Washing-Machine Philosophy
(At around five on the evening of November 29, 1996, about twenty-five
devotees file in one by one to the long and narrow room that serves as
Avatar Adi Da’s “office”. Adi Da is already seated in a chair set against
the middle of the long wall. As each devotee enters the room, he or she
offers a gift at Avatar Adi Da’s Feetoften a flower, or perhaps a pleasing
object of some kindand then fully prostrates before Him. This is an expression
of our deep gratitude for our Beloved Guru’s ceaseless Gifts of Liberation
and our surrender to Him as the Source of Wisdom and Grace in our lives.
As soon as everyone is assembled, the evening’s discussion begins, ranging
over a variety of topics. Eventually, the “consideration” settles in what
proved to be the substance of this entire series of gatherings):
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ:
Isn’t it curious that there’s all this experiencing?
Why? Just what is it for?
(Everyone, including Adi Da Samraj, bursts out laughing,
and Adi Da’s beautiful, ringing laugh continues after the other laughter
has subsided.)
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ:
There are so many difficulties involved in experience.
And so much is required to make it possible for there even to be
any experience. It makes you wonder: Why isn’t experience a lot better?
Why should experience be the way it is? And what’s the point of it? What
is there to understand about it?
This is something to be “considered” seriously while you
are alive, rather than just “going with the flow”.
Such investigation of the nature of your experience is
not a matter of being self-involved. Fundamentally, it’s a matter of going
beyond your apparently separate self in order to Realize the Truth
about Reality, in order to Realize What Is (whatever that turns
out to be). It’s not merely some kind of question about the gross mechanics
of conditional existence, some kind of “how does it all work” questionnot
merely [in a dry, bored voice] “why or how to connect this to that to the
other thing, plug it in, and the lights turn on” kind of stuff. It’s a
more profound matter.
You must, while alive, find out fundamentally what this
is all about. Ultimately, you must find the Source of all this-everything
that you are experiencing, everything that seems to be happening to you.
Otherwise, you’re just caught up in a pattern, you’re allowing your life
to be dictated by a pattern. And there’s not a lot of good news to say
about organisms of your type in the pattern of things. Haven’t you noticed?
It’s all difficult and brief and who-knows-what.
Doesn’t it seem curious to you that you would choose to
just go along with that?
To find the Source, the most positive “what it’s for”
Origin, you don’t really want an instruction booklet. It’s a more profound
question than that. It requires a more profound investigation than reading
a few lists of instructions.
I mean, which is more interesting? The washing machine?is
that the most mysterious thing?or the electricity coming out of the wall
there that runs the washing machine?
There’s just so much interest one can have in a washing
machine. But, generally speaking, the washing machine is all people ever
want to talk about. You’re always missing the point of what runs the washing
machinethe electricity coming out of the wall, the connection to the
Source. That is what is profound. And that is what I am here to talk aboutthe
Spiritual Matter, the electricity side of the wall, the Source of all motion,
all life, all this pattern, all this process here.
Why would you consent to just jiggle along with some sort
of plastic flow, being the puppet? Why would you consent to be not involved
with the Source of all life, the Spirit”connected” ultimately?
You hear a lot of washing-machine philosophy (or limited-mindedness)
these days, a lot of propaganda that taking good care of the washing machine
is what life is all about. Yes, you do have to handle your washing-machine
level of life-business, the practicalities of existence in the world. That
is not a question. But you don’t have to do it in such a way that you don’t
get to explore what is really of interest to you-which is not just more
and more replications, more and more washing machines, generation after
generation of washing machines. What’s it all for? Just so much of that
is interesting after a while-really interesting, anyway. And then it must
be more profound for you, or you just start getting sleepy and puppet-like.
So if you want to get to the bottom of all this experiencing-to
go beyond it, ultimately-you can’t just stay superficial. You have to get
Spiritually straight, heart-straight, for real. And let that brighten you
up. And live on that basis.
The above is from the book Drifted in the Deeper
Land
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©1999 The Da Love-Ananda Samrajya Pty Ltd.,
as trustee for The Da Love-Ananda Samrajya.
All rights reserved.
Used in DAbase by permission.
note to the reader
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