as likely.

I'm not really sure what we can say about Da from all this. I can give testimony to my version of Da, and Elias his, and each member of Adidam can speak to their own special Da, and the books have theirs - each quote creates its own Da, and each lila another Da, and soon the world is overrun with Da's of all kinds, each complementing or opposing one another, and soon there is a minor play in the Tabernacle vying for the respect of the congregation. Each congregant has his own play, his own story of Da to play out, and that's just among the tiny fraction of humanity that cares about Da. In other congregations they have their multitude of Jesus', and Buddhas, and Krishnas, and it never really ends. Each one is both affirming and doubting the stories they have constructed, and the person who is the hero of that story. But the hero always dies. And we follow him anyway, because we must. We don't know any other way.

It's so easy to construct a person from almost nothing. A few lines and we have a stick figure, and the mind fills in the rest. A person is born. Jesus is born of the same process, and so is Da. We seldom attribute this process to our own imaginations, because that might make it all seem suspect. So we tell ourselves we had nothing to do with it. It was all a grace, and we are so humbly honored to have been given this relationship, wrapped in swaddling clothes and scriptural blankets, that redeems the heart from its lonely predicament. But there's a little tag on the toe of each born savior, reminding us that it was made in our own mind's imagination by little elves working feverishly through the night so that Santa could leave us a Divine Present under the tree each morning. The world wakes up like a present unwrapped, and like lying parents we feign surprise at the wonder of it all. We don't want to tell ourselves that we made it and put it there. The children so love the ritual of it, even they don't want to know.

So who is Da? Who cares? He's whoever we want him to be now. He had his say for a while, and now we can define him however we wish. Sinner or saint, or bit of both, like a chocolate carmel with nuts inside. How harmless it all seems now that it's mere memory. Each present moment seems so real to us we forget it was just like this each time we took a little bite out of him. And he in turn took his little bites of us too. Should we send the meal back to the kitchen for a do-over? It didn't seem quite done, to tell the truth. Only our imaginations know for sure. They can conjure new life from dusty old memories, as they are doing right now before us. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespassings, just as we forgive those who trespass upon us.

Da changed every day of his life, and so did we, but we somehow imagined there was some kind of permanent truth to it all, some revelation being given, something that meant something else. There's not much in common between the boy with his drunken mother and the old man drinking with his own younger selves except the drinking. That's the one constant, the drunken dream of the imagination that holds its spell over the house we all grew up in. There's an unimaginable sadness at the heart of it all, which we wish would go away but never quite does. Even lovers leave one another and end up alone after a while, and the house seems empty and cold, like a body the life departed from. Where did it go?

We like to call that "communion", but it doesn't stop us from arguing over the meanings. The argument becomes our conversation with ourselves over the nature of the thing we created from ourselves. And wars are fought and blood spilled and more departures made, and more presents unwrapped with each new birth, each new day, each lover's spat. The hemorrhaging goes on and on. We only have ourselves to blame, but how do we do that without creating a whole world to play that game in? Each self seemingly born of a different thought, each perception born of a different self, and the puzzle made overly complicated by each layer as it unfolds from the box.

Inside, a little toy.

Will this toy make us forget? Will it entertain and occupy us? Can we talk to it, and will it talk back? Can it sing or make music?

Pull the string. See what happens.

Notes From Underground

2011-03-24T14:46:00.000-07:00

As a follow-up to yesterday's post on The Fruitless Search for the Real Adi Da, I'd like to add a few more ordinary and extraordinary points about this whole matter of Da's "work".

First, it's important to recognize that just because we can't ever find a real "person" behind all our many masks and bodies and thoughts and qualities, doesn't mean we can't speak of people as having a personal history or a sense of authenticity which can be both warped and/or developed both humanly and spiritually. The Buddhist teaching on anatta, or "no-self", doesn't negate the human experience of being born and going through a self-ish process of growth, development, and finally death. Nor does it negate the experience of living in an after-life subtle body and having a greater view of earthly incarnation from a higher perspective. It merely says that there is no actual entity or thing that goes through this process. If we look for one, we are frustrated, and all we find are various patterns of karma, tendency, vasana, samskaras, etc., all without an actual entity or "ego" at its root. And none of that is exclusively personal, it is all completely interconnected with all our environments, bodies, worlds, seemingly other people, and so forth. One has to accept all of that as both "real" and at the same time utterly "unreal".

By which I simply mean that even at the ordinary level of human and spiritual life, we have to go by appearances. We have to examine what people actually did in their lives, what they said, who they related to and how, and accept all of that as the "real person". Even a spiritual perspective from the vantage point of the deeper personality doesn't change this approach, it merely expands it and adds more layers to the history of the character, the "pattern" so to speak that we like to think of as an entity we call "I". Everyone experiences this sense of "I", and everyone organizes their external life around this "I"-sense, and even their subjective life is a reflection of these patterns and sometimes a pursuit of a deeper knowledge of "I", using these patterns as a jumping off point.

So it's hardly surprising that when we want to know about other people, we also want to build up a larger sense of "I" around them. And so we pick through our knowledge of them to try to build a persona around that person. Much of that, unfortunately, is just projection, because we have a very hard time distinguishing between our own inner subjectivity and our outer perceptions, since they all come together in this subjective world of "I" that is, itself, largely an imaginary creation. Our own sense of "I" is created out of a hodgepodge of phenomena, some we cling to, some we reject or are adverse to, and there is a constant struggle to discover the "real self" in the midst of all that. Of course there is no such thing, the conditional self is really just all that crap thrown together in a heap of dirty laundry, and a central person inferred from the pile. Does a pile of dirty laundry actually have an "identity" to it? Of course not. So why do we think there's such a thing behind our own pile of vasanas? The only reason is that we are self-aware, and we assume awareness must be a form of identity, and so we go on with this endless confused struggle to figure ourselves out by picking through the dirty laundry and seeing what makes sense, what smells right, and what we don't want to be.

And that's what a lot of us do with Da also, as with everyone else. We look for a "real Da" behind all the masks, but there's not really anything there, just as there isn't with us either. The "true Self" isn't an identity, it's the absence of any such thing, the "emptiness" of the Buddhist viewpoint. That doesn't mean it's some nihilistic "nothing", it also utter fullness and utter relationship. A good comparison would be to Ramana's understanding of "silence". When criticized that silence seemed to be an empty phenomena and of no help in understanding the nature of reality, Ramana said exactly the opposite was the case, that silence was in reality utterly full and complete. He even said that in silence communication was made perfect, rather than corrupted as it is in speech. One of my favorite lines of his is: "Silence is the eternal flow of language, uninterrupted by words."

In the same way, the Self, though empty of all content, is not obstructed by content, and its fullness is thus infinite and contains all possible names and forms and is perfectly interconnected through the communicative language of infinity. And that is "who we are" and of course "who Da is". But both we and Da are also defined by the particulars of how we have appeared and lived and related to everyone else, and the consciousness in which we have done all of that. None of that has been perfect, unless understood in the Self.

So in that sense, Elias' attempt to distinguish between the early Da and the late Da is not going to find an easy resolution, in that all of that is "Da", and you can't really differentiate between any of it as real or unreal.

That said, let's take a short journey in another direction entirely, and entertain the notion that Da's human life doesn't fully represent him, any more than anyone's human life fully represents their spiritual nature. The whole idea of Da's "work" is that he incarnated through the body-mind of Franklin Jones to do some very "heavy lifting" in one of the darker parts of the cosmos. He used to joke about that early on, but let's assume for the moment that it wasn't just a joke. The question arises then, as to how successful this life of his really was in realizing that goal. As one of Da's critics, I'm of course quick to point out the many ways in which he failed or fell short of his ambitions, and Da's devotees of course are quick to explain everything as some sort of perfect Divine "theater" that all came out exactly as Da wished. This morning, I decided to ask Da himself what he thought about it.

I hope you laugh at that thought, because I certainly did. But let me remind everyone that I was once described by Da as one of his "psychics" who had a special psychic connection to him and that my role as his "court astrologer" was a part of that. In the years of my dissent and leaving the community, I declined more and more to take part in any of that, but I can't say it ever really went away. I've mentioned in previous posts that before Da's death, Da used to ask me now and then to come back to the community and help him with his work, and I always told him no way, that what he'd created was simply unworkable and pointless for me to get involved with again. I assume Da had similar requests out to other devotees who had left or become critical, and that few of them got answered positively either.

When he died, I did reach out to Da, and went to one of the sites he'd spent a lot of time at, and made an offering to him with other devotees present. I got a very hilarious message from him of deep laughter about it all, and this in rather stark contrast to the sad and even morbidly shocked state of most of his then-devotees. It was good to see that Da was quite humorous about his own death and the state of the community he had left behind. But it also confirmed to me that this wasn't a spiritual group I was going to want any involvement in again.

Anyway, after writing yesterday's posts, and getting those interesting messages from Da for my wife through this woman who once met her years ago, I thought that perhaps I should just break my code of silence with Da for a moment and have a short conversation with him about these things. And so I did.

The first thing that came through was a lot of laughter. He was obviously really finding this whole scene, and all this discussion of him, very funny stuff. And he made me laugh uproariously about it all too. One of the things he said, trying to explain his life and "work", was, essentially "it all got away from me". There was a bit of regret about that, but also the sense that there wasn't really any other way it could have worked out. If you are familiar with any of the psychic writings about reincarnation, afterlife experience, and the whole difficult process of human incarnation, you might know of this kind of phenomena that often happens when things get out of control, and the deeper personality loses its grip on the physical mechanism, and can't really control it anymore. Da was pointing to that as something of an explanation for a lot of what went on, not just in the later years, but throughout his life.

It's important to understand how much difficulty Da had incarnating through the physical body. He was never much "into" this body of his, and it showed in all the serious health and psychological problems he had all through his life, the panic attacks, the death experiences, the yogic phenomena, the depression, the intense pain and trouble he had with the body, and all the really weird things he did to alleviate those difficulties. So when he says "it all got away from me", he's admitting that he never quite had it under his command to begin with. He was never fully integrated with the body, despite his claims to the contrary. In fact, even those claims of completely incarnating down to the toes were a sign of his difficulty in integrating with the body. The narcissism and crazy behavior and cultic escalations that went on were part of that disturbed relationship with the body, and he could never quite get it together, despite some rather herculean efforts.

In part, Da explained that this was just part of what he was trying to do, which was a puja of purification that he really did hope would succeed, but which never actually did, not as he had intended at least. He laughs about that, but there's a tinge of the tragic in it as well, because he really wants to make it clear that he tried, and that he loved all the people he hurt, and didn't really want any of it to turn out as it did. He had expected things to be far more benign and positive, and the fault was very much his own, not anyone else's, that it was a huge gamble he took, and a necessary one he felt, and still feels that way, but he can't change what happened. His own bodily personality just took on too much "stuff" to get it all clear or make it work out right, and he was not able to make himself come through in the manner he wished. Spiritually, he was able to bring the Divine Force down into the body, and to do a fair amount with it, but on the human level it never quite achieved his purposes. So in a certain way you could say that none of that life was the "real Da". And yet, all of it was still part of the process of his real efforts and ambitions, like anyone else at a certain stage of their life, and there were certain moments and levels of it all that were very much real and true, and of course all the love was real, and the intention was real, even if the result fell short.

So, the other thing Da wanted to make clear about all this is that he's very likely to return once again and give this all another try. This is important and necessary in relation to another thing he mentioned, which has to do with the spiritual evolution of the earth plane, and the changes in the earth's psychic energy grid. I'm not sure how aware people out there are of the widespread talk in new age circles about 2012 and the transformation of the earth's energy grid, but it's rather widely accepted among such people that since the Harmonic Convergence of 1987, a massive re-ordering of the earth's energy grid has been taking place, particularly in the years of the first decade of the millenia. Da himself used to talk about this sometimes, and I had reported to him on the fact that the 2012 phenomena seemed to be real, even astrologically, and in relation to his own life.

One of the important implications of this transformation of the earth's energy grid is that the "old energy" of the world is no longer going to work in the new grid, and that all that old energy, and the people and patterns and even institutions around the world that are built upon it are all going to fall apart as we transition into this "new energy". The current collapse of totalitarian regimes in the Arab world, for example, (and the financial collapse also) is taken by these people as a sign of how the old energy patterns are collapsing all by themselves, simply because they can't survive in the new energy. One doesn't even have to do very much to make them collapse, they will do so all on their own.

In that sense, Da's death in 2008 was virtually inevitable, because his bodily incarnation had taken on so much of the "old energy" that it really couldn't survive any more in the new energy grid that has been evolving on the planet. In fact, one could almost say that Da's life and work and what he had built was a kind of last gasp of the "old energy" of the spiritual process. This is very much evident in the authoritarian structure of his community, his way of relating to devotees, all the exploitation and abuse, all the decrees and crazy-ass teachings, the endless shifting and remaking of himself in an attempt to make a change into the new energy, but simply unable to make the transition, and dying as a result. One thing Da said about this is that it isn't a bad thing at all, it's a good thing, and he's very glad to be done with it all. Even if it didn't work out the way he wanted, it at least worked as a kind of garbage bag body-mind to be thrown out at the end of the day, with all the oil stains and ink spots pointing to the past, and leaving room for something new to replace it.

And that's where Da really had a big laugh, and I laughed too, because he made it very clear that he's going to come back and do it differently in the new energy. This means another incarnation, of course, but this time one a lot more suited to his deeper nature, so to speak. It doesn't mean there will be no drama, but it does mean it will be a lot more benign. But here's the thing - he's not coming back to the Adidam community he left behind. He's not going to be born back into some Adidam household and get raised as the Adi Da tulku or some such nonsense. He doesn't find the Adidam he left behind to be suitable to his needs for the new incarnation. It doesn't really represent him, it represents the old Da, the old energy. It's not that he wants to forswear it or write it off, but he's very clear that it's not what he's about anymore, or what he will be about in the future, it's more like Vivekananda's Vedanta Society, a relic of the past that may or may not carry on into the future with its own spiritual mission and community doing its thing, but not really related to him in his present mode, and not suitable for that in any case. He doesn't mean by that that Adidam should just disband and sell off its properties. The people there have their own karmas to deal with and their own relationship to the Divine to work out, but he's not really a part of that anymore, at least not in the way they would like to think. He's moved on already to new things, with new plans and new ideas. Sound familiar?

As far as his next incarnation goes, that's not clear yet. I don't think even he's decided yet when or where it will be. I don't get the sense, however, that we're talking centuries, or even many decades. he seems just a little impatient to get back on the horse, so to speak. But anything's possible, including the possibility that he's just fucking with me and won't be coming back at all. I just don't get that impression however. I could be wrong, of course, and this is all just my own subjective impressioning process going on, so take it all with main grainfuls of salt.

But Da is even now telling me not to overqualify any of that. He's really serious about this shit and wants to return really soon and wants everyone to know that. If people in Adidam really do want him to have anything to do with him the next time around, they are really going to have to get their shit together and do some real sadhana, because he's not terribly happy with how they related to him this time around. And he doesn't mean by that going all institutional again and blowing smoke up his ass, he means really, deeply loving one another and him and God and just throwing away anything that gets in the way of that, including all the crap he left for them to work with. He's incredibly fierce about this, I have to say, and it's kind of burning me up just writing this out. He says to tell everyone that he loves them to death, he loves them eternally, he loves them more than they will ever know, and they are going to have to become something very different now, something that can work in the new world that's coming, and drop everything that doesn't. This is a message for everyone he ever knew, and he wants them to get it and respond directly, not institutionally or dogmatically or through any other channel than their own heart.

He also wants to make it clear that the world is changing every day, and we have to allow it to change us as well. We have to be receptive rather than creative. We are not making the world, it is making us. We have to let die what needs to die, and let grow what can thrive in the new environment. He's going to be part of the new environment. It just won't be the old "him", so don't look for him in that manner. Look for him in something new, something that thrives and grows, that isn't like what faded and died. Look for him in that lone flower in the wilderness. Look for the star that shines brightly and dies. Don't abandon what you have, but don't let it prevent you from seeing the new form that he's taking. It will surprise you. And offend as well, but not in the old way.

Which reminds me, Da's talk of reincarnation was responding in part to a post I had written a couple of years ago after Aid Da's death, when I looked at Da's astrological death chart, which seemed to clearly indicate that he would be reincarnating. He was confirming that this was basically correct. One of the things I saw in the charts at the time was that in his next incarnation he might even come back as a "dissident". I'm not sure exactly what that means, but Da is basically saying there's something correct in that. By which I thought it could even mean that he will come back in a family of former devotees, or people who are otherwise somewhat "turned off" by the old Adidam. He seems to find that idea really hilarious and therefore just the right way to do it, but I don't get the sense that it's quite nailed down, and it could mean many things. He may just be fucking with us there. The basic sense is just what was said earlier, that the new Da won't be much like the old one. So in that sense I think he's going to be a self-dissident, not a "devotee" of the old Da, and even generally critical of his ways. (Just as he was often critical of Vivekananda's ways).

Okay, enough playing around with subtle games for now. It's time to let go even of this form of entertainment. Da is, indeed, quite happy and laughing about all of this. Why shouldn't we?

The Fruitless Search for the Real Adi Da

2011-03-23T19:46:00.000-07:00

A lot of activity in the comments sections lately. A current devotee of Adi Da's is opening up about his thoughts and feelings about all manner of things: this blog, yours truly, other devotees, Adi Da in general, and giving good evidence of more people "speaking openly in Adidam" in the years following Adi Da's bodily demise. He's left so many comments its a little hard to respond to all of them, but I'll give it a general shot here.

But first I want to start with a comment by Elias over at his forum, regarding the last two posts I made in response to his Facebook conversations with another Da devotee (that didn't go quite so well).

The one thing he [Broken Yogi] doesn't get into is the apparent opposition between early and late Da. (I believe he has talked about that elsewhere.)

My view (after a good deal of intuitive mulling) is that the "two Das" are the same Da. And what you see in the last decade or so is actually a projection created by the cult, which he took on like one of those hats he used to wear.

The Da I know is still LHAO without the impediment of his overweight and rather sickly body.

This is what I really want to address, and maybe that will bleed into the devotee-commentator's many questions.

Asking "who is the real Adi Da?" is a bit like asking "who is the real ego?" One can search in vain for a "real person" behind any of our many personas, and wind up only confused and even heart-broken. (Which, incidentally, isn't a bad outcome). The ego is a slippery character precisely because there is no "real person" behind it, and in the search to find one we encounter nothing but frustration. This should tell us something very important about the nature of life, of people, even of Gurus. There's no "there" there. And looking for a "there" to hang our hats on is what drives us batty.

I mentioned before in my last post that real spiritual life pretty much begins and even ends with the First Noble Truth of Buddhism - that conditional life is simply unsatisfying (dukkha). This is a core reason why this feeling of dissatisfaction is so universal - it applies even to the very notion that we are a person, an entity, a being with an identity, and that others around us are also, including God and Guru. This is why the Buddhist doctrine of anatta (no-self) flows so directly from the fact of dukkha and points back at it. Being an apparent self is like being a hungry ghost who doesn't even know he's dead. There's simply no possible satisfaction given that situation. It doesn't matter what we try to "eat", or seek, the very core of what we presume ourselves to be - a "self" - isn't even there to feed, much less anything viable to feed upon. The heart of a hungry ghost isn't so much closed as simply dead and empty.

The problem with trying to figure out who the real Adi Da is, is that once we start looking behind the masks and attitudes and words and teachings and experiences, peeling back layer after layer to get closer to the truth, we find nothing there at all. Just a bag of wind. And maybe some devotees then go "yes!" and say this only proves what a Divine trickster he was, what a perfect Divine Incarnation he was and so on. But the same could (and should) be said for any of us, and the result will be the same as well.

Who is the real Broken Yogi, as the commentator seems to be asking? Am I the child growing up in a weird dysfunctional family in crazed suburbia? The teenager who called upon Ramana to come, and was overwhelmed in his Presence? The guy who left home at sixteen on his spiritual quest? The one who stumbled into Poonja Swami without knowing who he was and whose mind fall into the heart? The one who found Da and discovered in his living room that nothing ever happened? The one who fell through a hole in the universe a year later after falling in love with Da and came out on the other side in a transparent world of pure God? The one who left to go to college, who came back to give Da another shot, who left again to wander the world, who came back for still more, who got married, had kids, vascillated again a number of times, became Da's astrologer, defended Da on the internet, criticized Da on the internet, and then left Da? The one who returned to Ramana, who practiced self-enquiry, and now writes here today? Who the hell is that guy?

There really isn't a good answer to that question, except to say "none of the above". If you are in a series of dreams, wondering which dream is the real one, you are not going to find a satisfactory answer. There is no real dream. There is only awakening. And in awakening, all the dream identities fall away, leaving nothing to identify with at all. Whatever we think ourselves to be, we are not. Whatever we think Adi Da to be, he isn't. It's not that this applies only to really special mystical realizers, if that's what we think Adi Da is. It doesn't. It applies to everyone and everything. So I really don't have a lot of patience with the notion that there are some aspects of Adi Da's life that are "really him", and others that are not. As if only the latter years of his life are a reflection of other people's influence on him, whereas there was some earlier period where the "true" Adi Da shown through. This is just nonsensical thinking, hungry ghost thinking, I'm sorry to say. Imagine a hungry ghost trying to eat some "real food" after getting fooled by "fake food". This is just more comedy, and tragedy, waiting to happen.

And yes, that's what most of us are up to most of the time when we are trying to figure one another out, or figure Adi Da out. It's best to simply stop trying to look behind the mask for something "real", and instead simply accept the mask itself for what it is, and what it isn't.

That's pretty much what I went through as I was leaving Adidam. Yes, I had been deeply involved, and I'd "recognized" Adi Da very early on. I had what to me were transcendental recognition breakthroughs of an extreme kind the first two times I met Da at the age of seventeen and eighteen. It's no use trying to explain them or categorize them. I was thrown out of myself, and really, I never quite got back in. It wasn't the first time that had happened to me, but it was incredibly powerful and it cemented my relationship to him, even though no one else seemed to much notice or care. It was more powerful than anything that came along in the latter years, even when I served him directly and was more "mature".

And so when Da began talking about the central importance of "recognition" of him in the late 1990s, I knew very much what he was talking about. But a strange thing occurred over those years, in that by then I no longer felt that was my primary interest, even when it came to Adi Da. The more Da talked about recognition of him, the less and less I cared. I found that I just wasn't terribly concerned with who Da was, that it really didn't make any difference to me. I was more and more interested in who I was, not Da. I came to the recognition that the only thing that really mattered was my own understanding of myself, not of Da. And so the whole issue of what Da was, what his realization was, and what I should do on that basis just fell away like a childhood game. I just wasn't interested in playing that anymore.

So I began to drift away from Adidam in an odd sort of way. I wasn't really sure where I was going. I wasn't even yet an open critic, I was just trying to find my own way. I was more interested in the process I was going through than in what Da was going through. His whole dramatic theater didn't matter to me much anymore. When the whole Translation thing happened up in Seattle, I really couldn't care much. Da personally invited me to come visit and see him and spend time with him, and I just declined. I sent my wife instead, since she'd stayed home and cared for things many times when I'd taken off to be with Da before.

When I became an open critic of Da's, one of the issues people were constantly asking me about, and I was not able to answer, were things like "so do you still think Da is enlightened?" or "Did Da change over the years?" The simple answer was that I didn't really know. Maybe, maybe not, to both. The real answer is that I simply didn't care, and I don't see that the question even matters. To people in Adidam, this is the ultimate heresy. They think that if one concludes that Da is enlightened, one has to accept everything else about him as true and all of his teachings as Divine Revelation, and all is excused and even Divinized by this "recognition". I found this to be sheer bullshit, to put it bluntly. I didn't feel the need to excuse or recognize anything, because none of that was going to change my own experience, which was of "me", not "Him". What I was interested in was penetrating this "me", and not of endlessly trying to recognize "Him".

So I found myself drawn to Ramana, and to self-enquiry, to this basic question "Who am I?" I didn't really care who Adi Da was. Fine, maybe he's a realizer of unprecedented power and depth. Maybe he's a fraud, a con man, a hypnotic manipulator. I really didn't care. I still don't. To the degree that I was interested in those questions, I was interested in how I came to be involved with either aspect of that whole Da-phenomena. I was interested in understanding myself, my attraction and involvement in all that, and not what Da-in-himself was or is or will be. What he was to me wasn't necessarily even about him, it was about me, my life, my mind, my fears, my projections, my ego. I knew tons of devotees who claimed to recognize Da, but they were the same dumb shits they had always been, and no different from me. This applied even to the Kanyas, who I knew and could see were deeply delusional even about their own recognition of Da, because they didn't know who they were.

To me, recognizing Da doesn't really mean shit. What matters is recognizing who "I" am. And as far as I'm concerned, that applies to everyone else also. I don't really care about some devotee's recognition of Da, if they don't recognize themselves. That's pure cultism as far as I am concerned, and that's all Adidam seemed to be by the time I left. A parade of clowns miming their recognition of Da, with no clue as to who they were. And I was a bozo who desperately needed to get off that bus.

So when Elias asks if I think the latter Da is a projection, I'd say yes, definitely. But so was the early one. And by the way, so is "Elias", and "Tom", at every age and stage of his life. And yes, Da's a projection of the egos of devotees, because there is only projection, everywhere, on and through everything. It's a world of glass mirrors everywhere. No "real world" to be found. No "real people" either.

Okay, I don't want to confuse the issue by category jumping or mixing duality with non-duality. But this is the nature of duality and identity. Da as a human being had a lot of problems at every stage of his life, and he was constantly trying to solve this by creating a new identity. Did he know who he was in the ultimate sense? I don't know. Maybe, maybe not. Did Jesus? Did Buddha? Did Ramana? I don't know that either. The only thing I do know is that no one else knows either. Da devotees love to bring out all kinds of conceptual creations Da gave them to play with, and put people into little boxes of various identities and stages and how they all add up to Da being the greatest most infallible super-identity ever. And not an ego at all, of course. But how would they know if they still think of themselves as egos? As long as they keep thinking the thought "I,I,I"? And what good comes from any of that? It's just the blind leading the blind, because no one knows who they are, they are so busy trying to know and assert who Da is.

I first met Da in 1975, when he was Bubba, and I last saw him around 2003 when he was Adi Da Samraj. Was he the same guy? Of course not. But that didn't matter then or now. I was there because I needed something from Da, and by the time I left, I didn't need anything from him anymore. At the end, I made a conscious decision not to judge Da on the basis of whether I thought he was enlightened or seventh stage or anything like that, even on the basis of my own mystical experience of him. I simply asked myself what kind of way was he relating to me and to others and what had he created here as a vehicle for practice, and did that work for me or anyone else? And was any of that useful to me anymore? The answer increasingly came back that no, this wasn't useful to me, it was actually harmful and destructive and something to stay away from. It was rather easy to see that I'd excused Da earlier simply because he was useful to me for a time, and once he was no longer useful, I could see his activities in a clearer light.

Now, I'm not sure what that says about Da in any ultimate sense. Those who still need Da are of course going to see him in a certain light, and those who don't will see him differently. Leroy Stillwell I'm sure sees Da in the light of someone who desperately needs him and can't imagine anyone having anything negative to say about him at all, unless they were demented or resentful and so forth. It doesn't make Leroy a bad guy or a fool or an accessory to fraud that he thinks this way. It just makes him relatively blind to anything outside himself and his own needs. Having been in both places, I have a bit of distance on both views, and also a lot of sympathy for both views. I could no more ask Leroy to see things differently than I could ask my younger self to. I was at least as needy and in love with Da as he was and still is. But I'm not anymore. Is that a progression, a regression, or a just an impression (samskara)? God only knows. One thing I can say is that I'm free of the need to care either way.

Real freedom to me isn't about identifying with a particular view, and being free to indulge in that view and gain victory over all other views. I don't think it's possible to be free and to hold onto a particular view of Adi Da, any more than it's possible to be free and to hold onto a particular view of oneself. Who am I? Whatever I answer, it's not freedom. Who is Da? Whatever I answer, it's not freedom. So I don't answer. Self-enquiry isn't about getting an answer to the question "who am I?" It's about seeing that there really is no answer at all, because there is no ego at all. There is no separate self, no closed heart, no dead self, no hungry ghost, and no true self either. There's just freedom.

I've had arguments with devotees of Ramana about this even. Some of them are quite attached to the notion of the "Self" or the transcendental substratum underlying the self and world. I try to point out that these are not "real things", they are just verbal and conceptual pointers that are useful to some for guidance in their sadhana. They help point us in the right direction, and that's their only real purpose. Calling our true identity "the Self" is merely a directional pointer, in that by examining the subject, the ego- self, and following attention to its source rather than outward towards objects, we can penetrate the illusion of the ego. That's important and necessary and thus a good teaching tool. But to turn that into a reified "real thing" is to defeat the whole purpose of the inspection, which is to destroy the ego-mind and its concepts and ideas and projections and leave us free of them.

There are good and useful teaching tools in Adidam also. That most of them are taken from sanatana dharma or Buddhism is not such a bad thing, whether Da acknowledges that or not. It actually adds to their authenticity. But there are also delusions in Adidam and bad teaching tools and traps one can fall in. That is true of sanatana dharma also, of course. It's important to recognize that all spiritual teachings are dukkha. They are unsatisfying. They are frustrating and ultimately useless. Most of spiritual practice is just the down to earth process of finding this out. And unfortunately we really do have to find this out, we really do have to suffer our illusions, our projections, our relationships, and come to the point of knowing them as dukkha. That is how we gain liberation from them. That is why the First Noble Truth is the truly liberating principle of spiritual life. That is why we have to keep that truth in mind throughout the spiritual process, so that we don't become enamoured of whatever spiritual path or teaching or teacher is temporarily seeming to fulfill our needs. That too will pass, and we will be left with our dukkha.

Da is no different in that regard from anything else we have pinned our hopes on. One can claim till he is blue in the face that Da is different and this time it's really going to work, but no one has any evidence of this. None of Da's devotees demonstrate much of this in anything but the most ordinary ways, and even there not so much. I say this not out of disrespect or cynicism, but only because it's the tragic truth. And if there's any value in the whole Adidam experience, it's in coming to the point of accepting this, and feeling the full force of dukkha, of our dissatisfaction, even in the midst of whatever profound truth we think is going to save us.

Not that Da didn't bring anything true to the table. The Da commentator talks about the Atma shakti, or as he calls it the "Atma nadi Shakti", as if there's some kind of difference. This is just another example of the dualism that haunts so much of Da's teaching. As if there is any difference between the Heart (Atma) and its own Light (Atma Nadi, or Amrita Nadi). The whole point of non-dual teachings such as Ramana's is that the Heart is everything, and that all seeming forms and light and energy are simply the Heart. The idea that there is some form of separation between the two is a bizarre idea of Adi Da's, something he came up with to insist that he's the only genuine realizer of the Atma Nadi (despite borrowing the name and description from Ramana) and that all other realizers only got as far as the "exclusive heart". As if, again, there is such a thing.

And that's the problem with Adidam in a nutshell. There's no doubt that Da could feel and communicate to others this feeling for the Atma Shakti, this beauty that is at the heart of all experience and all beings. But then he has to always make a subtle differentiation in this Atma Shakti, as if what he is "giving" is actually separate from the Heart, because it's the "Amrita Nadi". That distinction runs through his whole teaching, and it creates subtle separation whenever his devotees try to put it into practice, which is where this whole cult phenomena comes from, the whole us vs. them mindset and all its attendent delusions and fantasies of victimized martyrdom.

This is funny to me, actually, because one of my latter experiences with Da was a vision in which Da gave me the full instruction on Amrita Nadi, in every possible yogic form, in an infinite dimension beyond all forms and limitations. (And don't ask, because there's literally nothing to say about that whatsoever). So in a strange sense I actually do know something about this, and I can say that there is no distinction whatsoever between the Heart and Its Light, and no distinction between Atma and Amrita Nadi, that any distinction is entirely conceptual in origin. So while there is some kind of value in Da's teaching about not developing an exclusive orientation around the Witness, and thus excluding phenomena strategically, it has virtually no bearing on the actual nature of the Divine Shakti, the Heart, or Its Light. There are not two or three or ten kinds of Shakti, there is only one. Or, One. The reality of the Shakti is the reality of the Heart. There is no need to differentiate it. The differences only come at the level of the mind of experience and its bifurcated madness.

One of the points I made careful note of when leaving Adidam was that discrimination wasn't just about making subtle distinctions. It was also about not making distinctions that don't actually exist. And the distinction between Atma Shakti and Amrita Nadi Shakti is a distinction without a difference. It's important not to introduce distinctions into the mind that have no basis in reality, especially about something so central.

Now, as for Elias' mention that Da is not the same character now that he has no physical body to worry about, well duh! I mean, the same is true for all of us. These physical bodies and brains are a huge drag, and they make us all seem so dumb and shallow. Every one of us, when we shuffle off this mortal coil, is going to know himself in a far better light. Much happier and less burdened by bullshit. Or at least seeming to be. That's the nature of the subtle worlds. So I'm sure that Da is feeling a helluva a lot better and is just laughing at those of us here who are taking what he left behind so damned seriously, both devotees and dissidents. But that's pretty much the reaction of most souls when they die. As Einstein said, when we die the first thing we probably ask ourselves is why we took this life so seriously.

But of course that's the whole point of incarnating in the first place. It's to be put into a relatively dreadful situation that we have to struggle with and deal with all kinds of really convincing forms of separation and terror and struggles to survive and fear and anger and so on. And somehow, even in the midst of all that, find some humor and happiness, and above all some love. Otherwise it's really just a waste of time, and we'd all be better off in some subtle world living it up. Coming here is a sacrifice for the sake of sadhana, so it's a real shame to waste time here doing anything less. Those of us who came here with the karmas to get involved with Adi Da were definitely signing on for some serious shit to transcend and find the humor and love in, regardless of how painful that might be. That doesn't mean becoming a brainwashed Da junkie or swallowing the Daist hook, line, and sinker, or defending the bullshit as if it were God's special revelation. Part of the challenge is to break through that form of dukkha as well. That doesn't come except by seeing it as dukkha, even the "spiritual stuff". After all, those higher subtle realms we go to after death, they are dukkha too. It's just harder to see that once you are there. Which is why we come here to these crazy-ass physical worlds where everything is so damned frustrating. That's the whole point. The physical realms carry the concentrated message of all the realms, and that message is dukkha. Being satisfied by Da is to miss the whole point of that experience. We are not here to be satisfied.

A Doubtful Postscript

2011-03-20T17:21:00.000-07:00

In relation to my last post on Transcending Language and Concepts in the Adidam Teachings, I've found some further discussion of the Facebook exchange between Elias and Greg Wells over at Elias' Lightmind Forum. From that forum I've found another link to a second Facebook exchange between Elias and Greg that seems to have preceded the previously posted one. It's not as juicy as the other exchange, but very, very preachy nonetheless on the part of Greg. [Update: I've found out that these discussions are in fact being posted by Elias in chronological order, the first being first, the second being second, and apparently a third on its way.]

There's not as much to say about this second exchange, except when the subject of “doubt mind” is brought up by Greg to explain why Elias is not likely to be satisfied with the answers Greg gives to Elias' questions. Greg says:

Your question is you, as mind. Thus, it is about "you", not this Root Way of Reality Itself. You, as mind, will never be satisfied by any answer I give, because the root of mind is doubt. The mind can believe, but it cannot "see" Reality because it is itself the obstruction to noticing the Obviousness of Reality Itself. Thus, why not turn whole-bodily to the Avataric Human Revelation-Body of Adi Da Samraj, and "Fall Awake" in your Heart?

There are some fair points here, used rather dishonestly unfortunately. The fair point is that the mind is rooted in “doubt”. To be more accurate, the mind is rooted in separation. That's the “I”-thought, the ego, the sense of being separate from reality and thus trying to figure it out rather than simply being what we truly are. The mind thus includes the whole of the ego and its world, not just the verbal sense of mind and brain and so on. And true enough, the mind cannot know or see reality, because the mind is the result of separation. But this is also a narrow understanding of mind that does not account for the genuine basis for our awareness of mind, which is transcendental consciousness.

If mind is defined by thoughts and objects of thought, then true, mind is founded in ego, separation, and unconsciousness, and it cannot know reality. But by so defining “mind”, we run into the same problem I highlighted in the previous post about Da's use of the term “heart”. Namely, this defines mind by the very terms of separation that are the result of an illusion about our self-existence. Thus, it defines mind by the mind's own sense of illusion, rather than in reality. And it is in reality that the mind is understood to be transcendental divine awareness, and not the “I”-thought and the world the “I”-thought creates around itself.

If we think of “doubt” as the fundamental illusion of separation, then yes, the ego-mind is rooted in doubt, which is all the “I”-thought amounts to. But this only means that the illusion of separation is rooted in the illusion of separation, which is rather redundant, and actually points to the truth that separation has no actual basis in reality, but is merely a form of circular, self-defining illogic. What we call “mind” is not really what we think it to be at all. It is not, in reality, this mechanism of doubt and separation. It is transcendental awareness, free and open and continuous with all of existence. It is not defined by doubt, and it does not disappear when the illusion of separation and doubt is seen through. It is only ego-mind, or doubt-mind, that vanishes in realization, and our true mind is seen to have never been qualified by the ego's illusion of doubt.

So Greg is playing a bit of a trick on Elias here by saying “Your question is you, as mind.” He is defining Elias by this doubt-mind, rather than by affirming his real nature as transcendental awareness. This does not serve anyone. Telling someone they are “doubt-mind” does not liberate them. Telling them that they are transcendental awareness is what will liberate them. If Greg were to make clear that this sense of mind-identity is not who Elias really is, that would be one thing, but instead he is using this point as a pivot by which to gain power and authority in the conversation.

After all, isn't Greg using mind also here? If Elias' questions come from “mind”, then where do Greg's answers come from? Either Greg sees himself as coming from a place beyond mere doubt-mind, or he is just being doubt-mind also, and his answers are going to be unsatisfying regardless of Elias' receptivity. They are also going to be forms of subtle doubt, framed in the pseudo-religious language of faith, but actually only projections of inner doubt-mind. What seems to be happening in the conversation is that Greg is claiming some sort of special status for himself, as a devotee of Adi Da, who is able to transcend the limitations of “mind”, and bring to the conversation Adi Da's radical wisdom and teaching, which Elias ought to bow down to by surrendering his mind to this wisdom. But what Greg fails to notice is that his own grasp of Adi Da's teaching is itself largely a mental one, and Elias makes note of this at the end.

This is the kind of problem that often comes up when talking with fundamentalists, especially of the Daist variety. They don't seem terribly self-aware of their own ego-mind, and the tricks it plays on them. I'll be the first to acknowledge that the ordinary use of the mind tends to be filled with doubts. Da is right to point this out, and it's something we all need to be aware of. But being a devotee of Adi Da gives no one any special exemption status on this count. Being able to repeat the teachings of Adi Da by training the mind to remember his various catch phrases and capitalizations does not make the mind any less “doubtful” than before. In fact, it often merely adds another layer of self-delusion to the already difficult process of transcending the illusions of the mind.

In our ordinary state of egoic confusions, we of course have many doubts and questions. The First Noble Truth of Buddhism, which I think is pretty much the beginning and the end of all true spiritual teaching, is that conditional existence is “dukkha”, which means many things, but the primary meaning I get from it is “unsatisfying”. And the conditional mind is always unsatisfied and unsatisfiable. Likewise, all spiritual teachings which address the mind are unsatisfying, and there is no spiritual teaching which can ever satisfy the conditional mind. Fortunately, however, we are not the conditional mind, and thus, we are not limited to the language and concepts of spiritual teachings which describe and critique the conditional mind. We can stand beyond the doubt-mind, even as we critique it and let it voice its many doubts and questions, because in reality we are already beyond the doubt-mind. Thus, we can accept the conditional mind as it is, and not react to it or expect it to be satisfied. We even have to respect its need to understand itself, and to ask question and seek answers in the process. That is why spiritual teachings exist in the first place, to help those who are yet identified in one way or another with the conditional mind to find their way beyond it, and to know their real nature.

It is for this reason that spiritual teachers answer questions. Da himself spent much of his teaching years answering the questions of his students, over and over again. Yes, he pointed out that ego-mind is rooted in doubt and separation, but that didn't stop him from continuing to answer questions and writing dozens of books that were essentially answers to those questions.

The problem with pointing out that someone you are in conversation with is suffering from doubt-mind and trying to explain their lack of agreement with you on this phenomena is that it is essentially a form of projection. In other words, it's a way of shifting responsibility for one's own doubts and separative mind to one's debate opponent. It follows from the perception that the person one is having a discussion with isn't entirely agreeing with one's views, and taking that as a form of opposition and conflict that requires one to mount an attack on the other person. Subtly accusing them of being filled with doubt-mind is a way of doing that. It raises oneself higher and lowers the other person to an inferior plane of discourse. It's no longer a discussion among equals, of people who recognize their own limitations and their own dukkha, it's a discussion from a preacher's pulpit.

And that is what Greg tends to do as these discussions progress. He climbs to the preacher's pulpit, very much like Evelyn Disc, using the distance thus created as a form of protection for his own ideas and ideals. But what is really being protected through these methods is the preacher's own inner doubts about those ideas and ideals. In this discussion, Elias has some reasonable questions, and actually agrees with Greg quite a lot, but when he voices some dissent from Greg's views or asks questions that might possibly undermine something Greg says, or something he quoted from Adi Da, there is this reflexive resort to ascending to the pulpit and preaching.

