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Authority, Certainty, Growth and Freedom
In an Age of Uncertainty and Doubt
Editors note: The following is an excepted and edited talk given by Adi Da Samraj on April 6, 1987 taken from The Way of The Heart Student Text Series, Vol 1, No 2.
Part II
The Call
Part II – (Part I)
ADI DA SAMRAJ: We could call the advanced dimension of the fourth stage of life and the fifth stage of life as a whole the cosmic stage of development, wherein human beings continue the self transcending process or the process of adaptation. All adaptation is in a sense self transcending, since you must move beyond a self-limit to a greater dimension of awareness. In the context of the ascending process, beginning in the advanced phase of the fourth stage of life, human beings transcend themselves by adapting to the cosmic frame through psychic ascent, or ascending participation in the Spiritual Reality. This process leads to Cosmic Consciousness and Conditional Nirvikalpa Samadhi, including various great and lesser realizations. These realizations, however, are also a limit. Yogic doctrine and the doctrine of the saints is not sufficient. They must be passed beyond eventually.
The domain of the prophets, by the way, belongs to the fourth stage of life, even to the third stage of life, because so much of their influence and motive was to regenerate the moral or social disposition of human beings by associating them with Divinity. The prophets, therefore, belong to religion in the human, rather than the fully terrestrial, context. Greater devotees, direct God-Realizers, go on to serve the process in the fullest context of the fourth stage of life.
The Passage Beyond Separate Point of View.
Beyond the cosmic stage is the sixth stage of life, the stage of transcendental Realization, Realization of That which transcends the ordinary or manifest human frame, transcends the terrestrial or descending frame, transcends the cosmic or ascending frame, transcends the psyche, transcends conditionality, particularly the subjective and subtle psychic manifestation. Of course, you must be prepared to move into the framework of the sixth stage of life, but you must also be attracted to it through the demonstration and the authoritative expression of the sixth stage Realizers.
The seventh stage of life is itself summarized or ultimately fulfilled in perfect Translation. You must understand that there is a unique difference between the sixth stage of life and the seventh. The seventh stage of life is the Divine stage, the sixth is the transcendental stage, and there is a profound difference between them.
There is a profound difference between each of the stages or great sequences. The passage from the sixth to the seventh is actually the completion or fulfillment of the total passage through and beyond the conditional point of view of egoity. It is passage beyond the separate point of view. It is Realization of the Divine point of view, so-called, which is without limits, although it may apparently be associated, if we can use the word “associated”, with any form of limitation, just as it may be associated with no limitations whatsoever. It carries no obligation to appear in one way or the other.
The sixth stage of life is about identification with the transcendental state, Consciousness Itself, ultimately to the exclusion of phenomena. Just as the fifth stage of life is involved in the subtlest reaches of objectivity, the sixth stage of life is immersion in the ultimate domain of subjectivity, beyond the psyche. It is identification with Consciousness prior to objects, as if the limits on Consciousness had been released by passing beyond the context of space-time, and you had brought yourself to stand prior to the Big Bang, before there was space or space-time, before there were objects, before there were mind, body, and conditionality in any form. That is transcendental Realization, but it is simply another stage.
The highest stage is the Divine stage, the stage of the Realization of the Divine Nature of Consciousness. That Realization carries with it the native capacity to “Recognize” whatever apparently arises, even if space does arise, even if space-time arises, even if conditions arise, the body arises, psyche arises, others arise. The arising of anything does not limit the Divine. Likewise, it does not limit the Realizer of the Divine Condition.
Now I am here calling you to that Realization. Yet you are called to truly Realize it, which means you must take into account, or really associate yourself with, whatever limitations are associated with your point of view in the present moment. You must outgrow yourself, or transcend yourself, to Realize that ultimate Realization. Nonetheless, the Wisdom Teaching and the Mere Presence of the True Heart-Master are given to you even as a beginner. That Presence and that Teaching are the means whereby you can be drawn beyond yourself to the ultimate point of view. You are not being called and drawn to a lesser realization.
No realization, no stage along the Way is the ultimate or Divine Realization.
You are not kissed and fondled and congratulated and given badges for practicing stages two or three. These are just phases of your growth and outgrowing. They are not ultimate achievements. Nor are visions. No phenomenal signs are ultimate achievements. No limitations are.
Your practice is therefore governed by this ultimate Teaching and Presence, which is the instrument whereby you can grow even ultimately, just as it is the instrument whereby you can grow in the context of your present limits.
Such is the basis of the Way that you practice, at whatever stage you may be practicing-even those at the human stage can consider this Wisdom-Teaching, you see. You may be practicing at the terrestrial stage or the cosmic stage or the transcendental stage. Whatever your stage of practice, you are practicing in response to That which is communicated ultimately.
