your Real Condition…. so that you will be free of the
defining power of your own reactivity, the
self-contraction”
Participate in the
Condition in Which You Stand
A talk by Adi Da Samraj
September 1982
Listen to talk
In
the manifest world all beings are gods and goddesses. Every
one, every one of you causes things to happen. Every one of
you preserves certain conditions. Every one of you destroys
certain conditions. Every one of you is a god or a goddess.
Every one of you in other words is a kind of divinity. On
the basis of this observation human beings have developed
polytheism, a worship of ancestors and so on. Everyone is
such a causal center that for everybody must be bowed to and
everybody must be treated right because everybody can
ruin your ass.
manifestation there is a natural hierarchy“
Now in the midst of things where
everyone is a god or goddess, everyone has power but if you
look at the total display of the Great Mandala some have
just a little bit of power and some have a little bit more,
some have a lot more, some have incredible power you so in
this domain of manifestation there is a natural hierarchy.
There are beings and there are
bigger beings and there are great big beings. So there is a
kind of polytheistic
universe that has nothing
directly to do with the Great Divine but practically we live
in a world of gods and goddesses, big ones and little ones
and we all have the opportunity to move higher up in the
scale or even to descend lower into the scale and in the
meantime we have to cope with opposition in the scale but
really, really we all exist in one condition, the Divine
Condition of Self-Radiant Bliss.
unillumined manifestation then everyone is struggling for
supremacy, everyone.”
We play life based on
the self contraction and mere observation, mere knowing,
generally in the plane of coping but when we begin a little
more observant then we begin to acknowledge a hierarchy of
power and as influences. That’s the theatre of the
mandala1.
No being is here to get snuffed. No one is here to
get snuffed. No one will bow the head to be destroyed
absolutely. No one will. No one does. In the world of
unillumined manifestation then everyone is struggling for
supremacy, everyone.
There is no peace and never will
there be peace at all never without ultimate
enlightenment on the part of every being. It’s nonsense to
think that all that all that would have to happen for the
Divine to be born manifested incarnated and say the good
word and shine bright and everything will change is
bullshit. It doesn’t happen. It cannot happen, will not
happen. My life is certain proof of this. It just does not
happen you see, because there is this concrete hierarchy of
egos of powers and there is the eality of
unenlightenment.
There is however also the Reality of
Enlightenment or the Reality of Reality Itself, the Reality
of your condition itself which can be realized which can be
acknowledged which I call you to realize and acknowledge in
My Company. I have great power to do this but it is not an
absolute power in the sense that all I have to do is appear
and say the good word or make the good shine and everyone is
instantly converted as if by magic. No, that is not
how the universe works.
struggling for survival as a god or a goddess. Everybody is
a superpower. Everybody is waiting for their moment to lay
it on to everybody else.”
The universe is about causes and
effects, gods and goddesses, hierarchies, trouble, struggle
for existence, struggle for survival, competition, getting
big, being small, suffering, overwhelming, being great,
being nothing.
Everyone is struggling for survival
as a god or a goddess. Everybody is a superpower. Everybody
is waiting for their moment to lay it on to everybody
else.
You depend on your maintenance of
power or your separate position to continue it seems to you
anyway, to continue the level of enjoyment that you have
become capable of through your struggle. Even so everyone
Exists in the Same Position, The Position where you Stand,
the Inherent Position of Being which is Self-Radiant which
is the Substance of the Universe Itself. Self-Radiant
encompasses everything is the substance the energy of
everything. Everything that appears then including every
concreteness of personality is a modification of or a
limitation upon that Self-Radiant Force of Being, The
Divine. The Divine is not a god among all these gods.
The Divine is Transcendental – ONLY
– Great not in competition with all of you. I call you, not
merely to submit to me as the best of the gods, but to
understand to transcend yourself and participate in my
condition, which is Transcendental and All
Pervading.
You must come to realize then that
you are that Self, inherently. You are inherently blissful
and all of this that you pay attention to in the theatre of
coping, the theatre of activity, is a modification of and a
limitation upon that Inherent Bliss, everything.
then you are given permission in nature to enjoy your
Inherent Condition”
Having in some sense decided to
submit to or participate in this grand universe of
limitations, this grand hierarchy, you know very well by
now, being of relatively mature age, that some of the
conditions of existence have such force that they allow you
to enjoy the fullness of your Inherent Blissfulness.