Why, one might ask? I think it's a rather classic example of Da's saying, “those who despise me, love me in secret, while those who love me openly have hidden doubts”. Not that Elias here is showing any evidence of despising Da – quite to the contrary, he is openly praising many things Da says. But when he says anything remotely critical of Da, or asks difficult questions, this triggers Greg's own inner doubts, and he mounts an immediate and elaborate defense against them, filled with all the ringing language of the Adidam preacher. But rather than dealing with these doubts directly, as his own inner problem and conflict, he projects them onto Elias, and starts addressing Elias' “doubt-mind”.

This is a shame. People like Greg need to see their own doubts rising to the surface so they can deal with them. Not because I think Greg needs to embrace those doubts and leave Adidam, but because he needs to be free of them one way or another. Living in isolation on Naitauba, surrounded completely by other devotees of the most dedicated sort, is not going to expose Greg to much that will challenge his own inner doubts or help him to confront them. In fact, in a setting like that, there's usually a communal agreement never to do anything like that, and so people build up forms of consensus among themselves about the absolute truthfulness of their own path in order that none of them ever have to face up to their inner doubts about it. The basic method for dealing with such doubts is to call them “doubt-mind” and to suppress them and cast them out, and to think of that as something that “people in the world” are afflicted with, not themselves.

And of course, someone like Elias, a prominent critic of Adidam, is a convenient target for that kind of projection and trashing, which relieves the believer and makes his fellow believers feel better about themselves. They have made an easy scapegoat of Elias in order to not have to deal with the problem of their own inner doubts. And by affirming in their minds through deadening repetition the core precepts of their path, they can see themselves as the righteous upholders of truth and reality, rather than as ordinary folks with the same ordinary doubts and troubles that we all have about such great matters.

Da once defined cultism as “big talk about great matters without real practice”. Rather than apply that too broadly, trying to paint the whole of the alleged cultist's life with one brush, it's best to apply it to specific situations like these, where we can examine the participants and see whether they are actually practicing in the moment, or just making pretentious Big-Talk. I think we can see that Greg is not really practicing here. He's talking the talk, but not walking the walk. In fact, his inability to walk the walk in this situation leads him to talk bigger and bigger, until his words swallow the relationship entirely and leave nothing behind. What would it take for Greg to actually practice under these circumstances? Not much at all, really.

First, a simple acknowledgement (not necessarily even spoken) that he doesn't actually know all the answers to Elias's questions. That would be a good start.

Second, an acknowledgement that he has questions of his own that he doesn't know the full answers to.

Third, simply staying in human relationship with Elias and making honest observations about the matters under discussion.

Fourth, refraining from over-quoting Adi Da, or turning one's own language into paraphrases of Adi Da's teachings.

Fifth, refraining from putting any blame for one's inability to answer these question on the other person. Try the best you can, and if that isn't good enough, assume no blame on anyone's part.

Sixth, stop preaching or otherwise trying to get rid of any doubts one sees in either oneself or the other. Allow the doubts felt or expressed to rise up and be observed and openly felt without the reaction of suppression. Asserting the opposite of doubt does not undo doubt or overcome it, it only keeps it in the unconscious and makes it more powerful.

Seventh, abandon all dharmas and agendas. Just relate honestly to what is arising, without imposing a mental construct upon it, even one derived from the dharma. Use the present circumstance to illuminate the dharma, and vice-versa.

The key here is simply staying in relationship. That doesn't mean one can't be emotional or even react at times. But one must be able to climb back down from those emotions by feeling them and knowing them as one's own, rather than projecting them onto others. The biggest danger in all these kinds of discussions is the projection game. It's something we have all done. I've done it, Elias has done it, and here Greg is doing it. No big deal, really. I'm impressed that Elias is actually refraining fairly well from playing that out, because I know it's something Elias has had problems with in the past. It's good to see him showing some maturity here. Kudos.

But then again, Elias has had the advantage of years of engaging people in almost endless rounds of internet discussion and has experienced these kinds of conflicts over and over again. Him and I have done that with one another as much as anyone probably, and we've each been guilty of some of the most egregious offenses one can imagine. Greg has not had that kind of experience. I'm sure he's had lots of Adidam devotional groups, which sometimes allow for this sort of confrontation with one's own inner demons and doubts, and been through his fair share of purification in that regard. But this is quite a different animal, dealing with people outside the reference frame of the small religious world of Naitauba and having to talk with people who simply don't share that point of view.

There's a whole layer of doubt-mind rising up here in Greg that he's probably not had to deal with in a long time, since he himself was entering into the Adidam fold. And so it's perhaps understandable that he's intimidated and responding so aggressively. But it's also something that I hope he and other devotees can learn to handle responsibly, taking on the reactions that arise in them without projecting them onto others, and allow themselves to be unsettled by the experience rather than constantly trying to resolve it with affirmations of their own faith. That's not going to work. They have to see these encounters as forms not of missionary preaching, but of confrontation with their own doubts and difficulties, as a gracious opportunity to see things about themselves that their rather cloistered life in Naitauba is not helping them with.

Rather than seeing themselves as the beneficent vehicles of grace given to the lowly and doubt-filled Elias for his healing and enlightenment, they need to see Elias as the vehicle of grace given to them to help them deal with their own doubts, difficulties, and cultism. Yes, that's a humbling attitude, but a necessary one. Elias may have some prickly personal qualities at times, but even that's not much in evidence here. In fact, Elias seems very much motivated to understand these Adidam folks and the dharma of Adi Da, just without all the cultic baggage attached. That's not being served here. It's not furthered by preaching, but by honest discussion.

That means people like Greg need to get over the image of themselves they've created as some sort of wise and saintly vehicle of grace, and get down to real practice, which means really facing up to and transcending their own inner nonsense and doubt. They have to acknowledge that they have their own doubts about Adi Da and his teachings, and not feel that if they admit that to themselves or to others that they have “lost” the debate. Doing that is actually a sign of inner strength, not weakness, whereas these outer shows of faith and conviction are actually signs of weakness, not strength as they seem to presume. And people listening in on this conversation can't help but perceive it that way.

One has to be able to enter into conversations with our fellow human beings in an open-ended manner, without knowing how it's supposed to turn out for either of us. As mentioned in my previous post, Greg has an agenda here, a missionary agenda, and he sees himself as obligated to perform some priestly role here of bringing the dharma to those in darkness. This unfortunately is just a belief in Greg's mind, and he's trying to impose it on the conversation, and naturally it produces conflict – primarily in Greg's own mind, but by projecting it onto the conversation, it destroys the natural relationship there as well. Instead, Greg could just engage Elias without that agenda, and let his own natural relationship with the Guru guide him, and let what occurs unfold without his mind trying to control it. This would allow Greg to actually benefit from the encounter in ways he probably couldn't imagine beforehand, rather than see the only benefit coming from Elias being “turned around” by Greg's skill with the Adidam dharma.

In other words, these kinds of discussions have to be living, fluid and unpredictable, like life itself. Like God. Even, like Adi Da. Doing that would be genuine missionary work, regardless of how it seemed to turn out. Living satsang with an open-ended mind is the best way to overcome doubt-mind and the presumption of separation. Otherwise, things always turn out badly, even if one thinks one has succeeded in one's preaching. Gaining converts to the Tabernacle of Saint and Ear, where the repetition of high dharma is used to push one's inner doubts deep into one's unconscious, is not real missionary work. Real missionary work is no different than real life or real practice. It is open-ended, putting no limits on mind or speech, a constant encounter with one's own limitations and a constant practice of overcoming those limitations. It isn't about overcoming the limitations in others, ever.

The limitations one encounters in others are always and only opportunities to deal with one's own inner doubts and demons and limits, for we react to what we have in ourselves. If we find ourselves reacting to doubt-mind in someone else, and trying to remedy that by preaching the gospel of Adidam (or whatever one is into), one has to recognize that and simply stop it, turn on a dime, and deal instead with one's own doubts, until there is no more reaction left in us. That's what there is to learn from these kinds of encounters, by which I mean virtually all of human life. What relationships are not like this, not just ultimately, but in everyday practice? Life is series of confrontations with ourselves, played out in a drama of outer forms and circumstances, but always a means for us to deal with ourselves, rather than try to fix or cure or convert others to our point of view.

That is what I've learned at least from my time in Adidam and my time out of Adidam. It's not, I think, a point of view that is in conflict with basic Adidam dharma. I think it's a fairly universal lesson we all need to learn, and something I need to keep learning and practicing with. It would be good if people in Adidam could learn that from these sorts of encounters, and be willing to have genuinely open-ended discussions with public people and even critics of Adidam like Elias. It's one of the best ways to purify oneself of cultism and all its artifacts in the mind, which are essentially forms of “closed-mindedness”. This is to be done by resorting to that inner and transcendental aspect of mind that is not limited by doubt and separation, but which is always prior to these. This aspect of mind is the true “heart” of the mind, and it is always available to us, under any circumstances, and it isn't a form of preachy repetition of the right words and phrases, it's an open-ended and loving embrace of whatever crazy circumstance or relationship one is in.

So anyway, I hope that this little message of minds gets read by Greg or others in Adidam who have some honest interest in genuinely “making satsang available”. This is I hope at least a decent pointer to how to do that. Elias unfortunately mentions in his follow-up discussion on his forum that some of the Adidam people seem to have withdrawn from Facebook and suggests that this might be the result some inside decision to not engage the public in this way, but to stay away from such open encounters that can't be controlled or that might result in some kind of embarrassment to the organization. That's too bad.

The Adidam organization needs to get over its embarrassment phobia. That should have been done away with back in the Garbage and the Goddess days, but somehow it persists all the way up to the present. I mean honestly, Adi Da's public reputation was ruined way back then, there's really nothing left to lose. Which is actually a good thing, if those people have the courage to embrace that set of facts. It means they could, if they were insightful and secure enough in themselves, actually engage the public in an open-ended manner and simply allow what comes of that to flow naturally from their own faith in their Guru. One thing needs to be clear – that would be the sign of real faith, not this endless attempt to control all interactions with the public and ram the gospel of Adidam down their throats. Why not just live their faith without preaching it at all? It's the living, not the preaching, that is the real “missionary work”, after all. One can still talk dharma and make communcations about it and so forth, but it's no longer a form of preaching, it's just a way of engaging people in a way that's interesting and meaningful. Many people do like dharma discussions, and in Adidam there's a lot of dharma to discuss. None of it needs to be preached however. And everyone, including perhaps especially the most inner-circle devotees, has lots of doubts and questions about it. Most of those are quite reasonable and need to be addressed.

No one can actually quell or answer anyone else's doubts and questions, but one can at least be a sounding board for them. And by being a sounding board, one can also examine one's own doubts and questions, since all too often we share them with those who ask them. The process of actually and honestly looking into these matters is not easy, and we can't presume to have done that until we really are free of the illusions of doubt-mind ourselves. Until then, we have to be very honest about the presence in ourselves of these same doubts and questions, and not see ourselves as having the answers, but as engaging in a consideration in which we are really asking ourselves what we understand, and not merely mouthing the answers our minds have read. We can of course put forth the answers we have come up with, or have read about, but as something that is always worthy of crticism and critique, not deification. The problem with these kinds of discussion of Adidam dharma is that none of the Adidam devotees actually want to enter into a critique of the Adidam dharma, they want to make an icon out of it, which is actually a way of killing it, putting it in a coffin, and raising it above the dias of Saint and Ear, which is what happens to Quandra (the questioner) in the Mummery.

Adidam devotees really ought to examine the meaning of that teaching symbol and how it applies to their failure to actually critique the questions they have deep within themselves. Rather than killing them through religious cultism, they need to bring them to life and deal with them in life, in relationship, in the world of give and take and the struggle to understand ourselves.

Transcending Language and Concepts in the Adidam Teachings

2011-03-19T19:34:00.000-07:00

I recently came across an interesting Facebook exchange between Elias Oz and several Daists that peeked my interest for a number of reasons. I'm not sure if this posting is the whole of their interaction or just an exert, but it's rather revealing about the current state of mind in Adidam. The conversation doesn't end well, in that the primary devotee involved, Greg Wells, decides that unless Elias wants to make use of the conversation "to be reconciled in your relationship with Adi Da Samraj", and to relate to Greg as "your friend and bridge to your True Heart", then Wells is going to end the conversation and de-friend Elias. To top it off, he then accuses Elias of "projecting".

This is all a little sad, especially in that Greg says he's been living on Naitauba for many years, and thus represents the dedicated core of Adidam devotees, and not some peripheral newcomer. It just goes to show how few people in Adidam can actually relate to outsiders in an ordinary human way, without an agenda. One can't fault Greg his devotion to Adi Da, but rather than letting it be free, he seems to tie it to an agenda, a missionary agenda it seems, and can't simply relate to Elias without that agenda guiding him. This is part of the problem with missionaries – like multi-level marketing salesmen, they only value their human exchanges to the degree that it fits their sales agenda, and people get cut off and discarded for the “crime” of not buying into that purpose. So once Greg realizes that Elias isn't conversing with him for the purpose of fulfilling this missionary agenda, he cuts him off and discards him, trashing him along the way as closed and adolescent. But what is more adolescent than seeing people only as objects of one's missionary agenda, and cutting off any relationship with outsiders that doesn't serve that agenda? The logic here is rather deadly and even sub-adolescent. It's a childish approach that ignores anyone who isn't there to feed them.

Elias for his part comes off quite well, all things considered. And I say this as someone who's had more than his share of conflicted run-ins with Elias, and knows his various debating games quite well. Not much of that seems in evidence here. Now, maybe there's something missing from the exert, but from what is visible it seems Elias is just having a polite disagreement or debate about some simple issues regarding Adidam teachings and his own point of view about all that. He doesn't seem to be creating any personal conflict over this, and he deals quite well with someone who is getting offended by the slightest issues. For example, Elias says that sometimes Da was sloppy in his use of the term “heart”, and this is regarded as an almost capital offense by Greg and other Daists, who not only mount a defense of Da, but quickly turn it into a direct personal attack on Elias. Whether Da was sloppy or not in this regard, it's hardly the most critical thing one could say about him, and there's really no need to be concerned about protecting some imaginary threat to Da's reputation here. Elias starts to run into the problem that so many Daists seem to have – it's simply inconceivable to them that anyone could ever criticize anything Da ever said or did, and when someone does, they get very defensive and then heavily offensive in rapid succession. Demands are made that Elias retract his statement, and soon there's a total collapse on the Daist end of the discussion.

Now, it is true that Elias makes some critical comments about the Daists in the discussion, their making an idol of Adi Da, their questioning of whether Elias even has the right to make criticisms of Adi Da, but these all seem very reasonable comments and not condemnations. From what I can see, Elias is genuinely trying to engage these folks in a conversation about Da without any particular agenda in mind, and he's basically just addressing the issues that get in the way of having an open conversation. Elias has his own point of view about Da to be sure, one that I don't always agree with, but all he seems to want to do is to have an exchange of views, whereas the Daists are really just wanting to impose their views on the conversation, and see no other point in having a conversation except to get Elias to see things their way and thus be “healed” of his disturbed relationship with Da. Elias, however, doesn't see a disturbance in his relationship with Da, and doesn't see any need to heal it therefore.

It's a case of the Daists playing the old “gom-boo” game on Elias, trying to convince him that he has a disease that needs to be healed, and then selling him the method to heal that disease so as to lock him into their fold once again. And if Elias doesn't buy that method, he's only making his disease worse, rejecting the help he needs and thus siding with darkness and evil. Da used to be quite adamant about how insidiously destructive this kind of religious message is, and how the teachings of Adidam should not be understood or communicated that way. The strange thing here of course is that the only person in this conversation who seems aware of this and is able to apply its intelligence is the critical ex-Daist, Elias, and not the devoted members of Adidam. Talk about irony.

The whole conversation reminds me of how problematic the language and concepts of spiritual teaching are. What we have here is a classic example of the failure to communicate due to incompatible concepts and language. It's interesting that the turning point of the conversation hinges on the topic of language itself, and Da's use of it. This issue of what is meant by the term “heart”, capitalized or not, only confirms that despite Da's intense scrutiny of the language he used in his teachings, a great many ambiguities remain. The Daists here make some good points about the difference between “heart” and “Heart”, but this only ends up confirming Elias' notion that Da's use of language is problematic, even in regards to this central aspect of his teaching. In fact, their inability to admit that such ambiguities remain in Da's teaching, and that they themselves have stumbled into a number of those problems, is what leads them to cut Elias off and refuse to converse further with them. An honest Daist would have to admit that even Da's teaching is not perfectly free of such conceptual difficulties and misunderstandings, but these are not honest people, and so their arguments degenerate from logical points to mere assertions of Da's ultimate status as the Perfect Realizer. The idea here is that Da is the ultimate spiritual source and authority, and thus there is no room for any discussion that is not resolved by accepting Da's Person as God and his Word as Truth, regardless of whether we actually understand what is being said or how to apply it, much less whether it's even true or in what sense it's true.

I'm reminded of a great Danny Devito-Kevin Spacey movie called “The Big Kahuna”, in which those actors play salesmen at a convention who are trying to land a big account. They bring along a young gung-ho salesman to help show him the ropes. They find out that he's a fundamentalist Christian, righteously pure and certain of his own honesty and goodness, who ends up totally undermining their efforts by finally gaining access to the “Big Kahuna” fellow, but spending the whole conversation evangelizing him about Christianity rather than just doing his job. There's a great speech at the end of the movie where Danny Devito explains to the kid that despite his ideas of himself as being a servant of God, he's a deeply dishonest and inhuman fellow, who really needs to change if he ever wants to become even a decent human being. And this is the same problem with many of these Daists, because in this sense Adidam is no different from many other forms of fundamentalist religion. Rather than just engaging in an honest conversation about ordinary “business” - in this case, a discussion of dharma – these folks somehow feel the need to evangelize and convert anyone they engage in a discussion of dharma.

In the Facebook discussion, a number of Daists talk about what an honest and good person Greg is, and this is precisely why I think the reference to “The Big Kahuna” applies. Many people in fundamentalist religions think that honesty and goodness is actually about trying to convert people to their point of view. I'm sure that Greg does seem like a good and honest fellow, but in this discussion he isn't. He's actually being dishonest and driven by an agenda, rather than merely having an honest exchange of views. He's not even listening to Elias. He's not considering the possibility that Elias is saying some things that are true, and honestly trying to understand what those are and how to take that into account. Instead, he just abandons any pretense of listening to Elias in any human way, and proceeds to preach the gospel of Adidam, and assert the perfect Divinity of Adi Da. Literally. This is not cultivating a relationship, it isn't being a friend to Elias, it isn't being honest, and it isn't even providing a bridge by which to heal Elias of any problems he might have with Adi Da, if he actually has any - if that is even Greg's purpose. Which it is not, really, because Greg doesn't seem to have any real idea of how to actually do that. Because he's not even learned the basic lessons of the gom-boo trap, how could he have any facility in the rest of the dharma, much less in anything resembling a living relationship to Adi Da?

What is Greg's real agenda? It would seem from this conversation that it is to create a cult around Adi Da and to justify that cult using all the concepts and language of Adidam. This is how religions operate, to be sure. We see Christians using the concepts and language of Jesus to create a cult around him as well. The result is that the concepts and language of a religion become the barriers to the actual realization of that very religion. Cultic Christians become loveless and righteous persecutors of heretics and those who disagree with them, and use Christian language and concepts to justify themselves. And Daists do something similar here, even raising the very concept of heresy in the process. They have lots and lots of Daist language to throw around, but none of it is actually used to further anyone's understanding or spiritual realization, it is used instead as protective armor to keep the religious ego intact. The more threatened they feel, the more this language comes out, until the whole conversation is smothered in it, and the life-blood of “consideration” is clogged with capitalizations. What becomes of the heart then? Is it not closed off and deadened by all these religious concepts?

The tragic fact of life in all spiritual teachings is that the very concepts and language that are used to communicate its truths are also the very means by which those same truths can be destroyed and covered over. I'm best known as a critic of Adidam, but even I will acknowledge that there are some good and valuable truths in the Adidam teachings. So it is a shame I think to see even those worthy truths destroyed by those wielding its teachings as a cultic club against heretics. Perhaps I am particularly sensitive to this given my personal history, but I don't think almost anyone outside of the Adidam cult, and even many inside it of more open minds, would disagree here. At least I hope they would not. And I say that in the sincere hope that Adidam will someday emerge from its internal cultic mentality and be able to actually engage the world, and even critics like Elias, in honest conversation. I'm not holding my breath, and I don't have any personal stake in it anymore one way or the other, but it would be a good sign at least that the world isn't going totally to shit.

If we examine the content of many of the Daist arguments in this discussion, we can see how deeply embedded in Adidam culture many of these misunderstandings are. In particular, we see this obsession with the ego as the defining reality of an individual's life. This is precisely the “gom-boo” problem that Da once addressed, but which doesn't seem to have been absorbed very deeply into Adidam culture. Perhaps because Da himself had only observed it, but not fully realized it himself in his own life and his subsequent teachings reflect that. So his devotees are likewise reflecting that inability to absorb this insight into the religious life. It's certainly common enough that many of us have brilliants insights into spirituality and realization, but are not able to fully incorporate that into are life and fully realize it. Da would not be the first to suffer that kind of incompleteness. We can all become guilty of our own forms of hypocrisy in the course of our human relationships without being much aware of it, so there's nothing special there. Even accomplished spiritual figures make these kinds of errors. So it's hardly unexpected that Da's devotees would also demonstrate a certain lack here. No harm in pointing it out, but if they won't even engage in a conversation about it, it's not likely to be remedied any time soon.

Elias' basic point about the heart remains. He says, “What I am saying is that the heart is always open. You don't have to open it. All you can do is realize it.” This is the real deal, the real “fundamental truth” that all good fundamentalists ought to know and affirm. Instead, however, the Daists get very reactive to this statement, and try to put it down, and put Elias down for making it. Some try to clarify the issue by pointing out that Da uses “heart” to refer to the “emotional heart”, and “Heart” to refer to the transcendental Being prior to the body-mind. However, this actually confuses the issue even further, as if there are really two hearts, one merely emotional, or conditional, and the other transcendental and unconditional.

These teachings on the “closed heart” refer, if I am not mistaken, to the notion of the “knots”, and particularly the “granthi bedha” knot in the right side of the heart. This causal center was pointed to by Ramana Maharshi as a reflection from the point of view of the body-mind of the ignorance at the core of all suffering. He spoke of how this knot opens in true Self-Realization, and how otherwise it appears to be closed, or only partially active, creating by reflection the “I”-thought that rises to the Sahasrar and then descends through the body, animating the mind and life with all the qualities of the separate “I”.

However, in Ramana's teaching this “heart knot” is actually an illusory appearance, born of ignorance. In reality, as Elias says, the heart is always open, always awake, always self-aware. In fact, one of Ramana's most famous teachings was that the only thing preventing realization was the thought that we are not realized. If that is done away with, then realization is obviously already the case for us and all beings. However, he also makes it clear that the thought he is speaking of is the “I”-thought, and not merely the superficial thoughts we have about whether we are realized or not. That is why the primary practice he recommended was to inspect this “I”-thought and to see that there was no “there” there, that it was essentially empty and non-existent, and that the actual truth was that we are, in reality, the very Truth that we are seeking. Seeing this truth demolishes the illusion that the ego is our true identity, and thus destroys this “I”-thought at its root. When that illusion is cut off at the heart, then the heart is said to “open”. But Ramana makes it clear that this is only a matter of speech based on the perspective of an outsider. The realizer himself sees that there was never any obstruction at all, no closed heart, and thus no opening of the heart. In reality, even the appearance of a closed heart was an illusion all along, and when that illusion is seen through, there is no need to open the heart because it is already open. So the heart never actually opens, only the illusion that it was ever closed is dissolved.

From the perspective of those still believing in illusions, however, it looks as if the realizer's heart is opened. And much effort is perhaps mistakenly made trying to emulate that and open one's own heart. But all such efforts are in vain, because the problem to be addressed is not the closed heart, but the illusion that the heart is closed. Elias seems at least sensitive to this issue, and remains adamant in affirming the nature of the heart as opened. He wisely does not accede to the point of view that the heart is closed and must be opened, but rather to the point of view that the heart is opened, and only the illusion that it is closed must be done away with.

Unfortunately, the Daists he is arguing with seem unaware of this flaw in the teachings that they follow. (Whether that flaw exists in Da's teaching, or is only inserted into it by ignorant devotees, is hard to say. What is clear is that they are following flawed teachings, and are not aware of it). There are severe consequences to following teachings like this, which assert the reality of the closed heart, and thus of the ego, and all its immensely complicated implications. For one, once the heart is assumed to be closed in us, the goal must be to open it, and spiritual practices are then conceived of as aimed at opening the heart, and actually engaged for that purpose, and in a manner that will somehow practically achieve this goal. However, all such practices are doomed to fail because they are not based in the understanding that the heart is already open, and the illusion that it is closed is just that. So such practices never work. They are always aiming at curing an imaginary disease. They do not realize that such efforts only perpetuate the imaginary disease, rather than relieve us of it. They in turn become very attached to their imaginary disease, and make much of it, and tell themselves over and over again that the most serious spiritual practitioners are those who take this disease very seriously, and make the most dedicated efforts to cure it, heal it, and open the heart to God. Even worse, they tell themselves and others that those who point out that the heart is open are not serious spiritual practitioners, are stuck in mental delusions, are not transcending the ego, and are not qualified to criticize them even.

So Elias gets accused of being an adolescent mind-case stuck in illusions, when that is clearly a projection from their own diseased imaginations. Not that Elias isn't adolescent or a mind case, like the rest of us, or not fully realized himself, but that's hardly the relevant point in this discussion. The relevant point is that he's perfectly right about the nature of the heart, and that has to be acknowledged, regardless of what one might think of him as a critic of Adidam. We all have our problems, but it's important to realize what our problems are. They are not the having of closed hearts, they are the complex belief in an imaginary disease called “closed-heartitis”. It is this imaginary belief system that has to be dealt with, not any kind of closed heart phenomena we need to take seriously. And that imaginary belief system is not something we should take seriously. It's a joke, literally. Taking it seriously merely feeds it. It needs to be laughed at and derided, not made the basis for a religion. Laughing at it might make us seem to “open the heart”, but this is never actually be the case. We are merely getting a glimpse of the open heart, by abandoning to some degree the stupid belief we have in the closed heart. It's an important distinction that can save much time and grief on everyone's part.

It's a shame the Daists Elias engaged don't even seem to have an intellectual understanding of this issue, much less a practicing grasp of it. It's a point of criticism for the whole of Da's teachings that this simple matter has not been properly addressed, as it has been in Ramana Maharshi's teachings, say. I suppose by reading this some Daists might see the value in this perspective, and even point to aspects of Da's teaching that make this same point, but it would appear that it's not been strongly emphasized enough either by Da himself or the community, otherwise we would not see these kinds of conversations break down over issues like this that ought to be well understood by everyone in Adidam, especially people as deeply involved as Greg.

And that is part of the problem with framing one's teaching in the way that Adi Da has done. A spiritual teacher must choose certain concepts and forms of language and arguments to frame his teachings and his realization, based on what will actually work to help devotees get beyond their limitations, even of mind and language. Ramana did a pretty good job of that, in that those who study his teachings acquire a fairly good grasp of this radical approach to the heart. In Adidam, however, this radical approach seems not terribly well understood, and part of the reason for that is the way in which Adi Da framed his arguments, what language and concepts he used, what he emphasized and what he did not emphasize.

For example, Adi Da famously centered his arguments on the criticism of all beings as narcissus, and pointed to the “self-contraction” as an activity we are all engaged in that was responsible for our closed hearts. The problem with this framing of the argument is that it reinforces a widespread sense of shame, guilt and responsibility for our suffering, as if we actually have committed a real crime of some sort against the heart, rather than merely mistakenly come to believe that we have committed a real crime. The result of that belief is a very complicated religion that is always trying to undo something we think we've actually done to ourselves, this “self-contraction”, rather than understanding that the very notion is an illusion, and not something that has ever actually been done by us. And not surprisingly, it's a religion which hardly ever seems to get anywhere, because it only ends up affirming the reality of the ego and the disease of “closed-heartitis”.

I can of course relate to that personally, in that the kinds of knee-jerk reactions we see in this conversation are something I myself experienced and personally enacted myself while in Adidam due to my long study and practice of the Adidam teachings. One could say I was responsible for that myself, and that's true enough, but it also reflects the simple fact that people with a certain kind of self-suppressed and shameful sense of ego and the consequent illusions about realization that it fosters are both attracted to Adidam and kept in those illusions by the teachings of Adidam, which subtly reinforce them by the very kinds of arguments we see in this Facebook conversation. Getting beyond those illusions is not terribly easy within the framework of the Adidam teachings and community, and many of those who try end up having to leave. That is a serious flaw in both those teachings and the way in which they have been put into practice.

Leaving Adidam was very helpful for me, in that it enabled me to more directly inspect and be done with all kinds of illusions about spiritual practice and realization that are reinforced within Adidam, particularly this matter of the “closed heart”. It's hard not to bring these issues up, like Elias has done here, when talking with Daists in any depth about the reasons why people like us left. However, instead of actually dealing with these issues directly, Daists tend to begin making personal attacks on people like Elias, and accuse them of various crimes against Adi Da and Truth and God, and shirking responsibility for the ego, which they continue to believe in contrary to all testimony from realizers. This ends up going nowhere, which is a shame, because some of these folks could really learn something important in the process, if they weren't so attached to a certain iconic belief not just in Da himself, but in their own grasp of what he was about.

Instead, they ramble on about contemplation of Da or satsang with the Guru being the means to realization. But they don't seem to understand what that even means. What is the whole point of contemplation of the Guru or the practice of satsang? It's to see that the heart is always open, and that we are never at any moment in the position we fear ourselves to be. We are afraid that our hearts are closed, that we are cut off from God, and that fear creates our world – a world of egos with closed hearts. The truth, however, demolishes that world, because it reveals that our heart has never been closed at all. And these Daists, instead of embracing that truth, are rejecting it and clinging to the notion that their hearts are closed and need to be opened first, before they can enjoy realization. And that is why they are stuck and in a self-perpetuating logic that descends into cultism whenever this is pointed out.

It would sure be nice if even at a superficial level this problem could be acknowledged and accepted within Adidam, and steps taken to correct it. You cannot get deep without starting at the surface. That's why the concepts and language of spiritual teaching are important and have to be addressed when they create errors of circular logic like this. We have to be very of what we actually think about these matters, because how we think about them determines our approach and our practice. Not that merely addressing these matters at the level of language and concept is enough, but it's a necessary start. One has to become relatively clear about these basic matters if one is going to make any real progress or achieve any meaningful maturity. It's possible to become so stuck in various self-destructive teaching memes that one can't ever get free of them, until one actually stops, looks at them, and has the courage to throw them away, even the ones we were most attached to. Especially those ones.

The whole “message” of the realizers is that all of us are exactly the same. As Ramana said, we are all jnanis, the only difference is that not all of us are aware of that. So the whole point of satsang with the realizer is to be in the company of someone who knows who we are in reality, that we are all the Divine Person. The genuine realizer helps you feel the reality of who you are merely by being with them. They are not there to emphasize some imaginary difference between themselves and their devotees, as if prior to realization you are not the Divine, only afterwards. No, they are they to show us and help us to understand that even now, however fucked up we may seem to be, we are the same Divine Being that the realizer knows himself to be. When we feel that Divinity in their company, we are not feeling them, we are feeling ourselves. We are relaxing enough to enjoy the bliss of our own real nature. Calling that “transmission” is very misleading, if one takes it literally. The realizer does not transmit anything, because we are not lacking anything that need to be given us. The only “gift” the realizer gives is the gift of direct knowledge into ourselves. To see the realizer and only proclaim his greatness, and to think of ourselves as little egos in his infinite Presence, is to miss the whole point the realizer is trying to make.

And that of course is the problem with Adidam in a nutshell. Adi Da emphasized to an extreme degree that egos are egos, realizers are realizers, and that until realization devotees are egos and he is the realizer, and that the only way to become a realizer is through him, and never you forget it. This is contrary to all the great and ancient teachings of the Gurus about realization. Their message is that right now, you are That. Right now. Not in the future, not only after realization, but right now. And by endlessly repeating that message, not just in language but in the silence of deepest feeling, we begin to awaken to this truth and know it. The whole point of satsang is to “listen” to that endless teaching of the Guru about the truth of the devotee, in this very moment, until we fully accept it and surrender to it. The heart is always open and present here, as our very Being. The ego is nothing more than the false belief that this is not so.

Actual Reports of Speaking One's Mind in Adidam

2011-01-19T12:55:00.000-08:00

After my last post slamming the Basket of Tolerance Quote of the Day website for not being straight up about either the Basket of Tolerance or its relationship to Adi Da, I did a little searching among Adidam-related blogs and found Adi Da Acausal, which is at least an honest and straightforward one in which the writer "says what's on his mind". It's written by a devotee who unfortunately won't give out his real name. Not sure why that seems to be the case with these devotees.

In any case, at least the author of this site puts his devotion to Adi Da up front and doesn't try to hide it behind some facade of calculated objectivity. He's a true believer, and makes no bones about it, and tries to explain himself and his relationship to Adi Da as best he can. One can argue with the content and its rationale, but at least both reader and blogger know what they are talking about. There's something refreshing about that, coming from Adidam, and perhaps its a sign that following Adi Da's death there's going to be some loosening of the stranglehold the institutional people have had on ordinary devotee's ability to speak their minds in public.

Of course, perhaps even this author is very reluctant to talk about some of the more controversial, personal aspects of Adi Da's teaching, relationship to devotees, abusive behavior, sex, money, exploitation, etc. And perhaps the anonymity of the blog is in part designed to shield his identity not just from the public, but from internal Adidam watchdogs as well. Or maybe he's just shy. But one does find some refreshing candor in his posts, including Adidam as a Mountain-Yet To Be Climbed, in which he makes the following observation:

Often I feel this about Adidam–meaning the practice and its ultimate outcome–It stands like an unclimbed peak, unchartered, unknown and pathless. It can be talked about, speculated on but no one has managed by Grace or effort to get passed the lower slopes

Adi Da Samraj particulary in His later years, closed all loop holes that may have allowed an egoic foothold here or there, so on first inspection it looks like a sheer climb, an ice chasm, with nowhere to start and no summit visible from the ground, a conundrum of sorts

I have looked at it from many angles and speculated on a possible approach that would allow a means to make a start, to get a foot hold, even a cleft of rock to pivot upon, each time I thought I may be on to something, the grip has given way upon testing and shown itself not to be workable.

Even now I think it may be possible, a new approach that will meet all the criteria and yet allow a passage… harder than passing through the eye of a needle, perhaps. One thing is for sure no “ego” can get even a foothold here.

A couple of things here. Although it's true that no one in Adidam has gotten past the base of this mountain, it's not as if there is no detailed “map” of how one is supposed to climb the mountain. The whole detailed teaching of Adi Da, written in thousands and thousands of pages, with all its instructions, stages, and so forth, is the map. The “path” is not pathless. It's just untraveled beyond the base. For that reason, however, we can't tell if the map is a good one, an accurate one, or just an error-filled mock-up that is not as useful as advertised. For that matter, it's hard to say that even his “base” instructions are good ones, or that they are a good preparation for climbing the mountain. It's certainly possible that no one has climbed this mountain because the preparation one gets at the base is inadequate or points people in wrong directions. I'd say that's the conclusion I came to, and why I left. But others obviously think differently, and its good to hear someone in Adidam at least describing his process of figuring these matters out.

For that reason I'd like to give at least qualified praise to this fellow. He's at least trying to be relatively transparent about his own experience with the Adidam teachings. Not everything he says makes sense or adds up, but at least he's putting it out there for others to examine. And that helps people grow, so it's important to encourage that. He even tries to grapple with some of the contradictions in Adi Da's teachings, such as the problem of “exclusivity”. In his post Q:Is Adi Da Teaching Exclusivity-One Way or Path to God, he at first tries to describe Adidam as a non-exclusive path because:

Adidam (which can mean the institution itself, and the practice of Adidam) is based on a most radical assumption- that all beings already are even now completely one with Real God, clearly then no one is ever separated from Real God or can ever be damned or denied that same condition so in that sense there can be no exclusive means or path to the Divine including any religious means because none are necessary, since the condition sought can never be attained or to put it another way “can never be lost or found ” or to put it even more realistically, all traditional paths and religious means are doomed to fail in there quest for Ultimate Realization, that is not to dispute all the traditional states of realization, samadhi or enlightenment, they certainly are attainable, that is not doubted and there have always been and will always remain great and lesser Realizers of these most honorable traditions (Including Christianity, Judaism, Sufism, Hinduism, Buddhism and all the other major and minor genuine traditions)

Quite a run-on sentence, but the sentiment is clear. And yet, it sounds pretty exclusive still, even if trying to be tolerant and appreciative of those outside the club, so to speak. But even he seems to sense this – one of the results of honestly speaking your mind is that you can't help reflecting on some of the crap that comes out - so at one point he just gives up trying to defend Adidam's non-exclusive status and reverses himself:

...having said all of that, there is only One means to the Divine Realization and the Absolute Freedom that is the Seventh Stage Realization of Reality Itself or Real God and that is through the means of Avatar Adi Da Samraj and His Agency: Adidam. So yes it is “exclusive” in that sense and there is no use saying it is otherwise. Adi Da Samraj makes it abundantly clear, overwhelmingly clear that this is exactly the case. An example is the constant use of the “Only-By-Me-Given”. It is constant and the devotee or regular reader of Adi Da’s Work may get a little immune to it, but it remains a blunt reminder for anyone who starts getting too universalistic, egalitarian and idealistic about the process (as is my own tendency).

As with many others my own tendency is to dilute that aspect of Adidam, in my own case because it smacks so much of the hideous “One Way” messages of Christianity and many other (if not all) exoteric religions. To date I have tended to deny this reality of Adidam and be almost an apologist for its possibility, but I clearly note this is an internal conflict of mine, and many others have no problem with it all, and are very clear on the matter as is Avatar Adi Da.

I have to agree that this is what Adi Da taught, and even the writer's self-aware reluctance to fully accept it can't change that. At least the fellow is self-aware of the contradiction between his own sense for spiritual reality, and the claims of Adi Da to this kind of exclusive “all must go through me” sovereign superiority to all other paths. There's at least a hint of a real conscience here, not yet drummed into line by the demands for full belief. The question remains, however: if this fellow has only stayed at the base of the mountain, how does he know that this is true at the higher and ultimate levels of the mountain? Yes, Da says it's true, but how can it be anything but sheer belief if one hasn't actually been there and done it? Elsewhere he tries to describe Adidam as a path that eschews belief, but he doesn't say how his faith in Adidam as the One true path to Divine Realization is anything but that. Well, at least he's struggling with such issues, which is a good thing.

The blogger behind this site doesn't appear to be a newbie to Adidam – he says he came across the teachings in the 1970s – but it's not clear how long he's been a practicing student. He seems fairly happy being a devotee, and not embarrassed by it, or hiding it, which is good all the way around. If I was harsh on the previous BoT website, it was because it had none of these virtues, not because it was championing Adi Da. In fact, I was harsh on it precisely because it didn't champion Adi Da, but tried to create some devious little entrapment route that not minimized it's author's involvement with Adidam, but even minimized any reference to Da's work with the BoT and what it means. At a certain level I could care less whether someone is a devotee of Da's or not, as long as they are earnest in their practice and don't willfully deceive others. People can practice some form of genuine spirituality in almost any form or tradition or path, as long as their intentions (and actions) are honest and straight. It's possible to do this in Adidam, of course. It may be even easier now that Adi Da isn't around anymore to get in the way of the honest man's path. At least I reserve some small hope there for people like this blogger.

Speaking One's Mind In Adidam - Not!

2011-01-18T15:43:00.000-08:00

A comment on a previous post asks if I've seen the fairly recently created blog Basket of Tolerance Quote of the Day, an Adidam semi-stealth site, and what I think of it.

After perusing the site superficially, I can only say that content-wise, it's pretty superficial and inoffensive. The author of the site, who doesn't give his name other than the handle "BOTstudent", seems not to have any real love for Adi Da's Basket of Tolerance list, or if he does, he hides it very well. Nor does he show much insight into it. The entries are bland and boring, even deliberately so. There's no obvious effort to introduce Adi Da's teachings into discussion, or to explain his point of view about the books discussed. In fact, he's hardly mentioned at all. Nor is the Basket of Tolerance even explained as a concept or a spiritual philosophy.

This is might seem puzzling, in that it appears obvious that BOTstudent is clearly an active member of Adidam. All the links on the site are to other Adidam-related sites. Most of the commentators on the site are people I recognize as long-term Adidam students. The whole point of the site would appear to be a missionary effort of “public outreach”. So while the content of the site isn't much worth commenting on, what is says about Adidam is.

The site appears to follow the lines of several other stealth sites Adidam devotees have created over the years, such as Chris Tong's “Practical Spirituality” sites, which included some of the most gawdawful pseudo-Adidam pablum I've ever come across. Chris has created a number of stealth and pseudo-stealth sites, and a few outright promotional sites which clearly present themselves as Adidam-oriented, such as Adidam Up Close And Personal, which at least has the courage to put forward some of Adi Da's actual teachings. This site, on the other hand, is trying to establish credibility as in some way impartial or not missionary oriented, while in fact being completely partisan and missionary oriented.

It reminds me of the old joke about the Hollywood agent who said he'd almost gotten his act together, all he had to do now was get that whole “sincerity thing” down. So this is Adidam trying to get its “sincerity” thing down, while yet being utterly insincere. The idea, I guess, is to promote the Basket of Tolerance as some kind of impartial book collection of nifty spiritual titles, and leave out everything about it that Adi Da actually said or did with it in order to not offend anyone. The attempt here is to eliminate any whiffs of “cultism” from the Basket of Tolerance, while not actually doing anything to stop being a cult. The hope is that people will like the neutered Basket of Tolerance and be drawn closer and closer to the Adidam teachings through it, and eventually get religion and join up and Adidam will finally start growing again rather than dying out. So the BoT is supposed to serve as a bridge to Adidam. Or, one might less kindly call it a classic cult bait-and-switch technique. Boil the frog slowly, is the idea.

