The Dreaded Gomboo or The Imaginary Disease That
Religion Seeks To Cure.
A Collection of Essays and Talks on the “Direct”
Process of Enlightenment.
By Da Free John.
Compiled and edited with an introduction and commentary
by the Renunciate Hermitage Order.
THE DREADED GOM-BOO
Part II: Renunciation
CHAPTER 15
The Lesson of Life
February 11, 1983
SECTION I
MASTER DA: The traditions do have something critical to
say about desire, about our tendencies toward objects and
phenomena of all kinds, identification with the body-mind
and all the rest. The traditional language of instruction
tends to be rather abstract or black-and-white. We are
simply told that object-attachment and identification with
the body-mind are wrong. The language may vary, but this is
basically the summary of the traditional point of view.
Therefore, the practice recommended by the traditions is to
not be attached, to be something that is not attached, to
dissociate. In general, then, the traditional instructions
are not associated with Wisdom but rather with taboos and
abstract ideas.
The other day we were talking about obsession with
objects and dependence on relations. What is wrong with such
dependence is that when we depend on relations, we suffer.
We become dis-eased the more we identify with the body-mind
and the more we become obsessively, compulsively involved
with and dependent upon others or relations and objects of
all kinds. We can notice, therefore, that a life determined
to associate with various kinds of others, or relations and
objects, gets un-Happy as a result.
To be compulsively oriented toward the body-mind and its
relations is to suffer from stress. Dependency on phenomenal
objects of one or another kind, including the body-mind
itself, produces stress. Stress is an inevitable phenomenon.
It can be noticed, at least after a while, and it is part of
everyones life. The result of attachment is stress.
We become diseased, therefore, by doing what we think is
natural. There is this body-mind, given by virtue of our
birth, and there are all these relations with which we
associate, and it seems inevitable that we associate with
relations because we are a body-mind. We are just doing the
normal thing, but the more dependent we become on others and
relations and the body-mind itself, the more stressful we
become. And the more stressful we become, the more
dis-eased, un-Happy, and bewildered we become.
Thus, object-attachment produces stress, a state of
apparent dis-ease, the Dreaded Gom-Boo. We could just take a
look at it abstractly and say, “Well, you see, we are very
un-Happy, we are dis-eased, and we are stressed out.” Like
doctors we could diagnose our difficulty and say, “Well, you
see, the reason for these symptoms is that we are driven to
associate with objects, phenomena, circumstances. Therefore,
as your physician, I recommend that you stop doing that,
stop associating with others, stop desiring others, stop
practicing desires, stop getting involved with the world,
stop identifying with the body-mind, and go inward, identify
with your most inward self and get away from all of
that.”
When our results of un-Wisdom begin to become the
symptoms of dis-ease or un-Happiness, we tend to look at our
situation analytically. We diagnose it as a disease and
therefore come up with a solution or a cure that, although
it is the opposite of what we are doing, is the essence of
un-Wisdom or false teaching.
It is factually true that we are attached to objects and
relations, and thus we have become stressed-out, bewildered,
and diseased. That this is true does not mean that we should
diagnose life as a disease, however, and then prescribe a
cure that in effect amounts to dissociating from the whole
affair of existence in which we have become apparently
dis-eased. The Principle of Wisdom must be introduced. We
must not merely analyze the “problem” and then prescribe a
solution that is the opposite of what we are doing. That is
not how to be free of all this. We are only free when Wisdom
is introduced, when the Truth, when Happiness Itself, is
introduced. Otherwise, we will be busy curing ourselves and
we will not be Happy.
The problem with false teachings is that they preoccupy
us with something that is supposed to remedy the disease but
that primarily dissociates us from the things that are
apparently making us sick. Instead of being well, therefore,
we are busy getting cured! The basis of right or true
Teaching is release from the bondage of the disease
altogether and immediately, not occupation with the game of
getting cured. The real process of spiritual life, or life
based on Wisdom, is to become profoundly involved with That
which is Well, That which is Happiness, That which is Prior
to the fault as well as prior to the strategy of curing the
fault.