There are some moments like this,
but not even absolute, but certainly like your inherent
blissfulness uncontained. But there are very, very, very few
such circumstances or moments, very few. Everybody is
waiting for such moments, such circumstances. It hardly ever
happens. Every now and then you are given permission in
nature to enjoy your Inherent Condition, every now and then,
million dollar moments. It’s very, very rare. It seems like
some people never experience it.
Most of the conditions of life, most
of the experiences in time and space allow you to experience
much less than your Inherent Happiness and in fact oblige
you apparently, to experience a lot of pain, not happiness
at all, and yet you still submit to this struggle this
coping, this hierarchical struggle between gods and
goddesses.
It’s not just one being making
everything happen. There are countless numbers of beings
making things happen. Every single one of you makes things
happen, not just one being. Every kind of being with all
kinds of motivations makes things happen, and makes things
continue and makes things stop. There are countless beings
making things happen, making things go on and making things
stop, countless such beings.
you to renounce your demi-goddish position.”
That’s why the manifest cosmos of
the mandala is so complex and in effect so profoundly
unhappy. It’s not saturated with happiness. Its ultimate or
fundamental outcome is not happiness. It’s an intense
confrontation and struggle with limited divines, limited
causes, unillumined movers. That’s what each one of you is,
you see. But in the scale of things you are rather low down.
You are greater than the ant but you are rather low down
compared to those who make planets and cosmic storms.
Nonetheless, you are a god or a goddess. You do make things
happen. You do make some things continue. You do make other
things end and as that kind of a causer you are in
competition with every other among the countless causers who
exist in this mandala.
Life is a great struggle for you
then and for the most part your experience of happiness is
limited profoundly limited either to a relatively mediocre
level of the experience of your inherent happiness or a
profound suppression of it. In the form of profound
unhappiness pain and in the midst of all of this I appear in
the circumstance here now as in countless other
circumstances throughout all the worlds in this cosmos,
everywhere. I am sitting now, standing now, working now,
happening now. Just as I am here with you now. Here I am,
called Free John living the apparent life that I do in the
chaotic fashion that I do. It must be chaotic and
unpredictable because it is as yet to awaken you you see.
Not merely to make order among you gods and goddesses. I am
here to get you to renounce your demi-goddish position.
enlightenment the essential business of practice is to
overcome reactivity.”
You can’t renounce it absolutely in
terms of functioning in the universe as an apparent
individual but in spirit I will ask you to renounce it so
that it utterly transforms your participation in this
madness, that is the cosmos. So I ask you to Realize the
Condition in Which you Stand and having realized it to
realize the condition of everything you perceive, everything
that arises as an object to your observation, your knowing.
You are now fitfully knowing or cognizing what arises.
I
ask you to re-cognize it, to
know it again, not to know it as it seems but to know it as
it is where it is the condition in which it is. This is the
substance of enlightenment.
Prior to enlightenment the essential
business of practice is to overcome reactivity. That is the
essence of it and the essence of the traditional wisdom, the
transcendence of reactivity. That’s it. Who are they, a
school of.. Mahavira…..what’s the name of it James? (see:
Tirthankara
of Jainism)…they kept
saying well don’t kill anything. Don’t kill anyone (12:09).
Some Jain ascetic walks down the
street and he’s got some servant out of the hierarchy as he
in front of him with a broom sweeping the insects out of his
path so he won’t kill anyone. Where did section ideal arise?
What is the essence of it?. What makes it universal? How
does it groove into the wisdom teaching given to everyone
else and all the other traditions? What is the meaning of
this reluctance to kill something? You can’t absolutely
kill….. eliminate the possibility of killing….just a
breath because the heat of the body kills bacteria and so
on.
You’re always killing but where does
that idea come from. Since you can’t absolutely avoid
killing what is the substance of it? Do not react. Do not be
motivated to kill. You can’t avoid killing but you can
certainly transcend the reactive motive to destroy life, to
destroy other gods and goddesses, other causes, other
motions, other beings.
Therefore, the whole substance of
the culture of practice preceding enlightenment is the
transcendence of reactivity, the transcendence of
the
self-contraction, the
transcendence of that act which defines you separately and
makes it impossible for you to recognize nature.
There is Only Bliss. There is Only
God, Only God, not the one god against the many gods, Only
God and this is outshined by that recognition. This is the
disposition I call you to. In the meantime you are hardly
even able to acknowledge yourselves as gods and goddesses.