The problem is that boiling frogs slowly doesn't actually work, despite the popularity of the metaphor, and this kind of site won't work either. In fact, my negative reactions to the site don't stem from my overall criticisms of Adi Da and his teachings, but from my own personal appreciation for the Basket of Tolerance and Da's work with it, regardless of how flawed that work might have been. I was one of Adi Da's “scholars” so to speak, and I put a fair amount of energy into working with the Basket of Tolerance over my years there. I was the first person to actually write up a lengthy structural outline of the books on the list and make it possible for people to see the internal logic and intelligence behind it. And to this day I'd say that for better or worse it's one of Adi Da's most meaningful accomplishments.

It's certainly the only truly consistent project he ever worked on throughout his whole teaching career. In fact, one could say that it's how he began his teaching career, in that the first public, missionary type work he did was to create a public bookstore in Los Angeles in 1972. In creating that bookstore, Da went through a considerable amount of spiritual literature to sort the wheat from the chaff, and I think he did an excellent job. In fact, when I first came across Adidam three years later, it was at the San Francisco bookstore, and I was very much impressed with the quality of the books on the shelves, which were several cuts above the usual new-age spiritual bookstores I'd seen previously. From those intitial selections, Da began to review and compile a list that over the years grew into the tens of thousands, and created a structure to them that had all kinds of philosophical and spiritual implications to it. He kept doing this throughout his life, all the way up to his death. So you could say in some respects that this is a huge part of his life's work.

And what are these pseudo-stealth devotees doing with that? Apparently they are too embarrassed by Da's actual work on the Basket of Tolerance to even mention him, other than to credit him with creating the list in the first place. They certainly aren't writing about these books in a manner that points to Da's teachings or point of view or his writings about them. They aren't creating any forum for discussion of those views, or even acknowledging that they are his devotees. And it does seem questionable whether these people really are Da's devotees, even if they seem to be so. Would real devotees of any Guru present themselves or their Guru in this manner? I hardly think so. They are doing a serious disservice to Adi Da in hiding their own involvement with him, and Adi Da's own work with the BoT from readers.

What exactly are they afraid of? That someone, somewhere, will find out that they are a cult? Well, that horse is out of the barn. Best to just live with it and be upfront and honest about who you are and what you think is true, and let others react or be attracted as they will. This kind of stealth promotional work just makes Adi Da's devotees look like cowards who are ashamed of themselves and their religion. But this kind of dishonesty is so endemic to Adidam they probably don't know any other way to do it. The idea of just being yourself and speaking your mind isn't something they think can be done, not in Adidam at least. No one is allowed to do that. And yet, even this goes against Adi Da's teachings.

When I was in Adi Da's inner world for a while, serving as his “court astrologer”, I was sometimes given the opportunity to present to him in person a whole series of things I'd been working on regarding his astrology and his possible past lives. The morning of one particular presentation scheduled for that evening that was going to have an audience of some 30 or so inner circle people, he gave me notes that explicitly instructed me to “say whatever is on your mind”. A part of me rebelled against that, because that's pretty much precisely the opposite of what most devotees did when they were around Adi Da. Everyone was so afraid of offending him or saying the wrong thing that they suppressed themselves and turned every conversation with him into a tactical affair of measured nuances and cultic praise. But certainly a part of me felt quite at home with being straightforward and honest. So in the afternoon, after a planning session for the presentation, I got another set of notes which also said, “Say whatever is on your mind”. And then, as we were all seated in his living room awaiting his arrival, as he came into the room followed by his two kanyas, just to make sure I got the point, one of them leaned over to me and handed me a piece of paper that said “Beloved wants to make sure you say whatever is on your mind”. And so began one of the more hilarious evenings of my time in Adidam, a wide-ranging conversation that went on for many hours, in which I tried to speak as much of my mind as I could.

That evening was a very important one for me, in that it helped push me further and further in the direction of openly speaking my mind, inside Adidam and outside. I thought it made me a better devotee, and also a better writer and astrologer. Unfortunately, it was not the sort of thing much appreciated or supported within Adidam, by virtually anyone. Except, at least in my own case, Adi Da himself. For a good time there, I had total communications access to Adi Da. Every one of my reports would be given to him unfiltered and unedited. He seemed to at least appreciate the fact that I was willing to speak my mind – up to a point I guess. When I began to speak critically of him, and even wrote some of those things to him, his response to even a fairly mild level of criticism was to tell me that he was “personally offended” by the implications of what I had to say. And that was used as a signal by the inner circle to shut me down and exclude me from both report-writing and darshan. Which I took as a sign that Adidam really just wasn't the place for me. But I will say that to his credit Adi Da finally got over his offense and invited me to come back and resume my previous position as court astrologer with all the same access. But by then I was simply done with the whole scene and couldn't go back.

That doesn't mean the principle of “speaking one's mind” goes against the grain of Adi Da's actual teachings, and how they ought to be presented to the public. Of course, maybe I'm the exception to the rule, but I don't think that's how it ought to be. All of Adi Da's devotees should speak their minds, regardless of how wrong the content of their minds might be. And they should do so publicly, as best they can, when talking about Adi Da's teachings and things he worked on like the Basket of Tolerance. What possible purpose is served by putting out this kind of dreckish, pre-digested bird-vomit? Even as a purely tactical effort, it's hopelessly pointless. People are attracted or repelled by strong views and opinions, which accounts in part for the reaction to Da, but they simply ignore milquetoast presentations of any kind. And why shouldn't they? If someone has no actual guts to stand up for what they believe in, why should anyone else care? If the writer of this site can't stand up and tell us about Adi Da and his work on the BoT, why should we think it's worth anything? Well, we won't.

To ring my own bell a little further, I recall a friend in the upper echelons of the Adidam missionary and publishing world telling me about a meeting they had about a book they planned to produce on Adi Da's art. The kanyas wanted me to write the book, but the editorial staff was a bit reluctant because I was something of a “loose cannon”. Some people at the meeting said, yes, but he's also the best writer in Adidam. And my friend spoke up and said, “No, he's the only writer in Adidam.” By which he meant that I was the only guy in Adidam who actually wrote in a real way, rather than in some weasily cultic manner. I appreciated his praise, but I don't actually think it was hyperbole. It's not that I was smarter or more skilled than anyone else, but it was true that I came from a place where genuine writing could at least be done, whereas most of the editorial department that wrote for the public was simply incapable of honest, up-front writing, and it degraded most everything they produced. Of course, it was another reason I found Adidam an intolerable place to live and even serve in.

That doesn't mean it always has to be that way. And yet, it probably will. Once again, I'm probably just tilting at windmills. As criticial of Adidam as I've been over the years, I've always hoped it would one day grow up and become capable of adult conversation about itself at the very least. So far, unfortunately, there's no indication that this will ever happen. This website certainly represents a futher move in the opposite direction entirely. These are not courageous early Christians willing to speak the truth as they see it and be martyred for their cause if necessary. These are people trying to devise a clever marketing plan that can arouse the least possible offense, and thus also the least possible interest, and somehow sneak people in through a back door.

I can understand it, I guess. Who really wants to be eaten by lions? Which, metaphorically speaking, is what would happen if they put themselves out there as they really see themselves and their world. Certainly there would be some serious confrontations with reality and with others who disagree with their views which might cause them to question the assumptions they've made about themselves and Adi Da. My “open mind” ended up leading me right out the door, after all. So there's risks involved. But it's all just on the level of “consideration”. Nobody is going to send actual lions their way. It's pretty cowardly to treat this as some kind of dangerous, armed struggle. It's just the usual set of religious and spiritual ideas and disputes in society where speaking one's mind is often actually appreciated. If you don't engage that, you don't get much of anything out of it. No guts, no glory.

Adi Da used to ask, “Where are my Vivekanandas”. Well, instead of Vivekananda's, he's got a battalion of Mr. Rogers'. I guess this is a fitting finale to the minor spiritual fiasco that was Adi Da's entire life and teaching, but even I would have hoped for something more interesting or dramatic or at least amusing. I suppose this is just an example of the banality of banality, and leave it at that.

Speaking of Psychic Encounters With Dead Gurus

2010-12-29T16:30:00.000-08:00

Last night I had an amusing dream of conversing with Neem Keroli Baba. We were in the backseat of a car and I looked over and saw Neem Keroli sitting next to me, and I thought, wow, I ought to take advantage of this and ask him the Big Question. So I leaned over and asked, "What is the best course for me to take towards realization?" I made it really clear in emphasizing "for me", that I wasn't looking for just general advice, but something specific for me right now in my current state. He looked a bit surprised at the question, and examined me up and down rather thoroughly to see if I was really serious about realization before answering. He finally seemed satisfied and said that the most important thing for me to do was to rely entirely on grace. I should surrender to grace, and let grace take me wherever it would. He indicated that it would probably even take me somewhere far away in the world, even in purely physical terms. I asked if that meant India, and he said maybe. It sounded like he didn't want to give me too much info, as that would defeat the purpose of relying on grace.

I asked him about Lakshmana and Saradama, and he said they were good people but he didn't really think they were my Gurus. He suggested that there might be someone else in the general vicinity of Arunachula who might be good to see, but he wouldn't offer a name or place. He just said something about monkey Gurus, which made me wonder if there was a Hanuman connection. Then I told him I had been involved with Adi Da for over twenty-five years, and he just laughed and repeated, "Twenty-five years? That must have taken its toll!" He said something like, another ten and I'd really have been wrecked.

He also recommended that I do a little yoga and some fasting, particularly before my trip. By this time we had arrived at our destination and were sitting down at a table and eating a meal, and the conversation continue on for a while. The great thing about Neem Keroli Baba was just how relaxed and ordinary he was, and how humorous his take on things was. His message about grace was simply spot on and exactly in line with my own recent considerations about practice.

Mature Surrender and Submission to the Guru's Instruction

2010-12-27T14:46:00.000-08:00

The fun and games with Elias continues in his latest post. I think I have to make clear that the personal issues in this thread are really quite peripheral as far as I am concerned. As much as Elias feels obligated to disparage me, it doesn't produce any ill feelings on my part, and I think I understand that even Elias doesn't really mean much of what he says. It's just the defensive reaction in him speaking. I've understood for a very long time that Elias can dish out criticism with the best of them, but he really can't take it. Merely disagreeing with Elias is the quickest way to get on his bad side and be labeled as a spiritual miscreant or munchkin who clearly has no understanding of spirituality and is probably an enemy of freedom. It's a very FOX News approach to spiritual debate. But it also makes for some lively interactions as long as one doesn't take it personally. Which I don't.

I should also make it clear that though I describe Elias as something of a "spiritual narcissist", this doesn't make him an altogether bad or un-spiritual person. It's just an unfortunate personal trait that tends to undermine his ability to relate to others, and I think it also interferes with his understanding of spirituality altogether. But that doesn't mean Elias is some kind of monster. He's really a very kind and generous person who genuinely wishes the best for people, including me. He genuinely thinks I'm badly mistaken in my understanding of things, and that I really do have an authoritarian bias that interferes with my own ability to understand the spiritual process. And in that respect, he's at least partially right, in that I certainly was involved with Adi Da for over 25 years and made many compromises with his authoritarian point of view, before ultimately rejecting it for good. So I've got a fair amount of experience with both authoritarian Gurus like Adi Da, and anti-authoritarian teachers like J. Krishnamurti (my first introduction to spiritual life) and non-authoritarian Gurus like Ramana Maharshi, who was one of my earliest "esoteric" spiritual contacts, and whom I would now consider my primary spiritual "source", if not a formal teacher or Guru.

Spiritual narcissism is something we can all suffer from, and it takes many forms. Elias just seems to suffer from it a bit more than most, and it takes a form in him that is not that hard to see. But it's also relatively harmless, in that Elias doesn't do much more than pound his own soapbox and hold firmly to his own views, while criticizing those who disagree with him. No real harm there. He's not actually abusing anyone, he's not collecting money, charging for his "teachings", browbeating disciples, or even having any to begin with. So there's really nothing go on there which anyone should be warned about. At worst it just makes for some aggravating dialogs, in that he simply can't acknowledge any criticism or comprehend how anyone could disagree with him in good faith, unless they were severely deluded and unconsciously opposed to Spirit and God. Most people who have interacted with Elias online or who have followed his forums are aware of this. If they agree with Elias or praise him, he's their best friend, but if he starts to disagree or criticize, it's the back of the hand.

Knowing this, I think it's best to just pick from Elias' thoughts some of the more interesting opportunities to discuss spiritual matters that present themselves, and to ignore the personal criticism as superfluous. Still, it's a little hard to discuss the issue of spiritual authority, obediance, and submission with someone who rejects all these, and yet simultaneously resents his own spiritual authority being rejected and criticized by others. Kind of funny, really. We end up with lines like these:

The consequences of mistakenly dismissing an advanced yogi or avadhut can be disastrous, spiritually speaking.

Smiley face aside, is Elias really presenting himself here as an advanced yogi or avadhut, and does he think this makes him a spiritual authority whose ideas should be revered rather than criticized? Are we to accept his "teachings" on the basis of his alleged authoritative status as a yogi? And if so, what does that say about his alleged rejection of authority? For my part, I don't go in for arguing from authority. I do go on for arguing from evidence and logic, however. I also reject the notion of arguing from merely personal experience, in that we cannot expect others to accept our own personal experience as conclusive, without much supporting evidence and reasonable argument. Which is one reason I don't like to use my own personal experience as an argument. My personal experience may have led to me to form various ideas about the spiritual process, but that only matters to other people if those ideas stand on their own, and are confirmed by others, or at least correspond to a fairly large tradition of experience apart from my own subjective opinion.

In any case, the issue of authority and personal experience is always an interesting one, because I think all of us are looking for the right balance there. No one but a spiritual narcissist would entirely rely on their own subjective experience, and yet no one but a cult follower would reject their own subjective experience either. Fortunately, these are not our only choices.

The problem with Elias' arguments in this response are that he sees only these two choices before us. We can either be childish cult-followers who blindly and simplistically do as they are told, or we can adolescently reject authority and strike out on our own. Real esotericism of course involves neither approach. It requires a mature individual who has grown past this sort of dichotomous inner conflict. Esotericism requires some pretty substantial human maturity as a prerequisite. It doesn't require any particular age, but an attitude that is neither childish nor adolescent. Obviously Ramana at age 16 was a highly mature individual in his basic sense for life, even if still quite inexperienced in the worldly sense of things.

The child and the adolescent are both struggling with the issue of authority and how to relate to it. The child is often comforted by the presence of authority and does whatever he can to please those in authority. His conflicts with authority are in the setting of limits by authority, which at times frustrates him, but as most people who have experience with children know, setting limits actually makes them feel more secure than having no limits at all. The adolescent, on the other hand, resents those limits, rejects them, and feels contempt for the child who follows them. On the other hand, the adolescent also wants to be an authority himself, and teenagers can actually be the most authoritarian leaders and followers of them all. What actually goes on in him is a cyclic wave function cresting on authoritarian leadership and ebbing with the following of authoritarian leaders. This makes adolescents in some respects the most "cultic" of all types, worse even than the childish types, who are really just looking for comfort rather than power.

Neither of these paths lead to esoteric spirituality however. And to be fair to Elias, I don't think he's advocating a purely adolescent spiritual ideology himself. He does want to be an authority some of them time, but at other times he wants to reject authority. He's looking for a more mature approach, and the compromise he's created is one that might be called "spiritual friendship". In this mode, one looks at traditional spiritual authority figures as simple friends, or as he has often called them "his buds". And in many respects this is certainly a better approach than being constantly intimidated by spiritual authority and feeling that one has to bow and scrape before them. There's even a lot of good traditional precedent for this approach. In the Tibetan tradition, for example, beginners are encouraged to approach the Guru and think of him merely as a "spiritual friend". One encounters similar attitudes in many Hindu teachers as well, including Nisargadatta, Ramana, Papaji, etc. Of course, even Da at one time advocated this approach, before abandoning it in favor of a kind of absolute authoritarianism.

The approach of "spiritual friendship" is a very good way for a beginner to enter into the spiritual process without activating the childish and adolescent patterns of human immaturity. It allows the beginning devotee to cultivate a relationship with the Guru that purifies those tendencies and lets them be outgrown, while also cultivating respect, trust, and mature devotion towards the Guru. However, if the relationship never matures beyond this stage, there is little in the way of genuine spiritual growth beyond the basics. Human growth, sure, and even spiritual understanding of the fundamentals certainly. But the genuine esoteric process requires something far more profound than mere spiritual friendship. It requires a profound recognition of the Guru, and a profound surrender to the Guru and his grace.

The beginnings of spiritual practice involve this growing friendship with the Guru, and the cultivation of trust, faith, respect and devotion. On the basis of these, one listens to and respond to the Guru's teaching, not as a childish slave or as an adolescent do-it-yourself rebel, but by learning the benefits through genuine application of his instructions and practice. At a certain point, this recognition and response to the Guru becomes profound and deep. The Guru is recognized as the Self, and one's response is surrender to the Self. The Guru is understood and literally seen as a transparent vehicle of the Self, and the Guru's role is understood as the Self's outer agent helping to point the devotee towards the inner Guru. It's not that only the inner Guru is the "esoteric" Guru. The outer Guru is also. The esoteric relationship depends on grasping that both are simply two sides of the same coin, and that what joins them together is the profound process of deep and abiding surrender to the Self.

Esotericism really kicks into gear when this lesson of surrender is learned, and the devotee actually practices it without holding back. Primarily, this means learning to surrender directly to the Self. But it also means having faith in the Guru as the guide to this surrender, and the pointer who keeps directing our attention back to the Self. This of course requires a Guru who has transcended ego and is himself surrendered to the Self, such that he doesn't direct the devotee's attention merely to himself, but always towards the Self, even if using his own body and mind as ways of instructing the devotee in this process. This is why the esoteric relationship to the Guru requires a high degree of maturity on both the part of Guru and devotee, and why if that is not present, the process gets disturbed and corrupted. This is why both Guru and devotee need to be tested to ensure that the process is genuine and not being subverted for egoic purposes.

Genuine surrender to the Guru does, indeed, require complete submission and obedience on the part of the devotee, but it also requires the same of the Guru. In some respects, however, it is the failings of the devotee that are more consequential, contrary to what most people think. A failed or incompletely surrendered Guru can indeed lead people astray, but if the devotee's devotional intent is true, he will mature even in the midst of a relationship to a corrupt Guru. As Papaji used to say, the real problem is always with false devotees rather than with false Gurus. Even someone as extreme as Da could only survive by exploiting the false needs and desires of his devotees, whereas their genuine needs and desires for spiritual growth could not be thwarted even when his instruction was faulty. I can testify to that personally, in both respects.

There is no way to underestimate the central importance of surrender to the esoteric spiritual process. Surrender is, essentially, the whole of the esoteric process. Giving oneself up to God and Self is what esotericism is about. That is how the ego is transcended. One cannot transcend the ego otherwise. How one arrives at surrender is always going to be different in the details, but in the general disposition it is always the same. In relation to the genuine Guru, it is always going to involve surrender and obediance to his instruction. There is simply no way around this. One might, in the case of a very mature devotee like Ramana, have no human Guru and thus no human instruction to follow, but nevertheless the same surrender must be practiced, and made absolute. That is what Ramana did in his famous death experience. He totally surrendered to the death process that was spontaneously initiated by his Guru, Arunachula. And that total surrender to the Self became total realization of the Self in short order.

The same process occurs more slowly in the case of less mature people. Ramana's devotees, for example, understood how important it was to surrender to him and obey his instruction. It wasn't just childish and immature devotees who did this. Quite the opposite, it was the mature ones who did. In fact, immature devotees can't really do as the Guru says, because they often don't even understand what he is instructing them to do. They have to mature in the basics first to even get a grasp for it. And so a good deal of human maturity is required just to obey and surrender to the Guru.

Unfortunately, this esoteric principle is also easily exploited by less than genuine Gurus and their less than genuine devotees. Knowing of this famous principle of esoteric practice, unscrupulous Gurus will often demand strict and unyielding obediance from their devotees, and immature devotees will be attracted to authoritarian Gurus who will indulge them in parental fantasies of completely trustworthy authorities. The result is a parody of the esoteric process, made into a farce that generally discredits the whole of spirituality for some people who observe these abuses. And thus the real esoteric process remains a "secret" even when its principles are openly espoused.

Elias, unfortunately, is only able to see the parody and thus rejects the whole principle of submission, surrender, and obediance to the Guru. This is a classic case of throwing the baby out with the bathwater. But by rejecting this profound traditional understanding of the esoteric process, Elias is unwittingly rejecting genuine esotericism itself. Instead, he's perpetually stuck in the "spiritual friendship" stage of practice, but confusing that preliminary process with genuine esotericism itself.

As for Da himself, and the prospect of having an esoteric relationship to him, Elias has these objections to my views:

...he says that this desired relationship must be paid for, by embracing "the formal disciplines and practices." Third he says it's Da's "perogative to say how people could relate to him" -- I assume he means "esoterically" -- as if Da or any other being could build and maintain a separation on the esoteric planes of consciousness and being!

First off, it's Da who says anyone who wants an esoteric relationship with him must embrace "the formal disciplines and practices", not me. I'm not making my own assertion about this, I'm just pointing to Da's own endlessly repeated instruction about this. And yes, it is up to Da how he wants to relate to devotees, both humanly and spiritually. If he requires all those formal obligations to be fulfilled, that's his business. It's not for Elias or me to tell him what to do, not that he'd listen anyway. And yes indeed, Da certainly can, like anyone else, build and maintain separation on the subtle and deeper planes of existence, just as they do here. If there were no separation on these subtler planes, there wouldn't be any separation here either. The illusion of separate self begins on the most subtle level of all (often referred to as the "causal" plane), and that means that wherever the ego is found, there will be the illusion of separation. The purpose of the Guru is to help dissolve that illusion and illuminate the truth, but until that process is complete, there will be the illusion of separation even in the subtlest of realms. Which is why genuine esotericism requires that we surrender completely to the Guru and Self. There is no plane of manifest existence that is free from ego and separation, unless we surrender on that plane, and all planes. This is why the spiritual process requires everything from us, and total surrender. And that is why it also requires grace, because such total surrender is simply impossible through self-effort and individual insight. It requires the magnetic power of the Self's attractive grace, most often given through the agency of a Guru, to draw us beyond self into this surrendered disposition.

The problem with Da, in my view at least, is that he hadn't fully surrendered his ego, and thus he ended up perpetuating a subtle thread of separation and egotism that eventually pervaded and corrupted his own teachings and his relationship with his devotees. Rather than leading devotees to surrender to the Self, he led them to surrender to his own ego, thus created a corrupt cycle that eventually toxified the entire gathering. He used the traditional principles of the Guru-devotee relationship to justify this egoic process, by equating his own egoic self with the Divine Self, until there was no way for his immature devotees to see the error of their ways. It's not that Da was entirely wrong, of course. He grasped a lot of the traditional and true aspects of the spiritual process. He just ended up turning them towards himself, rather than towards the inner Guru of the devotee, and thus made the whole process ineffective at the deeper levels. That didn't make it ineffective in some general sense. Indeed, many devotees benefited from some aspects of his teaching and spiritual influence. But that process was generally thwarted and turned inside out by his own subtle ego. It would not have been so bad if Da had been aware that he still had some ego to transcend and had applied himself to that process. Not all Gurus have to be completely enlightened to be of great help to devotees. But they do have to be aware of their own incompleteness to ensure that they don't undermine the spiritual process in others. Da couldn't do this, like I say, because of his own spiritual narcissism which wouldn't allow him to admit error or correct himself, and which led him to view all critics and "dissidents" as the enemy, possessed by evil forces or otherwise incapable of genuine esoteric practice.

Elias bears some resemblance to Da in that respect, in a far more minor way. But I'll say that at least Da understood something about how the genuine esoteric process works, even if he ended up perverting it. Elias saw that perversion, and rejected it, but didn't understand what it was a perversion of. He didn't grasp that there really is a genuine unperverted esoteric process that involves surrender, submission, and obediance to the Guru's instruction. In his view, all of that is poisonous and should be rejected. Here we disagree. I think it's a failure of discrimination on Elias' part, and he thinks it's because I'm still sympathetic to an authoritarian approach to spirituality. At a certain point, there's little sense in arguing the matter, we are clearly both going to see things as we will. So it's up to others to simply ponder these matters and come to their own conclusions, and act accordingly.

One thing Elias brings up is the fact that he did belong to Adidam for a few years, and did serve and obey to some degree back then. He wants this to be taken into account as a basis for having an esoteric relationship to Da. Well, not according to Da. As he said about a million times, he's the first person who will know is someone is genuinely relating him esoterically, and he didn't find that anyone was doing so back in the early 1980s when Elias was around. Nor, even much later, except for a couple of his kanyas. Occasionally he would form an "esoteric order" of some kind, and let people practice in it for a while, but invariably he would declare them all to be frauds and bust them down to the "exoteric" levels of practice.

One thing that should be clear about Da's own teaching is that to enter into the esoteric orders of practice it requires not just complete obedience and surrender, but what he calls "hearing", which is a whole other matter for discussion. Suffice it to say that "hearing" to Da requires a profound understanding of the core issues of Da's own teaching, particularly the "recognition of narcissus" as the core principle of one' s own egoic life, and thus the active renunciation of that principle. Unless Elias has "heard" Da's teaching in this respect, he couldn't, by Da's own definition, be involved in the esoteric relationship to him. And of course, Da hardly acknowledged anyone as having genuinely and fundamentally "heard" his teaching. The sign of that "hearing", in Da's view, was precisely this kind of total submission, surrender, and obedience to his every instruction. That should be abundantly clear to anyone at all familiar with Da's actual teaching and what the spiritual relationship to him required. Whether that would be a worthwhile thing to submit to is another story. It's Da's story, and he stuck with it throughout his life, both outwardly and inwardly. The cultism of Adidam applies to all the "esoteric" planes as well, in other words. There's really no escaping it.

But that won't stop some diehard seekers from trying to escape it, by creating for themselves some version of Adidam, or some fantasy relationship to Adi Da, that allows them to relate to him in their own preferred manner and call it "esoteric". They don't seem to grasp Da's profound commitment to cultism at every level of his life and relationship to devotees. Elias doesn't seem to grasp how pervasive Da's cultism was, and can't imagine that Da would be cultic even at the most esoterically "deep" levels of the psyche. But yes, he was and is. Astonishing, yes, but true. Of course, this shouldn't really be much of a surprise. Cultism isn't confined to the gross planes of existence, it exists everywhere the ego exists.

Oh, and one other thing Elias gets wrong about me: the accusation that I am a "constipated" thinker. I think almost anyone who's ever read my blog or forum postings knows that precisely the opposite is the case. I suffering from what can only be described as "diarhetic flatulence" of the mind. I mean honestly, look at how I let it rip without any seeming end to it. The walls are splattered with bowel matter. This is a case of nearly pathological flatulence. There seems to be no known cure. How Elias could describe me as constipated simply defies explanation.

Intuition Grounded in Reality

2010-12-25T14:32:00.000-08:00

Following up on my latest responses to Elias, he re-posts his own questions about my view on conditional and unconditional experience and views, which as it happens was part of what I had in mind to talk about but left out the other night.

The "notion" of limitation vs. un-limitation again rears its head! What is this "beyond all limits" that is somehow so unable to exist simultaneously with "conditionality" that it must add more "disciplined limits" to the game of life?

The singular problem with this type of oppositional rhetoric is that it lacks awareness and comprehension of the attribute of intuition. It is entirely spoken from the sensory or "vital" side of life, and it deals with the fairly common tendency in the West to view Eastern spirituality in terms of body yoga and the "problems" presented by the exoteric psyche.

Along these lines, I also want to respond to Elias' confusion about the difference between discipline and suppression, which he seems to think are the same thing.

To address the general issue first, I am not suggesting that conditionality and the unconditional don't or can't exist simultaneously. Nor am I suggesting that we need to add some "extra" discipline to life. The point is simply that all conditional experience is limited, and thus it naturally requires that limits be placed on it. One has to recognize that one can't eat cake and ice cream all day. One can't have sex as often as one desires with whomever one desires. One has to understand that every conditional experience, every conditional object, every conditional desire (or aversion) is naturally limited and one can't expect to get anything more than a limited result from it. So there's a natural discipline and limit that one places on such things, or one literally ends up unhealthy and degraded, even in the limited sense.

Likewise, one can't expect that discipline will do anything for you other than find a healthy medium within the limits of this world. Discipline won't enlighten anyone, and it won't destroy anyone either, unless pursued as an end in itself that is supposed to produce unlimited results. And it's true that some people do approach discipline in the same way that some pursue desire itself. They think that finding the perfect disciplined balance of energies and body and mind is going to result in unlimited happiness or realization. Many in various spiritual traditions pursue discipline for this purpose, and in this manner, and wind up frustrated or delusional in the process. And many may use discipline in a suppressive manner in the process, suppressing desires in an effort to reach a state of unconditional desirelessness, suppressing sex or appetite or greed or whatever desires tend to capture their attention in order find that state that is beyond desire. But this never works either. Disciplining conditional experience as a method for achieving the unconditional works no better than unregulated desire for conditional experience does.

This doesn't mean one rejects discipline altogether. Discipline is necessary and natural to life, and it's necessary and natural to spiritual life as well. It's just that one has to understand that discipline will not produce anything more than an intelligently self-regulated life of basic human maturity. It won't produce unconditional realization. It's an expression of a basic intelligence about conditional matters, that one shouldn't expect anything other than conditional results from them. One doesn't invest one's heart in such things, one doesn't pursue them with the expectation that they will lead to anything but more limitation, one simply accepts them as they are, grateful for whatever results comes one's way, but not expecting anything more than a limited result in the first place.

This is very important because it allows us to give our hearts unconditionally to That which is unlimited and unconditional rather than to become confused by the pursuit of conditional experiences. It's simply a question of "looking for unconditional love in the right place", which means locating the true Heart, the true Self, and not confusing That with any conditional object, experience, or search. And that's the real value to discipline in the spiritual process. The human benefits of right discipline ought to be obvious enough, but the spiritual benefits are indirect, in that it simply leaves our attention free to find the genuinely unlimited, unconditional nature of our real Self, rather than to become endlessly distracted by conditional seeking. Once limited things are understood to be limited, one only engages them for limited purposes. Whereas the unlimited purpose of spiritual practice is to realize the unconditional reality and nature that is at the very heart of our being. That is the only area in which our desiring should be unlimited, because the heart, the Self, truly is unlimited. Which is why genuine desire for the unconditional is actually encouraged in traditional spiritual esotericism, unlike any conditional desire. Our real and true desire is not actually for conditional things, that is just what we seem to be given. Our real desire is for unconditional reality, without limits, and this is an infinite desire that is satisfied only by That which is infinite.

Infinite desire only becomes problematic when the object of that desiring is limited and conditional. That creates unavoidable frustration and suffering. That creates an endless cycle of desiring, attainment, disillusionment, and the search for new desires. That cycle is endless because our root desire is infinite. The basic solution to this problem is to recognize the limited nature of conditional seeking, and to recognize the unlimited nature of the unconditional Self, and to see that this is the only proper pursuit of our unlimited desiring. We can let the body's natural desiring find its natural limits and its natural discipline within the realm of nature, as is appropriate to it. And we can let the heart's unconditional desiring find its natural fulfillment in the infinite realm of the Spirit, which is its natural condition and environment. The mixing of the two leads to confusion and frustration and much ill-health and suffering, whereas the ability to discriminate between the two leads to right spiritual practice.

So this is why all conditional life and seeking must be disciplined, and why that discipline shouldn't be pursued for some higher purpose, other than to free ourselves from the attention-traps that seeking creates. This doesn't mean that one ignores one's conditional or bodily needs or basic desires. One just doesn't invest one's heart in such things, expecting results that are impossible to obtain. One is "realistic" about such matters. And likewise, one does invest one's heart in That which is truly unconditional and infinite. That is being "Realistic" in the higher sense.

Genuine esoteric practice requires this understanding to be in place. It doesn't require ascetical discipline or suppression of desire, it merely requires a genuinely realistic (and Realistic) understanding of the nature of things. As long as attention is bound up in conditional views and conditional seeking, one is going to have a very hard time locating the true Heart, the Self, and investing oneself in it without limitation. Not only will one tend to pursue limited things with the ardor of the unlimited, one will confuse and mistake the limited for a "sign" of the unlimited. One will project one's desiring for the infinite upon limited and finite things and symbols and experiences, both gross and subtle. One will mistake psychic reality for unlimited and infinite truth. But the truth about the psyche is that it is all limited.

Elias likes to describe the psyche as some infinite field of infinite experience, but like the gross world, the psyche is itself limited, and can only produce limited results, no matter how dedicated our search for the unlimited in it is. Elias likes to bring up Jung's psychological theories of the psyche, and his use of the term "Self" to indicate that Jung was pursuing the same wisdom as can be found in Advaitic literature, for example. But Jung's "Self" is merely the self that is found in the psyche. It's a limited, psychological self, not the unlimited and unconditional heart. It's still a worthy goal of conditional existence, to develop a full,, integrated, and healthy psyche, don't get me wrong. I think Jung has a lot to offer in that limited sense. But it is, indeed, a limited offering, and should be understood as such and not confused with the unlimited nature of the true Heart, the true Self. Jung was himself hostile to such notions, and part of that was a healthy hostility to the conflating of the infinite with the conditional, which can produce some pathologically unsound psychological results. And this is just what I'm talking about as the mistaken path of conflating conditional and unconditional matters.

If one pursues a Jungian path of psychological integration, this is fine and good, but one shouldn't confuse this with the unconditional Self spoken of in Advaita. The conditional self of Jung's psychology has real limits, and requires real disciplines, as well as real opening and real understanding. But the understanding of the psychological Self also requires the acceptance of the basic conditional limits of the psyche, and the fact that it is not infinite or unconditional. So it's not the field by which we should unleash our unconditional desiring for the infinite. If we do that, we start to deify various psychological archetypes and processes in the psyche, not recognizing their limits, and thus becoming trapped in what should really just be an ordinary exercise of psychological health.

Elias likes to make a big deal of his own intuitive faculties, and accuse me of "lacking imagination" and being suppressed in my intuitive abilities. Which I have to say is really just more projection and inflation at work. My own experience of writing on this blog is of relying almost entirely on personal intuition. I hardly think of what I'm going to say except in the vaguest sense, I just let my intuition guide me every step of the way, in every word that comes out of my hands. So it's kind of hilarious for me to hear Elias accuse me of lacking an intuitive capacity. I live most of my life on an intuitive level, and consider everything else just secondary fuel for my own intuitive feelings about things. The fact that I can write discursively has nothing to do with a lack of intuition or imagination. This world is nothing but imagination, in my view, and so there's literally no choice but to rely on imagination to get through even the most ordinary of tasks.

Which brings me to another point I was wanting to make about the imagination. Earlier I was writing about the problems that can arise when one's self-image departs from reality, or is taken to be the real Self. Even on the psychological level, this can produce serious narcissistic problems, because we begin to live in the imaginative world of the self-image rather than in the "real" world of the body. I made mention of the problems that occur when we create not just an alternative self-image and live from that perspective rather than from the body's perspective, and also of the problems that occur when the imagination projects this image onto the world itself, and starts to live based on the imaginative images of the world we have in our minds rather than on the sensory-based experience of the body. I think it's important that I describe that in more detail.

We have the word "narcissist" to refer to someone who lives in their own self-image, but we don't have a ready word for those who live in a world of internal imagery and symbolism itself. The same imaginative faculty that allows us to create internal self-images and work with them creatively in our minds also allows us to create an internal image of the world itself, and creatively work with that as well. This imaginative faculty allows us to create vast codings of imagery and information at an internal level which we can work with and create from. However, problems arise here as well when these images start to take on a life of their own and we prefer them to the world of the body and sensory experience. This has in fact become a huge problem throughout the world, particularly in advanced societies that rely to a greater and greater degree on technological and symbolic manipulation of information.

Language itself is an internalized symbolic image system that refers to the sensory world, but can become a world all its own to us, even a substitute for the real world. Words are of course not "real", they are merely symbols that point to something real. The value of the word "tree" comes from the actual experience of a tree. And yet, of course, there's also the internal experience of "tree" that we each hold in our minds, through not merely memory, but through the creative manipulation of memories and sensations and emotional feelings. Poetry relies on this creative manipulation of internal images associated with words to produce feelings in us that are not necessarily present when we simply look at a tree. But we value it nonetheless because we value those internal feelings as much as we do external perceptions. And yet problems arise when we become fixated on these internal symbols to the exclusion of sensory experience, or substitute the one for the other.

One thing Elias seems to ignore is the fact that even discursive, rational language is also "imaginative". Anything that relies on language and symbols and concepts is imaginative. It's not just artists who are imaginative. Virtually every intelligent pursuit in modern life occurs on a symbolic basis of language. Science, for example, has an huge imaginative edge to it. But it grounds that imaginative sense in observation and data. And that's why science is in some respects the most "realistic" modern paradigm. It uses vast resources of creative imagination and symbolic language, from mathematics to computer languages, to create all kinds of amazing things, but it always grounds that imagination in the sensory world of experience and data. That kind of feedback is important.

Elias' personal story of his intuitive journey is interesting and even sympathetic, but I have to mention one small matter that he seems not to notice. He mentions how "I would always know the hidden truth of a matter, and in the case of my parents that often as not led to a scolding." It's sad that Elias faced that kind of traumatic suppression from his parents, but it's also worth noting the claim here of virtual infallibility. I think we all know that no one is infallible, and no one's intuition "always knows the hidden truth of a matter". Those of us who have long experience with Elias know that he often has a good intuitive grasp on things. But we also know that he often is wildly wrong and distorted in his intuitions. Perhaps at one point he really was infallible and his parents scolded him into fallibility, but I think it's more likely that what we are seeing here is a simple retreat by a child into a world of his own intuitive feelings, in which he is "always right". This is one of the benefits of the imagination. It allows children who are being suppressed to find an escape, a place where they can be "right" rather than always wrong, and it would appear that Elias, like many of us, made use of this form of self-protection.

But as adults, it's important to shed our childhood methods of self-protection and recognize that we are quite fallible people, and that even our intuitive abilities are filled will flaws and mistakes. This doesn't mean that we should abandon them. To the contrary, we should only abandon the expectation, as well as the presumption, that our intuition is always right. We can never actually grow in our intuitive abilities without real world feedback that tells us when we have gone astray, as well as when we are confirmed in being correct. If we simply affirm every intuitive feeling we have and presume it is correct, we never allow ourselves to evolve based on real world feedback. Elias, for example, has often been wrong about a great many people and things over the years, and yet when criticized he is invariably defensive and unable to acknowledge any errors and ususally attacks his critics. I don't want to compare him to Da in this respect, in that the scale and circumstances are quite different, but there's at least the basic similarity in attitude, which derives from this need to preserve a childhood fantasy of being omniscient and infallible.

It's a common problem many of us have, myself included. Fortunately, there's a real corrective for it, in the recognition that even intuition is a limited function of a limited psyche, prone to error like everything else, and that it needs to be disciplined through intelligent feedback mechanisms in order to grow properly and not take over the mind and life. The way to do that is to let the intuition fly, and yet respond to feedback as well in the world outside our own mind. That's basically what I try to do with my own writings on this blog and on previous forums. Not always successfully, but I certainly try. Perhaps I just have a more scientific bent than Elias, and a desire to ground my intuitions in real experience and data.

Speaking of science, I've been wanting to write about a lot of very interesting modern scientific theories going around these days in the physics world. Maybe I'll get to that at some point. But in relation to this whole business of "living in symbolic language", it's interesting to note that virtually all computer languages are built upon the essential machine language of modern microchips, which is actually a simplified form of ancient Sanskrit grammar. Hard as it might be to believe, when the early creators of computers were looking for a symbolic language system to encode information intelligently, they examined many different possible systems, and the best grammar they could come up with was Panini's Sanskri. So every time you use a computer, or virtually any electronic device that uses electronic chip instructions, you are "speaking Sanskrit". This should set more than a few minds on fire with the implications.

Esotericism Means Submission to the Guru's Instruction

2010-12-25T04:41:00.000-08:00

In the ongoing exchange with Elias, he is beginning to backpeddle to our original point of contention:

It seems to me that Broken Yogi has quietly drifted away from the proposition that began this discussion -- that one can have a genuine esoteric relationship with a guru without being involved formally with that guru.

Actually, the original proposition that began this discussion was Elias' claim that one can have an esoteric spiritual relationship with Adi Da without being a formal member of Adidam and doing as he says, which of course includes submission to all his instructions, disciplines, and practices. That's quite a different discussion from the general notion Elias is now putting forth. I can understand why, in that Adi Da couldn't have been more explicit and clear about the need for anyone who wishes to approach him to do so through the formal relationship offered by the entire Adidam apparatus. It's understandable that Elias might object to this, since those requirements really do include a lot of absurd things that no genuine Guru would ask of his devotees, but that's another story. If this is how Adi Da wants to do it, that's his business. And insisting that Da ought to do things differently is going to fall on deaf ears, both in the subtle realms as it did here on earth.

