Originally published in ‘The Free Daist’
The Quarterly Journal of The Heart-Word and Blessing Work of Adi Da (The Da Avatar)
DEVOTEE: Beloved, I remember Your Saying a year or two ago that Your Appearance in the world was associated with many unique conditions, such as global intercommunicativeness and video technology and so forth.
AVATARA ADI DA: And Freud, too, and Darwin. Darwinism is a major movement in the twentieth century that seems to oppose religious propositions and summations of how things work and how things have happened in the past. Freud and Darwin are often mentioned in social discourse about the influences, especially in Western, now global, civilization, that have undermined the past—undermined the roots, in fact, of what was called civilization until now. Both Freud and Darwin are associated with an anti-religious disposition. They tried to account for Reality based on materialistic presumptions, and with them—and others who could also be mentioned—came the entire movement of scientific materialism. Before now, civilization was not based on materialistic presumptions but rather on other presumptions, which have been very directly undermined by various influences, Darwin and Freud principal among them.
DEVOTEE: It is striking that when people like Darwin and Freud made observations, without any kind of idealistic presumption, they immediately jumped to the conclusion that what they observed disproved everything else.
AVATARA ADI DA: Yes, and they concluded that it proved the materialistic presumption. Such is naive realism, or the uninspected presumption that is part of the psychology of scientism. The immediate presumption is that the fact that one can observe processes associated with physical phenomena disproves any other understanding of Reality. It is a naive presumption, and a devastating one. It is fundamental to the present-day destruction of civilization and of human life altogether. Everybody is being hammered with what they drink are perhaps reasonable suggestions—being naive realists themselves—that disconnect them from the True and Great Reality. Human beings are now, in general, greatly disconnected and troubled by what they think is a necessary conclusion, which is that the materialistic presumptions of reality are true. No matter how fanatical or fundamentalist they may become, they still harbor doubt about the literal existence of a Spiritual dimension or Reality.
Material propositions have been made for thousands of years, but they were thoroughly undermined by Saints and people of greater experience and a greater disposition. In this apocalyptic time, however, the role of such people is discounted off-hand, and their wisdom is even regarded to be taboo. Therefore, the influence that in the past corrected the aberrations of materialism is now taboo—Realizers have little or no effect on humanity. It used to be that kings and presidents and people of high rank went to the hermitages of Realizers to be corrected. The Realizers did not go hat in hand to see the politicians. The politicians knew that to govern well they had to maintain an association with Saints, with Realizers, with people of greater experience.
That is not how it happens nowadays. Now, with the advent of TV, everybody presumes “Realizers are horseshit, Gurus are Hitlers.” All appeal to greater experience and to unique individuals has been denounced. That turn of affairs is even more important than the influence of Freud and Darwin. The very thing that could cure humanity has been made taboo.
DEVOTEE: The existence of that taboo, even in the nineteenth century, is probably what allowed Freud and Darwin to come to their conclusions.
AVATARA ADI DA: Yes, it was certainly part of it, because they appeared late in the stage of rationalism, or materialism, as it was mounting more and more in the West. Beginning in the Renaissance, it had been growing for at least a couple of hundred years or more. The Reformation in Christianity, which was a principal cultural force in the West, is another profound influence. Tradition and authority were thrown out. One was left with nothing but the book, which served for a little while until the book itself was analyzed and came into doubt.
Therefore, what connection is there? What do you have now? The local pastor, who is just as overwhelmed as anyone else by the prevailing social-minded philosophy, by Darwin and Freud, by his or her own complications and unresolved problems—and he or she is supposed to straighten you out?
The loss of the Sacred is the effect of this modernism. Some people, having lost the Sacred, want to become “fundamentalists” in the negative sense, or fanatics. They affirm what is not true in the face of these influences, instead of starting out all over again at oblivion and finding out what is True and resorting to those of greater experience. As in the past, so now: The madness of humanity will be corrected only by Saints and Realizers. That is the way it has always been, and that is the only way it will change, now and in the future.
DEVOTEE: That is why You are here, Beloved.