Maybe it sounds to you like some highfalutin notion. Here
are ordinary people and maybe they are gods and
goddesses….
Well yes, you are very very ordinary
people like ants the very ordinary ants…..flies ordinary
flies, mosquitoes ordinary mosquitoes, doors are ordinary
doors. But as flies, mosquitoes, ants, human beings, you are
causing effects. You are perpetuating appearances. You are
bringing an end to conditions. That’s the definition of a
god or a goddess. You are a power not a great one really
compared to what is beyond the human but greater than what
is lower than the human, greater than the mosquito, greater
than the door. If it weren’t for human beings there wouldn’t
be any doors.
If human beings truly realized their
supremacy in nature maybe there wouldn’t be any mosquitoes.
What is a few mosquitoes. There are far too many mosquitoes,
far too many ants, far too many doors in fact…. because
human beings will not acknowledge their conventional
divinity in the scale of things and also will not realize,
acknowledge their true condition. They are not releasing
into the plane of phenomena, the Power of Bliss.
experience…that portion or parcel of your Inherent
Condition”
They settle for….that…. tiny
experience, partial experience of their inherent condition
that circumstances allow and so you spend a lifetime
enjoying or suffering a limited experience of your Inherent
Condition and that which determines the limitedness of that
Inherent Experience is what Seems. If you recognized what
Seems it would be apparently nothing but That Unlimited and
Absolute Bliss or Happiness.
Then you would only be happy or
blissful or loved in the unlimited sense if you realized the
truth of your condition. Not having realized it, you only
experience from moment to moment that portion or parcel of
your Inherent Condition that appearance allows and you
settle for it and you think that you don’t have any
alternative.
So you are all struggling in the
world of gods and goddesses and struggling as personalities
who are too modest yet even to acknowledge that you are gods
and goddesses and I am not here as a god confronting you
gods and goddesses trying to get you to submit to Me and
bring order to this hierarchy somehow merely on that basis.
I Am tThe Very One who you Are.
I Am Here Where you Stand calling
you to Realize your Inherent Condition, the apparent Bliss
that Is your Condition and the Inherent Condition of
Everything that Appears. Not therefore, to organize you
merely in this world although that is a secondary aspect of
it. If you would respond to Me, obviously your ordinary life
would improve but it is not for that purpose in principle or
merely. I am calling you to the Divine Domain to the
Condition that is obvious in the moment of the Outshining of
the total
mandala.
….your Inherent Conditon”
I am calling you to re-experience,
re-know, re-enjoy, naturally, presently enjoy, the Condition
in which you Inherently Exist, not in which you apparently
exist, where it is all limited, the Condition in which you
Inherently Exist and you know nothing about this Inherent
Condition. You have limited it by presuming yourself to be
an independent consciousness and you have limited it by
accepting merely what you know without recognizing it.
This body will die. I will have
whatever history I have in my struggle with you all but my
disposition will be the same as has been all my life and
unto death that is the Awakening Presence. I am not merely
to awaken you to the fact that you are a soul or a god or a
goddess. I am here to awaken you to your Real Condition….
so that you will be free of the defining power of your own
reactivity, the self-contraction and so that you will be
capable of inherent recognition of phenomena. When you stand
in that position and recognize phenomena then that Very
Position will begin to transfigure
the body mind and its relations not only its physical
relations, social relations, its emotional relations, it’s
mental psychological and psychic relations, everything will
be transformed by that Recognition.
charge…..you are!”
You only know, re-know and
everything is infused with the Divine Light. The re-knowers
are the Adepts. The knowers are ordinary human beings or
gods and goddesses or powers in the universe, part of this
ridiculous play of existence that you will take so
profoundly seriously. You all want to say “Oh god is making
this happen”, “Oh god is in charge… blah blah blah”.
Bullshit. God is not in charge. You are in charge and
you are not even absolutely in charge.
You are just one of the countless
numbers of beings who are in effect in charge because you
all cause effects. You all cause form. You all cause
changes. You all cause unhappiness and there is no one being
causing all this unhappiness . There are countless numbers
of human beings causing it. The One Being causes no
unhappiness at all. The One Being Is Happiness.
only one you over against everything else there is only one
god”
The One Being must be Realized. The
One Being is not the creator god. The creator god idea is
just a tiny little religious notion manufactured by poor
beings in the Middle East, two or three thousand years ago
and they were no more enlightened in their presumption of
one god than the masses of people who have presumed many
gods. In fact those who have presumed many gods were more
realistic, much, much, more realistic.