Elias of course claims that despite Da's own clear teaching about this requirement, he and many others have had an esoteric relationship with Da for many years. Again, this goes back to differing definitions of what "esoteric" means. Elias seems to think that having some kind of genuine psychic contact with Da counts as "esoteric", when it certainly doesn't in Da's book, nor does that even fulfill the traditional definition of an esoteric relationship to a Guru. As I've mentioned, tons of people have had an active psychic relationship with Da and have had all kinds of intuitive sensitivity to his "transmission" and communication and so on. This is all a dime a dozen, nothing terribly special or unique, and certainly not "esoteric". It's still quite "exoteric", despite the psychic quality of these kinds of contacts. I mean, my very first contact with even a poster of Da was a psychic awakening, and my first walk into his bookstore center in San Francisco was a clear psychic contact, and so was reading the first lines of his books, and so was my experience that evening when I called out to Da and asked him to come to me as a sign of our spiritual relationship. (And yes, he did come).

Now, to Elias, that all seems to him to be an "esoteric relationship". And I guess to the average spiritual seeker, that's all "esoteric" means. Some kind of spiritual exchange of energy and consciousness tangibly felt and understood as such. Well, not really even close. That's still just the exoteric level of spiritual life. It's not esoteric, and not even the beginning of genuine esotericism. It's just common psychism, which is certainly important to be sure, but contains only the vaguest possibility of developing a genuine esoteric relationship to a Guru. It's important to some degree, but in some respects it can be a distraction from the more important elements of the Guru-devotee relationship, which has most to do with the emotional and existential response the devotee has to this initial psychic contact rather than to any psychic content itself.

One can "hang out" in the exoteric psychic relationship with a Guru for a very long time, and delude oneself into thinking that this is an "esoteric" relationship, and that those devotees who are spending their time fulfilling the Guru's explicit instructions are just too dense or spiritually unaware to "get" this esoteric relationship. But here the charges of immaturity and delusion are generally just projections of stunted spiritual development and an inability to get past the fascinating dimensions of the psyche. Because the real relationship to the Guru comes when one submits to the Guru, whole bodily, with all one's being. And as Da correctly understood, this involves real submission to the Guru, meaning real submission to his instruction and practices and whatever he deems necessary. Esotericism isn't a way to bypass this submission, its only made possible by this submission. Without that submission, even one's psychic relationship to the Guru will remain exoteric and generally ineffective. By which I mean, the ego of the devotee won't be much transcended, it will even be fed and inflated by the devotee's false approach and his self-indulgent attitude.

The Guru-devotee relationship is primarily about ego-transcendence, and this means genuine surrender to the Guru. This surrender of course involves the whole psyche, not just some outer bodily service and submission to various practices, but that's just the point - the "whole psyche" includes all aspects of conscious life, including bodily and social and cultural aspects, not just some inner feelings one has about the Guru. Which is why Da was correct to require full submission to his instructions and all the formal practices and disciplines for genuine esoteric practice. The problem with Da is the truly absurd requirements he made of devotees through those disciplines and practices and instruction, most of which would drive any genuinely serious spiritual practitioner far away and raise so many red flags they'd likely never come back. One simply doesn't find the genuine Gurus of the traditions making the kinds of formal requirements Da made, and thus one can't honestly describe him as a genuine Guru. One can just say that while Da understood something about the Guru-devotee relationship, he also corrupted and exploited that relationship, rendering it essentially ineffective.

So there's two basic ways the Guru-devotee relationship can be rendered ineffective. One is for the devotee to refuse to submit to the Guru and his instruction, and the other is for the Guru to exploit that submission through false and self-serving instruction. The fact that in Adidam both sides of this equation were way out of whack essentially assured everyone that very little genuine esoteric growth would occur in Adidam, and that virtually everyone would remain an exoteric "beginner".

Elias would like to think that because he has a lot of psychic experience under his belt, and ways of psychically "contacting" Adi Da, that he is able to have an esoteric relationship to him. Well, no. Again, this is just Elias' spiritual ego talking, thinking that because he's got all this psychic and intuitive development going, that makes him "esoteric". But it simply doesn't work that way. All the psychic development in the world won't get you through that "inner door" to the esoteric world of the Guru-devotee relationship. Why? Because for one thing, the psyche is just the exoteric level of experience. The real domain of esotericism is found in the heart, in primal consciousness, in real love, and the only path through that door is total submission. Not just partial submission of some part of the mind or the body or psyche. The word "heart" doesn't refer to some psychic center one can contact by exoteric means. It refers to the very core of our Being. And that is what the relationship to the Guru is about. The Guru isn't just some guy with really powerful psychic and intuitive abilities. He's simply a transparent vehicle of the Self, the very Being, the Heart. He's someone who has utterly surrendered himself to God, and that is why he can act as Guru and instruct others in the process of surrender to the power and presence of Grace that is active in him.

Now, it's certainly true that this genuine esoteric relationship to the Guru doesn't have be a "formal" one, certainly not in the crazy Scientology-based system developed by Adi Da. There are some Gurus who have formal relationships with devotees, who grant Guru-diksha or Guru-kripa, and even have some kind of monastic order. And in those cases, there certainly are requirements for the submission to the Guru's instruction. But in the case of most genuine Gurus, those instructions are not terribly confusing or difficult. We of course do have famous examples of really difficult Guru-devotee relationships, like the classic story of Marpa and Milarepa, but that kind of thing is very rare, and is generally meant only to illustrate a principle, not to serve as a guideline for how the relationship generally proceeds. In most cases, fulfilment of basic disciplines and practices are rather easy for the serious practitioner, and no hedging or reluctance is either encountered or tolerated. The traditional devotee understands quite well from the cultural traditions they grow up in what is expected in the Guru-devotee relationship, and that it would be absurd to expect or claim esoteric maturity without fulfilling the Guru's instructions.

Of course, there certainly are examples of very informal encounters between Gurus and their devotees, but in virtually all such cases, the devotee responds with total surrender to the Guru, not with the punk attitude we so often encounter among westerners that they don't need to go through any real surrender because they have some kind of "esoteric sensitivity" to the Guru. Wherever we do find ripe or precocious devotees who are ready to go directly into the esoteric dimension of practice, we also find devotees who are fully submitted to the instruction of their Guru.

A famous example would be that of Hui Neng, the Sixth Patriarch of Zen, who had a spontaneous awakening into the esoteric process merely by hearing the Lotus Sutra read aloud. He found himself drawn directly to the monastery of the Fifth Patriach, and asked to join even though he was illiterate and had very little obvious preparation. The Fifth Patriach was asked what to do with him, and he instantly recognized Hui Neng's spiritual awakening, and rather than draw attention to this, he had Hui Neng sent to tend to the pigs on the outskirts of the monastery grounds. And Hui Neng simply did as he was told. He didn't object and tell everyone that he was a true esoteric practitioner who ought to be treated with respect and veneration. He just submitted to his Guru, and gladly followed his instruction, and tended to the pigs. And as it turned out, this was just what he needed.

All the Guru-devotee traditions are filled with stories about devotees submitting to their Guru's instructions, and I don't know of any where some guy just claims on his own to be the esoteric devotee of a Guru while yet refusing to follow that Guru's instructions. This kind of thing is just laughed at as a total absurdity. It's simply a self-contradictory oxymoron.

Of course, people do have all kinds of spiritual experiences in relationship to great Guru figures around the world. People obviously have profound experiences of Jesus, of Buddha, Krishna, Rama, and so on. But once again, it's also understood that these experiences only become genuine esoteric relationship for those who submit to the instruction of scripture, or whose spontaneous surrender shows all the signs described in those scriptures of genuine submission. Anyone can have a vision of Krishna, but very few actually surrender to the instruction and practices associated with those traditions. The same with Jesus. Or even Ramana. Many people have had profound experiential contact with Ramana, including both Elias and myself. But that contact is not in itself the sign of an esoteric relationship to Ramana. The esoteric relationship to Ramana is only possible for those who genuinely surrender to his instruction and take on the path he taught and demonstrated. No genuine esoteric devotee of Ramana would object to any of that, only an exoteric pretender would balk at such a notion, or ridicule such expectations as only for "exoteric" practitioners who aren't up to the "esoteric" process. Again, it's a case of projection.

If one reads the stories of Ramana's real esoteric devotees, one finds profound examples of genuine submission to his instruction and unquestioning surrender to his practices and disciplines. As mentioned before, Annamalai's biography is entitiled "Living by the Words of Bhagavan" for a very good reason. That phrase summarizes the whole of his esoteric practice. The same story in one form or another is told by Muruganar, Sadhu Om, Poonja Swami, and countless others.

On the other hand, Ramana didn't have "formal" devotees. He didn't like that whole world of formal practice and didn't even call himself a Guru, and didn't give diksha. So in that sense there's clearly no requirement for a formal relationship to a Guru. But that's not the issue. What matter is that the devotee submit to the Guru's instruction in full, and not pick and choose or reject it in favor of some imaginary "esoteric" relationship to him. I think you will find that principle upheld everywhere the genuine esoteric relationship to the Guru is found in the traditions, regardless of how it plays out.

With Da the same principles hold, regardless of his actual qualifications as a Guru or the effectiveness of his instruction. Whatever Da's real esoteric relationship with devotees might have been had they been able to fulfill his instruction, is something that only such devotees could really describe. Guys like Elias, or Zensun, or any of the other peripheral types who think they have the esoteric chops to relate to Adi Da while ignoring his actual instructions, simply have no clue as to what that would be like. Those who at least spent some serious time in Adidam actually trying to live his disciplines and fulfill his instructions might have some notion of what that might be like, but I'm not sure if anyone in Adidam got very far with that. Maybe Sukhapur did. But the general impression I get is that it was simply a case of chasing the tiger's tail. There was no real there there, because Da's instructions for the most part simply weren't a sound springboard for genuine esotericism, and his own corrupted character sabotaged whatever genuine spiritual intuitions and capacities he had. A shame, really, but that's why there's been so little effective spirituality coming out of Adidam. It's not as if there was ever much emphasis on unconditional love in the actual practice within Adidam, especially in Adi Da's inner circles, regardless of what claims were made or lip service paid.

The sad truth is that most everyone in Adidam had, at best, an exoteric "psychic" relationship to Da, and not a fully esoteric "heart-relationship" to him. Of course, even in that dimension one's submission to the disciplines and practices is what deepens the relationship, not trying to practice "esoterically". Which is why Da emphasised surrender and submission to his actual instruction so strongly. So people experienced only as much of that esoteric relationship as they actually submitted to through those disciplines and practices. One's mileage and experience certainly varied. The problem of course lay in that so much of Da's instruction just made no sense and had little spiritual value and shouldn't have been followed in any case. Those who tried often just tied themselves in knots. The macho crowd of yes-men who applauded Da's every move would excuse this by any number of explanations, such as that Da was simply trying to "break" his devotees, and that if anyone had really and truly followed Da's instructions, great things would have resulted. But since no one did, one is left merely with an empty claim that has no evidentiary proof behind it. Is there anyone in Adidam who can actually verify the practice he gave? Apparently no one.

Can Elias or Zensun or other peripheral Adidam types verify Adi Da's bonafides? No, not really. Unless they actually do go ahead and submit fully to his instruction, which of course they never will, because they consider that sort of thing to be only for the "exoteric" crowd. Which is the basic giveaway to the true situation here. These are people who want to talk the talk without walking the walk. That's a very popular sport in the spiritual scene. You can find people like that everywhere, not just in Adidam. In fact, there's a whole lot of such people associated with Ramana, or Papaji, or the whole neo-Advaita movement - people who think they don't actually have to fulfill the practices and instructions given, but just sort of vaguely intuit the non-dual reality, and then simply assume that's all they need to do to claim esoteric relationships and even enlightenment by the Grace of the Guru. But the truth is that none of that is in the least bit to be taken seriously. Anyone who claims esoteric understanding without demonstrating profoundly humbling submission and surrender to their Guru's instruction or scriptural tradition is just jiving themselves and maybe a few gullible others. Even those who do have to be carefully examined, but those who don't aren't even worth the trouble.

Esotericism and Unconditional Love

2010-12-24T00:16:00.000-08:00

Elias has some new posts up over at Lightmind responding to my last blog entries. The first is a response to my incomprehension of his statement that "Something in [BY's] mind is set against the Self as the property and native state of every individual." The second is a response to my last blog post Esoteric Submission To Limitation and the Unlimited.

My first reaction to reading these posts is, nothing to see here. It's not just the gratuitous personal criticism, it's the absence of any real understanding of esoteric process. Not that Tom doesn't have some genuine spiritual experience and a lifetime of pondering these things. It's just that, like Da himself, much of this is negated by what I have previously called "spiritual narcissism", which ends up inverting both spiritual understanding and spiritual values until they are hardly recognizable, either in word or in Spirit.

To understand what Elias is up to, and where he makes his mistakes, it's important to understand the distinction between spiritual narcissism and genuine spiritual esotericism. The distinction is often lost in the general confusion of popular spiritual discussion. Spiritual narcissists are quite common - in fact, we could really classify almost everyone as a spiritual narcissist to some degree, it's just that some people go overboard with it and lose themselves in their own self-imagery.

The way I understand narcissism in general is that it revolves around the abuse of the internal process of self-imagery and self-imagination. All of us have self-images of ourselves, and all of us make use of those self-images in both ordinary and exceptional ways. It's part of the psychological structure of the human cognitive process. And it has a role to play in the spiritual process as well. It's intrinsic to the entire process of identification with form, whether human or otherwise, and it demonstrates how "mind" relates to form through imagery.

In short, once we identify with our human form, we also create an image of that form in our minds, and that image becomes an important aspect of our sense of identity. But this process is not limited to the human form. It also occurs in relation to our spiritual forms and body as well, and we form spiritual self-images that aren't necessarily connected to the physical body, except to the degree that our spiritual and physical bodies are connected.

The process of human incarnation, as I've described before, is essentially a bio-spiritual fusion of our spiritual bodies and "self" with the physical body and its "self". The connection between the two is not magical, it's a very down-to-earth process of growing connectivity on both a neural and a subtle level between these two bodies. In the course of growing those connections there are all kinds of problems that can arise, all kinds of confused feedback and mirroring can occur, one prominent aspect of which is the phenomena of "spiritual narcissism", in which one's self-image becomes inflated and confused by the flow of spiritual and bodily energies and awareness that naturally occurs in the course of self-aware living.

In the process of incarnating, the sense of self becomes a bit mangled, so to speak. What are we as human beings? Are we the physical body, or a spiritual self? In a very real sense, there are two competing senses of self at work in us, in that the physical body is an intelligent but rather limited being with its own self-image, based on the body and the limited characteristics of the physical world, and the subtle body is a much more intelligent and creative being with its own self-image, based on the far more expansive nature of the subtle body and the subtle worlds. There's a basic conflict between these two selves and their corresponding self-images, and one of the major challenges of incarnation in the physical body and world is to coordinate these two properly. That's no small task, as I think we can see from the vast confusion in the world over these matters, at all levels, morally, ethically, spiritually, religiously, psychologically, socially, and so on.

Self-imagery is an inevitable consequence of identification with any body or world, because identification creates a mirroring process in consciousness, and this carries forth into the actual structure of the brain or nervous system of any body we seem to have, whether it is physical or subtle in nature. This is meant to be a helpful process, allowing us to work through some of our problems in an internal, imaginative, and symbolic sense. Creativity is virtually impossible without the imaginative process of internal imagery, which naturally involves creating images of not only the whole world, but of ourselves, and then working with these images in a manner to fashion genuine "technological" advances in our physical and spiritual experience.

There's a natural feedback mechanism that keeps this process of imagination from departing too far from the realities of body and world, however, and it's very important that this feedback mechanism remain healthy and functional, or the imagination can lead us into a lot of delusions and trouble. The feedback mechanism is essentially a grounding of observation and imagination in real experience, constantly disciplining our internal imagery through "reality checks" that correct us if we are creating images that don't correspond to our experience, and thus preventing ourselves from turning these images into illusions that we think are real in and of themselves. And that is the problem with spiritual narcissism. It tends to create a self-image that is increasingly disconnected from the body and world, either gross or subtle, and we begin to live in and through the self-image, rather than through direct experience. This is how inflated (and also deflated) self-images come into being and literally begin to "possess" our sense of self. It isn't necessarily a sign of spiritual immaturity or lack of spiritual experience. In fact it can be a result of an excess of spiritual experience that we may have difficulty processing and understanding.

My understanding of Da's problems are not of someone who lacks genuine spiritual experience, or even a lack of genuine esoteric experience and understanding. However, I do see someone who was overwhelmed by his own spiritual experience, and could no longer form a genuinely healthy self-image, but who instead began to live in and through his self-image, and in the process lost track of the genuine esoteric process that lies beyond self-imagery and world-imagery. That is in part why Da is such a tragic figure, rather than merely a comical one. He strove for the heights, and actually achieved considerable spiritual understanding and experience, but could not go beyond the problems of self-imagery, and "fell", like Icarus, through the error of hubris, excessive pride, which really means, "lost in one's own self-imagery".

Alexander Lowen, author of "Narcissism: Denial of the True Self", describes psychological narcissism as a distortion of the self-development process, in which the young child, faced with the various traumas of living in a threatening world of physical limitations, including the limitation of the body itself, begins to retreat into the world of their imagination, and forms an alternative self-image, and even an alternative world, that exists largely in their internal imagination, and is only partially responsive to the outer world of experience, and tends to favor the internal over the external, to the degree of trying to shape the external to re-create the world of their imagination in it. This can create a precarious imbalance between the bodily self, the imaginative self, and the spiritual self, which is in large part connected to the physical self through the higher cognitive processes of the imagination and other symbolic means. Because the spiritual self and the physical self both form "self-images" in the mind, there is a competitive process that occurs inside each of us for the creation of a "true self". Trying to reconcile these two self-senses into a single self-image can be particularly difficult and can create many tensions and distortions, and all kinds of illusions and delusions.

Examining the existential challenges of incarnation in this way can help us see that there's great creative potential in the process. The whole world of art and creativity is, essentially, a spiritual process of integrating physical and subtle worlds through the imaginative faculties of the mind. The process of creating an internal self-image and an internalized image of the world itself requires that human beings merge and fuse the physical and subtle realms of experience, and our own physical and subtle bodies, into a single self-sense and world-sense. This is difficult because one can't get full and direct feedback from either direction that fully matches up with the fused self-sense thus created. The physical world doesn't give us a full picture of our spiritual nature, and the spirit world don't fully grasp or comprehend either the positive nature or the basic limitations of the physical world. This is why religions have so many body-negative presumptions, for example. It's easy to form an image of the physical realm as being spiritually "fallen" or impure or disgusting from a subtle-mind point of view, just as it's possible to form a spiritually idealistic view of the physical realm that doesn't take into account its real limitations and character. Being able to understand and communicate properly between the two worlds and the two minds is a problem of translation, not just of language, but of even the deeper cognitive divides between them. It's a creative problem, even a problem of creativity itself, because that very process has many pitfalls in it.

Lowen pointed out that the process of using self-imagery and creating an internal world can also become pathologically distorted if one is using the imaginative process as a means of escaping from the limitations of the physical world and one's physical relations, such as parents, family, society, even the body itself. The narcissist is someone who tends more and more to live in and through the self-image, rather than through the realities of the body itself. In his view, the self-image is supposed to correspond very closely to the body, and when it departs from the body, we get narcissistic problems. However, Lowen doesn't take into account the true human existential situation, which involves the fact of spiritual incarnation, that we are a fusion of both spiritual and physical bodies, and that our self-imagery is complicated by this. So it's not entirely true that our self-image should correspond to the physical body and its realities. It must also correspond to our spiritual body and its realities as well, and thus take both into account in the creation of an accurate self-image.

That is the essential need for our self-image - that it accurately reflect both our physical and spiritual natures, and our real development in both physical and spiritual processes, as well as in the process of integrating the two. We may have a highly developed spiritual nature, and even a well-developed physical body, but if the two are not properly integrated, then we suffer that lack of integration. One of the ways that integration can go wrong is if we become narcissistically obsessed with our own self-image, and place more importance on the development of this self-image than on the actual development of an integrated body-mind. That, after all, is the only real purpose of the self-image - to facilitate the creative integration of physical and subtle bodies and worlds. When the self-image begins to supplant the actual life of the body, and become both a path and a goal in itself, we are getting into trouble. And when it just plain takes over, we have rampant spiritual narcissism on the loose.

When I say that everyone suffers to some degree from spiritual narcissism, I am merely pointing out that no one's process of spiritual integration is perfect. There are always going to be discrepancies and the need for reality checks to keep us in a healthy developmental loop. But for most people those discrepancies are relatively minor and the reality checks relatively small. But there's always the risk of going overboard in any number of directions, resulting in a self-image that is wildly distorted from our physical or spiritual realities. Sometimes this is just a result of immaturity, and sometimes its a result of major risk-taking, of someone trying to leapfrog over their limitations and over-estimating the importance of the self-image in the process.

Da was one of those fellows who was willing to risk it all for the sake of attempting something really big. At least in his imagination he was. And in fact, he was really quite talented and powerful, both spiritually and physically. Unfortunately, he was not able to find a peace with the limitations he encountered in both dimensions, and this not only frustrated him greatly, it led him to depart from the realities of those limitations and to embrace instead the world of his own self-imagery and world-imagery, creating a "spiritual reality" of his own that was certainly very real to him, but which was itself a pathological distortion of the spiritual process. It's hardly unique in that respect. There's all kinds of spiritual and religious paths that contain these kinds of distortions in them, from all kinds of sources. In fact, you could say that virtually all spiritual and religious paths contain these distortions, and that for this reason spiritual practice is a bit like walking through a mine-field (or mind-field) filled with all kinds of subtle bombs ready to blow up in our faces. This can hardly be avoided and must simply be endured to some extent. We are not perfect, our teachers have not been perfect, and history is far from perfect. The important thing is not to gripe about this, but to learn from it.

So, what then is the esoteric process of spiritual realization? One thing I hope is clear from this description is that the genuine esoteric process of non-dual realization is something quite different from this kind of spiritual integration of the subtle and physical bodies and worlds. Often, the two can become confused. But I think it's strikingly obvious that spiritual integration is a dualistic process. That doesn't make it bad or wrong, it just means that it's dualistic in nature, and shouldn't be confused with non-dualism. Non-dualism isn't at odds with this dualistic process. In fact, before non-dualism can even be considered or approached, some kind of developmental process must be relatively mature in the individual, there must be some real spiritual integration in the person, or they are simply going to be too confused to understand non-dualism or engage in its esoteric approach. Likewise, an understanding of the fallacy of spiritual narcissism must also be in place, or they will fall into that trap and its illusions all too easily.

One problem such people will face is that they will confuse esotericism with some purely "inner" process, and see exotericism as an insignificant "outer" process. This divide between the two is a product of both the lack of functional integration in the individual, but even more importantly, a lack of understanding of the esoteric process itself. The narcissist in us tends to think that "inner" means "in the realm of internal imagery". and that "inner self" means this internal self-image we create in our minds. So when they encounter non-dual teachings about the Self, they think that this involves a developmental process of creating a more and more inclusive and spiritually activated inner self-image. They don't understand that the Self being referred to is not a Self-image, some process in our minds that helps us integrate our various functional bodies and worlds. The Self in non-dual teachings refers to That Being that is beyond not just the physical, but the spiritual realms and bodies, that total Being within which all those world appear. The imaginative self-image cannot even begin to approach that Being and it simply cannot create an image of it, because it is beyond all form. It can't even create an image of "formlessness", because that Being is beyond even formlessness, which is simply a concept in the mind we create in opposition to the concept of form.

The reality of the Self is thus, as Nagarjuna said in his famous four-fold negation, "Neither existent nor non-existent, neither form nor formless". What is a self-imagist to do in the face of such instruction? Well, this is where the rubber meets the road, and where real esotericism begins.

Describing the real esoteric process is difficult, because words are essentially images, they are symbolic means of representing thoughts, images, ideas, concepts, and so on. Whereas the esoteric process goes beyond all of that. In strictly formal terms, it's a "negative process", in that it strips all these concepts and ideas and images from our minds, and leaves us bereft of them. What it puts in place, in positive terms, is not describable as an image or concept. It can only be indirectly referred to by such means. But that is not because it is intangible, but because it is so directly real that it bypasses the indirect methods of imagery and experience itself. So the non-dual esoteric process is simply not an exercise of the imaginative faculties, physical or subtle, and it isn't advanced by self-imagery or world-imagery. It isn't at war with these either, or even the least bit hostile to them. As Guadapada said, "non-dualism is not in conflict with any other viewpoint or practice". But neither is it the same as them either. Having a strong and powerful self-image is not necessary for non-dual esotericism, nor is it necessarily a detriment, unless one thinks that the process is one involving one's self-image.

The non-dual approach to self-identification is one of confounding ourselves, and confounding our very self-sense at its core. Non-dual esotericism recognizes that all self-imagery is essentially a form of vanity, and in vain, in that our real and true Self is not described by any of it. Self-imagery has a functional value in the process of incarnation, as mentioned earlier, but none of that is genuinely "esoteric" spirituality. Those who think esotericism is about the integration of the physical and subtle are mistaken. It's esoteric in a relative sense, in that it's certainly more esoteric than your average guy who's just not into spiritual things, but even ordinary guys are actually involved in this same spiritual process of integration whether they think of it in those terms or not, and many of them can be more adept at it than those who talk big and create grandiose spiritual self-images of themselves.

This is why Elias' perspective on the issue of ownership, and specifically his claim that the Self is the rightful property of every individual, is a sign of a spiritually narcissistic confusion about the nature of the Self. This kind of statement can only make sense if Elias is referring to the "self-image" we create in our minds about ourselves, and about God and Self and so on. That self-image is, indeed, our own property. But that image we have of ourselves, or of the Self, or of God, is not the same as either our true Self or God. To mistake the image we have formed in our minds for the reality beyond the mind is a tragic error with some rather grave consequences, one of which is that it locks us out of the genuine esoteric process, and keeps us locked into the self-fabricated world of self-imagery and self-imagination, which is a form of suffering all its own.

The true Self is not our property at all, it is our true Nature and Being. We as individuals do no own the Self. In the realm of useful spiritual metaphors for understanding our relationship to the Self, this is just an inversion of the true relationship. If one is to speak of "ownership" in this respect, it can apply only to the Self "owning" us, or owning all the world and all beings. But even that is a fairly awkward and misleading formulation, in that the Self isn't the kind of being or form that could "own" anything at all. And we are certainly incapable of "owning" the Self. So I not only remain unconvinced that there's any value in Elias' formulation, I think its real value lies in the clear example it gives us of the kinds of inverted understanding that spiritual narcissism leads to.

It's a fairly natural inversion. In the same way that looking at an image of ourselves in the mirror gives us an inverted sense of ourselves, in that left is switched with right, spiritual narcissism creates its own understanding of the spiritual process in an inverted fashion that creates images of reality that are inverted through and through. It may see with some clarity, but it inverts what it sees into an image that is actually in conflict with the reality of the spiritual process, unless we correct for that inversion. So we end up saying absurd things like "we own the Self" that gets it all backwards and upside down.

The actual esoteric process allows us to retire the self-image to a purely functional status that has no greater meaning in the esoteric sense. The purpose of the esoteric process is to develop a direct relationship with the Self, not to form images of it in the mind, and then claim to be "Self-realized" based on those images. The more images the mind holds, the less open it is to the esoteric process. The existence of such images is not the problem, but the holding onto them is, the identification of those images with the true Self. So one of the primary principles of genuine esoteric spirituality is the letting go of all images, and all sense of "ownership" and identification.

What is ownership but a form of identification with form? The Self can't own anything, because the Self has no form. When we speak of ourselves as owning things, we aren't really speaking of our true Self. We are merely speaking of the body-mind that we identify with. The body can own things, but the Self cannot. The Self neither owns, nor can it be owned. It is free. Elias claims that owning things does not make you unfree, but it does, because it means one has identified with a limitation, a body, and claims that body as one's property. And of course I think we all know that being owned does not make us free either, as any slave can tell you. But it's not just slaves that lose their freedom by being owned, it's their masters who lose their freedom by owning them. Both have created a relationship in which our real freedom has been abandoned for the sake of ownership and identification with the body-mind. And of course much conflict ensues from that.

This is very much what goes on when we say that we own God, or that we own the Self. When we speak of "my God", or "my Self", we invariably have some sense of identity and ownership at stake. It gets more obvious when we talk of "my religion" or "my country", or "my body". A whole lot of conflict and war goes on because of that sense of ownership and identification. Which is not to say that the body can't functionally own things. Non-dualism is not much concerned with the functional characteristics of bodily life, which involves all kinds of practical issues of ownership. There's certainly a respected place in Sanatana Dharma for those who renounce possessions and live the renunciate life a of monk, but it's not considered a necessity, or even recommended for everyone. To the contrary, most of the Upanishadic sages were forest-dwelling rishis with wives and families and businesses and a fairly active life, but guided by an inner sense of renunciation.

Ramana Maharshi frequently spoke of this inner sense of renunciation, especially when devotees asked him to bless their desire to take formal sanyas. He denied that blessing to virtually everyone who asked for it, because he felt that for most people it was deluding, that real renunciation was of the mind, not of the body, that it meant renunciation of the egoic sense of self, which included the egoic sense of being the owner and the doer. Real esotericism begins, Ramana felt, when one makes this inner gesture of renunciation, and lets the outer life fall into line with that.

But there's more to it than even this. The true estoeric process begins with a re-orientation to an even deeper understanding of the outer world of experience than occurs through the process of incarnation and integration of physical and subtle bodies and selves. To Ramana the only genuine "inner" is the very Self, and everything object to or witnessed by the Self, both physical and subtle, was the "outer" world, the product of the false, egoic self. To Ramana, all worlds, both physical and subtle, were created by the ego, rather than vice-versa. Even the "Creator-God", which Ramana considered "the first illusion", is in reality just the primal form of the ego, not a truly non-dual understanding of God.

Ramana saw the process of perception in the opposite manner than we do. He saw perception as a process of projection, in which the egoic mind creates a world to perceive, projects it outwardly into an observable form, and then inverts that projection into a perception, as if there really were a world out there to perceive. This creates the illusion of an independent and objective world, with ourselves as a body-mind within that world, which is constantly verified by us in the process of perception, when in reality is it nothing more than the mind's own "virtual reality" feedback loop, akin to the world of The Matrix.

The esoteric process is a way of correcting for these inversions of attentionand the creations of the illusion of a "world" that are at the heart of what we might call "universal narcissism". The esoteric process is able to "catch" the mind in this process of creating images that become worlds to us, and interrupts the process of calling them "real". Instead, they are seen as projections of the mind, of an even deeper order than the process of incarnation itself and its imaginative self-imagery.

How is the esoteric process able to do that? Must we become supermen to be able to cut through all this maya being created moment to moment? Again, the opposite is the case. The theories and imagery of the spiritual narcissist creates the idea of the "spiritual hero", some great soul who is able to penetrate through all illusions, smash the demons, free the princess, and re-establish the sacred order. Adi Da was infatuated with playing out such a role, and frequently referring to himself as the "Vira", or spiritual hero, a unique capacity that only the rarest of souls had. But this is just more of the spiritual narcissism that distorts our understanding of the esoteric process.

To understand that process, we might, in the spirit of the Christian holiday season, look to the teachings of Jesus for some clues. In particular, we could look at sayings of his such as "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for they shall see God." To the common understanding, this seems to be an inverted statement. Shouldn't it be the rich in spirit who see God? What's all this about being "poor in spirit"? Well, this is where the genuine esoteric viewpoint departs from the narcissistic viewpoint. Because the genuine esoteric viewpoint acknowledges that we do not "own" the spirit. Quite the contrary. The spiritual narcissist, on the other hand, is immensely proud of his spiritual accomplishments, his spiritual experiences, his empowerments and abilities. He experiences the spirit as something that he "owns", as something he can possess and make use of, even manipulate and profit from. And for a time this may even seem so. Even "just so".But it is an illusion which leads to a great "fall".

The genuine esoteric process doesn't just teach about non-ownership as a concept, or as a rule of behavior, it teaches it as a spiritual reality, through and through. One becomes "bereft" of spirit in the process. One "falls" from spirit even, and becomes "poor in spirit". When one accepts this not merely as a concept, but as one's genuine spiritual reality, then the esoteric process awakens. This can happen in any moment in which one has "let go" of one's ownership stake in oneself and in God, Self, and Spirit. These are the moments of genuine spiritual crisis and awakening. They are often moments of profound inner self-inspection and even despair. They have no "content", even if sometimes we associate content with them. There is often a profound infilling of the spirit in these moments, but it is not an ownership of the spirit that we are brought into, but a surrender to the spirit.

They are also moments of freedom from the illusion of ownership and imagery, which occurs when we "break", fall apart so to speak, and cannot be "put back together", like Humpty-Dumpty. That is what "broken yogi" refers to. Like many, I have fallen, broken, and can't be put back together. That is a feature, not a bug, however. It's part of the life-long process of understanding genuine esotericism, which is only available to those who are broken, not those who are rich and powerful in spirit, who think they have it all going on. What is necessary is to learn how to remain broken all the time, to break down completely, and never to be put back together again. Most people don't like that process, and find ways to bypass it or steer around it or create a way to turn it into a convention of the ego, and put ourselves back together as "esotericists" with special knowledge and experience that the slugs or munchkins out there don't have. There's no end to the ways these things can be distorted and perverted through spiritual narcissism, except to end the narcissism itself.

They have no "content", even if sometimes we associate content with them. There is often a profound infilling of the spirit in these moments, but it is not an ownership of the spirit that we are brought into, rather a surrender to the spirit.

And that is the real point of esoteric awakening. It is always a moment of surrender of self to Spirit, to God, to Self. It's never a moment of triumph and victory, of gaining power over Spirit, God, or Self. It is a bowing down, a humbling of oneself before God, Self, and Spirit. Why? Because God and Self and Spirit are of the very nature of humility itself, not of triumph.

One of the esoteric secrets Ramana Maharshi taught was that God was the humblest of all beings, and that is how he became "God" in the first place. His notion of God is of utter, transcendental humility, not powerful self-aggrandizing hubris. The spiritual narcissists have it all inverted. The real power of God comes from his humility, his bowing down before all things, not his arrogance and strength. His true strength is his humility, his lack of ego, and that is how he became God. Likewise, all esoteric practitioners realize God through their humility, through their surrender, through their seeing through the false ego of self-imagery and self-projection, and bowing down before reality. This process is one of no longer protecting or promoting ego in all its form, not just the internal self-imagery, but even through the external projected self-imagery of worlds and their creative processes. The esoteric process surrenders all these and relates to the "outer" world in a very different fashion.

Jesus' primary esoteric teaching was of unconditional love. Spiritual narcissists tend to overlook the real meaning of his teachings, regarding much of this teaching about unconditional as mere outer social morality, and emphasize instead some kind of otherworldly experiences that one can have through mystical means and which, by pursing them, we are "saved" and become like Christ in the process. But this inverts once again the real meaning here. Unconditional love of all others, and acceptance of all as equal in God, is the key to the esoteric process, not mystical experience. In fact, genuine mystical experience is only gained access to through this practice of unconditional love, and is not possible without it.

Likewise, acceptance of whatever happens to us as the blessing of God, as something we should be thankful for regardless of whether it appears positive or negative, is the key to esoteric practice in relation to the world. This is because in reality we are all equal in God, and all that happens really is God's doing, not our own, and we need to be thankful to God for every aspect of it, not just the parts we find pleasurable or desirable.

To awaken to unconditional love one really does have to learn how to love all others, and that means all others. That's the "price" of esotericism. And that love is not hidden away in some purely "inward" sense. When Jesus was asked, "how should we know your real disciples and tell them from the false ones?", he said simply "You will know them by their love". In other words, it ought to be obvious in the way they lived and acted in all the ordinary aspects of life. And furthermore, this was the way to become "like Christ". Jesus' esoteric instruction was "to love others as I have loved you, unconditionally". He lived what he taught, he loved others unconditionally, with complete humility and surrender, and it was by this demonstration that people could recognize him as God. And in that sense, he was God, not through some mystical avataric nonsense, but simply by loving unconditionally. Because God is love, the Self is love, and the esoteric process of knowing God is simply one of surrendering to and living by that love, as that love, in relation to everything around you and in you, including your own Self. That is how one comes to know one's true Self, through unconditional surrender and love. That is how one becomes "Christ-like", not through some heroic rising above the slugs and munchkins. In Christ, there are no slugs or munchkins.

The esoteric process is really just this simple. Self-enquiry is nothing other than this. The esoteric relationship to the Guru is nothing more than this surrender, of learning to simply love unconditionally. It requires renunciation, yes. It requires that we become "poor in spirit" as well, with no defense and utter dependence on grace. We don't get to own grace or manipulate it as we wish. We are given over to it. We are the lowest of the low in the process, with no protected ego, deliberately surrendering ego into this process of unconditional love and acceptance. And this carries into our very living.

Nisargadatta was once asked how do we realize, and he said it was not enough just to understand or enquire of the Self, and grasp that the Self is our real nature and reality, we need to actually live as if this is so. And that means to see all others as our very Self and love all others as our Self. To love unconditionally, to surrender in total humility, and to allow grace to guide our lives. This is not easy to do, especially if we are enamoured of the ideas and self-imagery and God-imagery of the common or even "esoteric" forms of spiritual narcissism. But it is necessary all the more because of that. Which simply means we have to surrender these false notions and truly surrender in all humility and gratitude before the grace of the Self.

The esoteric relationship to the Guru is entirely about this process of surrender and submission to the living reality of unconditional love and gratitude. Many assume that these things are just some kind of exoteric social recommendation, but it is far more than that. It's the esoteric process itself, lived in relation to the Grace of the Guru. In that process, the devotee surrenders not only his sense of having "possessions" to the Guru, but all sense of "ownership" and responsibility for his suffering itself. He surrenders his worries, his concerns, and all the burdens of the ego to the Guru. And in turn the Guru surrenders these to God, and becomes the vehicle of God's Grace.

There's a beautiful message from Ramana I came across recently that almost perfectly describes this process:

Ramana's Promises

My devotees have the qualifications to rejoice abundantly, like children of an emperor.

Abandon the drama [of the world] and seek the Self within. Remaining within, I will protect you, [ensuring] that no harm befalls you.

If you inquire and know me, the indweller, in that state there will be no reason for you to worry about the world.

For the cruel disease of burning samsara to end, the correct regimen is to entrust all your burdens on me.

In order that your needless anxieties cease, make sure that all your burdens are placed on me through the brave act of depending totally on grace.

If you completely surrender all your responsibilities to me, I will accept them as mine and manage them.

When bearing the entire burden remains my responsibility, why do you have any worries?

Long ago you offered your body, possessions and soul to me, making them mine, so why do you still regard these things as 'I' and 'mine' and associate yourself with them?

Seek my grace within the Heart. I will drive away your darkness and show you the light. This is my responsibility.

More later.

Esoteric Submission To Limitation and the Unlimited

2010-12-17T03:22:00.000-08:00

There's a new post from Elias in response to my latest, but unfortunately not much worth responding to in it. Not that I expected this would go very far.

Some basic disclosure is perhaps necessary at this point. Elias and I have never gotten along very well, as many who frequent this blog and his forum are aware, though sometimes our disagreements lead to interesting exchanges. A few months ago over at Lightmind, things got rather bizarre from my point of view, with Elias leveling some rather strange and paranoid charges at me for "betraying" Ramana and other "crimes against the Self", or something incomprehensible like that. Obviously there was and is a serious disconnect going on between us, and undoubtedly we each see the other as being at fault. I wrote a response basically describing Elias as a "spiritual narcissist", and he responded by banning me from Lightmind. Which, to be perfectly honest, was something of a favor.

In any case, when Elias recently began writing again about Adi Da, and responding to things I posted here, I asked him to let me engage him again at Lightmind, but he declined, and so we're left engaging one another at a distance. Which would be fine if it stayed on topic, but it hasn't, and the personal issues between the two of us are getting in the way, and aren't even very interesting in the first place. When someone says of me that "he gives me a very creepy feeling, that something in his mind is set against the Self as the property and native state of every individual," I really don't have anything much to say, except c'est la vie. Is it happens, I really cannot comprehend the notion of the Self being anyone's property, or there being any sense at all behind that notion. It's pretty hard for me to square that with the understanding of the Self as inherently free, beyond all ego and ownership, and the very embodiment of freedom itself, since property is the opposite of freedom, as any slave will tell you. I can only comprehend that statement as something a spiritual narcissist would say about the Self, so I guess my earlier diagnosis seems to fit.

Not wishing this thread of samyama to disappear under waves of creepy feelings, however, I thought I'd continue on with some further thoughts I had on the general topic, and specifically on how these issues relate to Adi Da and his teaching drama.

One of those thoughts was brought on by a comment MDPC at the Lightmind Forums wrote in response to my last post:

BY: "What is limited must have limits placed on it, in order that what is unlimited can gain its freedom. If we don't limit our limited mind and life, we don't allow the unlimited spirit its true place as the final "authority" over us. We just become crazy, self-indulgent, full of ourselves, and convinced that we are great beings of unlimited intelligence and spirituality, whereas that is never true of any "one", it is only true of the One Self. To know that, we must bow down, which means surrendering all that is limited, all that is conditional, to the authority of the unconditional Divine."

MDPC: Ha, wait, what?? Everything else in that paragraph makes sense to me. I'm assuming it [the boldface sentence] was maybe an instance of awkward wording as opposed to some egregious laxity in understanding stuff, but why the lapse there into, um, some "radical duality"?