AVATARA ADI DA: And, now that I am here, that is why you must get people’s attention and bring them to Me. Ordinary, egoic beings will not figure it out, and they will not set the world straight. Such people are on a destructive course that is not only confusing humanity but actually destroying the entire global environment. The very same people are even getting ready to invade the universe with the same aberrated, egobound, materialistic presumptions— utter hopelessness, reactivity, competitiveness, dissociation, separativeness. The only cure is the Invasion of the Divine into the human realm, through Saints and Realizers of various degrees of Realization.
That is Why I am here. Yet people must respond, because they are cured by their response to Me. By your response to Me, you are cured from your reaction to everything else.
DEVOTEE: Until Your Appearance, there has never been the Ultimate cure of egoity itself.
AVATARA ADI DA: Yes, but there has always been cure of one degree or another in the past, through the influence of Saints and Realizers of one or another degree. Through their influence, humanity has been cured. There is cure even apart from the Appearance of the Ultimate Realizer. Positive things can happen, and people can become to some degree sane, short of Ultimate Realization. Thus have Saints and Realizers served throughout history.
In this time and for hundreds of years in the West—and now as Western culture sweeps over the entire world—the Sacred has been anathema. What is called “science” is not science. Science is free inquiry, the application of a rigorous method for the purpose of discovery. The outcome of such free inquiry is not predecided. Free inquiry has no philosophy. It has only a method. What is now called “science” is not that free. It is wedded to a philosophy—the philosophy of materialism. It is a bastardization of science. It is propaganda, wielding its power all over the world and depressing mankind, making mankind psychotic—literally psychotic—even now destroying the global environment in which we exist and filling it with political and economic programs that are reinforced every day all over the world. In such science, so called, the ego rules. It is madness, and the root of it is the rejection of the Divine, the rejection of the Sacred, the rejection of Saints, the rejection of Realizers, the rejection of that very Influence that cures and makes humanity whole, individually and collectively.
Now, some people who are good-hearted and who want to help cure human beings achieve some positive results here and there, but you see the situation. It is why I am here.
DEVOTEE: Beloved, You have pointed to the Renaissance as a kind of turning point when Western civilization got on this track and there was no way to stop it.
AVATARA ADI DA: Yes, Western civilization turned from the Sacred, from devotion to the Divine, at that time. Johann Sebastian Bach, a pivotal figure in the West as a musician and a composer, used to sign at the bottom of his compositions, ‘To the Glory of God”. After him, who would say such a thing and also be certain it was true? To Bach, it was true. Therefore, he can be viewed as a pivotal figure in the West in this transition. He lived during the unfolding and moving forward of the effects of the Renaissance into modern civilization, which is utterly based on egoity. You can see this movement in painting, in all the arts. Everything about mankind, absolutely everything, has been affected.
DEVOTEE: It seems there must have been some force at work that we could not even understand in terms of the individual people who were alive during the Renaissance. It is a total mystery to me how this disastrous change could occur.
AVATARA ADI DA: Observe the history and you will see that it happened gradually, a bit at a time. All kinds of historical incidents reinforced the disposition. It was not magical. Fundamental to it is divorce from the whole, and, therefore, from the Divine, or the Sacred, and investment in the separate position, the egoic position, of the individual. A so-called “civilization” was created on that basis. The creation of this new civilization required that everything be renounced that had anything to do with investment in the whole, anything to do with going beyond separate self, anything to do with participating in the great Unity. Civilization is no longer about one’s participating in the great Unity and That Which is its Source, but it is about one’s aggressively manifesting one’s individuality in competition with others and requiring governments, politics, economics, everything, to do the same, to be based on that principle and to reinforce it. Now the entire world is involved in an endeavor to glorify the individual dissociated from the whole—the social whole, the universal whole, the natural whole, the Source, the Divine Source, Which Realizers know is True and Real.
Everything is collapsed upon the individual and upon the struggle of many individuals to fulfill their desires. All of politics is based on this principle. Economics, treaties, national agreements, international agreements are all about the motive of the self-contracted, dissociated individual to fulfill his or her desires absolutely.
As My devotee you are here to Realize another reality in My Company. I think I have made My Self completely clear to you all about how to do it, about what the cure is, and it covers everything from your personal past history and case to the whole worldwide scene, the destruction of civilization and order, and even life itself.