True Authority
Therefore, you as practitioners of the Way of the Heart are associated with an authoritative revelation, a revelation you take to be authoritative in the traditional sense, not in any sense that is limiting or negative. The Way should function for you as such authority. You should thoroughly examine it with true discrimination, but ultimately it should function for you as authoritative Revelation. It is intended to. It is intended to serve your integrity and to attract and draw you from the very beginning.
What if there were no such authority? You might, as people ordinarily do, settle into the struggles of the first three stages. Or you might be attracted to some teacher or tradition or book that represented to you the very next stage, or some stage higher than your present stage. You might even try to imitate the higher stages, but you would not have the clarity associated with ultimate authority, perfect Revelation, nor would you be associated in your present-time practice with the Grace of the Revealed Presence. Therefore, for you to practice this Way of the Heart, you must necessarily be associated with its ultimate authority, its ultimate Revelation, which is not only in the form of a Wisdom-Teaching, but in the form of a Presence, a Transmitted Grace.
In fact, then, you have rediscovered a source of authority, just as people traditionally were associated with an authoritative source, a governing principle and reality. You have discovered it in the context of being a practitioner in a particular, yet rather small, community. You should be able to see, then, how important it is that there be such a Revelation, such an authority, and how it should be intelligently approached, but ultimately honored. And, likewise, you should expect that it be honored. You should not be calling for cultism, indiscriminate fascination, and affirmation, but for right honoring and intelligent consideration of the Revelation that is the Way of the Heart.
In addition to serving that very Realization in you, one of the things I am doing, especially in The Basket Of Tolerance, is communicating a reasonable justification for reaccepting a certain kind of authority and making it part of the cultural life of humanity in general. I am calling people specifically to the Way of the Heart in my Spiritual Company, that is true, but even prior to that, through The Basket Of Tolerance I am calling people to the authority represented by the Great Tradition as a whole, not any particular sect or exoteric version of it, but the Great Tradition as a total history of revelation epitomized not only by certain great individuals but by certain great Realizations, which we should be able to affirm as authoritative based on a most intelligent examination of all the realities of the Great Tradition.
We are no longer Americans, Australians, Europeans or Japanese, Indians or Saudi-Arabians. In some sense, we are nationals by virtue of our birth and the political realities of where we live. But nobody is defined as a human being by nationalism anymore, for the world is globally intercommunicative. Everyone is receiving everything, and not just what they may receive provincially or locally or for the time being. Everyone receives, or at least is rightfully in the position to receive, the total tradition of human existence, human realization, human struggle. That total tradition is what I call the Great Tradition. That tradition is many things, but in its ultimate expression, as a whole, rather than as parts, it is authoritative, or significant, or worthy of being taken seriously.
Religion and Science
The Great Tradition, including science, is not an alternative to science. It is not prescientific. Religion is not prescientific. Religion is simply another orientation, and it is senior to the orientation of science, because the orientation of science is inherently analytical or nonparticipatory. Science is a technique of observation. It is not a way of life, or should not be. Although it is becoming a way of life through technology and political influence, it is not worthy of being accepted as a way of life. You might as well say that materialism is worthy of being a way of life. Very few people in human history who have been serious about great matters would say that materialism is an ultimately worthy philosophy. Some people want to argue for it, of course, as people want to argue for all kinds of things, but great Realizers, truly serious individuals who overcame themselves, did not affirm materialism in any single case. None of them did. Materialism is an expression of a certain point of view that basically belongs to the human sequence, or the first three stages of life.
What should be authoritative is the Great Tradition as a whole. In other words, we should not be provincial. We must take seriously the greater aspects of the Great Tradition and not be localized or diminished in our humanity by identification with merely exoteric things, or a lower order of existence. But if we use the Great Tradition as our tradition, we will inherit, you see, even the greatest of considerations through to the seventh stage.
If humankind could reassociate itself with the Great Tradition as an authoritative revelation, then the great traditional principle of authority would be reintroduced into human society. This is not at all the conventional, political authority of domination and suppression, which has nothing to do with the great matters considered in the Great Tradition.
If you understand me rightly, you will acknowledge that the reassertion of the true, great, traditional principle of authority is essential for human well-being, and it can be reintroduced into human societies by our acknowledging the Great Tradition, which relieves us of provincialism, relieves us of the point of view of merely the first three stages of life. This would be good.
Now, you all are certainly examples of people who have reconnected with authority as it has been acknowledged in the Great Tradition. You therefore have a governor or a source of certainty, of balance, of integrity, which, of course, you must approach intelligently, not at all as true believers or as cultists.