Perhaps that phrase was oddly worded, but I think it makes an important point that stands out precisely because we tend to think of these things in "non-dual" terms. Having read about non-dualism, we tend to think that the unlimited cannot be limited, and that what is free cannot be contained, or made one's "property". And though in truth that is the case, in the harsh realm of human suffering the opposite is the case. That is what duality is all about. The non-dual, indivisible reality is made to seem separate and divided. Consciousness itself is experienced that way, as a separate, divided, and suffering sense of personal identity. Freedom becomes a goal, rather than our very nature. The unlimited and unconditional becomes a distant object of desire, or is considered a fantasy of remote and abstracted concepts. We find ourselves oddly surrounded by limitations everywhere we look, such that even our own sense of self is defined by these limitations. That is what it means to be identified with a body and mind. The sense of limitation becomes our very identity, and we struggle to overcome it.

And thus we are conditioned to struggle with limitations, and to resent every kind of limitation that seems to be placed upon us by others, from parents to teachers to government authorities to religious leaders to Gurus. We don't seem to readily comprehend the notion that we have it all backwards, that it is we who are imposing limitations upon ourselves, not anyone else. And that the primary limitation we impose upon ourselves is the sense of identification with forms, with mind and body, and of course with dualism itself. We somehow wish to attain liberation from limitation while yet being identified with limited forms of mind and body, and this produces a terrible and insoluable dilemma. We think that by making mind and body unlimited, we will escape this dilemma, but that never works, because no matter what we can achieve with mind and body, it always represents a limit, no matter how great. Even the tallest mountain we may climb is still just as far away from infinity as the smallest hilltop.

This is why spiritual wisdom begins with the recognition of our limits for what they are - limited - and applying appropriate limits to them. That is why discipline is appropriate. Not because we need authoritarian control from above, but because everything we identify with is limited, and therefore it is perfectly appropriate to have a limit placed on it. A Guru isn't an authoritarian Hitler for pointing this out. It's just his job to make clear the nature of things, and that means making it clear that limited things are limited and have to be treated that way. And by recognizing this, we are actually freed up from the pursuit of unlimitedness in what is simply and inherently limited. As the old county-western song kind of says, we have been looking for the unlimited in all the wrong places. We need to stop looking for the unlimited in limited things, and start looking for the unlimited in what is truly unlimited.

So the first step in this process means accepting the limits in what is limited. That means accepting that there is a natural and inherent discipline required in every ordinary area of life. This means getting over ourselves and all our dreams of unlimited success and attainment in ordinary life. It means in a very basic sense becoming a renunciate, one who has given up that illusory search. It doesn't mean that one literally has no participation in life or "worldly" activities, it just means one knows they are limited and can only achieve limited results, and one doesn't expect unlimited happiness or liberation in those pursuits. One even begins to see that limits are all pretty much the same, and that whatever one gets in such things is simply a grace, a gift of God, and that one can be happy with whatever result one gets in life.

This is what the Bhagavad Gita means when it describes the path of Karma Yoga being that of "not caring for the results of one's actions". This is what it means to have a "non-dual approach" to the ordinary functional matters of life. One is thankful for whatever comes, and not resentful or reactive towards how things turn out, measuring the results against some standard of expectation.

The very word "Maya", meaning the illusion of conditional existence, actually originates from a word meaning "to measure". Everything we can measure is an illusion, and that means everything in this world is fundamentally illusory. That is why it is appropriate to limit them, to discipline them, to not expect unlimited results from them. If it can be measured, it's limited, and thus "Maya". If it's unlimited, it cannot be measured, and thus it cannot have a limit placed upon it.

This is why the standard approach of spirituality is to place limits and disciplines upon all our "measurable" activities. By placing limits on these things, our attention is actually freed up to be given over to the unlimited. And that is how the unlimited attains its freedom. Without that, the unlimited remains hidden behind the facade of all our seeking within the realm of limitation, just as Brahman remains hidden behind the mask of Maya.

The idea that the unlimited is not free will of course strike one as contradictory. And it is. But that is the point of the unliberated person's awareness. They are living in a contradictory consciousness, in which what is unlimited has been overshadowed by limitations at every turn, such that the unlimited is not seen, and so rather than turning to the unlimited, we become obsessed with seeking the limited, yet in an unlimited fashion! That is why our seeking is literally endless. We desire what is unlimited, but all we see is limitation, so we become condemned to an endless cycle of seeking in and through these limitations for an unlimited experience that lasts forever. It never happens. It can never happen. It is the very definition of insanity, which is "doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting a different result". The only "forever" we experience is the eternity of our seeking, never of attaining.

Until we begin to see the insanity of what we are doing, however, we are condemned to repeat ourselves, running through all the possible limited searches we can possibly come up with, in the hope that one of them will pay off in an unlimited fashion. It's not until we begin to gain at least a little insight into this dead-end cycle that we can begin a genuine spiritual life. What we previously thought were spiritual pursuits are finally understood as merely more exotic ways of doing the same thing, meaning seeking the unlimited in things that are still limited. Yes, we can gain "esoteric" experiences of the psychic realms, and feel all kinds of great and wonderful things in the process, and this may give us hope that we are on the right track for a while. But eventually we discover that even these so-called spiritual pursuits are limited, and the only thing unlimited about them is the seeking, not the results.

So what is genuine spiritual esotericism about? First of all, it's about the profound acceptance of the limited nature of conditional existence. To some, that sounds like a real "downer", when in fact its one of the most liberating experiences there is. If it's just a concept, sure, it's no big deal. But if one really comes to the point of feeling and accepting in one's feeling the sheer finality of this truth, it is utterly liberating. And why? Because in that moment, one no longer has one's attention bound to that limited search any longer. The felt experience of this insight is so profound that it breaks open the universe, it breaks open one's heart, and one is able to find direct experience of the truly unlimited nature of reality. This is the heart-breaking truth. It comes when the suffering of limitations is so profound and inescapable that one can only stand in place and feel the truth of this limited view, and by standing still, see what has never been limited at all.

And this is why the Guru simply stands still, in silence, in one's heart, and the essential practice of spiritual life is nothing more than that stillness. In relation to the limits of the world, the practice is simply to accept the reasonable and inherent limits they represent, and not to react or rebel or fight against them, but to simply be thankful for whatever comes our way. In relation to the Guru, however - and by "Guru" I mean that inner and still Presence that opens up to us when we stand still - we should accept and practice no limitation whatsoever. If we identify the Guru with some limited form or being or symbol, we cannot confuse this with the Guru's unlimited nature. We cannot expect the form of the Guru to be unlimited, or we make the same mistake we previously made with our own ordinary life pursuits. The nature of the Guru is the same unlimited and unconditional nature that is made available to us by the acceptance of the limits of our own form. So we must accept the limits of the Guru's form in the same way that we accept - and discipline - all other limited forms, but open ourselves to the Guru's unlimited nature.

Meditation is in reality nothing more than to contemplate this unlimited nature. And that is why it is so important to accept the disciplined limits on the body and mind that are the requisites for contemplation. That is why a true Guru will always require that we accept limits and discipline in relation to our bodily life in form, and yet also steer our attention away from these in order that we may genuinely meditate upon the unlimited Self-nature in the heart, prior to all form. The real Guru is beyond all forms, beyond all limits, but we don't see that as long as we are obsessed with our own limited form and what kind of results we can get from it. And so that is why the Guru must be "freed" from the bondage we have kept him hidden from view behind, the mask of "Maya", the measuring of things that is our constant obsession.

So genuine esotericism only begins at this point. Previous to this understanding, we can have all kinds of incredible "spiritual" experiences. But none of them are genuinely esoteric. Likewise, we can have a relationship to a Guru that we think is esoteric, because of all the great psychic experiences that we seem to be opening up to. But a genuine Guru knows that none of that is what true esotericism is about. He knows that esotericism only begins when our seeking is surrendered and the heart breaks open by the power of the acceptance of our limits, our suffering of them, and the grace this allows into our lives.

So a genuinely disciplined esoteric practitioners is not some kind of heroic athlete. They have not attained some great disciplined ability to do masterful things. Nor are they some poor sucker who has been beaten into submission by a domineering Guru. They are simply wise enough to accept with deepest feeling the limitations that conditional existence is all about, and yet by that to open to what is unlimited and beyond all conditionality. This produces a natural form of discipline that does not react to, but instead welcomes these limits. The esoteric devotee accepts the Guru's instructions in all areas of life as a liberating gift that frees their attention to meditate upon the Guru's, and their own, unlimited nature. And so he is immensely grateful to the Guru for his instruction, and follows it without resistance, seeing it as the very means of his liberation.

Of course, the kicker here is that the Guru must be a genuinely free and liberated man, who is transparent to the Self, and thus incapable of abusing his relationship to the devotee for egoic purposes. There are few Gurus who fit this bill, of course. And yet, if the devotee's intentions are true and purposed towards freedom, even an imperfect Guru can serve him, at least for a time. Eventually, Grace will bring him to a Guru who can actually fulfill the esoteric process, regardless of how it has begun.

And of course it's important to remember that few devotees are entirely clear and complete in their understanding and acceptance of these basic truths and principles of spiritual esotericism. Some mixing of purity and corrupted values and understanding is inevitable until the very end of the line. So the devotee is likely to continue to seek through limited means even once he has experienced the awakening to the genuine esoteric process. He can even forget or refuse these insights and wisdom or confuse them and become enamoured of mistaken methods. So there is seldom a simplistic linear narrative unfolding in anyone's actual life and practice. But the principles do become clearer and more simple over time, and the essential progress of esoteric practice involves the growth of clarity and maturity in this understanding. Which means, above all else, simple surrender to the most basic form of the Guru's instruction, whatever that might be.

The most esoterically mature devotee is thus the one who simply does what the Guru instructs. Of course, this requires a Guru who is acting as a transparent vessel of the Self, leading the devotee directly to the Self, rather than towards the fulfilment of his own needs or limitations. Doing what an egoically impure Guru does will not lead to maturity or realization, it will only lead to complication and confusion. Or to a difficult to disentangle combination of the two. Which is where I would put Adi Da's efforts to create a spiritual relationship with his devotees.

Adi Da of course considered himself to be a perfect and unlimited Agent of the Divine. But most of those who were his devotees couldn't help but notice quite a lot of ego getting in the way at times. To hear Da tell it, all the ego problems were on the part of his devotees, but even a simple unbiased examination would demonstrate otherwise. The problem, of course, is that when one is a devotee of such a Guru, it's almost impossible to be unbiased. So endless explanations were accepted to explain Adi Da's limitations, and endless excuses created to divert any doubts back upon the devotee. But regardless of how one explains that, in my many years of being in Adidam, one thing I think was incontrovertible was that virtually none of his devotees were ever able to fully trust his life-level instructions.

Certainly many devotees would pay lip service to the notion that Da was trustworthy, or even infallible. But none that I was aware of actually acted in such a manner. If they tried to, the inevitable result was simple cultism, exemplified by all the usual manifestations of "cognitive dissonance". In fact, I had many conversations and interactions with a lot of the most sincere and devoted inner circle devotees occupying the highest and most responsible positions in Adidam, and I can say without question that none of them fully trusted Adi Da. In fact, they often openly made clear that they didn't trust him at all, and that it was essential to hide from him all kinds of information which they didn't trust him with, about themselves, about Adidam, about even basic matters of ordinary life. Many of them were terrified that Adi Da would find out what they had been up to, and for good reason, in that he regularly exploded into rages and waged war on devotees and threatened to leave or even die if things were not to his liking. Or he would make demands upon them that they did not trust were in their own best interests, from financial demands to living circumstance demands to sexual demands, you name it.

So the biggest problem in Adidam as far as I could see was the lack of trust between himself and his devotees. It was a mutual problem, in that Adi Da didn't trust his devotees either. And whosoever's fault that was ultimately, it accounts for the massive failure of the Adidam practice. How could it be otherwise? The trust between Guru and devotee is the fundamental foundation of the entire esoteric process, and without that trust it is constantly being disrupted and unable to mature or proceed to any favorable result.

In the genuine esoteric spiritual process, the relationship between Guru and devotee is all about building up that mutual trust, so that the Guru can trust the intentions of his devotee, and the devotee can trust the instructions of his Guru. The Guru acts in a way to build that trust, not to tear it down. In Adidam, however, Adi Da was constantly destroying the trust of his devotees. He would claim that this was because he wished to create a radical form of trust, but that never seemed to occur, and instead it created a pathological and highly contentious situation in which neither could be trusted. Adi Da lied to his devotees on a regular basis, and they lied to him as well. And they both lied to everyone else on down the line. Essentially, the whole of Adidam become little more than an endless series of lies that built into a gigantic lie, and eventually people noticed this, either in whole or in part. This is why so many ended up leaving Adidam and having very little to do with it. If one comes to a spiritual group looking for truth, and ends up being lied to, it tends to push people away. Those who stayed around ended up living a lie, or many lies, while yet hoping that truth would win out in the end. And the tension between those lies and the truth became a terrible burden to carry around. How people were able to resolve those conflicts is a fascinating question, one I can only answer in my own case (and I think I've already addressed that).

One can say that Adidam was a sincere attempt by Adi Da to create a genuine Guru-devotee relationship, one that got down to some kind of radical truth. There was something profoundly dear in his own efforts, and even the efforts of his devotees, that is probably missed by those who weren't there for it. But it never quite got there, that's for sure. In moments it did, but that's true for all kinds of spiritual pursuits with less pretentious claims. It created a lot of amusing theatricality, and lots of stories to be told, but the genuine esoteric process tended to be missing most of the time, and never was able to ground itself or become genuinely effective. Therefore it's rather to be expected that most of the people who claim to have had a genuinely "esoteric" relationship to Adi Da are those who had the least to do with him. But these people are, for the most part, unable to comprehend what esotericism is even about, and don't even know what kind of claim it is they are making. Esotericism has nothing to do with feeling powerful energies when one thinks about a Guru - unless those powerful energies leads one to submit and surrender oneself to their instruction and give up one's seeking.

So in many respects Da had it right when he said that anyone who wished to have an esoteric relationship to him must submit to his instruction and approach in the manner his instruction required - through the formal disciplines and practices he established in the Adidam community, mission, institution and culture. If nothing else, it's his prerogative to say how people could relate to him if he wished to do it that way. And it's certainly within the general outline of sanatana dharma to do things this way, if not quite in such an organized, scientology-like structure. Adi Da was certainly one to go to extremes, and this is in part what made him so difficult to trust. The traditional Guru-devotee relationship is seldom equated with organizational membership as an intermediary process, though I suppose some of the traditional monastic orders functioned this way. Rather than increasing genuine trust, however, this tended to require trust not only in Adi Da himself, but in the community, institution, culture, and mission, each of which were even less trustworthy than Adi Da himself. So the whole thing was really quite a mess, and almost impossible to disentangle oneself from.

Similar problems have occurred in lots of spiritual groups, of course, large and small, both in the east and west. It's hardly unique. It's just a bit more exaggerated in Adidam than in most. But it's hardly the worst example of a distorted spiritual relationship either. One has to maintain a certain realistic perspective on Adidam, and not get carried away even by valid criticism. There were a lot worse teachers around, a lot of whom were far less spiritually awake than Adi Da. Given the time and place and the difficulties all of us had, he did better than might be expected. Just worse than we hoped. But it's important to be grateful for whatever results came from it, including the learning of many lessons that evidently a lot of us needed to learn. Blessed be those who didn't need such lessons, but at least we got them. I think.

Heaven and Hell in the Guru-Devotee Relationship

2010-12-12T18:40:00.000-08:00

Continuing the debate on the esoteric and exoteric dimensions of the Guru-devotee relationship from my last post, Elias makes a reply that sidesteps the basic issues I tried to discuss by creating an either/or dichotomy. To hear him tell it, one has either the option of "mere adherence to traditional obligations and devotional submission to scripture and culture" or "the freedom and wildness of God-as-Guru." Nowhere does he seem to comprehend the notion that these two might go together, that the freedom of both the Guru and the devotee is expressed through discipline, devotion, and submission, and surrender to the instruction of both Guru and scriptural and cultural tradition, and that this is seen as the path of freedom, not enslavement to some sort of fascist totalitarian system aimed at crushing the spirit or imposing mental concepts upon the liberated consciousness.

In many respects, this is just a replay of a debate that has been going on among westerners since the 1960s, when eastern religion and Gurus first entered into the western mind en masse, and westerners began trying to develop actual spiritual practices based on eastern traditions. A whole lot of experimentation went on there, and Adi Da's community was a small but significant aspect of that. Fifty years later we are still try to iron out the mess that resulted, not just in Adidam, but throughout the east-west spiritual confluence. A large part of that mess is the result of precisely the kind of either/or thinking that Elias is arguing from in his post, this notion that because liberation is the goal, discipline and adherence to traditional instruction is actually an obstacle to be overcome, and those who value these things are somehow opposed to the true "spirit" of enlightenment.

I think most people who have stuck with the koan of spiritual practice and instruction have come to see that there is no easy or simplistic answer, and that "freedom" does not mean the trashing of traditional instruction in favor of the "wildness of the living God". The living God, it turns out, is a very disciplined and conservative dude. Discipline is freedom's best friend, and submission goes hand in hand with enlightenment. There is of course no single course of instruction or discipline for everyone, we all have to find out for ourselves what works, and choose our "Ishta Devatma" to submit to, but without submission to instruction, there is also no maturity and growth. We can see that in many people who refuse to surrender or submit, but instead create their own world of spiritual truth, largely in their own minds, and submit only to that. They show the signs of unfortunate immaturity, petulance, even outrage at those who remind us that things are no so simple as they think. They have the wrong idea of what maturity is - some kind of brazen standing up against authority, rather than the bowing down to the heart-truth.

There's a great old Zen story about this, in which a Samurai warrior approaches a Zen master because he wants to know what heaven and hell are. The Zen master just sits in silence as the Samurai rages on for a very long time, demanding answers to his questions, until finally he becomes so angry at the Zen Master's non-response that he takes out his sword, raises it above the Zen master's head, and yells out, "Show me heaven and show me hell, or I'll cut your head off!" The Zen master looks up at him calmly, pointing to the Samurai's contorted facial expression, and says, "That is hell." The Samurai is instantly stopped in his tracks, and horrified at his own state, he falls at the Zen master's feet begging his forgiveness. The Zen master than softly continues, "And this is heaven."

Anyone remotely familiar with early Buddhist practice, in Buddha's own lifetime, is aware of the tremendous numbers of rules and regulations governing virtually everything a bhikkhu might do. Similar sets of rules and obligations can be found in Sanatana Dharma, in Taoism, Christianity, Islam, you name it. I'm not about to defend all of these things, as many are certainly just rote obligations that can be enacted without genuine inner submission or understanding, but it's not as if they had no enlightened purpose from the outset. Buddha was certainly not motivated to suppress the spirit of his disciples with the heavy burden of empty tradition. There was a real purpose behind these disciplines, and it was an esoteric one, not to be engaged merely by beginners, it was to be engaged even by the most enlightened, as a sign of their freedom, of their real transcendence of the limitations of this world, and as sign of their awakened life.

Western non-dualists are rather famous for their lack of interest in formal discipline (and I count myself among these), but then we have some rather extraordinary counter-examples. Nisargadatta, for example, is one of the most popular of Advaitic teachers who taught westerners, to whom he made no formal demands for discipline or practice. And yet, Nisargadatta himself did puja every day on an image of his own Guru. He was often asked why he did this, and he said it was not at all necessary, it didn't change his enlightenment in any way, it was just that his Guru had asked him to do puja to him every day, and so he continued the practice throughout the whole of his life. It never crossed his mind, after his enlightenment, to stop doing the puja because he didn't need it anymore. He did it freely and happily, simply because his Guru had asked him to do it. And he continued that practice until the day he died.

It's important to recognize that the traditional Advaitic path is not some hippie anarchism in which all one does is go around singing about Oneness or saying "neti neti". Sankara created an entire system of highly disciplined practice involving intensive study of the scriptures, meditation, devotional practice, all kinds of instruction from the Guru, and of course very strict living conditions and disciplines suited for a monastic life. There were further disciplines for householders and those of every caste. And that's pretty much how the whole of Sanatana Dharma is. Elias like to call India "permissive", but again, this is just a westerner's misunderstanding. The modern west is a permissive culture, but India is not. India is very diverse and very tolerant of differences, but it is not permissive. It's actually rather strict and rule-based, with everyone's role in life very much defined and restricted. That has changed somewhat in modern times now that the caste system is breaking down, but the general character of Sanatana Dharma is never one of permissiveness. It's one of a great many disciplines and regulations that are rooted of course in religious purposes.

Not all of that is about esoteric purposes, of course, but the principle tends to be held even more closely when it comes to esoteric practice regardless of what sect of Sanatana Dharma one practices in. Esoteric practice in India under a Guru has a huge number of rules and regulations, and of course there is latitude given, at least for the Guru and the sect to set those rules as they see fit, but not for the disciple to pick and choose as he would like once he has been given diksha (initiation) or taken sannyas (renunciation).

Of course, so much of this is simply second nature to Indians that a lot of it doesn't need to be said. Reading the accounts of the life of Sri Ramakrishna or Yogananda or Ramana Maharshi one doesn't encounter a lot of discussion of these kinds of things because so much of it is merely taken for granted. There's just an understanding in India of how one lives and approaches a Guru and how one relates to a Guru that is simply part of the culture. The problem with westerners is that it isn't part of their culture and they don't think it matters, when it actually does. They think they can just be loosey-goosey hippies, get some pithy sayings, some shaktipat, some blissful meditation, and then groove their way to the Living God. They don't understand that what is keeping them unenlightened isn't some superficial mental misunderstanding, it's the whole course of their life and attention that has created deep vasanas and samskaras in their consciousness at every level, and that this has to be purified and undone, or there is no real spiritual growth and maturity. This requires real submission, real discipline, and real surrender of these vasanas and samskaras. What ends up happening with a lot of westerners is that they merely put a spiritual face on their vasanas and samskaras, and end up hardly changing or growing at all. Especially those who see discipline and submission to rules and obligations as somehow anti-spiritual in nature.

Someone like Ramana Maharshi represents something of a break from tradition, at least in some respects, and yet he is looked upon by some as the purest representative of the Advaitic tradition. Elias quotes Jung in praising Ramana in this manner, without mentioning that in some respects this is duplicitous praise, in that Jung uses that very rational to dismiss Ramana and his teachings as unsuited for westerners, as somehow representing a "foreign" influence that is even dangerous to us. Adi Da made similarly "dismissive praise" of Ramana by equating him with some kind of "ancient tradition of spirituality", which of course is not suited for modern times and modern people, for whom something new and of course requiring a new kind of Sat-Guru was required, and lucky for us Adi Da himself just happened to fit the bill.

The truth is that Ramana didn't consider himself an Advaitist, and didn't even consider himself a Hindu for that matter. He didn't have much religious education before his awakening, and he didn't associate it with Sanatana Dharma. His Guru was Arunachula Siva, the form of Shiva that was embodied, to him at least, in the sacred hill near Tiruvanamalai, where he spent the rest of his life. Ramana did get some education in the Sanatana tradition over the years, and came to love many aspects of it, but he always reminded his devotees that he was from "outside the tradition", and that he was "atiashrama", meaning belonging to none of the traditional Hindu castes or social regulations. He didn't honor the traditional Guru system, and refused to give formal diksha to any of his devotees. Nor did he even advocate the kind of disciplined practiced one would find in a traditional Advaitic math. He wouldn't let his ashram be run in the usual manner, with strict schedules and rules of service and so forth. That doesn't mean his devotees weren't disciplined, but he prefered a more natural kind of life. By western standards it was certainly rather austere, but by Indian standards it was something many found hard to take seriously. Many of the other sadhus who lived in the area referred to Ramanashram jokingly as "that bunch of householders on the hill", because they didn't live by the standards expected of traditional sadhus.

And yet, it's not as if Ramana didn't require discipline and maturity from his devotees, or the real transcendence of their vasanas and samskaras. He just had his own understanding of how that process worked that wasn't like a giant cookie-cutter churning out batches of the enlightened. One of the best accounts of how Ramana actually taught his devotees is contained in the biography of Annamalai Swami, Living By the Words of Bhagavan, written by David Godman and available through his website (currently out of print, but I think about to come back into print within a few weeks, I've heard). In this account, Annamalai makes it clear that his sadhana was primarily about doing whatever Ramana told him to do, submitting to him so fully that Ramana's grace was able to work its magic and relieve him of all his vasanas and samskaras, and awaken to the Self. Annamalai performed a very demanding sadhana, building all kinds of structures under Ramana's direct instruction, and having to transcend himself in all kinds of ways he'd never have undertaken on his own.

The point to understand here goes back to what I was trying to get across in my earlier post - that the esoteric relationship to the Guru is not something that takes place only on some inner plane. There's certainly a profound inner process going on, to be sure, and without that inner process nothing fruitful will come of outer practices. But the same is true of outer practice. Without it, nothing fruitful will ever come from inner work either. The two go together, and one must strive to see the unbroken linkage between them. The word "tantra" for example, means "continuity". Most westerners think tantra means getting to play around with the sexy, abandoning discipline and regulation and being wild and crazy spiritual guys who get to squeeze those big American breasts at the disco (Steve Martin and Dan Ackroyd being the model practitioners here). But tantra actually means the opposite. It means recognizing that the inner and outer worlds are continuous, unbroken, and that what we do inwardly and outwardly affect one another directly, because they are simply not separate. It's not even a causal thing, it's a continuous fabric of spiritual reality. So without outward discipline there is no inner freedom, and vice-versa.

The problem with western Gurus like Adi Da is that they understand something about this, and try to incarnate this approach by demanding obedience and submission from their devotees, but they don't really understand how this works, and how they are required to submit to the process as well. Elias asks:

Who is he to say what the Guru can or cannot do relative to his or her relationships? You can lay down statements that may have general application, especially for those who are just approaching a Guru. But once the Guru is recognized by the devotee as the living instrument of God, all bets are off.

Yes, it's not for me personally to say, but the whole of the Sanatana tradition does say what the Guru is able lawfully to do, and what he is not to do. There's a lot of scripture and tradition which spells all this out really well, and it serves a purpose. It's not as if it's utterly rigid and unyielding, it does recognize the inherently free nature of the genuine Sat-Guru, but nonetheless it also understands that there are natural limits to what any human Sat-Guru can do, and what is appropriate, and what is not appropriate, and how the process unfolds. Everything in Sanatana dharma, even the behavior of Sat-Gurus, has to have some kind of scriptural precedent and justification, or it is looked upon skeptically and considered adharmic. This is one of the reasons that no India Guru has ever acknowledged Adi Da as being a genuine Sat-Guru. It doesn't take much of an assessment to see that regardless of his spiritual capacities, Da is simply not qualified to be a Guru, and his methods and practices are simply not capable of producing enlightened devotees.

This is not the case with those like Ramana Maharshi, Sri Ramakrishna, or Anandamayi Ma, each of whom simply appeared out of nowhere so to speak and became famous teachers without benefit of a course of instruction in traditional approaches and practices. In each of their cases, qualified practitioners and Gurus were able to verify that both their realizations and their teachings were sound, even if they sprang up simply out of their own nature in a spontaneous fashion.

In Anandamayi Ma's case, there arose a controversy at one point because during her period of youthful wandering she began hanging out with the strictly practicing sadhu community of Northern India, who were dedicated to all kinds of very ascetical practices, one of which forbid them from keeping the company of an unattached woman. Anandamayi Ma, for those unfamiliar, was a strikingly beautiful young woman, I mean we're talking world-class beauty-contest babe here, so it's quite understandable that a traditional community of celibates would have some obvious problems with her being around. It became such a point of contention that the sadhus held a convention to discuss the matter and to decide how they should handle their relationship to Anandamayi Ma. And by the end of the convention, they had come to the conclusion that whatever their traditional rules might proscribe for them, Anandamayi Ma was the whole reason for their existence, she represented the very Divinity that had led them to become sadhus in the first place, and that took precedence over any rule they might have to live by.

So there's an example of a Sat-Guru breaking rules or creating new ones. But keep in mind that this didn't change anything else about their formal rules as sadhus. They didn't just go, hey, all this rule stuff is a bunch of jazz, we should just hang with Anandamayi Ma and do as we please, since she's the living God. To the contrary, Anandamayi Ma blessed their rules and disciplines, and invited them to be with her wherever she went. And so throughout Ma's lifetime, many of these strange-looking ascetic sadhus were to be found at her ashrams, and traveled with her, living their traditional rules and disciplines.

Adherance to discipline and tradition is something that virtually all Gurus expect from their disciples, and they also expect if from themselves. Even Ramana adhered to many traditional Hindu customs and rules out of simple respect. He did not recognize caste as having any genuine spiritual or even human basis, but he didn't want to offend either, and so he tended to obey caste rules in food preparation for those who lived the traditional life, and otherwise didn't. At big public celebrations at the ashram he would allow for traditional caste seating rules, and again, abandoned them otherwise. In many cases, there was simply a natural coincidence with a fair amount of traditional practice, since it had been established on some kind of esoteric basis long ago, and was thus compatible with esoteric practice in Ramana's ashram.

Elias seems to have become fascinated with a certain kind of approach to esotericism which thinks that authority is the enemy of spirit. I would certainly say that authoritarianism is anti-thetical to spirit, but mere authority is not. Virtually all effective spiritual practices defer to some form of authority, whether it be Buddhist or Hindu or Christian or whatever you can name. It's merely the case that authority must know its limits and be directed towards a real spiritual purpose, and not merely invoked for its own sake or for worldly purposes.

One good bit of wisdom Adi Da once said was that "whatever is limited must have a limit placed upon it, and whatever is unlimited must have no limits placed upon it". By this he meant that in all areas of life, inner and outer, that are conditional, there must be some form of discipline that limits them, whereas in the areas of unlimited, unconditional reality, there must be no limits placed. Many westerners confuse these two, and think that the whole point of "non-dual" spirituality is to have no limits on anything, no dualism whatsoever, and to somehow see all dualistic things as non-dual and treat them accordingly. But this way lies madness, and not of the unlimited variety. They want to have their cake and eat it. They want what is limited to become unlimited, and they think that the realms of limitation can be made unlimited by non-dual practice, non-dual awakening, and non-dual liberation. They think that is what freedom means. But they have it all quite backwards. What is limited must have limits placed on it, in order that what is unlimited can gain its freedom. If we don't limit our limited mind and life, we don't allow the unlimited spirit its true place as the final "authority" over us. We just become crazy, self-indulgent, full of ourselves, and convinced that we are great beings of unlimited intelligence and spirituality, whereas that is never true of any "one", it is only true of the One Self. To know that, we must bow down, which means surrendering all that is limited, all that is conditional, to the authority of the unconditional Divine.

That does mean submission to the Guru, even in human form, but that human Guru must also be utterly submitted and without that submission the process is interrupted. That is why Gurus like Adi Da could not produce enlightened devotees. They had broken the link to the Divine through their lack of full submission. Yes, he could fulfill some part of it to some degree, as many lesser teachers and spirits can, but he could not bring about full realization because he had not accomplished this in his own case. Sad but I think the evidence bears this out. Even at his death there were no realizers in Adidam. The chances that they will appear following his death seems rather slim. Unless, of course, they find a more genuine source of spiritual grace not corrupted by egoity as his was.

One thing I guess I should mention is that Elias' personal criticism of me as someone who has an "authoritarian take" on spirituality is rather hilarious. In life I'm about the least authoritarian practitioner around. In fact, I'm "an instance of my own criticism" as I said about Da. I don't have ANY cultural or spiritual disciplines that I follow, neither Daist nor Hindu nor Buddhist nor new-age. I mean nothing. I live a relatively simple and healthy life, but I have no human Guru who tells me what to do, and no culture that proscribes by behavior. Nor am I looking for such a thing. I'm not sure if that means I have little chance of enlightenment in this lifetime, but I wouldn't be surprised if it did. But I'm really not in the least convinced that the traditional approach is genuinely necessary. When Elias says that my sympathies are clear on this matter, he's confusing my clear understanding of the Sanatana Dharma with my own choices, which are quite different. I have no problem seeing the spiritual traditions and Adidam and even the spiritual process as clearly as I can without being swayed by whether or not I personally agree with them or adhere to them. I don't feel I have to create some kind of conceptual understanding of spirituality that allows me to rationalize my personal choices, or even feel guilty if there's a discrepancy. In fact, I see it as a sign of my own slight spiritual maturity that I can simply observe these things and not insert myself into the equation. I'm well aware that my own arguments here about spirituality make me look pretty bad. But I'm used to that, and don't even mind.

The best I can say in my own defense is that my own Gurus, Ramana Maharshi and Arunachula Shiva, are much more lax in their demands for discipline than the traditions associated with them. Ramana's only definitive discipline was the practice of "being still", and self-enquiry when that was not possible. And so I've been living a rather "experimental" life of my own in the years since leaving Adidam, of simply practicing in that manner, with a simple natural devotional orientation, and seeing what it leads me to both in outer life and in "inner" practice. My days in Adidam are over, and I'm not about to embark on some similar venture of a Hindu flavoring - unless of course I do. You never know where these things lead.

From this position, I find myself able to understand both Adidam and Sanatana Dharma more clearly than I did when I was inside their realms. And I appreciate them, and their limitations, all the more for it. My own relationship to the Guru has moved to a more direct position. And that requires a more direct submission and surrender to its authority and power. And there are indeed demands made upon my outward life by this, demands for discipline that strain my own meager resources whether I want them or not. Such is the nature of grace. It comes to us in all the forms of this world, not just some guy sitting on a sofa making up lists of things for us to do. We have no choice whatsoever in the matter, except in whether we submit, or refuse to submit. Heaven or hell, those are our choices.

Understanding Adi Da: Exoteric and Esoteric Approaches to Reality

2010-12-10T17:55:00.000-08:00

Over at Lightmind Forums there's been some controversial discussion of Adi Da's legacy, sparked in part by some things I wrote here on my blog about Adi Da's relationship to the Advaitic teachings. It begins harmlessly enough with the observation by Elias that Da's teachings are based on his own realization and experience, and not derived from Advaita or Buddhism. He makes the point that one can't teach about spirituality and non-dualism without invoking the same truths one finds in these traditions, simply because those traditions are the hard-boiled expressions of basic truth, honed over many centuries of tradition and culture, and anyone who tries to describe these truths will end up sounding a lot like an Advaitin or Buddhist. This has some merit, but one can't ignore the fact that Da doesn't merely teach using concepts that arise directly from whatever realization he has, but openly borrows from the very concepts and language used by these traditions for thousands of years.

Elias goes on to try to score some personal points against me, which really aren't worth defending against, in that I have no problem with Da borrowing from these traditions, only with the claim to which I was originally responding, made by a commentater, that I could only speak about non-dual reality as I do on this blog because of my familiarity with Adi Da's teachings. As I point out, this isn't even true on a scholastic level, in that Da's own teachings are derived in large part from Advaita and Buddhist teachings, even at the level of language and formal concept. Neither is it true on an intuitive level, in that any of us can access the spiritual reality from which these concepts and language and tradition are derived, and thus speak from our own experience about them, even me, because that is our own reality as well. Spiritual reality doesn't belong to Da or the Sanatana Dharma or Buddhism, and we don't become intelligent about these matters merely by reading what they have to say, we have to resort to our own reality, which is the same reality all of these traditions have been derived from as well. Similarities and correspondence are of course going to exist because they all have the same Source. And differences are going to exist as well because we all have a different reference point from which we see these matters, culturally, psychologically, spiritually, sensually, and so forth. But we do have to acknowledge that we are dependent on those who came before us, and that Adi Da's teachings as they are presented in all his books and talks simply could not exist as they do without the long tradition of Sanatana Dharma, whereas the reverse is not true. One can speak in all the language and concepts I have used without any knowledge of Adi Da, if one were merely well versed in Sanatana Dharma.

Even so, it's clearly evident that Adi Da's teachings have a particularly close relationship to the Advaitic tradition, as well as to the whole of the Sanatana Dharma, which even he acknowledges. It's also obvious that Adi Da himself read and reviewed and has been deeply influenced by huge amounts of traditional Sanatana Dharma literature and scripture and tradition. So when we speak about Adi Da's influence on people like me, at the level of verbal instruction and cultural practice, we are really talking about the influence of Sanatana Dharma, not Adi Da per se. If we are to speak of Da's “unique” influence on others, myself included, we have to speak of what in his teaching is unique to him, and not present in Sanatana Dharma. And that is a fairly small portion of even his own teachings. Or, at the very least, we need to speak of what emphasis Da placed on the same matters spoken of in Sanatana Dharma, and how his emphasis was different or shaded by a different fundamental understanding.

Probably the principal area of concern in Da's teaching is the relationship between exoteric and esoteric spirituality, focusing as this does on the true relationship to the Guru. This has been the subject of considerable debate and controversy not only within Adidam, but it rears its head from time to time in the Lightmind forum debates among former devotees, and with present devotees, and especially with those who consider themselves to be true devotees, but who don't practice within the formal relationship to Da offered by the Adidam community, institution, culture, and mission. Elias himself offers sympathy for those who claim to relate to Adi Da esoterically, which I gather means to him “not through the outer forms of community and culture and even dharma, but through an inner, psychic, living, conscious relationship in spiritual truth”. Likewise, he tends to condemn those, like myself, who insist that we actually pay attention to what Adi Da himself taught, wrote, said, and practiced in relation to these matters, and not just make up our own “inner truth” about Da based upon our subjective feelings and intuitions, not matter how “esoteric” we think these things are.

Adi Da's teachings about the exoteric and esoteric practice of spirituality, especially in relationship to the Guru, are very interesting and subtle, and I don't want to make simplistic generalizations about this matter. I was obviously deeply involved with Adi Da and Daism for many years, and throughout that time this was probably the most important issue to me, as it was I think for most devotees. However, it's important to note that it's also the central issue in the actual practice of traditional Sanatana Dharma, whether of the Advaitic or any other branch. The whole of Sanatana Dharma is based on the notion that only a Guru can reveal the truths contained in its scriptures, that one might read about its concepts and entertain these ideas in the mind in the manner of a pandit or scholar for a very long time, but only the Guru can show the inner understanding that is necessary to make them come alive and be spiritually effective.

And yet, the Sanatana Dharma nevertheless maintains that all genuine realization comes about through the study of these scriptures and through the fulfillment of all its precepts and instructions, which stretch through the full length of personal, cultural, and religious practice. The esoteric relationship to the Guru is not intended to bypass these, but to enlighten them and reveal their inner truth and necessity. The traditional Guru does not tell his esoteric disciples that these practices are unnecessary and that they can do whatever they wish. Instead, he reveals that their basis in esoteric understanding is sound and thus increases their devotional adherence to traditional practices and norms, rather than decreasing them. This is of course not something most people these days want to hear. They want to develop an “esoteric” relationship to spiritual reality that is free of any such traditional obligations or devotional submission to scripture and culture.

I can certainly understand this personally, in that having left Adidam I am essentially a person “without culture”, who is not an adherent of either the Adidam cultural and religious way of life, nor have I adopted any of the Sanatana Dharma traditions either. As most know, I am very drawn to Ramana Maharshi and others in the modern Advaitic tradition who have taught westerners who not part of the Sanatana tradition, but I have not become a Hindu or a member of any sect, and I don't practice any of those traditional approaches. But that doesn't mean I don't understand the traditional approaches, or that I confuse Adi Da's teachings with some grand departure from those traditions. They are not. Quite the contrary, Adi Da has tried to create a cultural and religious tradition of esotericism that is largely derived from the Sanatana Dharma model, modified of course to fit his own version of that, but not at all some form of “spiritual individualist anarchism” as some would like to think.

Many people get the wrong impression about Adi Da's spiritual orientation, based on his early years of wild partying, breaking of taboos, wide-ranging conceptual criticism of various traditions, including the Sanatana tradition itself, and general claims to the establishment of a new and unprecedented tradition. One might get the impression that Da is a new-age anarchist, a demolisher of old traditions, a liberal and libertine in the modernist sense, who is not afraid to dismantle all the ancient traditions and start over from scratch. In particular, there's the impression some have that Da has aimed to liberate the realm of spirituality from the grip of the exoteric, “religion business” model that crushes the spirit under the weight of orthodox tradition and seeks to undermine the ability of the individual to relate directly to the esoteric truth of the non-dual Reality and Person. And of course they get that impression from Da himself, who often talks this way in an effort to differentiate himself from all other spiritual teachers and to make the case for himself as the One True Realizer who has never before appeared, and whose mission it is to purify these traditions of egoity and for the first time ever establish the esoteric basis for all religion and spirituality around Himself, the Divine Person.

Whether or not one buys into that claim, it's important to notice that in the process of “purifying” the traditions of egoity, there are many important things that Da does not eliminate, but instead emphasizes, strengthens, and makes fundamental. One of these is the notion that esotericism and exoterism are not at war with one another, and that they not only complement one another, but that their relationship is essential and indivisible. There's a lot of literature in which Adi Da criticizes exotericism openly, and one might get the false impression from this that Adi Da rejects exotericism entirely, and that if one does find exoteric instructions and practices in Adidam, they are merely compromises for the sake of immature devotees, which can be disregarded by those who are “esoterically mature”. But this is simply not borne out by the actual practicing tradition of Adidam, which does not merely demand outer devotional adherence to its instructions from those at the beginning “exoteric” level of approach to the Guru, but expects an even greater outer devotional adherence to instruction from those at the most advanced stages of esoteric practice.

Elias tries to explain this away by resorting to Da's basic instruction about turning to the Guru and practicing Satsang:

I would suggest that Da collected a grab bag of practices from various places (including Scientology), mainly to keep people occupied while they did the main practice -- putting their attention on him.

In that sense he was like the program director of a camp for juvenile delinquents. He knows that having these kids endlessly "paint fences" and learn karate is not going to change them.

But Da's underlying faith was that satsang would heal the spiritual malaise of the world.

I think it had already been proved, over thousands of years, that such was not the case.