DEVOTEE: It seems like it is getting very bad lately. There is no “God” and there seems to be no vision in leadership anywhere in the world today—no vision and no real strength.
AVATARA ADI DA: People think they have vision, but it is an automaticity. They think certain principles are there to be enforced, and they automatically reinforce them politically. The political impulses among political leaders are associated with this down-trend since the Renaissance in the West, which is now infecting the entire world, so that people do not even inspect it anymore. Therefore, competitive individualism is reinforced and made into a political and economic agenda. They feel that they are doing right and doing good to do so. They do not even think about it. They are like rats in a maze, doing something automatic, yet they think they are doing good. They think their agenda is the right principle: All one has to do now and then is be hypercritical of somebody who is grossly violating the usual norms, and then everything is purified. No! Yet the same principles continue. Every day there is a scandal in the news or somebody is being abused, as if to air such nonsense is going to change things. It does not change things. It is just drama. Everybody loves the drama. The great athletic game nowadays for all nations is the daily news.
The transformation of the principles that are being enforced politically, socially, economically, personally is not the subject of discussion. The change will not happen unless something intervenes. In times past, political leaders and other leaders knew they had to go into the retreat hermitages of Saints and Realizers to balance themselves and acquire a right view by which to serve the people. They did not always succeed, obviously, but such was the tradition, and some did succeed. Nowadays it is taboo to resort to anybody. Everybody is an individual. Life is a competition. Politics, economics, philosophy, society—all must reinforce the principle of dissociative individualism and competition, not investment in the Unity of the whole and submission to That Which is the Source of it, not listening to, taking seriously, and seeing the signs of the Saints and the Realizers, and being corrected by them. The entire system is based on competitive individualism, egoity, egoic “self-possession”, conflict, winning. Not good.
DEVOTEE: Beloved, You Said a great thing last year. You Said that in the past, the Saints served the princes and rajas, because they were the ones who had the power. But today, when ordinary people have the power, the Saints must serve ordinary people.
AVATARA ADI DA: Yes. Yet TV tells people not to be so served. The one thing that can cure is anathematized, made profoundly taboo through daily propaganda. Resort to the Realizer is the only cure. Unless such resort once again becomes acceptable and people become transformed by it, the current trend is not going to change and it is going to get worse, and worse, and worse. No matter how many meetings of world leaders are convened, no matter how many representative governments go to this or that convocation and talk about current world problems, they will not change anything fundamentally, because the root-problem, the idealization of egoity, is not being addressed.
According to the popular mind, there is no ultimate authority, there is no Divine Intervention. The Divine is anathema, taboo, systematically rejected. Therefore, people do not believe that the Divine can have any Influence. But until that Influence is embraced there is no cure and you have nothing to expect but more bad news, worse news, progressively worse and worse news.
Recently I heard a radio program about epidemics of disease in Southern Asia. The commentator was talking about all the things that come together to produce such epidemics: economic programs, social programs, competitive individualism, and individualism associated with economic programs that reinforce individual interest in winning, or being selfaggrandized. People can talk all they like about the terribleness of the results of economic, social, and political trends, but you simply must accept the fact there will be such results unless there is a most profound transformation—not only in the disposition of people but in the programs they make, politically, economically, socially, culturally, and altogether. Such transformation is not happening. It will not happen soon, because there is no motive toward it whatsoever. If the chaos of suffering becomes intolerable, some universal solution may seem attractive, one that is rather authoritarian and suppressive— nothing better than that. That could be the next step, because the real solutions are taboo.
The world is insane, some would rather stay in their backyards and tend their gardens, or just drop out—some who feel they cannot do anything about the big picture, and must accept the situation somehow or other. But people can always do something about themselves, their own reactions, the suffering in which they are investing themselves by their reactions. They can enter into association with others who are doing likewise. That is the Way of the Heart. People can do that. If the big picture is to change, however, what I just said must happen, and that change is a long way off. The big picture is not going to be improved for a long time, and things are really going to get worse, and worse, and worse, and there is not a thing you can do about it.