All this monotheism is a confusion
between the polytheistic orientation of egoity and the
transcendental orientation of the Divine Realizes.
Monotheism is made by egos who are insensitive to the powers
of the universe and who have not yet realized the truth. All
of you here I think are by tendency disposed to monotheism
not because you have realized the truth or whether you know
the one god but because that is what you were taught when
you were a kid as compatible with your egoity just because
there is only one you over against everything else there is
only one god. Believing in one god hasn’t made you any
happier than believing in the one you.
There is One God but it is not the
one over against the many. That which is One is not the
creator although that one has manifested as all creators
without intention merely by existence, by virtue of that
one’s existence. The One Divine simply Is and is the
Condition of All Beings and is the Condition of Everything
that every being knows and every being must realize the
condition in which he actually really exists and every being
having realized that must recognize everything else,
everything that appears, everything that stands up,
everything that is perceived by virtue of the various
functional organs, of birth. You just recognize it
all.
choice but the discipline of your own
birth”
You are all in trouble you see. You
all know very well that you are not completely happy because
you are, you are and you’re not happy, not completely,
hardly at all even. You’re struggling. You are struggling to
survive on the basis of your present self-concept and that
includes this body here and you want to stimulate its
pleasure as much as you possibly can and to the degree that
you are frustrated in that endeavor you want to withdraw,
disassociate yourself from relations, phenomena and so forth
but as soon as a pleasant opportunity comes up zap….you’re
back downtown. Your phony ascetics run out of the hills as
soon as a party is announced…downtown, you see.
bullshit without there is bullshit within.”
Relationship is your obligation
until you transcend all reactivity in the framework of this
form. You have no choice but the discipline of your own
birth. Your own birth is your discipline and I’m here to
make it explicit to you what that discipline involves….
because you want to withdraw from that discipline as you
always want to withdraw. It is your total motive to
withdraw, to react, to disassociate, to become
self-contained to indulge in a few spurious patterns of
pleasure for that is allowed but otherwise what pleasure is
frustrated you want to withdraw. You want to become
subjective. You want to go within. There is nothing within
that isn’t without. If there is bullshit without there is
bullshit within.
It is the same shit inside and out.
You must understand and transcend yourself and realize the
Truth. It is not within or without. Everything within and
without must be understood. The truth however is not inside
or outside. The Truth is Where you Stand. The Truth is
Inherent. You don’t have to turn away or within inside or
outside to realize it.
You can’t realize it by any of this
turning. All turning is a matter of attention reaction. You
must realize the Condition in which you stand, the Inherent
Bliss of Being Itself. To realize, that you must transcend
all reactivity… every specimen of self-contraction, all of
it. That’s a great struggle. That’s a great topas. I know
because I have done it. I know very well because I have
really done it.
unlimited, unbounded sympathy with you and I am not here to
make you suffer but I must make you conscious of your
suffering.”
I live all of the limitations you
live, not only in the form of my own birth, in the form of
your birth. I have lived all of it and I know that it is
very very difficult. I know exactly how difficult it is and
I have great sympathy for you, great sympathy. That is why I
persist. I don’t merely react to you in your unhappiness. I
persist. I have great unlimited, unbounded sympathy with you
and I am not here to make you suffer but I must make you
conscious of your suffering. It is the necessary
connection… or movement between unhappiness and happiness,
you must pass through this knot.
You must.
Hear
me. Understand. Observe
yourself. Know the reason for this discipline. No wide is
useful or appropriate. Know that I am always happy with you
while you are drawn to that observation, always that
happiness present to you even when you are inspecting the
worst aspects of your own life.
That is the grace that I bring to
you.
1. The fifth stage is
associated with the mystical aspect of spirituality. The
individual’s attention is withdrawn from the theatre of
external activity and experience and inverted upon the inner
world or ‘subtle physiology” of the brain-mind. The mystical
ascent of attention through the psychic centers of the
body-mind is conditioned by the nervous system. Experience
in this stage reaches its peak in the state of conditional
“formless ecstasy” or nirvikalpa samadhi. This elevated
state of consciousness is only conditional and temporary,
because it still contains the seed of a differentiated self.