This is certainly the sort of explanation Da himself offered in the earliest years, and it probably applied to many of the kinds of outer activities that went on during that time. However, over the years Da clearly evolved a more nuanced understanding and intention. The outer, exoteric practices of Adidam became not merely some arbitrary way of keeping devotees' attention on Da, they were to him a well-tested and proven series of practices meant to align the whole person to him, so that the orientation of Satsang was made comprehensive and compatible with every area of one's life, and no “bypassing” could be accomplished. To Da, all the disciplines and practices were a way to “rope in” the wandering ego and give it no room to escape. Thus, these were not arbitrary practices at all, but practical methods for making Satsang pervasive and effective in the transcendence of egoic consciousness. In this way, the exoteric was designed in such a way as to complement and feed the esoteric relationship, and each was an essential part of the whole.

Adi Da's teachings made this principle fundamental to the entire life of practice he recommended, which of course included all kinds of very ordinary disciplines and requirements at every level, from the financial demands of tithing and other contributions, to complete participation in the community, institution, mission, and so forth. And the overriding directive in all these areas was very simple: do whatever Adi Da tells you to do, no matter how mundane, because all of it is part of the esoteric relationship to him. Adi Da for year and years in countless formal and informal instructions would emphasize this principle: that fulfillment of his instruction in every part was the necessary requirement for all esoteric forms of relationship to him, and for the effective reception of his spiritual transmission.

Those like Elias and others who argue for what they think is an “esoteric” relationship to Adi Da are ignoring what Da's actual instructions in regard to esotericism are. One can certainly disagree with Adi Da's instructions in this matter, but I think it's pretty difficult to make the case that Da himself was simply creating a smoke-screen of instruction meant only for the spiritually immature, whereas his “real” instruction is for those, like themselves of course, who are above that sort of beginner's understanding. There's a certain vanity in that viewpoint that Da himself had no stomach for, and constantly criticized and rejected in every detail over many years. To Adi Da, true esotericism meant complete obedience to his every word of instruction, no matter how outwardly trivial it might seem to some. To him, there was no esoteric relationship to him without this disposition of total obedience, expressed not merely by one's inner disposition, but by one's outer behavior and action. That was what surrender to the Guru meant. Of course, he wasn't advocating merely outward forms of obedience that tried to mimic an orthodox lifestyle, but neither was he at all willing to compromise on orthodoxy.

While Da might seem to some to be some sort of radical spiritual revolutionary, he saw himself as an immensely conservative upholder of tradition. And the creation of the entire edifice of Adidam's dharma, community, culture, institution, mission, and so on, with all its outer practices and requirements, was to Adi Da part of a gigantic “conservative” project to restore what he considered to be true integrity to the spiritual process, which of course meant the relationship of devotees to him. It was not meant to be a monolithic tradition unable to adapt and change, but its principles were meant to be unchanging and constantly oriented towards the esoteric relationship to Da through obedience and submission, and not just on some inner plane, but on the outer plane of ordinary life.

That was what the entire “Adidam Project” was about. It's what I was personally and deeply involved with for all the years I was in Adidam. It's what kept me actively involved with Adidam through thick and thin. It was a project that captivated my imagination, as well as my own spiritual life, both inwardly and outwardly. The ideal of it was something I tried to give my life over to, up to the point where I came to see what a travesty it had become. I can't really say that I regret that. I'm sorry it didn't end up working out, and I've been open in my criticism of how it failed to materialize. And I'm sure some in Adidam would say that I'm mistaken about that, that despite outer appearances Adi Da really did succeed, and that future generations will see the fruits of it, and I can only say, that would be great, but I really don't think so. But one thing I'm pretty certain of is that this is what Adi Da's life's work was all about, and what his view of esotericism was about, and that those who try to define it otherwise to suit their own spiritual viewpoint and inclination are engaged in what Adi Da used to call “revisionism”. By which I mean that they are fantasizing an esoteric relationship to Adi Da that he himself did not see as “esoteric” at all, but falling far short of that.

I can certainly understand why many people would like to think that they have an esoteric relationship to Da. In the ordinary sense of the word, they do. If by “esoteric”, they merely mean some kind of spiritual, psychic connection that goes beyond the gross physical sense of separation, that allows them to “feel” Adi Da spiritually or have some kind of spiritual connection to him, of course they do. I do, did, and always will. Virtually everyone who ever had a devotional or spiritual relationship to Adi Da did and still does. Even people who just read his books can often feel something spiritual active in his words. People who see his picture or videos have “esoteric” experiences of him. These things are a dime a dozen. Everyone in Adidam has had thousands of these kinds of experiences. It would be sheer foolishness to deny this. But it would also be sheer foolishness to assume that this is what Adi Da meant by an esoteric relationship to him.

Adi Da often talked about the difference between the exoteric and esoteric relationship to him, and he even defined these distinctions in his instruction. The exoteric relationship to him was not merely about “outer” forms of practice, what one does bodily, socially, culturally, institutionally, etc. It also included the nominally “esoteric” practices of feeling-relationship to him, meaning “Satsang”, meditation, devotion, service, and so on that had not progressed to the point of full and true “recognition” of him that would make complete obediance to his instruction natural, necessary, and unavoidable. In almost all cases, those approaching him as Guru were practicing from an “exoteric” point of view regardless of how psychically or spiritually sensitive they were. True “esotericism” was something much more than mere psychic sensitivity. It required a disposition of total surrender at every level of the being. It meant, in his phrase “entering his house”, and the only way through the door was total submission. Not just some kind of inward submission, but also outer submission. This is why the exoteric practices of submission came first. They were the testing grounds to see who was genuinely submitted to the esoteric viewpoint. No one who failed to submit outwardly could possibly be genuinely submitted esoterically. And so only those who approached exoterically first, and demonstrated their submission and obedience through actual adherence to all the disciplines expected in those areas would even be considered for esoteric practice. Da himself constantly criticized those who approached him or claimed to have some special relationship to him without fulfilling those requirements. He didn't simply put such people down, but he did require that they submit to him by abiding by all those disciplines and practices if they wanted a real esoteric relationship to him.

Naturally, many people didn't want to submit to Da's disciplines and practices because they felt he exploited and abused people, and not for purely spiritual purposes, but because Da himself was not entirely free of ego, or even at all. And so that's where his esoteric ideals meet the hard reality of life in Adidam and become corrupted. The widespread corruption of these principles in Adidam are hardly unique, however. The Guru system in Sanatana Dharma is not immune to corruption either, and often by the same route. There are plenty of Gurus in India who take advantage of the principles of submission and obedience to exploit their devotees. One could almost say it's so common as to be an accepted part of the system. A certain amount of exploitation and corruption is almost expected and a part of the process. But there are also safeguards within the system that help devotees recognize these limitations and hopefully go beyond them. In Adidam, not so much. \

That's part of the problem with lifting huge elements of the Sanatana Dharma system out of its natural cultural ecosystem and trying to recreate it in a modern western environment with no cross-cultural controls. When all authority is invested in only one man, and the scriptures written by that one man, a lot of exploitation and misadventure is virtually guaranteed. In Sanatana Dharma authority is spread widely across the whole cultural spectrum, and even a Sat-Guru is seen as only one element within the whole system of checks and balances. This doesn't prevent exploitation and abuse, but it does mean that when it appears there are ways of addressing it, or leaving it behind, without leaving the entire system. In Adidam, there is no such option. So when one finds some fault in Adi Da, and feels that he is not entirely trustworthy or entirely free of ego, there is nowhere to go except to leave entirely, which would not be the case in Sanatana Dharma.

And yet, both dharmically and in practice, Sanatana Dharma shares with Adi Da the same conservative orientation towards obediance and submission. It just has such a complex association of many sects and practices and teachers and teachings that it remains highly flexible, whereas Adidam is so rigid in orientation that it cannot allow much give and take. Like traditional orthodox, pre-schismatic Christianity, there is only one acknowledged source of wisdom in Adidam, and only one set of scriptures, and only one authoritative Church. To step outside those orthodoxies is to become a heretic, plain and simple. And so it is with those who differ with Adi Da on these very issues of esotericism and exotericism. They are generally branded as heretics and kept outside the fold of accepted devotees. Of course, in Sanatana Dharma they would also be criticized for not understanding the dynamic of the Guru-devotee relationship, but they would not be forced into isolation, they would be a part of the general spiritual scene and not kept out of the ashram or the community of spirituality. So I feel for such people who are trying to have a spiritual relationship to Adi Da without actually being a “formal member” of Adidam. The whole concept of being a “formal member” of anything has no meaning in Sanatana Dharma at any level. Caste issues aside, every Hindu in India is considered a “member” of the Sanatana Dharma, regardless of their viewpoint. Even atheists have a place. But in Adidam, any serious deviation from accepted teaching is regarded as unacceptable and the refusal to approach Adi Da through the institutional and cultural forms and practices he has given means that there is no place for such a person in the Adidam community.

The problem with complaining about this, or calling it delusional, is that this system was put in place by Adi Da himself, and created for the very purpose of fostering what he would consider a true, esoteric relationship to him. So to reject it and to create an alternative “esoteric” relationship to him is, unfortunately, just delusional. Yes, one can reject it and still have a psychic relationship to Da, and make that the basis of some kind of devotional practice. I did that for any number of years when I was younger and outside of Adidam for financial or personal reasons, and I certainly still felt a powerful psychic bond of devotion to him. And even now that I have rejected not just the formal relationship to him, but even the whole Guru-devotee relationship to him altogether, I feel that kind of psychic relationship to him. It's not that I never had one, and only had some bookish understanding as some devotees would like to think. In fact, I'm one of the few people who Adi Da ever actually acknowledged as practicing the esoteric relationship to him. Back in 1996, after going on retreat with him for six weeks and then becoming deeply involved in my strange astrological “patterning” service, he said that I was at that time the only person in the whole of Adidam who was relating to him directly. No big deal, really, but it's just to say that I do know something about this whole matter directly, and not just from reading books. And Da certainly made many efforts to invite me into his esoteric fold, including when I was leaving Adidam, when he sent personal representatives to meet with me and try to get me to come back, offering to forgive and forget and restore me to my former position as his patterning advisor. On the personal and spiritual level, we had a very intense devotional relationship, and I certainly loved him as God Himself for many, many years. I understood what the esoteric relationship to him was really about, and I considered it deeply before declining the invitation. Even after I left, from time to time I would feel Da asking about me, and asking me to come back, and my having to tell him that this simply wasn't going to happen. It's not as if he wasn't persistent or caring. He just didn't seem to grasp how badly he had screwed things up.

I would have to say that on a certain level, Adi Da wasn't terribly “self-aware” of his own faults or their consequences. He didn't realize that he'd created a monster both in himself and in his community. But I do think by the end of his life he came to see how unworkable it had all become, and that he was not surrounded by the kind of people who could make a real go of it. So his death was hardly unexpected. In fact, years before in my astrological service I had said that if his devotees didn't genuinely progress into the esoteric relationship with him, he would have to give up the body. At the time, I expected that things would work out differently than they did and that he would go on to live a long life, but I think in recent years he realized that there wasn't much reason to go on with this lifetime, that the rest of it would be largely fruitless. So it was just time to go.

Who can really blame him? And who can really blame even his most loyal devotees for not actually submitting to him through the kind of obedience he demanded? It was an impossible situation in many respects. In some respects, it was all quite unnecessary. The kind of esoteric submission that he wanted to establish in Adidam actually does exist in the Sanatana Dharma system. It's far from perfect, but in some cases and places, it becomes real and active and effective, and produces genuine realizers and Sat-Gurus and devotees. One can see this around people like Ramana Maharshi. One can see long lines of such figures spontaneously appearing from the framework of Sanatana Dharma and making this process come alive generation after generation. It occurs in Buddhism as well, and in other religions and places.

The idea of creating a single, tightly run organization built upon this principle was ambitious and even laudable, but perhaps not such a good idea after all is said and done. The failure of Adidam is perhaps a good lesson for those who would like to fulfill those ideals through a centralized process and a single, dominating figure. It doesn't mean that true esotericism doesn't involve submission to outer form and exoteric practices, however. It merely means that these things have to develop organically and not by fiat. In the end, the Sat-Guru is not as important as Adi Da would have us believe. The Sat-Guru is merely one aspect of a comprehensive process of submission that has no controlling central force or figure. That process evolves naturally, and it makes its appearance through all kinds of signs, including the sign of the Sat-Guru. True esotericism does indeed involve a profound submission, not merely some kind of psychic relationship to things, but submission at every level of the being. Merely feeling spiritual energy and having subtle experiences doesn't make one “esoteric”. That requires a profound and intimate devotional love which devours the heart and makes one entirely vulnerable even at the outer level of ordinary life.

In a basic sense, what Adidam wanted and needed to create was a real and vibrant spiritual culture within which genuine esotericism could grow and flourish. What it actually created was a cult, however, not a culture. Everyone involved, including Adi Da, was at fault for this in their own way, myself included. Adi Da had a lot of the basic ideas right, but enough wrong that in practice it never came together. He didn't really know how to achieve the exoteric devotional relationship in life that really could form the basis for an esoteric submission to the Divine. This wasn't just the fault of his devotees, but it showed a lack on his own part as well. It shouldn't be surprising. Adi Da was never able to submit to his own Gurus in life either. Neither Rudi nor Muktananda, his only living spiritual teachers, were able to get him to submit to them fully. He tried to go “over their heads” and form subtle relationships with Nityananda and others, such as Ramana Maharshi, even the Goddess directly, but even there he was unable to submit to them. Instead, he expected them to submit to him. Outwardly, he was simply incapable of the kind of submission he demanded from others. And so this naturally kept coming back to hit him from behind when he tried to get his own devotees to submit to him. Da was an instance of his own criticism. He simply couldn't admit that to himself, much less to anyone else. And that is why the whole esoteric process in Adidam never really got anywhere, and why some of those who jumped ship, even just partially, have tried to create their own form of esoteric relationship to him, one that doesn't require any real submission on their part, either outwardly or inwardly. A lot of these people don't even understand what real esotericism is about in any case. At least Da had a grasp on the principles, even if he couldn't quite bring it to fruition, even in his own case.

I'm not sure where this leaves us. One has to pick up the pieces somehow and try to make something of one's spiritual life regardless of how often things don't work out. I certainly have tried. I wish I had been able to see these problems more clearly long ago, but I didn't. The need for genuine esotericism remains, regardless of whether there's a supporting cultural process available for us. As much as I wanted it to be, I don't think Adidam was a good supporting process for esotericism, so I can understand why people would try to make it work through some other route. Obviously those still in Adidam are trying to make it work, and I wish them all the help and blessing in the world. Just as I do for all the Hindus and Christians and Buddhists and Jews out there trying to do the same. Culture is a bitch. And true submission to the esoteric process of moving beyond the ego is not at all easy, even when a supporting culture is in place. What is necessary, of course, is not any particular cultural model or system, but the surrender of one's own vasanas and samskaras, the patterns of attention, and the devotion to the inner person of reality, the living Self who dwells at the heart of our own consciousness. May that One guide us in all that we do.

Om Shanti Shanti Shanti

Adi Da and Non-Dual Errors

2010-11-19T11:20:00.000-08:00

A devotee of Adi Da from Melbourne left the following comment on my last post, The Sacred Beyond: Setting Non-Dualism Apart:

Hi Conrad, I am from Melbourne. I am a devotee of Adi Da Samraj.

It is obvious that you obtained the concepts and ideas for this posting from Adi Da. Otherwise, or so it seems to me you could not have written it.

By a mysterious pattern of conjunctions last weekend I happened to listen to your very inspired, inspiring and humorous talk The Universal Pattern of the Mummery.

What happened in between?

Here's my reply:

Melbourne,

I'm surprised to hear that Adidam is still using my old talk on the Mummery. I'd have thought it would be long since “retired” given my status as a dissident. Well, bravo to them for keeping it around. Or maybe those back in the states aren't aware you guys are still using it. Rather funny, really, when you think about it.

Now, as for obtaining the concepts in this post from Adi Da, I think you have it a bit backwards. Most of what I say here comes from the concepts and teachings of Advaita Vedanta, some from Buddhism, and it is what I am criticizing that comes in a roundabout way from Adi Da. Devotees of Da might think that what he taught was original, but most of the concepts and ideas he uses come from Advaita and Buddhism. That's why they might seem so familiar to you, and why you think I must have gotten them from Adi Da. It's a common mistake in Adidam devotees who are unfamiliar with the Advaitic tradition that Da draws upon for most of his esoteric teachings.

I was familiar with Advaita before I even came to Adi Da, which in part was why I was able to understand his teachings fairly well. But even I tended to make the mistake of thinking that he had an original interpretation or point of view, and in most cases this is simply not true. Since leaving Adi Da and studying Advaita and Ramana in greater depth, I've learned just how much of Adi Da's teachings are taken from other sources without attribution. In fact, in the areas where he does depart from Advaita and tries to create his own version of things, I think he begins to fall into error. But since much of his teaching remains standard Advaita, there's still much truth in it, and it's possible to benefit from it if one discriminates that truth from the errors which Da has added onto it. Of course that can prove very difficult, and often one ends up with a lot of delusional icing on an Advaitic cake that has to be scraped off to enjoy the genuine article lying beneath it.

The error in Ken Wilber's point of view that I'm addressing in this post is in large part derived from the same error that Da makes, due to Wilber's own long association with Da and his teachings. And likewise, a fair number of ex-devotees who have become teachers, such as Saniel Bonder, David Deida, Andrew Cohen, Terry Patten, etc., have also made this same error at some level. If they were more familiar with the genuine teachings of Advaita they might have avoided this, but Da's teachings contain a serious temptation to believe that he has “advanced” beyond traditional non-dualism into some new, superior “seventh stage” teaching and viewpoint. The primary error in all that is the assumption that non-dual realization involves some kind of “merger” of the dual and the non-dual, which then justifies all sorts of self-indulgent attitudes and behavior among those who believe themselves enlightened as they engage in clearly dualistic seeking which in turn is considered “non-dual” and even superior to traditional non-dualism because of their claims to be enlightened, or of a more “evolved” understanding. Unfortunately, I came to feel that Da himself was simply another one of these people, mistaken in his own claims of complete realization, and that this accounted for his erratic views and behavior.

So while some of my language is influenced by my long involvement with Adi Da and his teachings, the concepts and ideas are mostly Advaitic in origin, because that is the origin of most of Da's teachings as well. Although perhaps you are referring to my use of the term “set apart”, a phrase Da often used? I think if you examine how I use that phrase (which, as Da himself would admit, is merely the basic definition of the word “sacred”), you will see that it's quite different from, and even opposite to how Da uses it.

Da refers to himself as a non-dual realizer who must be “set apart” from not only the public sphere, but from all but his most inner-circle devotees, in order to preserve his personal status as Sat-Guru as something “apart” from the mundane world. I use the phrase only to refer to the conceptual teachings of non-dualism, which requires that the concept of non-dualism not be mixed with the concept of dualism, and that “complete and true” non-dualism not be mistakenly conceived of as some kind of merger of the dual and the non-dual, form with formlessness, etc. To the genuine non-dual realizer, there is no dualism, no dualistic world, no form, and thus no formlessness, and no possibility of merging these or uniting them or anything of the sort.

For this reason, the non-dual realizer has no need to set himself apart from anyone. He does not see himself in a world full of unenlightened beings, or even a world of enlightened beings, who he could possibly set himself apart from. He lives naturally and at ease with all apparent form, because he knows there is no form – there is only Brahman. That phrase that Sankara used to complete his three-part teaching - “The world is Brahman” - and that Adi Da often quoted to justify his attitudes and indulgences – does not mean what Da or most others think it does. It does not mean that there is an objective or subjective world that is really, if you see it in truth, God in form. The word “Brahman” is not the nature or quality of form. Brahman has neither form nor formlessness, which is merely a concept derived from the idea of form. Emptiness is derived from the concept of fullness, but "Brahman" is beyond all concepts, it is simply reality itself. So the phrase means that the world of form actually has neither form nor formless, is neither full nor empty – it is not here at all, and not describable in any respect. "Brahman" means, if anything "incomprehensible". It refers to the indescribable reality that has neither form nor formlessness, and which is not a merger of the two, but is "set apart" from all concepts. Like a dream, what we see as having form is merely our own concept of form, from which comes the concept of formlessness. But none of that is real, it is only the mind playing tricks upon itself, as in a hall of mirrors. What is truly "there" is Brahman and only Brahman.

This is why genuine realizers like Ramana and Nisargadatta did not set themselves apart in any sense of the word. They know there is no world at all, only Brahman. So why live apart in any way? They are already living without concepts, in reality itself. So they lived a natural life among their devotees and made themselves available to anyone at any time. Ramana's door was always open day or night to anyone who needed to speak with him. This is the opposite of Da's attitude and practice, where “availability” was always dependent on all kinds of conditions and where Da had himself “sat apart” from most devotees most of the time. This is a reversal of the real way that genuine non-dual realizers do things, or understand the principle of "set apart", and I think it demonstrates a lack of full realization. And this was in part the reason I came to see that Da's realization and teachings were flawed, incomplete, and in the end, riddled with serious errors. At first I simply sensed that something was wrong in Adidam, that it was "off". As I looked into this more deeply, I came to see that the problem was not just in Da's devotees, but in Da himself, and that pointing to devotees as the source of the problem in Adidam was just trying to put people off his scent.

I did always love the Mummery, but I came to see that the role Da was playing in that parable was not so much Raymond Darling the innocent but victimized realizer, but Evelyn Disc, the exploitive but highly experienced and knowledgable cult leader and religion-business charlatan. My basic take on the Mummery is that it's an excellent representation of the various conflicts and personalities within Da's own psyche, and that within Da there has long been a battle ranging between his Raymond Darling side and his Evelyn Disc side. If you ask me what changed for me, it's that I saw Da more and more becoming a fundamentalist cult leader like Evelyn Disc rather than a free and open innocent like Raymond, and that the one aspect of Raymond that Da retained was the whole “victimization” role that makes Raymond a relatively tedious character in the Mummery. Rather than “dropping the egg”, Da seemed to hold onto it tighter and tighter, playing the victim game to the hilt, until most of the real life and freedom had been squeezed out of Adidam.

At least that was my impression of things in the last decade and a half of Da's life. As much as I had been devoted to Da, I realized that I was more devoted to truth, and that I had severely compromised my relationship to truth by conflating it so deeply with Da and his teachings and the culture of Adidam. As I tried to renounce those false and cultically fundamentalist views, which at first I presumed would only deepen my relationship to Da on a spiritual level, I found myself feeling increasingly isolated within Adidam and unable to find anything there for me to do. Eventually, despite Da's offers to me, I felt I simply had to let go of Adidam and face up to the reality of what had been going on there, and within myself as well, if I ever wanted any real freedom. So I let go of that egg, and the whole thing came crashing down. Quite devastating, and yet also liberating.

So you could say I was left with a lot of egg on my face. Which is only as it should be. Broken Yogi = broken egg. I didn't chose the name for that reason, it just felt right, but it also makes sense in context. I think aspects of the Mummery were truly inspired, and if Da had really been able to fulfill its promise, he would have been a truly great teacher. But like all the other “promises”, the promise of Adidam was a broken one. Da couldn't let go and simply let the Shakti be free. He had to keep her contained in books and organizational hierarchies and so on, until she wound up dead on the altar. And so in many respects this ended up destroying him and the whole movement. His own inner “free bird” kept wrecking the room of his own body-mind and of Adidam as a community out of frustration. If he'd really achieved true realization, he'd have let the bird go and taught in a natural manner, rather than the affected and “set apart” way he did. But at least he's become an almost archetypal warning of what can befall those who only go part way, who try to have their cake and eat it, who want realization very badly but won't sacrifice the separate self for it, and instead elevate it to the status of a God to be set apart. That's an incredible lesson and I value Da for giving that lesson, even if his devotees don't really see his life that way.

Funny, one of my few regrets in leaving Adidam is that I'd never get the chance to play Moode Thom in the Mummery and deliver that great speech of his on broken promises and broken men. There's a kind of beauty in it I still admire. Adidam is essentially a spiritual tragedy, and I hope Adi Da has learned from his mistakes. I hope we all have.

The Sacred Beyond: Setting Non-Dualism Apart

2010-09-26T13:14:00.000-07:00

Commenting on my post Beyond Non-dualism - a Response to Ken Wilber's Evolutionary Spirituality Glenn asks this question:

At least 3 times in this post you have mentioned non-dualism as "standing apart".
I understand that from the POV of the ajnani this would be an accurate perception, but it also seems to be a bit contradictory. Can you explain or elaborate?

First, we have to understand that the entire history of "non-dualism" is merely a teaching within the dualistic mind and world given for the sake of ajnanis - people who do not firmly know that they are non-dual in nature, but have a growing intuition of this truth they wish to cultivate and expand upon, and perhaps at some point fully realize. There are no actual non-dual teachings in the strictest sense, there are only dualistic teachings that try to point towards the non-dual reality that is already present here and now, but which in our ignorance we do not fully grasp, perceive, or experience.

The world is filled with an endless supply of dualistic teachings, because the dualistic mind creates for itself a world that is dualistic in nature - what we "see" around us - and for such a world, dualistic teachings are the most appropriate approach. To understand the non-dual understanding of the dualistic world, it is important to understand this point - the world we live in is not self-existing, and it was not created by the non-dual reality, as a non-dual world. It was created by dualistic mind, as a dualistic world, operating dualistically even at the pre-cosmic level of mind, not merely at the personal level.

The dualistic mind is something we tend to think of as a merely personal matter, existing within us a personalities, and the world is seen by us as self-existing, beyond our personal ability to create and control. And this is true enough of us as bodily individuals. But the roots of dualism go much deeper than the bodily individual, and the dualistic mind goes all the way down to the level of consciousness that creates and manifests the very world we live in. The dualistic mind extend down (or up, depending on your perspective) into the subtle dimension even in the ordinary uses of mind, and at a deeper level it includes the subtle, re-incarnating soul, the higher mind, the causal mind and body, and even "God", the primary source of manifest dualism, the seeming "creator" of the dualistic world. All of that is dualistic, even God, all the product of primal egoity. The dualistic ego is the source even of God, and is thus the source of dualism itself in every manifest form.

The dualistic world is therefore nothing but an elaborate optical fabrication of a false viewpoint, from the non-dual point of view. It is a reflection of a deeper dualism, the source of which is an illusion - the ego - that creates an endless supply of "mind", which reflects upon itself in an infinite cascade of self-reflecting mirrors, creating more and more intricate worlds and experiences as it multiples in consciousness, each more solid and "real" than the next. By the time we get down to incarnation on planet earth and these crude meat mechanisms of brain and body, our consciousness has become so deeply immersed in the dualistic perspective that it can't help but see everything as dualistic, and dualism itself as the nature of every thing, until the non-dual seems nothing more than a highly dubious and speculative idea that only the bored, crazy, and immature would bother to entertain.

And yet, because the non-dual remains our true nature, beyond the innermost illusion of the ego, it cannot be entirely banished from our awareness. It keeps resurfacing, to the point where some people "break through" not just through some of the cruder aspects of the dualistic illusion of ego, but through the entire thing, down to the very core, until even "the world" as a dualistic phenomenal collection of objects in awareness essentially vanishes, and the non-dual reality is fully grasped as the only reality, and the true nature of everything and everyone. Even the dualistic world is seen to have never been dualistic at all, and never to have actually appeared at all, it is understood that it was only a reflection of the non-dual reality as seen through the endlessly reflecting "prism" of the dualistic ego. And because of people awakening beyond dualism in this manner, non-dual teachings began to appear within even this seeming sold and real human world,. teachings about the process of awakening to this non-dual reality that is our very nature, and the nature of everything here.

These non-dual teachings are not directed towards dualism itself, however. Dualistic teachings naturally arise in the dualistic worlds as practical responses to the conditions and needs of dualism, and this is all quite appropriate. Non-dual teachings, however, have an entirely different purpose - to help us awaken from the illusion of dualism to the non-dual reality. They aren't directed towards making dualistic life better, more pleasant, or more workable. The word "awakening" is often thrown around rather loosely these days to describe any abiding sense of insight or heightening of awareness that anyone experiences. And there are indeed all kinds of awakenings possible within the dualistic mind and worlds. They are not false in any relative sense, they are often quite meaningful and valuable in the context of dualistic functioning. But they are not non-dual awakenings.

Non-dual awakening is not an awakening within the worlds of dualism that is geared towards our dualistic evolution to some greater and more inclusive form of dualism, it is an awakening to the reality which transcends dualism, which is not modified by the egoic, dualistic mind. And thus, it stands apart from any kind of dualism, or any kind of dualistic teaching, or any dualistic function we are trying to understand or incorporate or integrate into our dualistic life. It is not something that we can merely make a part of our lives, it is something that "stands apart" from the entire basis of our dualistic life. That is why non-dual teachings and traditions need to be set aside, and not mixed with dualistic teachings and traditions. They don't come from the same place, they don't address the same matters, and they aren't purposed towards the same ends.

Dualism and dualistic teachings are purposed towards the perpetuation of dualism, the growth of dualism, the evolution of dualism, and the survival of the dualistic ego most of all. Non-dual teachings are purposed towards an awakening from dualism itself, and bring an end to the dualistic vision of life, by penetrating to the very core of dualism, the ego itself, and awakening beyond the ego to the reality the ego has separated itself from, or at least imagined it has separated itself from. In so doing, the ego itself is discovered to be an illusion, and consciousness is known as itself, not by its dualistic representations in the mind that are then reflected as created worlds. That goes against the entire grain of the dualistic mind and the dualistic worlds the mind has created for itself to incarnate within. For this reason, dualism is often subtly at war with non-dualism and feels threatened by non-dualism. It even conceives of non-dualism as a terrible enemy, a satanic force that threatens even God (since God is the original dualistic creation of the ego). And for this reason, dualism often either tries to destroy non-dualism, or it tries to conquer and incorporate dualism into its folds, just as empires conquer and incorporate neighboring countries into their body politic, or destroy them if they resist.

Non-dualism, however, isn't at war with dualism at all, since it can't be at war with something that, from its point of view, doesn't even exist. One doesn't go to war with shadows and reflections in a mirror, one recognizes them as oneself and remains unthreatened. Nor does non-dualism seek to conquer and incorporate dualism into its "empire", since there is no such need or purpose to non-dualism. So non-dualism doesn't feel threatened by dualism, but it does set itself apart from dualism, because by its very nature it can't be a part of what is an illusion. We can see our image in a mirror, but we are never a part of the world we see there. We can enjoy watching a movie, but we know we aren't up there on the screen interacting with the people and places we see upon it. Those are just images. They are not "real", except within their own context.

Similarly, non-dualism by its very nature is "set apart" from dualism, and this is reflected in how it relates, even as it appears in human culture, to the teachings of dualism. Because it is so different in its origins and purpose, it simply cannot be directly mixed with dualism. It can be confused with dualism, and it can arise within a dualistic religious culture of some kind, but it must always be "set apart" in some way. And that is merely the meaning of the word "sacred", to set something apart by recognizing that it is of an entirely transcendental and non-dual nature. That is the origin of the whole tradition of the sacred, of setting apart what is most holy and true - a deep intuition of the non-dual as being not even of the same order of things as the dual.

Of course, the dualistic religions of the world end up combining and interpreting this notion of the sacred with its own dualistic concepts and views - how could it not? - and this results in a separative notion of God and the sacred superceding non-dual understanding almost everywhere one looks. But even without this perversion of the sacred, there remains a true distinction between the non-dual and the dual which serves a necessary function in spiritual practice and culture. Non-dual teachings by their very nature require that they be "set apart" from dualistic teachings, because they transcendent dualism itself, whereas within dualism there may be higher and lower forms of dualism which one may use the word "transcendent" to describe in relation to one another, but none of them actually transcend dualism itself, but only confirm and perpetuate it. These non-dual teachings are not to be "mixed" with dualistic teachings, because they point to this non-dual reality and not to any dualistic concept, even though they must use dualistic concepts in order to be taught to those who are immersed in dualism.

Is this contradictory? In a word, yes. It cannot be otherwise, however, because the nature of dualism is endless contradiction. Thus, even non-dualism, which points to the non-contradictory nature of reality, is contradicted by dualism itself, merely by being spoken or thought of. The nature of dualism is that everything which appears has an opposite that contradicts it, and this applies even to the teachings of non-dualism. Which is why non-dual teachers such as Ramana point to silence as the greatest of all teachings, because silence has no content which can be contradicted by its opposite. Even noise is not the opposite of silence, since all noise contains silence within it.

And this is why non-dualism must stand apart from dualism in practice. It cannot be properly understood as merely another assertion of concepts, experiences, teachings and evolved precepts which can be contradicted by its opposites in the realm of dualistic mind and experience. To reduce non-dualism to the concepts used to describe or point to it is to miss the fundamentally transcendent nature of what is being pointed to. For this reason, non-dualism must always stand apart from dualism. It must always make it clear that non-dualism is always referring to the transcendental source of all dualism, which is beyond all dualism, and not to something "opposite" dualism. The movie screen is always apart from the images that are projected upon it, and non-dual consciousness is always apart from whatever images, concepts, and experiences appear within its infinite dimensions of awareness. If one knows the non-dual reality, then nothing is ever seen as apart from it, but without that full and complete knowledge, in other words, within the dualistic worlds created by the dualistic mind, non-dualism will always have to stand apart from this dualistic mind and world that we assume to be self-existing.

The practice of non-dualism must likewise not confuse itself with the practices of dualism, or conceive of dualism and non-dualism as opposites which ought to be united (as Ken Wilber suggests). Ramana Maharshi tried to make this clear many times:

Advaita should not be practised in ordinary activities. It is sufficient if there is no differentiation in the mind. If one keeps cartloads of discriminating thoughts within, one should not pretend that all is one on the outside..... The world is a huge theatre. Each person has to act whatever role is assigned to him. It is the nature of the universe to be differentiated but within each person there should be no sense of differentiation.

The jnani, therefore, does not try to impose non-dualism upon those who see the world dualistically. The jnani doesn't see a dualistic world at all, as the ajnani does, so this problem does not arise for him. Even so, the nature of his actions in the world never comes into conflict with the dualisms that others live within under the mistaken assumption that they are self-existent. The jnani has overcome all contradictions, all opposites, and all opposition, so there is no sense of conflict in him, and no tension between the dual or the non-dual, because no such opposites even exist to him. And yet for this same reason his life and actions do not "mix" the non-dual and the dual either, because it is impossible to do so, since they are not existent qualities than can be mixed. So the jnani does not pursue some kind of "integration" of the dual and the non-dual. His actions reflect a natural understanding, even from the perspective of the ajnani, that non-dualism "stands apart" from dualism. So while the jnani sees no differentiation between the two, because he does not see "two" at all, he does not act in a manner which violates this principle of "standing apart" either, since that is reflective of the prior relationship - even at the cosmic level - between the dual and the non-dual.

This does not imply on the practical level of life any disassociation from others or indifference to the sufferings of dualistic life. As Ramana once said, if the jnani walks down the street and sees a man raping a woman, he doesn't simply pass on by thinking to himself, "That's just Brahman enjoying himself with Brahman". No, he acts appropriately, does what he can to stop inappropriate behavior, and remains certain of the transcendent reality of Brahman as being undisturbed by any of this, including his own appropriate action in the midst of it. It doesn't require a non-dual understanding of existence to stop an act of violence, nor does a non-dual understanding in any way interfere with one's dharmic obligation to act appropraitely. There is no need to ask oneself, "how do I bring non-dualism into the dualistic world when a man is raping a woman?" One simply acts appropriately, according to the needs of the dualistic world these bodies inhabit. One doesn't "mix" dualism with non-dualism, or integrate the two, since they stand apart at all times, just as the movie screen does not interfere with the movie that is playing upon it.

This doesn't mean that one who knows themselves as the non-dual reality, the jnani, feels himself to "stand apart" from the dualistic worlds. He knows there is no possible way to do that. But to any outside observer, who must employ an inherently dualistic analysis of the jnani's action and behavior, the jnani will demonstrate this principle of always "standing apart" from dualism. And for this reason when the jnani teaches others the principles of non-dualism, he also advises the student to not mix non-dualism with dualism, to not confuse the two realms of understanding, and to not try to bring them together under some ideal of unity or integralism, as if that were the meaning and purpose of non-dualism. Those efforts only bring about confusion, corruption, and the dis-integration of the spiritual impulse.

Even in matters of spiritual practice, it is important to set these apart, to respect the need for a sacred, inner space in which to approach the non-dual, and not to mistake sacredness for separativeness, or to see discrimination as the enemy of unity. The non-dual practitioner must discriminate between the dual and the non-dual in practice, by not confusing the transcendental with the immanent, the real with the illusory, or the sacred with the profane. One has to give the appropriate respect and deference to each within their own domain, and not inappropriately combine the domains in an idealistic effort to transcend their differences. All such differences are the product of one's own mind, and they are to be transcended where they arise, in the mind, and not in the reflected "world" of outer life as if by trying to integrate and combine them there, one is undoing the sense of "difference" itself. One is not, one is merely creating more conflicts within oneself that will make a greater mess of one's reflected outer life.

In the context of my previous post, I was referring to the actual history of non-dualism as a spiritual teaching, and made the point that non-dualism always has to stand apart from the culture within which it arises in order to maintain its own purity and inner strength. This is generally borne out even by the modern's world popularization of non-dualism, and its widespread appropriation by all kinds of spiritual teachers and paths, including Ken Wilber's integral movement. Popularization has its advantages, in exposing many more people to non-dual teachers and teachings than has been possible in the past, but it has many disadvantages as well, especially in this desire to "merge" non-dualism with whatever form of dualism one is involved with. Thus, Wilber's integral approach, being a dualistic approach of the dualistic mind, tries to incorporate non-dualism into its system and process. It does so by trying to re-conceive of non-dualism in a manner that makes this not only possible, but "new and improved". It's approach is an outright and open attempt to "combine" non-dualism with dualism, and the result is not a greater form of transcendental non-dualism, but a lesser, corrupted, and abusive form of non-dualism that is merely a shadow of its real nature.

The principle of "setting non-dualism apart" has been rejected by Wilber and the integral movement, without realizing the serious adverse consequences of this approach. In their idealism, fueled by a philosophical and practical need to combine and include all things into their system of thought, the integralists have indeed made non-dualism approachable, but in the process they have turned it into another dualistic quality that confers a certain degree of peace or harmony, which is to be balanced in turn by dualistic qualities of action and desire. When this happen, non-dualism loses its real power, and its ability to actually awaken us from dualism, and becomes instead merely a selling point for the latest conceptual version of dualistic enlightenment in the spiritual marketplace.

The true meaning of "integralism" is integrity itself, not "inclusiveness". Inclusiveness is not non-dualism, and including non-dualism into the integral club with all the dualistic approaches does not make it either stronger. Instead, it weakens and corrupts non-dualism, and it confuses and disturbs the dualistic. They do not mix. Transcendence does not mean inclusion, as Wilber has asserted. The screen does not "include" the movie that plays upon it. They simply coincide. It is that radical "coincidence" that is the secret of how the jnani seemingly lives within and as a part of the dualistic worlds. He has not combined the two, he lives from a perspective in which the two coincide. And it is this "co-incidence" that is the genuine non-dual principle of understanding how dualism works, not the integral approach of inclusion.

And that's the point of my earlier discussions of acausal synchronicity. If there is a non-dual perspective on how the dualistic world actually operates, it is this principle of acausal synchronicity, which merely means that the dualistic perceptions of the world always coincide with one another, rather than causing one another. Even the non-dual reality does not "cause" the dualistic mind or world to come into being, the two merely radically coincide. But co-incidence is not the same as inclusion, combination, or even unification. In fact, to observe the co-incident nature of the relationship between the dual and the non-dual, or even between the infinite dimensions of the dual, one must set apart the non-dual, and merely observe the dualistic mind and world from the perspective of the non-dual. If one does this, one will eventually see that the nature of the non-dual is radically non-separate, beyond all experience and observation itself. If one doesn't, one will never actually know the true nature of the non-dual, one will merely be pursuing one's desires for illusion using idealistic concepts of non-dualism as fuel for one's lust.

True integrity comes not from inclusion, but from putting everything in its appropriate place and thus preserving its real nature. Since the true place for non-dualism is "beyond" all dualism, it must be set apart from all dualism. It must be treated as a sacred principle, not a worldly principle to be combined and mixed in with all the various forms of dualism. If that is not done, then non-dualism's true nature is not preserved, and it can not serve the function it has, which is to bring about genuine awakening from dualism. The integralists approach castrates this function of non-dualism, rendering it incapable of actually reproducing itself and thereby awakening us to the non-dual, and thus it merely becomes the neutered pet of dualistic teachings, rather than the ruling principle of the sacred source that all dualism must bow to. One can see that in the integralist teachings, all the energy and enthusiasm is for more and more dualism, more and more thought, more and more desire, more and more activity in the dualistic mind and world, and very little of it is actually in the direction of genuine non-dual awakening from dualism. That principle has not merely been forgotten, it has deliberately been discarded and "transcended" as a lesser principle than dualistic inclusion, which is somehow conceived of as the higher and truer principle within non-dualism that has been neglected until now.

This is simply more of the vain attempts of the dualistic mind to perpetuate itself. It is not merely the rational mind that the "pre-trans" fallacy operates within. The genuine pre-trans fallacy is that of dualism itself. As long as one operates from the perspective of the dualistic mind that thinks it is living in a dualistic world, one will be immersed in its dualistic illusions. To introduce non-dual teachings into the dualistic mind at that point is very difficult and dangerous. The dualistic mind will tend to interpret and use even non-dual teachings from the perspective of dualism itself, and twist them into forms of dualism, and end up only strengthening one's dualistic illusions. For the dualistic mind to grasp such teachings and make use of them it has to set the non-dual apart, treat it as sacred, bow to them and worship them, and not corrupt them with dualism. That is how they remain effective and useful even within the dualistic worlds of men. If that is not done, their power is lost, and they become mere concepts with no more meaning or purpose than any other set of concepts we might encounter in the dualistic play of life. The sacred is beyond the dualistic mind and world, and it is only by cultivating the sacred with this understanding that we unleash its power to awaken us truly, beyond all limiting and illusory dualisms.