Even so, you can live beyond hopelessness. You must accept some of the results of the big picture, but you can get out of hopelessness by listening to Me, hearing Me, dealing with your own reaction, living right life, entering into association with others who are doing likewise. In the small picture—not just in the life of the individual but in the life of cooperative community with others—there is something you can do. It will not immediately affect the big picture, but you need not be a psychotic and just suffer. You can do something about the real roots of your own aberration. That is what My devotees are doing, if they take Me seriously and apply themselves to practice of the Way of the Heart for real.
The big picture is another matter. I listen to the news every day. I Do what I can about it, but you cannot do anything about it but be fascinated and depressed by it. There is nothing you can do about it, unless there is a change in the disposition of mankind globally. And that is not going to happen soon.
Some try to affect the situation by making statements about what needs to change. It is good to say right things, but in terms of changing the situation, you are fooling yourself if you think everybody is anything but deaf. Therefore, you must concentrate your energy in dealing with yourself, and dealing with yourself in the context of community with others who are doing likewise. Get really invested in the Way of the Heart itself, and in the community of the Way of the Heart, because if you want to put all your energies into some sort of transformation of the big picture you might just as well think that by magnifying love AIDS will disappear. Magnifying love is good, but it is not going to dissolve AIDS. Saying right things can reflect a good-hearted impulse, but it is not going to change anything right now.
Nonetheless, it is good to keep saying right things. That is fine.
The real process at this moment is not about the big picture. It is about individuals responding to the possibility of dealing with themselves and their own reactivity, and entering into community with others who will do likewise. That is the best you can do. All you can do is hope that the results of the madness in the big picture will not be as bad as they could be. Allow Me to listen to the daily news, let Me Do what I can. Something profound will be suffered by everybody for a long time. In that meantime, you can deal with yourself in relation to Me. You can live in community and make right life with others. You cannot be indifferent to the big picture, but you must be real about it and know what it really takes to change the big picture. Keep saying good things, be real, and do not neglect the real process.
DEVOTEE: When is this destructive tide going to turn?
AVATARA ADI DA: There is no way to say. Even when remarkable opportunities arise to make changes, people refuse to do anything different. When the Soviet Union collapsed and the Berlin wall went down, it seemed that for a moment everybody’s hopes were realized and all that people had to do was do something different. Yet everyone refused. People just made more chaos. Everybody all over the world had a great opportunity in that moment, perhaps the most unique moment in recent history. In that moment people could have cooperated, governments could have been changed, politics could have been changed, economics could have been changed—everything could have been changed. It people had had the will to change, they would have done so. Everything could have been different. But you do not want it yet.
DEVOTEE: It takes some suffering.
AVATARA ADI DA: There was much suffering before. But suffering was not enough. That old dictum in the West, “Through suffering comes wisdom”, is not so. Some do become wise with suffering, and some become wise even without great suffering. Yet very few become wise on any account. Embrace of all, and the total Unity, and the Divine, without reactivity—that is Ishta-Guru-Bhakti Yoga. That is Salvation. That is cure, to be not so deeply embedded in your darkness of separativeness and egoic “self-possession” or your looking at your own reflection. What philosophy will talk you out of it? You must see Something more beautiful and turn away from the pond. To do so is a big deal.
Therefore, for now, everybody must be cured one by one, and make community around Me. The big picture is something else. Elsewhere the world is mad. Politicians are mad, economists are mad, media people are mad, everybody is mad—dissociated from the great Unity and its Divine Source. Some, rather than deal with their reactivity and becoming -Divinely sublimed, would rather just tend their garden, drop out, find some consoling circumstance, and just forget about it.
The big picture is very depressing to look at, if that is all you want to look at. Therefore, look at Me. Deal with yourself. Deal with your own reactivity. That is something you can do. You cannot dissolve AIDS and halt the global environmental degradation by a glance, but you can, right now, in every moment, right now for real, transcend your own reactivity and grow. You can also find others, as you do in this community, who are doing likewise and cooperate with one another uniquely, truly humanly, to support one another’s growth. You can do that, regardless of the world picture. That is about all you can do for now. The changing of the great picture is a long way off. ■