What is our real Situation then? We are in the
Self-Position, already established in That which is
Infinitely Happy and Blissful. It is Unqualified Being,
Self-Radiant, Self-Sufficient, and It is never anything but
That. But by virtue of a curious association with phenomenal
existence, wherein we identify with the body-mind and become
involved with relations and objects of all kinds, we forget
That which is in the Self-Position, and then we start
looking to cure ourselves. We look more and more for
something outside ourselves that will make us feel good. In
our compulsive living we manufacture everything from sex
partners to the Creator-God to make us feel good again.
It is not that we must dissociate from objects and
relations to feel good again. We must Locate the Happiness
that is Inherent again. If we are established in That, then
our complicated life becomes spontaneously purified or
released of the apparent disease. The cure, therefore, is
not to treat ourselves as diseased persons and to try to
escape what is making us sick. Release from this bondage is
to Locate Happiness again, the Inherent Well of Being and
Bliss. To Locate It and become constantly immersed in It is
the Way, and not any strategy we may apply to the mechanics
of our bodily existence.
If we locate Happiness, then the compulsive process of
identifying with the body-mind and becoming dependent on
relations, objects, and experiences relaxes. It achieves a
state of equanimity wherein the Inherent Radiance of the
Being also begins to invade the plane of function and
relationship. The more profoundly we identify with that
Inherent Happiness, the more It Radiates in the context of
manifest existence. Ultimately we begin to recognize every
aspect of manifestation, so that this very Happiness
Outshines phenomenal or conditional existence.
In the meantime, however, we should not be involved in a
strategy of dissociation from the field of phenomena. Such
is the error of false teaching. Rather, on the basis of
Wisdom we should Locate the Inherent Happiness in the
Self-Position through understanding, and allow That which we
Realize by those means to purify and transform the whole
affair of phenomenal existence and relationship.
We are purified or apparently cured by Happiness Itself.
The Way is not a matter of presuming the disease and
analyzing it very thoroughly and then taking up another
strategy, equally mechanical, of inversion and dissociation,
separating, as a long-term cure, from the things we know are
part of the context of our trouble, and hoping ultimately to
get well again. You can see that this is not the way to do
it. It is the false approach.
But that false approach tends to characterize the
traditional recommendations, and thus when people get
religious or so-called spiritual, when they tend to become
involved with mechanical redress of their presumed disease,
they are still sick, but now they have a diagnosis, they
have a doctor, and they have a treatment. Instead of being
involved with Happiness, therefore, they are involved with
treatment. Their preoccupation with treatment gives them a
little release, a little consolation. They are still sick,
but they know what their illness is and they know what to do
about it and they hope that what they are doing about it
will ultimately make them feel good again.
In the ordinary dimensions of living, first aid has
practical virtue. If you cut your finger, for example, you
can wash it and put something on it that will make it
better. But the mechanical things we might do that have
practical virtue should take place within the context of a
life that is spiritually based, that is profoundly Happy and
immersed in the Transcendental Condition. The Way is to
Locate That Condition through hearing and seeing and to
associate with That through reasonable practice, not through
any of the strategies that merely complicate existence. If
we take up this practice, our compulsive life of
identification with the body-mind, our dependence on
relations, objects, and states, and our fear or resistance
toward various other kinds of relations, objects, and states
will be changed and Transformed.
It is not that someone practicing this Way will abandon
the orientation of strategic cure and say, “Practical
measures are just nonsense. I do not need them because I
have Wisdom,” and continue to do what everybody else does to
make himself sick while at the same time imagining that he
is well. That is not it at all. There is simply a different
Principle, a Great Principle, whereby we Realize Happiness
and are free of the encumbrances of mechanical
existence.
There is a right Way and there is a “wrong” or fruitless
way. All I have just described to you is the difference
between the right Way and the fruitless approach. To take up
this right Way, or the Way of Truth, does Transform our
existence, there is no doubt about it. It purifies us,
restores our balance, Transforms our consciousness,
Enlightens us ultimately, and produces all the phenomena of
Enlightenment. An aspect of that process is a change in the
whole affair of our association with the body-mind and its
possible relations.