Beyond Non-dualism - a Response to Ken Wilber's Evolutionary Spirituality

2010-09-20T16:00:00.000-07:00

I hadn't been intending to post here for a while, but I recently came across Terry Patten's latest initiative, in cooperation with Ken Wilber's Integral Institute: a series of lectures and discussions available both live and for download on the internet entitled "Beyond Awakening: The Future of Spiritual Practice". It would be relatively easy to dismiss a fair amount of this sort of thing for obvious reasons, and I'd like to avoid those because they are just too obvious. Instead, I'd like to respond to some of Wilber's core arguments, particularly those he describes in the opening lecture in this series given just a few days ago. Unfortunately, there is as yet no transcript of this lecture, so I will have to paraphrase Wilber's comments, but I think I can do that without distorting them beyond their intent.

The central message of this entire series, and most of Wilber's recent work, is embodied in the phrase "evolutionary spirituality". The series seems intended to express and promote a movement that envisions spirituality as an evolutionary process that changes according to the needs of evolving cultural norms, and that literally creates a greater fullness as those norms become more and more inclusive of every aspect of this evolutionary process. This movement points to all kinds of precedents and teachings it might wish to align itself with, but its main inspiration and leading intellectual force is clearly Ken Wilber himself. So this lecture by Wilber is perhaps the best representation of its message, its views, and its thought process.

I don't wish to pick apart the whole of Wilber's views here, but to focus instead on his understanding of non-dualism as an evolutionary process, which seems central to the rationale behind his advocacy of an evolutionary approach to spirituality. There are some good points Wilber makes in this lecture on culture and its developmental history and conflicts, and I'm not opposed to the notion that religious and spiritual culture and its norms evolve and change over time, but I do think that Wilber's analysis is deeply flawed at both the core level of his understanding of non-dualism, and subsequently in his understanding of how the dualistic world operates.

This particular lecture of Wilber's is a relatively important one in that in it he tries to respond directly to the criticism of his attempts to associate non-dualism with an evolutionary process. I'm certainly not the first to point out that the realization of non-dual truth and reality doesn't "evolve" over time, or represent a cognitve level of development, even if non-dual teachings in the human world certainly do reflect the evolution of human culture and cognition. Wilber begins his defense of evolutionary non-dualism by pointing out that there is a traditional perspective on non-dualism which considers reality to be unchanging, beyond time and space, beyond all manifest dualities, and thus immune to any developmental process. And Wilber concedes that if this is true, then one can't equate non-dualism with any evolutionary process, because evolution clearly is something that occurs in the changing, dualistic world. However, Wilber suggests that within the non-dual traditions there is what he considers a "greater perspective" that is inclusive of the dualistic world, and which does not conceive of non-dualism as excluding dualism and its evolutionary process. He points to the Upanishadic formulation of "turiya", the fourth or "witnessing" state of consciousness (beyond the conventional three states of waking, dreaming, and deep sleep), and to the Buddhist teaching that nirvana (formlessness) and samsara (form) are the same, as a justification for his assertions that to associate non-dualism with dualistic evolutionary processes is not only a good idea, but represents a greater understanding of the inclusive nature of non-dualism.

In Wilber's view, the reason one can speak of an evolution in non-dualism is that while the pure, formless, non-dual reality is never changing, the dualistic world is always evolving, and thus the "union" of the dual and the non-dual changes in respect to the "fullness" of what non-dualism includes. For this reason, Wilber considers that Buddha's nirvanic realization, although it was founded in the same non-dual reality as any other non-dual realizer, past or present, was limited in its "fullness" by the evolutionary state of the time and place he lived, and that realizers of later phases in human cultural evolution, representing more "inclusive" points of view, were therefore "fuller" in their realization of the non-dual. The integral level of cognitive development, in Wilber's view, therefore represents the first real stage of a truly inclusive non-dualism, because the integral level is the first developmental stage in which inclusiveness itself is fully embraced as a principle. Previous epochs of non-dual teaching and realization have been relatively exclusive in nature, or limited by the various cognitive conflicts of the "first tier" of the Spiral Dynamics cognitive evolutionary cycle, and it is only now, according to Wilber, as integral thinking has evolved to the point of becoming a growing cultural norm at least among the "leading edge" thinkers of our time, that this greater realization of the inclusive union between the evolving dualistic and the unchanging non-dual can be understood and embraced as the basis for spiritual growth and human development.

I think that the above is a fair summary of Wilber's views on the subject, at least as presented in this lecture, and I'd like to critique him on that basis. If I've distorted or misunderstood his views, I'd be happy to hear about it, but I've tried to avoid that and give Wilber's argument its strongest hearing. Rather than looking at merely the weakest links in his chain of thought, I'd like to address the errors in his strongest points, which I think is a more effective way to understand what is mistaken in Wilber's views of non-dualism.

The Problematic and Corrupting Relationship Between Culture and Non-Dualism

To step back from Wilber for a moment and to place his views within an overview of the relationship between non-dualism and human culture, it has to be noted that non-dualism has always been falsely associated with the particulars of the given cultural and religious norms of the time and place in which it has arisen, and thus, with the "level" of cognitive function exhibited by that culture. This is as true of ancient India as it is of modern day America. If, for the moment, we accept for the sake of discussion the general Spiral Dynamics overview of human cultural and cognitive development (an oversimplication perhaps, but good enough for the sake of comparison), it's certainly true enough that the earliest recorded forms of non-dualism show it to have developed within some rather primitive cultures dominated by mythic beliefs and polytheistic conceptions of God and nature. Consequently, these earliest non-dual teachings were associated with these myths and concepts by tradition. But it's also clear - and this is hugely important - that non-dualism itself did not come out of those myths and concepts, nor did it require them or depend upon them. Non-dualism has always "stood apart" in its views, and yet it has also not usually been at war with the culture within which it arises, but instead merely adapts itself to those cultural norms, because it is not concerned with such things.

If we look at the earliest forms of non-dualism that arose from Vedic sources, we see this primal assertion that non-dualism transcends all forms of dualism, even all cultural and religious notions of Gods and Goddesses and cosmic hierarchies and structures of development. The vedic definition of the non-dual reality is "that which never changes", and its definition of illusion is "that which changes". From this came an understanding that there are two "levels" of reality - the unchanging truth, and the world of relative, dualistic experience. Only the unchanging reality is real in the Vedic non-dual understanding, but the changing reality is accorded a "relative reality" that derives from its being founded in the unchanging reality. For this reason, the cultural norms of the specific religious societies in which the Vedic teachings developed were deemed useful and having purpose, even for those who were seeking knowledge (jnana) of the unchanging reality. They could serve that purpose if they were aligned in their particulars to the unchanging reality which was their true source, and acknowledged this reality, bowed to it, and worshiped it, even in the form of various manifest Gods, Goddesses, forms, traditions, and religious norms. And thus, from its very beginnings non-dualism adopted a stance of peaceful co-existence with the relative world and its various traditional practices and views. As Guadapada later explained, Vedic non-dualism is not in conflict with any other religious or spiritual view.

However, this is not to say that over the centuries the general culture of Vedic life didn't come to falsely associate its cultural and religious norms with non-dualism, and to imagine that they were necessary to non-dual practice and realization, or even identical to it. It's simply the nature of the dualistic mind to always make false associations and identification with non-dualism. That's what "samsara" is all about. Even if non-dualism is entirely about the unchanging source of the changing world, those whose minds are constantly changing can't help but become subject to these conceptual associations and identifications, because that is simply what the mind does, regardless of its developmental stage.

While non-dualism may not be in conflict with the culture in which it arises, the same cannot be said for the culture itself. Human culture is a field of dualistic conflict, by its very nature, and it tries to resolve its conflicts with "others" by either destroying or incorporating them into itself. Usually a little of both. Vedic culture tried to incorporate non-dualism into its many dualistic views and practices, and in the process corrupted and degraded aspects of it as well, by associating them with those dualistic views and practices. Non-dualism responded to these attempts to corrupt it by withdrawing to a significant degree from the general culture, and becoming a series of esoteric "cults" that were set apart from the normative culture, surviving largely in "secret", with secret teachings, secret scriptures, secret practice, secret Gurus, and so on. Unlike the west, the eastern cultures were not greatly hostile to these esoteric cults, but even valued and encouraged them, and so a bargain was struck in which the general Hindu culture evolved with a vague understanding of non-dualism being the root or core teaching of the Vedic tradition, but it was considered an "advanced" practice and perspective that most were not ready for, and thus the general culture was dominated by dualistic teachings and practices. This allowed both sets of views to evolve on their own, influencing one another certainly, but neither dominating the other. This allowed Hinduism to grow into a widely divergent and tolerant culture with an esoteric foundation that could always be turned to for support and guidance.

Of course, even this balance was often corrupted, and the dominant dualistic culture often parted ways from its esoteric roots. The varna system, for example, degenerated into the caste system, and even the deference given to esoteric cults was corrupted into a dominance by Brahmanical priests. Thus, even as early as the Buddha's time, there was need for a rebellion against this corrupted dominance by dualistic priests and their dualistic understanding, which gave rise to Buddhist non-dualism as a rebellion against the Brahmanical religion of these dualistic Hindu priests. And then the same process began once more, with Buddhist teachings being corrupted within their own culture, and various forms of esoteric rebellion occuring there as well. As Buddhism evolved in various times and places, from India to southeast Asia to Tibet to China to Japan and finally to the West, it faced the same cycle of esoteric cultism and corrupting general culture interacting in both positive and negative ways. One can certainly point to this as an "evolving" relationship, but it doesn't mean that non-dualism itself has changed or evolved, only that its relationship with human culture has.

The insight that I think is determinative in the long history of non-dualism is that wherever it has arisen, the general culture of the time and place it has arisen in has tried to co-opt, define, and control it to some degree or another. My primary criticism of Ken Wilber's views on evolutionary spirituality is that he is doing the same thing to non-dualism that every other evolving cognitive stage of culture has done. Wilber is, to use his own terminology, a representative of "integral thought and culture", and like every other culture that has encountered and tried to incorporate (rather than destroy) non-dualism, he and his associates are trying to co-opt, define, and "own" non-dualism by associating it with his own cognitive and cultural values. So just as primitive India tried to associate vedic non-dualism with various Gods and mythic processes and beliefs, Wilber is trying to associate modern non-dualism with integral forms of thought and culture, including especially this notion of "evolutionary inclusiveness".

I won't argue against integral culture as some kind of abomination or corruption of the human spiritual tradition. Non-dualism has no conflict with integral culture, because it has no conflict with any culture or religious and spiritual view, even atheism or non-belief. But neither is non-dualism properly associated with any culture or cognitive stage of human development, including these integral stages. If integral culture is benignly oriented towards non-dualism this is a good thing and it should be encouraged and appreciated, but this does not entitle integral culture to own, define, or appropriate non-dualism for its own purposes, or to suggest that the true nature of non-dualism is one of "integral inclusiveness". The integral values system is to be applauded on a number of levels, including its potential to bring cohesive sense to the general state of cultural conflict in the world through an inclusive approach to human culture, and it's also to be applauded for highlighting and valuing the non-dual perspective, but this does not mean that it is not a corrupting influence upon non-dualism, or that non-dualism should allow itself to be defined by integral thinkers and integral culture. The views of Wilber and others in the integral movement are not genuinely "non-dual", they are integral, and the two are no more synonymous than non-dualism and Hindu polytheism.

On the other hand, it's certainly possible for integral cognitive processes to make a valuable contribution to the history and development of non-dual teaching. While non-dualism itself, its core truths and realization, does not change, its human expression certainly does. The common modern complaint that the ancient teachings of non-dualism need to be made "current" and more easily understood by the modern mind and culture has merit, and in the last century or two this process has been in full swing. The western influence here has been an important one, even on Hindu reformers like Ramakrishna and Vivekananda, and the modern Advaitic tradition of Ramana Maharshi, Nisargadatta Maharaj, and other prominent non-dual teachers who have had considerable contact with westerners.

One of the most promising developments in this regard has been the opening up of the esoteric non-dual cults and traditions to the general culture, both in the east and the west. As mentioned before, non-dualism has generally had to secret itself in small groups and cults, protecting itself from the general culture. This is true even today, regardless of the more open society that has developed in much of the world. And yet, even with this openness has come forms of hostility and a lack of support for genuine non-dualism that makes it something of a taboo subject. If the cultural process of integral thought coming to the fore means that non-dualism will find a more fertile ground in which to grow and develop without becoming corrupted in the process, this is all to the good. But it must still guard against the corruptions that come from the integral perspective itself, even if well-intentioned.

The Oxymoronic Corruption of "Integral Non-Dualism"

And what are those corruptions that integral thinking brings to the table? For one, it would be the notion of "inclusiveness" and this proposed "union between the non-dual and the dual". It is not that non-dualism is actually opposed to inclusiveness, it merely sees it as a dualistic gesture that is essentially unnecessary, in that non-dualism doesn't exclude anything to begin with. How can it? It sees nothing that can be excluded, since it sees only unity in and as everything. It need not achieve unity, because it knows unity as already the case, regardless of what those who see themselves and the world as separate entities might say or perceive. It does not see the conflicts of the dualistic world as having any basis in reality to begin with, and thus it does not try to evolve or resolve them. Those conflicts are merely the result of ignorance, to be "treated" by bringing the light of consciousness to them and curing them at their source, through the knowledge of non-dual reality. Thus, the non-dual "solution" to conflict and ignorance is merely to examine them in the light of consciousness, and see that they were merely a set of mistaken assumptions that hid the underlying unity that has always been the case. This is not an "inclusive" process that seeks to incorporate all forms of dualism, but one that actually negates these proposed solutions as being well-meaning forms of ignorance that only make the situation worse in the long run. That is why non-dualism has always tried to set itself apart from dualistic spirituality, and why when it has not done so it has usually become corrupted and degraded.

Let us take, for example, Wilber's argument about "Turiyatita" in this lecture. He is referring to the teaching in the Mandukya Upanishad that describes the three ordinary states of waking, dreaming, and sleeping, and reveals a mysterious "fourth state" called turiya beyond these three, described as the true Self that witnesses the other three states from a transcendental position of pure consciousness. The final passage of this short but extremely influential scripture also refers to "Turiyatita", which means "beyond the fourth", and this is not described or defined at all. Wilber seizes upon this notion of Turiyatita as representing a "higher" form of realization than "conventional" and "exclusive" non-dualism. He takes some serious liberties with this notion of Turiyatita, and tries to imply that it refers to a condition in which the transcendental witness is united with all that it witnesses, and which it had previously "excluded".

There's a number of problems with Wilber's use of the term "Turiyatita". First, of all, the traditionally accepted understanding of turiyatita is that it does not refer to a higher state or realization that is greater than turiya at all, but is merely a superlative modifier of turiya, that makes clear that turiya is not itself a conditional state or stage or level of consciousness, but is inherently "beyond" all these. Thus the "-tita" suffix, which simply means "beyond", is interpreted as merely a superlative that defines the nature of turiya itself as always beyond all conditional definitions. Turiya is turiyatita, therefore, always beyond any definition that might be associated with it. It isn't some "higher stage" than turiya, because there is no higher stage, there is only "beyond", which is by definition beyond all stages and levels. That is why it is not referred to as "the fifth" state of consciousness, but merely "beyond the fourth". And this alone should give one pause about Wilber's understanding of non-dualism as being composed of stages, levels, and evolutionary processes that result in greater "fullness" and inclusiveness. Turiyatita refers to a realization that is beyond any such stages or levels or conceptual definitions. It defines ultimate realization as always being "beyond", and even that definition is something it goes beyond. In essence, it is saying that no cognitive process can define or even properly describe it.

For this reason, the Advaitic tradition generally interprets even the "witness" description of turiya to be something that is gone beyond. Ramana Maharshi, for example, when asked about the witness said that the Self is beyond the witness, and that referring to the witness is merely a helpful directional pointer to the Self that is beyond all cognition and perception, and at the root of the self-sense and the awareness, but not an actual "witness" identity functioning at any stage or level. Nisargadatta likewise taught that the scriptures refer to the witness only because that is how the Self appears in relation to the manifest cosmos, it's not a description of the Self itself or its extent, it's merely the best way one can refer to it from the dualistic point of view. Advaitic teachers certainly point to the witnessing function of consciousness to be an important pointer to the Self, but they do not assert it as being the exclusive nature of the Self, as some kind of perspective that excludes anything or anyone, because it is beyond even exclusion. They refer instead to true realization as a tacit understanding that everything that we mistakenly see as dualistic and limited is in reality the infinite and unlimited Self.

And this is part of the problem with Wilber's understanding of non-dualism. In his lecture he also refers to the Mahayana Buddhist formulation of nirvana and samsara as being the same. What he "gets" from this is that the world of objects is actually real and true, not an illusion, and that these objects are "nirvana undergoing evolution". This, to be clear about it, is an objectification of nirvana, and thus a corruption and distortion of these non-dual Buddhist teachings. The Mahayana Buddhists teach that nirvana and samsara are not the same until one has realized nirvana, after which what was previously known as samsara is seen to have always been nirvanic, and never samsaric. Before that point, however, the samsaric point of view of dualism dominates one's understanding, and thus, one sees the samsaric world as objectively existing. It is only after one has seen that no such samasaric world of objects governed by dualism exists that one can also see that what one thought was objectively real was actually nirvanic in nature, and therefore not "changing". The change one saw in objects was not real, it was the product of the changing nature of one's own mind.

There's a great Mahayana Buddhist story which illustrates this, involving the famous 6th patriarch of Zen, Hui Neng, when he was a young monk. Hui Neng was an illiterate peasant who had experienced a sudden awakening upon hearing the Lotus Sutra recited aloud, and went to join the monastery of the Fifth Patriarch of Zen. Upon his arrival, the Patriarch immediately recognized that Hui Neng was in the process of awakening, but rather than openly acknowledge this he assigned him to care for the pigs on the outskirts of the monastery to protect him from the academic and spiritual corruptions of the other monks. However, one day as Hui Neng was going about his work he heard two monks nearby engaging in a classic argument about the nature of spiritual reality. They were watching the large monastery flag waving in the wind, and one monk was arguing that it was the flag that was moving, while the other argued that it was the wind that was moving. These two arguments correspond to classic viewpoints about the nature of reality, about how the transcendental and the immanent, the non-dual and the dual, are related to one another (and these classic views are not too different from Wilber's own). Hui Neng listened in the background to the arguments of these two learned monks, but finally could not hold himself back. He finally interrupted them and said, "It is neither the flag that moves, nor the wind that moves. It is your mind that moves".The two monks were silenced, and Hui Neng went about his work tending to the pigs.

This story is a great example of the genuinely transcendental point of view of realization, and how it resolves the "problem" of the apparently changing dualistic world. Rather than objectifying the world, and seeing the world as the manifestation of the transcendental "wind" of spirit, or seeing the wind and the flag, the conscious spirit and the manifest world, as being a changing process we must engage as truly existent, the genuinely awakened "jnani" sees all change as the product of his own mind, and knows that it is only his mind that is changing, not the Self or the world. It is the limited and changing nature of the mind that makes the world seem to be a place that is changing and evolving, whereas the reality of both Self and world is always beyond this. This knowledge allows the awakened individual to transcend the seeming contradiction of nirvana and samsara, not by seeing the world as an evolving form of the formless reality, but by knowing reality as eternally "beyond" not only all forms, but beyond mind itself, and thus beyond all changes. It is only the samsaric mind which changes, not reality itself.

And that is the heart of non-dualism - a perspective that transcends all perspectives, all mind, all cognition, all perception, all interpretation, all stages, all levels, and even the very sense of "including" all stages and levels. It recognizes all such things as merely "mind", and it does not acknowledge the reality of the mind's concepts, no matter how evolved. This is truly impossible to reconcile with Wilber's integral level of cognition, for the same reason that it is not reconcilable with any stage of level of cognition, however one theorizes about them or whatever system one uses to describe them. Non-dualism is "beyond". Non-dualism is not "Vedanta" nor is it "Buddhism" nor is it "Integralism". It can be approached through these, as human vehicles of communication, but none of them define it.

The advantage the traditions of Vedanta and Buddhism have over Integralism is that they are long-standing traditions with a record of many genuine realizers appearing over time and affirming these fundamental basics in such a way that they can always be differentiated from the cultural specifics in which they appear. However, even this is not enough to keep all corrupting influences at bay. Although many of these cultural forms and practices have been tested and demonstrated over time to help those who are deeply committed to non-dualism, serious practitioners of non-dualism often encounter the same problem that Hui Neng did - a normative culture which had appropriated the lingo and concepts and traditions of non-dualism, but corrupted them into cognitive forms of thought and culture which they then confuse with non-dualism itself. (It should be mentioned that at the conclusion of Hui Neng's stay at the monastery, after the Fifth Patriarch passed on to him the robes and authority of his position, Hui Neng had to run for his life to escape the violently jealous pursuit of the other monks).

So the genuine realizer, and even the serious aspirant, often has to appear as something of a rebellious outsider who disrupts the established order. In some cultures, that is valued, while in others, it is anathametized and even crucified, as the story of Jesus demonstrates. But wherever it appears there is a tendency in the normative culture to either destroy or corrupt it by making it conform to that normative culture's values, symbols, and thought processes.This is what occurred to Jesus' own non-dual teachings in the years following his crucifixion.

When "integral culture" tries to incorporate non-dualism into its system of thought, as Wilber demonstrates, there is a natural tendency to corrupt non-dualism in the effort to make it conform to that culture. That is what Wilber has done, by distorting the teachings of non-dualism in order to make them seem to be "integral" and "inclusive" in nature, and suggesting that any other way of understanding non-dualism is merely a lesser stage's exclusive definition, and thus not "true" non-dualism. And to some extent, Wilber has a point, in that other cultures have indeed tried to produce corrupted forms of non-dualism which are limited by that culture's own normative views. Wilber simply doesn't grasp that he's doing the same thing by making non-dualism conform to the normative views of the integral viewpoint.

It's not as if non-dualism is genuinely threatened by this, any more than it's genuinely threatened by Hinduism or Buddhism or Christianity. But it does mean that genuine non-dualism has to be "set apart" from even these traditional schools in order to thrive and perpetuate itself. And fortunately that is just as possible in this day and age as in any other. Non-dualism is never threatened at all, by any culture or cognitive process, even when it might appear to be. Non-dualism is beyond all changes, and knows that it is only the mind which changes and moves, not any "world". Therefore, it manages to survive largely by fading into the backdrop and appearing as no different than the normative culture to outside viewers. It would be good, perhaps, if it could be more open and explicit, but this is not always a good idea. It would be nice, perhaps, if integral culture were respectful of the needs genuine non-dualism has to remain true to itself rather than to integral thought, and perhaps as integral culture develops it will do just that, and leave aside its efforts to co-opt non-dualism and attempt to redefine it in its own image. But if not, non-dualism will survive all the same, as it always has.

That said, it's also true enough that in the dualistic world of mind, spiritual and religious culture does change and evolve, and its views on non-dualism change and evolve, and the teachings of non-dualism that can influence people to awaken from dualism are themselves dualistic and change and evolve to suit the needs of any particular time, place, and culture.It's just important to understand that non-dualism isn't about a set of ideas or religious beliefs, it's about reality itself, and the nature of reality does not change merely because human modes of cognition and culture do. Nor does non-dualism lie on a continuum that stretches from one "extreme" running from exclusion to inclusion, nor does it have a dualistic "opposite" in the form of dualism itself.

The common use of intellectual language and concepts is inherently dualistic. Thus, for every concept one can name, there is an opposite concept. Thus, the concept of dualism has the opposite concept of non-dualism. What Wilber seems to have done is to seize upon this intellectual property of giving a name to "non-dualism" and declare, "see, that means non-dualism is only one side of a dualistic pair, which means that non-dualism is only partial and exclusive, a one-sided point of view that needs to be balanced by dualism to make it inclusive, and thus integralism is the necessary all-inclusive principle, not non-dualism itself." But really, this is just an intellectual trick that can be repeated infinitely. We could just as easily take integralism, propose its opposite, in the form of "non-integralism", and say that integralism is an exclusive, one-sided and partial truth, that it excludes non-integralism, and thus the real unity is found in, let's call it "pan-integralism", which is the true unifying path. And then take that, propose its opposite, and unify them once more. And so on, forever. We could even call this infinite regression principle the "Dialectical Unity" principle, and then oppose it once again with the "anti-dialectical disunity" principle, and propose a merger of the two. It never ends, and it never produces any real insights, other than that the whole exercise is a delusional waste of the intellect.

This is the problem with Wilber's intellectual approach to non-dualism, and trying to "balance" it with dualism. It ignores the simple fact that the very basis of non-dualism is an understanding that in reality there are no opposites to begin with. The very word "non-dualism" (advaita), is a deliberate effort to refuse to define what non-dualism actually is, for the simple reason that it is beyond all dualisms, all names, all forms, all definitions. It is not the opposite of names and forms, it is beyond them. Thus, it does not exclude names and forms, it is the very "ground" from which names and forms arise, and the substance of which they are composed, and the reality of their very being. It is simply not any name or form or substance that could possibly be defined, because it is not even in the same "ballpark". It is like defining the screen upon which a movie is shown. It has no qualities in itself, and yet the movie could not exist without the screen. It is of an entirely different order than any name or form that is seen on the screen. Or, if you take a step further back in the movie analogy, it is the white light generated by the projector that passes through the film. The film "filters" the light, allowing only some of it through, which forms the image on the screen. The images themselves are simply modifications of the light, a partial view of the light. And in a similar way, the images of life that we experience are merely limited modifications of the non-dual light of consciousness. We think they are separate objects, but they have no existence independent of the light or the screen on which the light is projected.

However, the view of non-dualism is not that of "light" as opposed to "dark". The dark only exists because of the presence of the light. The images of the world we experience only exist because of the light of consciousness, and are not in any way separate from that light. The illusion is dualism itself, the idea that these images are in any way separately existing. Of course, a difficulty arises when we take even this analogy of light and images on a screen literally, as if there really are these separate pieces and parts, one a light that projects on a screen, two the screen itself, three the images we see on the screen, and four, the observer in the theater watching the movie. In non-dualism, all of these are the same being, the same non-separate Self. This is why even the "witness" must be gone beyond. All these analogies only point towards what is beyond the analogy, the unity that cannot itself be pointed to. That unity has no opposite, and it also has no parts. It is not in need of any unifying principle to bring it back together with its excluded parts. That would only make separation seem real and require some necessary path of re-unification.

What Wilber is proposing, then, is a path of re-unification between our dualistic nature and our non-dualistic nature, as if we actually had two such natures. To him, this is the essence of the integral path. But for that very reason, it is not a genuinely non-dual path. It is simply a form of dualism that is imposing a dualistic vision upon "non-dualism", and then trying to form a dualistic unity with it. In another sense, it is a form of panentheism, in which the objective world of dualism is seen as "Divine". There is a tradition, both in Hinduism and elsewhere, for this kind of view. Sometimes it is called "qualified non-dualism". In essence, it is a view that dualistic objects are Divine in nature, and that we should therefore see the manifest universe as the "play" of the Divine, and that the universe is "playing" out the Divine's expressive character in the form of this drama of life within the dualistic worlds. It sees two principles, consciousness and energy, or purusha and prakrita, shiva and shakti, as producing the universal leela of life. And it thus advocates an "engagement" with these in order to do the unifying work of making them whole once again.

If Wilber were openly taking this approach, that would at least be good to know. Instead, he's couching his approach in the rather secular language of integral theory, and only loosely referring to such religious notions. Non-dualism, however, is critical even of this approach, reminding us that there are no actual objects that have been created, there is only the "creation" of a dualistic view and its separative vision, what we call the "ego", that has no basis in reality. When Ramana Maharshi was asked about the existence of God, he said that God was the first illusion created by the ego, and that from there, all other illusions were created, including the illusion of each separate self. So the ego loves the idea of God, because God is both the ego's original creation, and the born ego's "source", its creator, depending on what level one looks at God from. But all of that only sustains the illusion of separation that cannot be undone by any "unification" of opposites, because even that creates more opposites, and never actually achieves the unity it proposes and seeks.

The non-dual approach is to cut through all of this play of opposites, Godly or not, to the very source of the whole matter. Its fundamental insight is that there are no objects, and thus no opposites, and no requirement for a reconciliation or unification of opposites. Samsara does not unify with nirvana, it is seen that there is no samsara, only nirvana. They are not literally seen as the same, they are the same only because there is no samsara to begin with. What we presume to be an objective, samsaric reality is only our own Self, and its appearance as a field of objects is the result of our own egoic separativeness, not of "God's play". The God whose play it can be described as is also the separative ego's creation. So it is not truly God's creation, not the "Real God" that is the One true Self, it is the ego's doing, and even there, it is not a literal "creation" by the ego, it is merely an optical illusion created in the ego's separative mind, which is the only thing that is actually "changing".

Thus, trying to "include" all of God's creation under one umbrella, and "engaging" with it in some directed manner is merely repeating and reinforcing the same separative, egoic error over and over again, ad infinitum, whether one does so using the cognitive functions of primitive Gods and Goddesses, or the modern secular cognition of integral thought. It's far from the worst thing one could do, I'm sure, but it's not what genuine non-dualism is about, nor is it "greater" than non-dualism, as Wilber likes to think, because it "includes more". In reality, it is still excluding the true nature of reality, and pursuing again (and again, and again) a world of objects and thoughts that does not truly exist.

The whole point of genuine non-dualism is to bring an end to that entire cycle of illusions, even the very Godly illusion of God and his creation, through the knowledge of the transcendental Source of all of these delusions. Contrary to what the ego fears, this does not mean an exclusion of or a lack of engagement with "the world". It means a recognition that the world is not existing objectively, a recognition of the world as our very Self. It therefore means a complete lack of conflict with the world, or with any worldly teaching or pursuit, which means in essence to no longer be in conflict with oneself. It seeks to attain nothing, and it seeks to reject nothing. It knows there is only the Self. That is the teaching of non-dualism, both anciently and in such modern exponents as Ramana and Nisargadatta. It isn't ascetical or world-denying, but it isn't indulgent or world-seeking, or even unity seeking. It is the "middle way", between all those illusory paths.

What is the Future of Spirituality?

Having made clear, I hope, the distinction between non-dualism and the integral or even panentheist approach to spirituality, we can still ask ourselves what any of this implies about the future of spirituality. After all, in the relative world, life does go on, and spirituality as a human phenomena continues to change and evolve like everything else.

One thing I can probably say with some certainty is that genuine non-dualism will always remain a relatively small and rather private affair. It will likely continue to grow in interest among westerners, but I would sincerely doubt that many will fully embrace its path. The role of non-dualism in most religions, including Hinduism, is usually peripheral to the more mundane spiritual needs people come to religion and spirituality for. In Hinduism it certainly performs a significant role in holding together such a disparate collection of ethnic and religious groups who seldom really agree on much of anything, and it could certainly play a part in holding together the similarly diverse collection of people and paths that could loosely be called "new age spirituality".

It's important to realize that the initial impetus of much of what we might call "the new age" came from Hindus like Vivekananda coming to the west and preaching the unity of religion. What's not so much recognized in the west is that Vivekananda's greater role was in revitalizing Hinduism itself within India under the banner of Vedanta, and that a major part of that project was using the teachings of Advaita Vedanta to rally colonial India together by reminding them of the unity inherent in this core concept of spiritual reality, and conceiving of it as India's gift to the world. This revitalization of Hinduism around both the national concept of India and the spiritual concept of non-dual unity transformed both the spirituality of Hinduism and the politics of India, to the point where today Advaita is now both highly popular in India itself (it had previously been the province of the spiritual elites almost exclusively), and also considered its "flagship" doctrine for the world.

The future of this new spirituality in the west will likely, I think, develop along lines similar to the modern Hindu model, without the trappings of ethnic identification or any specific founding in Vedism. And I think that is a very good thing, as Hinduism has provided an excellent cultural model of a religion that is able to tolerant immense diversity within itself without resorting to exclusion or concepts of heresy to create excessive conflicts and division. By adhering to those principles of inclusion and tolerance, the new age movement can avoid the kinds of debilitating intellectual and cultural wars which, while quite popular in appealing to our visceral instincts, end up hurting and holding back the human and spiritual development of its members. The failings of much of western religion in that respect has made it not only necessary, but possible for new religious views to develop and potentially replace the old guard. However, it's important to realize that even the principles of inclusion and tolerance are not original to the integral movement, they have existed for a very long time and been proven not just in our culture, but in many foreign cultures which are much more "primitive" than our own in the cognitive sense.

The new age spiritual movement is itself an evolutionary response to the crisis in religion and politics that our modern era has engendered. In evolutionary biology, it has been observed that a species under stress will actually trigger mechanisms which encourage a greater degree of genetic mutation, in order to produce a wider than normal variety of organisms, because evolution itself favors the ability to spread a wide net in order to come up with sufficient diversity to ensure that at least some of its progeny will prove capable of survival under difficult conditions. And that is what is happening in the world today, not just in the new age movement, but in traditional religion as well. All kinds of spiritual "mutations" are being produced at a rapid pace, and while we can't tell which ones will survive and prosper, we can be fairly certain that those which do will be fairly different from the past, or we wouldn't be seeing all this diversity in the first place.

That doesn't mean we can predict what will survive and prosper in advance, or that we can "engineer" a religion which will do so, based on some analytical process of pre-figuring the evolutionary needs of the time. Books and theory can only take us so far, the chaotic world of human affairs seldom conforms to our theories and expectations, and nothing is less surprising than being surprised by what actually occurs. If Ken Wilber's integral movement thinks it can outsmart evolution and design a spiritual movement that will outcompete what nature spontaneously throws out on its own, I think he is going to be sadly disappointed. No amount of marketing prowess is going to overcome evolutionary pressures themselves.

On the other hand, if Wilber tosses such vain aspirations aside, and simply rejoices in the sheer spectacle of seeing so much spirituality being spontaneously generated without anyone's actually trying to design it, he will find the future of spirituality quite healthy and prosperous. It's not terribly likely that Wilber's own version of things will emerge victorious in the years to come, or even be the defining philosophical basis for the "integral stage" of human development, if that is what we want to call it, but this hardly matters, I think. None of that is necessary or even important, even to evolutionary spirituality. What is important is that enough diversity exists that healthy forms of spirituality will thrive and prosper even under difficult circumstances such as these.

We of course have to remember that most of the world is indifferent to new age religion and spirituality, and is strongly committed to the traditional paths of religion. Yet even within those paths, much innovation and mutation is occurring. Over three billion people belong to the monotheistic Abrahamic faiths, and that is likely to grow and not diminish. The advent of what Wilber calls the integral stage of development is not likely to change those numbers. Most likely, we will simply see more "liberal" and "integral" forms of Christianity, Islam, and Judaism develop. There is no inherent contradiction between the cognitive processes that Wilber calls "integral" and the religious traditions of most of the world. They are already much more complex than many give them credit for, and have accommodated many levels of cognitive thought and reasoning for many centuries. They can certainly accommodate and adapt to higher levels in their own way. Likewise, even fundamentalism will likely persist and grow in the future, since an atmosphere of growing tolerance also breeds the counter-reaction of intolerance. That's how the dualistic world works, unfortunately for those who dream of utopia.

Will non-dualism find this future world a more benign place in which to thrive? Perhaps. One would certainly expect so, but one also has to be aware of the ways in which an overly friendly environment can be more corrupting than a hostile one. The embrace of non-dualism by many in the west has actually had a corrupting influence upon it in many respects, as those who have embraced it have often done more to change non-dualism than they have allowed non-dualism to change them. Wilber is himself a case in point. The embrace of non-dualism by Wilber and his integral institute has been an uneasy one, in which the understanding of non-dualism has often been corrupted in order to make it consistent with Wilber's own philosophy and aims. The same is true of many western devotees of non-dual eastern teachers, of course. And the same is even true in India itself, even within the traditional paths of Advaita, and always has been. Non-dualism has always been corrupted to some degree by whatever mainstream or even esoteric influences it has been surrounded by. That too is just the way of the world, and can't be helped.

What keeps non-dualism alive and thriving is the dedication of those who truly embrace it and realize it - those who keep "going beyond". That is the key to non-dual practice, not inclusion, but always going beyond. Every limit must be transcended, every concept must be abandoned. The heart of non-dualism never stops, never sleeps, never settles for any attainment or achievement, but always beats the same drum of "beyond, beyond, beyond..."

Spiritual Narcissism, Self, and Self-Image in Non-Dualism

2010-02-18T09:21:00.000-08:00

A comment was left on a recent post asking these questions:

In an earlier post (December 2009?) you mentioned the narcissistic danger of many neo-advaitists in identifying with the mind-created "spiritual self". As an antidote you talked about having a healthy relationship and identity with the body. You even quote Freud and others in the post to support this position. However, in the posts you have written in the last month you talk about not identifying with the body which is more in line with traditional Advaita teachers. Can you explain the difference between healthy and unhealthy body identification (or at least the discrepancy in your positions here)?

The earlier post mentioned was, I think, "The Confusion of Self and Self-Image among Western Non-Dualists", in which I explored the difficulty westerners have distinguishing between the Self, the ego, and the ego's self-image.

The short answer to this question is to point out that the proper relationship for us to have with the body is not one of identifying ourselves with it, but to have an "intimate relationship" with it, which occurs when we simply accept the body as it is, and observe it and experience its qualities and characteristics with deep feeling and sensitivity. The body is not our real or true Self, but it is our first responsibility, our first relation, so to speak, and we need to love it and care for it as we would anyone we relate to.

The longer answer requires that we understand the structure of the ego and the psychology of the egoic mind. The first thing we must understand about the ego is that it requires objects to survive. Unless the ego can identify with an object, it will die, because it has no existence of its own. As long as we live as egos, therefore, we will identify with objects, and that cannot be undone without undoing the ego itself. The body is merely that set of objects the ego identifies with, which the ego "conjures up" in the simultaneous creation of mind, body, and world. There is no single entity called the body any more than there is a single entity called the ego. It is merely a set of samskaras and vasanas, tendencies of the mind, attention, and thought which perpetuates itself through ignorance, inertia, and activity.

The ego therefore requires an "image" of itself to survive. That image is what we call the body. It is not limited to the physical body, it is not limited to the subtle mind, it is merely a set of objects which the egoic mind takes to be itself, thereby identifying with the body. All of those objects are merely thoughts, if examined directly, and all those thoughts are rooted in the ego-thought, the "I"-thought, which is the first and most basic step of egoic separation from its own nature. So at the most basic level, the body is our "self-image", and as long as the ego is operative, that has to be accepted by us.

One of the problems with non-dual teachings, as I mentioned in that earlier post, is that many people mistakenly assume that Advaita's admonitions to not identify with the body means that we should cultivate some kind of alternative self-image that is not based in the body, but in the non-dual Self. This is not an unexpected problem, and one should not feel like a total idiot for making this mistake. But it is important to recognize that it is a mistake that can have serious repercussions. The problem with this approach is that it is impossible to create a self-image that corresponds to the non-dual Self, because the non-dual Self is not an object. The egoic self-image requires an object, and that object, however we choose or create it, is what we call the body. So if we try to create a self-image based on the non-dual Self, we are headed for trouble, because we are not recognizing the simple function of the self-image, and its inherently limited nature, being rooted in the body.

The first mistake we will generally make is to disassociate from the body, rejecting that self-image, and to try to create and dwell in an alternative self-image, basing that self-image on various concepts and experiences we may have about non-dual reality. We may try to identify with "emptiness", or with some experience of unity, of love, of bliss, etc. We will reject the body and imagine that the admonition to not identify with the body means that we should identify with one of these other experiences or concepts. And thus, we will tend to live our spiritual life in the mind, in the realm of self-imagery, rather than in the consciousness which inspects the ego and becomes intimately aware of the egoic structure of our own mind.

Papaji used to point out that one of the primary errors people make in trying to practice non-dualism is that they form a concept of enlightenment in their minds, and identify so strongly with it that they actually seem to achieve it. The mind is so powerful that it will create an experience to go along with whatever concepts it holds to strongly enough, and it will even create and sustain an experience of "enlightenment" that will correspond to whatever concept we have of enlightenment. Papaji called this "mind-enlightenment", and warned that it was a serious trap that many would fall into if they were not conscious of this power of the mind. One can certainly see many people among Papaji's western devotees who made this mistake, some of whom even set themselves up as teachers and Gurus giving satsang and claiming enlightenment, so it's not as if Papaji were merely speculating, He was addressing a serious problem that westerners in particular tend to face in our time and place, because the western world is manifesting a particularly powerful narcissistic mindset that imagines itself to be more advanced than any traditional understanding of life, when in reality it is often shallow and lacking any emotional or feeling depth.

I mentioned before the work of Alexander Lowen, M.D., a prominent psychologist who wrote "Narcissim: Denial of the true Self", among many other works. He pointed out that while in Freud's time most westerners seemed to suffer from repressive forms of neurosis, sometime around the 1960s the culture shifted more and more powerfully towards narcissistic disorders which had a very different teleology and required a different understanding and treatment. His studies of narcissisism taught him some very basic lessons that are relevant to our discussion of this issue.