By virtue of your affirming the principle of certainty, balance, and integrity, you are suggesting that you have found a resolution to a fundamental human need. I suggest, then, that the Great Tradition is worthy of being reaffirmed as the tradition of all humanity, and of being reasserted, therefore, in the context of human societies. If it were so asserted the edge of all kinds of social, political, cultural, and economic difficulties would certainly be softened. Mankind would see a progressive education, a progressive process of growth, an opening to growth on the part of people everywhere.
I think this is a good idea, and you, by virtue of what you are doing, are suggesting it is a good idea. The question is: Is it possible? And I would say that in principle, it is possible in the longest term. Through my Spiritual Work I am providing a seed for the possibility.
I playfully suggest to you that I am talking to people who will appear a long time into the future. I am. I am also talking to you all, but I am talking to people yet to come and trying to introduce a seed of possibility. The fullest Realization of what I am presenting to human beings through my Work is not likely for some time to come. But if this institution continues, and authentically, then it will be an instrument for this possibility. It will communicate this possibility, and if it is successful in its communications, it will find intelligent responses. Obviously, in principle, this is something that should be done.
The success I look forward to in my lifetime is, of course, the actual communication of my Teaching Revelation, and that has been done to some significant degree already. But beyond that, I look for the gathering of devotees to be authentic and for the Communion to establish itself and show all the signs that it can not only survive in the present context but perpetuate itself and be a living seed, an instrument, for the accomplishment of good things for humanity in the future. Of course, those good things include people entering into greater and greater stages of growth and realization, and also being an influence at the level of humanity at large. This Communion functions on many levels. It provides a culture for people who grow through the stages, but it also maintains its work with the public, friends, and beginners. Likewise, its influence in the future will be effective at many levels.
You see the reason for my urgency, then, in ensuring the success of the response that is this Communion. Among other things, the Communion is purposed to reestablish a fundamental authority for human beings-to help humanity become grounded once again, associated with the great Realisation that permits that authority to be effective through various cultural means, even at the beginning level of human adaptation. Human beings would not thereby become Spiritualizing robots – nothing of the kind. Uncertainty in the ordinary sense remains, and there are still things to learn. The lower levels of adaptation or growth remain part of human existence, and all kinds of limitations must still be dealt with creatively, but there is a grand difference between dealing with all those things in the context of sheer doubt and no understanding of the great matter at all and confronting them in the context of a real, living culture of ultimate, perfect Realization.
END
Kings and Queens
Authority, Certainty, Growth and Freedom
In an Age of Uncertainty and Doubt
Footnotes:
1. The Urgency of the Adept’s Work – Mankind needs regular reminders of the fact that it is not fulfilling its highest potential, which is God-Realization. The aspirations and lives of most people fall far short of this supreme ideal and ultimate necessity. Particularly today, in a time of crisis where the traditions have been eroded by scientism and where the moral fiber of the globe’s nations has been undermined materialistic values reign supreme. In traditional Hindu terms, our period can be characterized as a Dark Age (Kali Yuga) that is en urgent need of the Light and Wisdom of the God-Realezers.
If you want to learn about Truth when Truth has become corrupted, then go to an Adept. Go to one who has Realized the Truth. Go to one who has already fulfilled the process completely. If you live in a moment in time when there is no Enlightened Tradition, when all the cults are corrupt, you can be certain that somewhere on Earth an Adept is alive. Such a person appears under exactly those conditions, when Truth is no longer visible in the cults, and when religions have become so corrupted by history and fetishism that they are about to become extinct.
The religious traditions in our time are about to be smothered by a mechanistic, political, and scientific world view, only because the cults are in doubt. They have held on to their fetishes so tenaciously that they have lost their association with the Living God. They do not even know the Living God anymore. People who belong to churches, religions, and spiritual societies have no unqualified connection with the Living Reality. There is no true devotion in them, and, therefore, no Realization. Their association with God is only words and hopefulness. Therefore, they do not represent a living force in the world. They have nothing to offer that is Alive. Only the Adepts,’ who are God-Realized, through whom the Living Power of God manifests, can make a difference in human time. Such individuals are the instruments for the acculturation of humanity. Periodically, such individuals must appear, and they must be influential. There is a notion that Adepts should be hiding in caves in the wilderness. This is not true. If the Adepts do not speak, the only voice that will be heard is that of ordinary people who are not God-Realized. The Adepts are the Sources of spiritual life. Such individuals must therefore enter into the stream of society, to purify the culture and reestablish’ the process of God-Realization. If they do not speak and become influential, there is no hope at all for humanity.
The Enlightenment of the Whole Body, pp. 155-56
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