The first point about narcissism that he brings up is that it is rooted in a disassociative impulse. To Lowen, the natural "self" that each of us has - meaning the ego - is simply the body. This is a very good insight, as it acknowledges the basic nature of the ego as identification of the body. Furthermore, Lowen points out that one of the basic structures the mind uses in its everyday life is the creation of a self-image. The sensual mind receives all kinds of information about the world and the body through the senses, but it does not stop there, and merely respond instinctively as animals do. It processes this information in the conceptual and imaginative mind, and creates all kinds of images there which it is able to creatively work with. One of the most important images it creates is what we call the "self-image". This self-image is used by the mind not only in everyday life, but in its own process of self-development and growth. For that process of development and growth to proceed in a healthy and productive manner, the self-image must be a realistic and useful one. To Lowen, that means that the self-image must have a healthy and realistic correspondence to our body, and that the self-image not become distorted or "unrealistic"m which can occur if it is separated from the body, and allowed to develop independently or even in opposition to the body. Even more importantly, we must not succumb to the temptation to abandon the sensual life of the body because of its often painful limitations and dwell instead in the world of mind and self-imagery. If we do that, we begin to fall into the miseries and delusions and inflated imagination of narcissism.

Lowen's understanding of narcissism is that it represents an escape from the body into a world created around a mental self-image. He observed that this was often due to early childhood trauma and pain that made the world of the self-image much more attractive and safe than the vulnerable and exploitable world of the bodily self. Many people develop a narcissistic fixation upon their own self-image in response to the physical and emotional pains of bodily life, and create for themselves an alternative reality within their own mind, in the form of all kinds of images and concepts, all organized around the self-image in the mind, rather than around the body itself. To some, this seems to be a better way of living, and in non-dual circles, this can even seem to be the fulfillment of non-dual teachings, which teach that the body is not our true self, and that we should not identify with the body, but with the "true Self" that is the very nature of our own consciousness.

The spiritual narcissist thinks that the world of our self-image is the "true Self" referred to in the Advaitic literature, because it is not based in the body, and is instead based in "consciousness", or the mind, which is found "within", as all mystical teachings seem to describe. But Advaita is not about identifying with an internal, mental self-image. Nor is the process of transcending identification with the body the same as turning to some alternative reality built upon self-imagery and mental concepts that become reified in our inner experience. The spiritual narcissist makes some primal errors that create an even worse form of delusion and suffering than the simple forms of bodily identification that we all suffer from, and it is often even harder to make one's way past these errors, because the world of the spiritual narcissist is almost impenetrable to criticism or self-examination. The spiritual narcissist will simply retreat into his own world of inner self-imagery, thinking that this is what the Advaitic scriptures have always been pointing to, when in reality that is not their import or understanding at all.

One finds these kinds of spiritual narcissists everywhere, not just in Advaitic circles. We even find them in ourselves. Whenever we become absorbed in some spiritual concept, or some spiritual experience, and identify with that concept or experience, we are flirting with spiritual narcissism. The ego is always looking for an image to identify with, and whatever comes up and grabs our attention will suffice. It's important to know this and directly observe this about our own egos. It's important to be familiar with this pattern of the ego, and not be surprised or fooled by what it identifies with. It's equally important to understand that so long as we live by the ego, we will also have a self-image, and that we should therefore make sure that our self-image has a healthy and realistic relationship to our sensual body, and not succumb to the temptation to cultivate an unrealistic self-image that is disassociated from the body.

It's important to observe the body, the mind, the ego, and the self-image, and see how they relate to one another. The body is not our enemy, and the self-image is not the route to enlightenment. The process of actually transcending identification with the body is not one of cultivating an "enlightened" self-image. It is not a process of disassociating from the sensual body and dwelling in internal conceptual states in which the self-image is based on mental content rather than bodily, sense-based content. The self-image has virtually nothing to do with the spiritual process, except in a very ordinary way based on direct observation of how body, mind, ego, and egoic imagery interact with one another. Having a self-image is natural and unavoidable so long as we have an ego at all, and thus the healthiest form of self-imagery is one in which we form an image based on the sensual body itself for purely practical purposes.

When Advaitic literature speaks of "looking within", they are not talking about looking at one's internal self-image and imagining that this must be transformed into a Divine and enlightened self-image. They are talking about a very realistic inspection of the mechanisms of self and self-imagery that is not trying to escape from the ego's identification with the body, but merely examining it freely. This means allowing oneself to feel and experience the suffering of the body and the mind without trying to escape from it into an alternative reality. The practice of self-enquiry recommended by Ramana Maharshi, for example, is not one of disassociating from the body, and instead cultivating an inner self-image of being the transcendental and limitless Self. It is merely a direct examination of the very feeling and process of self, including seeing how self-imagery is formed in the mind as thought-objects that we also identify with. Rather than forming new self-images, or even "meditating on the true Self", self-enquiry merely examines the egoic self directly, in the body and in feeling, without reacting to it. It merely observes these aspects of the ego, and traces their development back to their source in consciousness, back to the "I"-thought. In the process, the ego is stripped on its self-imagery and self-aggrandizement. It is a "humbling" process rather than a self-aggrandizing one. But it is humble not because it creates a smaller self-image, but because it undermines the very process of creating a self-image at all.

Even so, as long as we have any ego left, we will have a self-image, and that self-image will be based on the body. This is not something we can change, and if we do try to change it, we will only complicate our internal self-delusions. It is the ego that will try to become enlightened through the internal self-imagery, and we have to recognize that this is just how the ego works in response to suffering and threat. The spiritual process can be perceived by the ego as a threat to its very existence, and so it will often try to escape from that process by fleeing to the alternative world of the self-image. It will create an alternative spiritual reality around its own self-image, which may include either an image of oneself as an enlightened being, or the projection of this internal self-imagery upon a Guru, who will then be raised up beyond all egoic status to some superior and Divine Deity whom we can worship and revere as a way to escape our own sufferings. Such paths usually involve a disassociation from the body, from the bodily realities of the world, and often involve forms of exploitation of the body and world by oneself or by others in a manner that is not recognized as egoic, but is often confused with some profound form of self-transcending spirituality. This is how cults are formed, and why they are so difficult to break away from. They are rooted in a narcissistic identification with a self-image that is then projected upon the cult and cult leader and seemingly justified even by some of the most profound scriptural sources, if misinterpreted in this manner. And this pattern is of course not limited to small cults who exploit westerner's lack of familiarity with non-dualism. We see this anti-sensual, anti-body approach even in the largest mainstream traditions of religion, both popular and esoteric. The tendency towards narcissism is a universal one, and it infects most everything in human life if we are not aware of it.

That is why it is so important to have a grasp of this process, and to actually observe it in oneself and in others, so as to not fall into these traps. It's an area that the eastern non-dual scriptural sources have not adequately addressed, at least not for westerners who are trying to grasp these teachings from the perspective of a culture which is deeply entrenched in all kinds of narcissistic delusion. It's very easy for westerners used to our culture of narcissistic self-imagery to form false notions of what the Advaitic process is about, and how it proceeds, and what its goals and purposes and practices are. We have seen over the last 50 years many dramatic lessons about this in the subculture of non-dual spirituality, and I'm sure we've all lost many friends, and even ourselves form time to time, to its temptations.

The east is not without these kinds of problems, to be sure, but here in the west they take on greater urgency due to our general lack of cultural understanding of non-dual spirituality, and the blindness of our own narcissism, which is actually encouraged in much of western culture, and is the basis for so much exploitation here that it's no surprise that spiritual paths in the west are also commonly perverted by gross narcissism. The commercialization of spirituality in the west is just one aspect of this trend, and it too feeds upon the cultivation of self-image rather than the humble inspection of self. It's much easier to sell a self-image than it is a simple and unglamorous process of self-inspection and acceptance of one's self-image as the body. For most of us, our bodies are not very glamorous or exciting, and so we want to create a new sense of self based on something "more" than the body. Anyone who can sell us a method for doing that is going to find gullible consumers of that product. But the real process of spirituality is not glamorous, and it doesn't involve cultivating some self-image that is disassociated from the body. It requires that we accept and love the body as it is, with all its warts and sufferings and limitations. We have to accept our ego for what it is also, and merely observe it as it goes about its business, and not be seduced by the temptation to create endless new worlds on the basis of some other self-image that might be more attractive to the mind.

In the end, of course, this transition away from narcissism isn't really very difficult. It merely involves a return to our ordinary suffering, as Freud used to say about the ending of neurotic fixations. If we examine these paths of self-imagery realistically, and take into account all the troubles they create and the miseries they perpetuate, we can see that their path is actually much more difficult and stressful and harder to follow than merely facing up to ourselves realistically and accepting the simple pains and troubles of the body we have already created and identified with. To move beyond that identification means realistically accepting that identification and dealing with it head on.

If we accept that identification with the body, and allow our self-imagery to simply reflect that identification naturally, we are not then simply trapped in identification. Instead, we are now able to work with it, to inspect it, to feel into it, and to begin to move beyond it. We can begin to feel that identification with the body so deeply that we can feel beyond it, to the source of the body-thought, and even to begin to intuitively understand the true Self. Even so, we need to understand that no experience in the mind corresponds to our true Self, but only to images we might form of the Self. We have to recognize that those experiences are themselves just thoughts, and that there is no profit in identifying with them as an alternative to the body we have already identified with. Until the ego is no more, and the Self is realized, the mind will always center itself on the body, because that is what it identifies with at root. To transcend that identification, we therefore have to attend to the very root of our mind and awareness, and not become distracted by any images that present themselves to us as an alternative. We certainly have to refrain from cultivating an entire path of spirituality based on those images and thoughts. We have to be at peace with the body, including its sensuality, and not reject it.

To begin that process, we simply have to observe the body, mind, and ego as they arise, and not fall into exclusive identification with the internal self-images that are generated by the mind as a natural part of born life. To ease our identification with the body does not mean increasing our identification with that internal self-image. It means merely observing both without identifying with either - or at least while easing our identification with either. To observe the process of our own identification with the body and mind and self-image is the quickest way to ease that identification, and to begin to see and feel beyond it. As we mature in that process, we will find ourselves enjoying a greater freedom in consciousness and life, but we will still be subject to identification with the body, and we have to accept that, and allow our self-image to correspond to the body as well. As our understanding and perception of the body increases, our self-image may even grow, but only in natural accord with the body itself. It needs to always keep step with the body, since that is its source.

Papaji once said that it's best to have no self-image at all, but if one is going to have a self-image, he said why not see oneself as "the greatest of the great"? That may be appropriate if one's understanding of the body is virtually limitless, but it will only lead to spiritual forms of narcissism if one tries to cultivate such a self-image apart from the body. If one can see the body as rooted in the Self, it's true source, then all limitations are off. But that seeing cannot be in the mind and its imaginative concepts, it has to be direct and egoless. The problem with too many spiritual seekers is that they leap immediately to the mind and the images of the self, and don't give the body a chance to reveal its true nature to them. Then they become Gurus who are addicted to the same fascinations that those who are identified with they body exhibit, because they are in reality still identified with the body, they just don't realize it because they are so absorbed in the spiritual self-imagery they have created for themselves. And the power of their mental identification is so strong that it even creates for them all kinds of seemingly profound spiritual experience that seems to validate their notions of enlightenment and higher knowledge. Others may be sucked into their world as well, and imagine it to be real. And so goes the folly of human spirituality.

Consciously Conferring Reality

2010-02-09T14:41:00.000-08:00

I've been rather busy, and a bit too active on the Forum, but there's a comment from Aurelius that I should respond to:

You went on to say, “One thing to notice is that we choose which objects to our awareness we confer the status of "reality" to. We can call our dreams at night real or unreal, depending on our perspective, and we can call some things in the objective world real or unreal, depending on our disposition towards them. We can call some memories real, and some false. In all cases, we decide what is real, and reality is conferred upon the world by us, not by the world itself. If we choose to decide that our own consciousness is unreal, and the objective world is real, that is the reality we will live in.”

How does this work out practically though?

We decide what is practical based on what we have already conferred reality on. Things that we don't think are real, we don't consider practical, and vice-versa. Some people, for example, don't consider the imagination to be real, and so they don't have any. Some people don't consider self-image to be real, and so they don't cultivate one. Some people don't think money is real, and so they don't pursue it. Of course, for most of us these things aren't black and white. We have a sliding value system by which we confer reality on things, and this changes all the time, and some things seem to have a lot of value to them, and thus reality, while others do not.

If I you met a mother who just lost her son in a motorcycle accident and whose 8 year old daughter is suffering from a large brain tumor – would you say, “it is real if you decide it’s real”? That would leave me cold and empty, reminiscent of the scientific answers we get about life that are purely materialistic. (Perhaps I am just prodding you a bit here – sensing that you have something interesting to say.)

In the first place, I'm not about to tell a mother who just lost her child and has another with a fatal disease anything at all. What words of mine could possibly help her at that point? Why would I intrude on someone's tragedy? To preach some ideas of mine? That would hardly make sense or show any sensitivity. Even if I knew this mother very intimately, I'm not about to argue philosophy with her. So the question, taken literally, is kind of a setup. Anyone who answers it directly is a fool. I don't suggest that Aurelius is trying to set me up, I understand it's just a rhetorical question, but the emotions involved pretty much negate any point I might want to make.

From a distance, however, viewed as a rhetorical situation, we have to see that the mother has already decided what is real to her, and what is not. As someone who has had children near death's door before, I can say from personal experience that it makes clear to a parent how unreal so many things in life are that we normally consider real, and how real our love for our children seems to us then. A mother in this situation doesn't care about the laws of science and medicine, the physics of motorcycles, the theology of advaita, how much money she made last year, how beautiful her house is, what a nice car she drives – her child is dead, and another dying, and that's all that's real to her right then and there. Whatever we love, that is what we consider real, and only to the degree that we love. If the mother doesn't love her children, which happens now and then, their death doesn't matter to her very much. If she loves her house and car more than her children, she would get upset at their lose more than losing her children.

As for what I would say to her, I can't possibly change her values, her sense for what is real, what she loves most, etc. Those things are already part of her before I say anything, and her ability to deal with loss will depend on how she views reality, what she has conferred reality on, and it won't change by my saying anything about it. Perhaps if she had thought long and hard about death and loss before, and realized something about the nature of consciousness, she would be able to do more than just mourn her loss. She might understand that even her children cannot truly die, that the body can die, but the life and spirit go on. Some people understand this intuitively, and even though they mourn the loss, they also feel the spirit continue.

Death often forces us to re-evaluate what we think reality truly is, and what is truly important to us. I'm reminded of one of my favorite poems by John Keats:

When I have fears that I may cease to be
Before my pen has glean'd my teeming brain,
Before high piled books, in charact'ry,
Hold like rich garners the full-ripen'd grain;
When I behold, upon the night's starr'd face,
Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,
And feel that I may never live to trace
Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance;
And when I feel, fair creature of an hour!
That I shall never look upon thee more,
Never have relish in the faery power
Of unreflecting love;--then on the shore
Of the wide world I stand alone, and think,
Till Love and Fame to nothingness do sink.

The flip side of this is that we also confer reality on whatever we are attached to. Love is not the whole picture here, even with children. Mothers not only love their children, but they are attached to them, and that is not always the same thing, and it even presents conflicts to the mother. Love recognizes the spirit of the child, which goes on beyond death, but attachment tends to focus on the body, which does not.

Likewise, if the family bread winner loses his/her job would it be best to “do nothing” and wait for another job to “arise” – or first to wait and listen to the native consciousness we all possess, or assume there is a certain level of “apparent” cause and effect and try to increase the probability of getting another job by applying for a new position somewhere? Finally, how does your statement above differ from the spate of “positive thinking authors” and “preachers of affluence” that we hear from today?

Again, this depends on what the person considers real. Sometimes, losing a job is a good thing, it makes a person re-evaluate their life and discover what is real to them. Sometimes the challenge represents a test of their faith. One has to consider what is real to us, and proceed on that basis, consciously. The problem with many of us is that we are not even consciously aware of what we have conferred reality upon, and just act and react unconsciously. We merely assume that we consider things to be real because “that's the way things are”, when in fact it has been a conscious evaluation process of our own that has determined these things to be real, and conferred that status upon them. If we consciously inspect this process of how we came up with these evaluations, and ask ourselves how real these things really are, we might change our views, our actions, our relationships, on that basis. We will begin to see that we are not stuck with the reality we thought we were in. We have a much greater flexibility than we sometimes think we do.

Merely "thinking positively" or "creating our own reality" cannot work unless we are aware of our own unconscious evaluations and the way in which we have structured what we think is real.Some people who practice "positive thinking" are in fact engaged in some kind of deeper inspection of themselves, and if they are, they will often get good results, and it will help re-arrange their own view of reality, and thus re-prioritize their life and their purpose. Others do not, and merely engage in a mental exercise of repeated affirmations, which end up creating an inner conflict as they rub up against our own evaluations of what is real. This is why people get varying results from these kinds of approaches. If a person remains unconscious of their own internal process of conferring reality on the world around them, but tries to change their thinking to something more positive in order to become successful, they won't do much more than frustrate themselves, and not know how or why. Often, they are simply not willing to pay the price of examining themselves deeply in order to effect real change, and instead just want a quick or superficial fix that will leave their deeper structures intact. This won't work, and the person will usually give up after a brief and fruitless period of effort.

Others may persist in their efforts, thinking there's some magical power in positive thinking that will, all by itself, change the world around them, and help them win the lottery or something like that. I've actually had unemployed friends who tried to do just that, and I couldn't help yelling at them when they told me their plan. It's hard to explain to these people the error in their approach, because they consider that "negative thinking". But there's nothing wrong with being critical of oneself or others in the process of changing. In fact, it's absolutely necessary. If we want to change, we really do have to examine our own unconscious negativity, which is really just a form of reality evaluation. We are negative about things we consider unreal, and so we have to examine those things we have negative feelings about and find out if that evaluation was correct or not. Often, we find that we have created a false evaluation based on some emotional reaction, and we have to correct that, and adjust our lives accordingly.

There's some truth to the magical aspect of this, in that even the events of the world tend to occur in harmony with our deeper evaluations of reality, for better or worse, and that if we can change these deeper evaluations, even the events of our life will tend to change with them. Even so, a lot of things are simply unchangeable, and it's merely our attitude that needs to change to recognize the worth of things we previously considered worthless or harmful. But all of that requires a genuinely deep self-inspection and revaluation of our lives, such that we genuinely re-consider what is real to us, and what is not. Without that, any efforts we make will be in vain, and even counter-productive. There are no painless fixes.

“…What must be said loud and clear is that being the conscious observer is how we participate in life, it's how we experience everything directly, and how we act directly. If we don't live as the conscious observer, we are separating ourselves from life through concepts and interpretations that render us as "third persons" to our own experience. This is why we feel separate and apart from our experience - because we are not being genuinely related to it, we are instead conceptually related to it, identified with objects, even subjective objects, rather than knowing ourselves as the conscious subject, consciousness itself…”

I have had different experiences here. Not identifying with mind and body – and just resting the conscious awareness – truly allows me to experience what is happening: to feel deeply – whether it is joy, fear, outrage, love or whatever. On the other hand, sometimes there is still a sense of dualism and separation here. There is the conscious observing of (the object of that observing). Any comments?

You are describing exactly what I refer to as “conscious awareness”, tacitly free of identification with either mind or body. This is a basic state of receptivity, of simply being aware of whatever we feel or think or experience on all levels, without making a distinction between them, or between ourselves and them. And yes, this is not the end of all dualism by any means, but it is the beginning of a conscious life that is truly connected and related to all things, internal and external. It's a basic way of being true to oneself and to one's experience, and it makes possible the resolution of our conflicts, both internal and external.

“…Light does not actually do anything to darkness. It merely makes light obvious. It does not cause the darkness to "die". Similarly, consciousness does not come about through any cause, and it is not a cause in relation to anything else...”

I once read a western mystic who said darkness manifests the light - as need manifests supply - as fear (the sense of separation) is the venue to manifest faith (oneness knowing oneness). The universe is a loving relationship. Is this what you mean here?

No, not really. He is basically describing how opposites create one another in turn. That is how dualism works. I am not referring to the dualistic light that is the opposite of darkness. I'm using light as an analogy, in which light represents “non-dual reality”, and darkness represents “ignorance of reality”. When we live in ignorance, in duality, light and dark seem to be opposites, and sure enough, one creates the other in cycles of birth and death that never end. But the “light of reality” dispels ignorance, and when ignorance is dispelled, reality is simply obvious. One sees that there never was any such thing as “ignorance”. In our ignorance, we thought ignorance was a real thing, something to fight and do battle with, something to defeat using the forces of light, etc. But when ignorance is lifted by the light that is our own real nature, we don't find the street littered with dead dark things. There is no dark at all once the light is seen. And we see that there never were any dark things at all, it was merely something we imagined in our ignorance.

The difficult part is recognizing this while our ignorance is still partially present, when we have begun to see the light, but aren't sure if the light is real, or the ignorant visions of dualism are real. We seem to have two possible realities before us, and they are completely incompatible with one another. Which one do we choose? This question can only be answered by our own conscious awareness, which is able to surrender to the reality that we are already in by either faith or insight, or a combination of both. In so doing, we see that even the sense we have of there being a choice between these two was itself a product of our ignorant. In reality, we have no choice.

The Mahakala of Chaos and The Fully Conscious Ordering of Infinite Life

2010-01-29T11:41:00.000-08:00

R, Aurelius has left some follow-up questions to my last post on "The Harmonic Convergence of Acausal Reality", which was a response to previous comments by him:

“…The problem is, there's no such thing in real life as a strictly material event. There's always a human consciousness involved in it somehow, either as a seeming actor or a seeming observer…”

True, but to what extent? And again, why does there seem to be such a reliable predictability to what falls onto consciousness or what waves consciousness collapses into reality? If I send 10 people at different intervals to have a look inside my garden shed – and write down what contents they find – they would all very likely report the same thing (a lawn mower, a rake, some dried leaves, and an old bicycle). Yes, consciousness is involved. But, as you write below, who or what caused this to arise in consciousness? And why does it seem to arise with such regularity (i.e. the garden shed contents)? Are we all having the same dream? Is our “function” merely to collapse waves into this dimension? This is still not clear to me.

First, let's be clear that there is no moment in which consciousness is not present in experience, because without consciousness, there is no experience. The common, seemingly objective viewpoint is that our experience is unnecessary to the existence of the body, the world, and other people. We presume that if our consciousness is not present, that everything goes along just fine without us. We presume that our consciousness is limited to our own body and mind, which is just an insignificant part of a totality which barely notices its existence. But if we actually examine ourselves as consciousness, we will notice that these presumptions have little validity. They are beliefs that are reinforced by the belief itself, creating a circular logic that has no actual basis independent of consciousness. The reality of our experience is that we, as consciousness, always come first, and what we experience in consciousness, whether it is our body, the world, or other people, comes second. Even while we identify with the body, this is always the case, and there's never a moment in which this is not the case.

So the real question is, how can a secondary aspect of our existence come to be seen as primary, and how can the primary aspect of our existence come to be seen as secondary? Part of the answer is found in Aurelius' question. We notice that the world around us has some regularity to it, and that our own internal subjectivity does not. Since our intuitive sense is that whatever is constant and regular and seemingly "permanent", or closest to that, is real, we presume that the world outside our subjectivity is real, and that our subjectivity is the illusion. The problem with this logic is that it confuses our internal thoughts and feelings with consciousness, when if we observe these things we will see that they are actually just as "objective" to us as the external world. Both internal thoughts and external experience are composed of objects to our awareness. We tend to identify ourselves with the internal thoughts, rather than the external, sensory objects, and so we tend to see the outer world as "objective", and the inner world as "subjective", but this is an artificial distinction. The real distinction is between the observing awareness of experience, and the objects of experience.

It's extremely important to notice both the falseness of the distinction between inner and outer objects of experience, and the bare facts of our own awareness. Another thing to say about this notion that all observers will find the objects in the shed to be the same is that it just isn't true. For one, each observer will bring his own subjective and even objective interpretation to the shed, and see things somewhat differently. Everyone's senses will perceive the shed slightly differently, everyone's brain and nervous system will process that information somewhat differently, and everyone's subjective thinking and emoting about the shed will be different. So no one will experience the shed exactly the same. Likewise, the conditions in the shed will change over time, even over very slight periods of time. But even further, and most importantly, everyone will experience the shed as a phenomenal object arising in their consciousness, and not as a truly independent, objective event outside of their consciousness. The distinction between inside and outside objects is a false one.

The reason this is so important is that if we genuinely are looking for something that is regular, reliably present under all experience and in all conditions, regardless of how they change, it is this observing awareness. This is the one real constant in our experience. We are not in a world of unchanging shedness. The shed is a temporary and fleeting part of our awareness that we simply cannot remain constantly aware of, and even if we try, that "shedness" will change, and our experience of it will shift and change with our moods and perspective, even if we try to preserve its objective nature as long as possible. The fact that ten people will inventory the objects in the shed in a fairly similar way only tells us that limiting consciousness to the body of a single individual is not meaningful, that our consciousness is connected in important ways. But it also tells us that to the rest of the world, this shed is not terribly important. Consciousness never really has the same contents twice. Time makes sure of that.

A famous scientist once defined time as "God's way of making sure everything doesn't happen at once. Causality cannot exist without a concept of time, and yet, if we are attentive we will notice that we never experience anything but a single moment of time. We have a concept of time only because we create memories of past moments, but these memories do not actually exist in the past, they only exist in the present. So even our notion of time exists only by comparing present experience with present memories. We have no guarantee that our memories of the past are true, because we have no actual past to compare them to in the present, we only have our present.

One of the most famous and bewildering of scientific paradoxes is called the "Boltzman Brain Paradox", invented by Ludwig Boltzman, who is most famous for inventing/discovering the principle of entropy and the notion that the universe was created by random fluctuations - this long before even the notions of quantum mechanics were known. Boltzman's brain paradox is a mathematical proof that it is far more likely, in a universe of random fluctuations, that a single brain would manifest with false memories than that many brains would manifest with true memories. The numbers aren't even close. The suggestion, therefore, is that either the universe isn't truly random, or we are living in a world of false memories, not true ones, and that there aren't really other people at all, but only a single mind.

Whether or not the Boltzman brain paradox is true, it's rather obvious thatwe can't ever be certain that our memories of the past are true. Even if we compare them to the memories of other people, and the results of some mechanical device like a camera, these too are appearing in our consciousness, and we can't be certain of their reliability therefore. All we can be certain of is that our own consciousness exists as an awareness that is constantly observing and "experiencing" everything. The "everything" always changes, but the observing awareness does not.

The primary illusion of life that we all have to face up to, therefore, is that our consciousness is secondary to experience, and thus a secondary part of reality, and that objects to our consciousness (whether inner or outer) are actually primary to experience, and therefore to reality. We grapple with this illusion every day, and move in and out of identification with either internal or external objects, but seldom do we simply allow ourselves to be who we are, which is this observing awareness.

If we begin to examine our experience from the perspective of this observing consciousness itself, the one unchanging constant in our experience, we begin to discover what our real relationship to reality is. As Aruelius suggests, we begin to see that we are all experiencing the world as a "dream", as something that arises in and to our consciousness, and that the objects of our consciousness have some kind of regularity only because consciousness is not separated by body and brain, but has a larger expanse than that.

And let me be clear, I'm not suggesting that anyone go around with some concept in their mind that we should try to be aware of ourselves as "the observing consciousness". No effort is needed for this to be the case, because if we examine ourselves honestly in any moment, we will notice that this is just who we are. This is our reality, and it requires no concept to be imposed on us for that to be so. If we notice ourselves in any moment, we can see that we simply are observing everything in and around us, whether it's a thought in our mind, a memory of the past, or the perception of a bicycle in our shed. In all such cases, we are the observer of these things, and we are the reality of them, not the other way around.

One thing to notice is that we choose which objects to our awareness we confer the status of "reality" to. We can call our dreams at night real or unreal, depending on our perspective, and we can call some things in the objective world real or unreal, depending on our disposition towards them. We can call some memories real, and some false. In all cases, we decide what is real, and reality is conferred upon the world by us, not by the world itself. If we choose to decide that our own consciousness is unreal, and the objective world is real, that is the reality we will live in. One of the problems we face, then, is that different people have decided these things differently from us, and this upsets us. We tend to associate with people who have made similar choices about reality to ourselves, and consider variations from that forms of "craziness". We wonder to ourselves how people can be so insane, without recognizing that we are insane also, because we have confused reality with our own projections of reality upon a chosen set of objects, rather than recognizing that the source of all feelings that things are real is in us, not "out there". And by "in us", I don't mean merely in our own subjective thoughts and feelings, because these too are merely things that we give some the sense of being "real", and others the sense of being "false". We are not actually the same as our subjective thoughts and feelings, these are still just objects to us that we confer reality upon according to our own choosing.

”…We all intuitively know what it means not to operate by cause and effect notions, because we do this all the time in reality. It's actually only in relatively rare moments that we operate by cause and effect - usually when things go wrong and we feel a need to blame someone. Or when we are trying to figure out some practical problem of material mechanics..”.

I would say rather that we do operate by a cause and effect awareness (sometimes on an unconscious level) of reality more than we think. When things go wrong our focus is on why something went wrong in order to understand it and eventually correct it. If nothing goes “wrong” then we simply don’t think about it – because things are “working” according to expectations. My car not breaking down also appears to have “cause” (i.e. proper maintenance, model type and age, wear and tear – or lack thereof, etc.). So then, in what way do you mean that we intuitively not operate on a cause and effect level?

What must be said first about this is that cause and effect is a conceptual interpretation of experience, it is not how we actually experience anything. One has to learn to think this way, it is not something immutable in our experience. So in that sense, we don't actually go through the day thinking "cause and effect", we only interpret things that way after they have already happened, or in anticipation of their happening. But in the present moment, there is no actual cause and effect, because we can only experience one present moment at a time. Of course, even the brain and nervous system conspire against us in this regard, in that it's been shown that our nervous system creates a kind of "cache" of sensory experience that it assembles into an artificial "present moment" that in reality is built of briefly stored memories. This is one of the reasons why eyewitness testimony is actually one of the least reliable forms of evidence - our actual brain-based experience of things is unreal even by the standards of science. In moments of crisis, the brain assembles "facts" together unreliably, even confusing the order of events.

How reliable is our own brain then? How reliable is our bodily-based experience? Well, not very, even by "objective" standards. This suggests we can't even rely on our own thought process and sensory experience. Rather than submit to some external, objectified notion of reality, this suggests that we should be based in what is genuinely reliable to us - our own observing consciousness. We can observe our own internal thoughts and experience, even our brains as they process sensory data and internal thoughts. We can be what we actually are in the midst of all the confusions of experience - consciousness. That can be our reliable ground of experience, not the conceptual fabrications we create around us, including the concept of cause and effect. Even when we seemingly observe cause and effect, we are the observer of these, not the object of them. We see objects seemingly related to one another by cause and effect, but we, the observing consciousness, are never either a cause or an effect. We only seem to be when we identify ourselves as an object, such as the body or the brain, rather than as what we really are, which is this observing consciousness.

So Aurelius is correct that we do enter into cause and effect mode at times, when we need to think of some kind of way to change our present situation, or to account for changes that have happened. But this cannot be maintained for long. It persists only through stressful effort, and we forget it all too often in the midst of trying to deal with the present moment, because cause and effect can't exist in the present moment.We have to step back from our actual experience in the present in order to see things as ruled by cause and effect. So this notion that cause and effect makes us participants in life, whereas being the observing consciousness is a way of removing ourselves from life, has things exactly opposite. It's an inversion of reality to think this way. Actual reality has us always as an observing consciousness, and it is only by removing ourselves from reality that we can see it as a cause and effect phenomena. And since we actually do live in reality, whatever we may think about it, we don't actually experience the world as a cause and effect matter.

We tend not to notice this much simply because our minds tend to be confused and identified with our own confusion. But even our confusion does not come about by cause and effect, and it can't be undone by removing what we might think is its cause, or by creating a cause that will produce the effect of undoing our confusion. Our confusion is simply false identification, like seeing the rope as a snake. We cannot "undo" the snake, because the snake is not caused, and it never actually came into existence. Likewise, the causes of our confusion don't exist, because confusion is not real to begin with. It is only by thinking that it's real that it becomes real to us. We confer reality upon our confusion, in the same way that we confer reality upon the snake that doesn't really exist as a snake, but is actually a rope. If we try to undo our confusion by acting upon it, trying to create clarity as an effect of our actions, we have merely reinforced our confusion rather than worked to undo it. What will actually undo our confusion is noticing what is not confused, and has never been confused, which is our own consciousness. We have to notice the rope that we are, and that will clear things up. Doing things to the snake does nothing but tell us that there really is a snake, and that's the nub of the problem right there.

It would be great to be able to just be there in tune with what it is and act in harmony with the situation as we are presented with it. I truly believe this. It would indeed be a relief - as you put it. But it does seem, by your own account, “we” can still mess things up – looping us back into a cause and effect scenario. We somehow get in the way (cause) and we end up messing ourselves up and producing unintended results (effect). It seems that dropping the obligation of seeing myself as a causal being continues to be an elusive goal. Could you comment here? I believe this is the crux of the discussion. To say that life just arises in consciousness – seems to imply that there is no participation in life other than observing and passively going along. Does saying that we can mess things up not throw us right back into the cause and effect equation – which to me – would validate a cause and effect universe on almost every level?

Once one begins thinking of things as occurring by cause and effect, everything falls into these conceptual categories, even acausality. One even sees the origins of cause and effect thinking in terms of cause and effect. It's logic can be applied to virtually anything and everything, and thus becomes inescapable. This is why I say that we have to begin by throwing away cause and effect, and not gradually get there.We have to recognize what is real, and proceed on the basis of that, rather than on the basis of some concepts we have about reality, which will end up being re-devoured and regurgitated as cause and effect if that's how we begin. We have to begin with what we actually know directly, not some concept in the mind like cause and effect. And what we actually know is our own conscious awareness. All the objects we know are secondary, and all concepts we have about ourselves and the objects of our experience are tertiary. The first person is what matters, not the third person concept we have of ourselves. If we stay with the first person, we won't become confused. If we leave the first person behind, and instead presume the third person through conceptual notions, we will quickly become lost. Cause and effect is one of the primary ways that we presume the third person by means of conceptual interpretation, and lose our direct experience of reality.

What must be said loud and clear is that being the conscious observer is how we participate in life, it's how we experience everything directly, and how we act directly. If we don't live as the conscious observer, we are separating ourselves from life through concepts and interpretations that render us as "third persons" to our own experience. This is why we feel separate and apart from our experience - because we are not being genuinely related to it, we are instead conceptually related to it, identified with objects, even subjective objects, rather than knowing ourselves as the conscious subject, consciousness itself. This is also why our efforts to be "in the moment" fail if we are identifying with the body-mind, and trying to act to produce results through the body-mind, rather than with our native consciousness. Our efforts backfire and simply reinforce the source of our problem. That is the problem with all cause and effect efforts, even the effort to undo our confusion by cause and effect.

If we interpret all of this as meaning that "identification with the body is the cause of our confusion, so let's engage in some effort to undo that identification, in other words eliminate the cause or do somethign that will have that effect", we haven't actually learned anything at all. We are just recycling these simple truths through the conceptual mind of cause and effect, and we will indeed become only more disassociated as a result.The simple answer to this is simply not to interpret all this through cause and effect notions, and not to look upon our confusion as the result of a cause, or the cause of some further effects. This is one of the problems with much Buddhist dharma on cause and effect. Rather than step out entirely from the mindset of samsara, it tends to reinforce samsara by imagining the "solution" to our entrapment in karma is more cause and effect, rather than less. And people who naively engage in Buddhist practice with the notion that it will undo their karmas, or void the causes of suffering, are not getting the real point of genuine "emptiness". Genuine emptiness transcends causes and effects, it is not the cause of some effect we might call "enlightenment". And the same goes for all forms of spiritual practice conceived of as causes that will produce spiritual effects.

What is necessary is a genuine insight into all this, a genuine breakthrough that goes past cause and effect and stays there, and which becomes the basis for all spiritual practice, which simply means life itself, free of concepts. It is important that such insight not be re-subsumed into our cause and effect conceptualization of reality, therefore. It must develop the strength to stand apart from all that, which means to stand in reality itself, directly, in the first person, not the third person, unruffled by concepts about cause and effect. This is how karma is actually undone, by standing in reality. One can never "work off" one's karma by cause and effect - that is simply endless, because the method merely reinforces the conceptual illusion of cause and effect, which is what karma is to begin with.It is precisely by not trying to cause enlightenment that enlightenment is found. And even that cannot become a conceptual method to produce enlightenment. It must be a direct understanding. There is no other way.

“…When we exclude consciousness from the equation, it doesn't go away, but it reappears in our experience as randomness…”
Can you be more specific here – when you talk about random intrusions? Any examples?

The experience of randomness is far more common than that of cause and effect, but it too is an illusion. Behind all cause and effect interpretations lurks the incomprehensible monster of chaos. We try to resolve chaos into causes and effects, but despite the academic findings of science and philosophy, our actual experience is always chaotic. Even the science of chaos theory is merely a superficial stab at trying to grasp just how complex and chaotic life actually is. Even quantum mechanics tells us that every moment is a series of probabilities governed by randomness, not an ordered universe. Cause and effect breaks down at the quantum level, which means our hope of finding an orderly cause and effect universe is simply in vain. So everywhere we look we see chaos, randomness, and chance, rather than orderly causes and effects we can predict with any certainty. Cause and effect is a reaction to this experiential fact, rather than the underlying reality behind it. It is an attempt to keep ourselves from facing the Mahakala of Chaos, by erecting fences of orderly cause and effect. But the Mahakala always wins out in the end, not our theories of cause and effect.

What I am suggesting is that if we examine our experience from the perspective of consciousness, we will find that in reality there is no chaos, no randomness, no infinite multiverse of all possibilities, but only the single reality of consciousness itself, which is unity and uniform throughout all of experience, and which is reflected in all experience. What we perceive as randomness is merely the acausal nature of consciousness confronting us in the midst of a life we are scrambling to interpret in some other way, because we have made our own conscious existence a secondary, unconscious, even tertiary affair. When consciousness, which is acausal in nature, is made unconscious is us, pushed aside for the third person viewpoint, it does not vanish, it merely acts in an unseen, unconscious manner, which we see as chaos and randomnness. But randomness is not actual random at all, it is merely acausal. It operates by a different principle of order than we are accustomed to. It doesn't operate by cause and effect, but by acausal unity. Our conceptual mind can't grasp that, so it sees it as an enemy, a force that must be broken and tamed by cause and effect interpretations. But it turns out that even all our cause and effect efforts end up finding an irreducible randomness to life that is impenetrable to cause and effect, even at the most scientifically refined levels of understanding. What "causes" randomness? Well, clearly it wouldn't be random if it were caused, that is precisely the problem with randomness. Randomness exists precisely because it has no cause. And this points us back to the acausal nature of reality.

It can be difficult to discern if we have surrendered to life or simply to a concept of “life flowing spontaneously”. And there is always that nagging feeling that perhaps we have not really surrendered – leading to the “mess up”. How do you approach this?

It's not really all that hard to discern. If we are operating by a concept, we are not living spontaneously. If we have that nagging feeling you describe, we are not surrendered. What to do then? Well, it's very simple. Merely noticing that we are not surrendered is enough, because that noticing is a return to consciousness. We need not engage in anything other than mere noticing, in order to return to reality. If we have that nagging feeling, just notice that. Don't try to undo that nagging feeling, just notice it. If you notice that you are trying to undo that nagging feeling, just notice that. Ad infinitum. Eventually, just noticing will purify us of what we notice. We will find ourselves returning again and again to consciousness, to being consciousness, naturally and effectively. The more we simply notice this, the more our own consciousness will grow in intelligence and clarity. The more our responses to experience will be spontaneous and true, and in accord with reality. We will notice consciousness itself in the process. We will notice ourselves as primary to all our experience. We will find ourselves more and more established in our real nature, simply by the power of noticing, which is rooted in the first person, not the third person. Messing up is inevitable, but not a problem, if we simply notice it. In the process, we will also notice that there is a principle of acausality that is governing everything, rather than cause and effect. We will notice that cause and effect is not how things actually operate in real life, that it's just a conceptual interpretation of reality based on illusions, rather than on how things actually are.

“…We tend to attribute even the bad things that happen as a result to some cause and effect mechanism, when in reality it is merely due to not living as our consciousness actually operates...”

Again, is this not the cause and effect mechanism at the ultimate dimension?

No, this is merely how it seems if we interpret even this understanding by cause and effect notions. The result of living by cause and effect notions is that we seem to be trapped in causes and effects, and can't get out of it by resorting to further causes and effects. It is only be seeing that even the illusion of cause and effect is not actually caused, that it never actually became real, that we can penetrate this illusion. It is a self-created illusion, in other words, and self-reinforcing within its own logic. The ultimate dimension knows no cause and effect, and it sees that no illusions of cause and effect ever actually exist. The consequences of living in illusion is that the illusion seems to persist, and that is how cause and effect seems to be our pervasive experience. That is karma. Living in reality has no effect on our illusions, any more than turning on the light has an effect on the snake. It merely makes reality obvious, and illusions vanish without cause, because they were never real to begin with. From the perspective of illusion, light is a terrible threat, and is seen of some cause of the dark's destruction. But there is no such thing as darkness, there is merely the absence of light. Light does not actually do anything to darkness. It merely makes light obvious. It does not cause the darkness to "die". Similarly, consciousness does not come about through any cause, and it is not a cause in relation to anything else. The noticing of our own consciousness is not another cause that dispels the darkness, it merely reveals the acausal nature of all arising, which we mistakenly perceive in the dark as "randomness". In the light, it isn't random at all, but the fully conscious ordering of infinite life.