As I have indicated to you again and again, you must be a
renunciate to practice this Way, not an ascetic, not an
invert, not someone at war with phenomenal existence, but a
renunciate. The Principle that is Truth, that is the
Transcendental Self or the Divine, must become your
commitment, perfectly and absolutely. Your entire life must
be informed and changed by that commitment and the Substance
and Condition you Realize on the basis of that
commitment.
The true renunciate is absolutely committed to Happiness
and absolutely free of the orientation to un-Happiness, and
the true renunciate enjoys great Wisdom relative to the
whole process of existence that ultimately produces
un-Happiness and that is not conducive to Happiness. The
renunciate chooses Happiness perfectly, and in every moment,
therefore, lives the Law that is conducive to Happiness and
eschews all other tendencies. Of course, that eschewing or
release of tendencies may take time to Realize fully, but
nevertheless it is practiced in the disposition of
renunciation or freedom from bondage to that which causes
un-Happiness.
It is true that dependent attachment to relations,
objects, states, and the body-mind itself produces
un-Happiness. There is no doubt about this. That is the
lesson of life. This does not mean, however, as I have
already indicated, that the Way of Happiness is to divorce
yourself from relations, experiences, pleasures, ordinary
activities, and functions of the body-mind and just turn
within and away. Such is an apparent solution, but it is a
false approach, not founded in Happiness but founded rather
in the search for It and an abstract notion of disease and
cure.
In our dependent association with the body-mind and its
present or potential relations, we become involved with a
feeling notion that Happiness depends on this body-mind and
its present or potential relations. Therefore, if we are not
associated with the objects or relations or states that we
find pleasurable, we begin to feel dis-eased, un-Happy,
disoriented, and driven, and we begin to seek. Everything
that we acquire and with which we are able to associate
rather exhaustively begins to bore us a little bit at a
time, becomes less and less satisfactory, and we are driven
to depend on certain kinds of relations, others, objects,
and states for a sense of pleasure. But the more we indulge
them, the less pleasure is inherent in them. We go on to
find some other relation, some other object, some other
state, some other possibility. Even God or mystical
experiences conventionally considered to be spiritual or
religious may become objects of our seeking for
Happiness.
The essence of all seeking is the pursuit of Happiness in
relationship. The search is based on the notion that without
relational circumstances we cannot be Happy. Even our
homeliest motivations toward pleasures in this world are
based on this notion. Unfortunately, most people are
surrounded only by homely realizations, and there is no
ultimate Happiness in them. Some people are motivated on
that basis to find something Great, but they are still
seekers.
Seeking, you see, is founded on the fundamental lie that
Happiness depends on relatedness, not just the relatedness
of the body-mind to others and objects and states, but even
our relatedness to the body-mind itself, which is simply an
object of our awareness that we are driven to hold on to and
identify with. Our sense of identifying with the body-mind,
therefore, is just another form of our seeking, our urge
based on the lie that without relations, however we
individually might define our necessary relations, we cannot
be Happy. Without the body-mind, we cannot be Happy. Without
wife or husband, we cannot be Happy. Without sex, we cannot
be Happy. Without food, without entertainments, without
travel, without beautiful environments, without beautiful
clothing, without this and this and this and this, we cannot
be Happy. All our motivations toward relations are based on
precisely the same lie: that Happiness depends on
relationship.
It is also a lie that to separate from relations brings
about Happiness. Happiness is not in relations, but it is
also not in separation from relations. We are in fact in a
circumstance of relationship. Happiness is That in Which we
already sit. It is already Inherent in the
Existence-Position, the Being-Position. It is already Where
we are, What we are, or That in Which we inhere. But we are
busy identifying with various things, seeking certain
things, creating or seeking experiences, objects, and
relations of all kinds. And our seeking puts us under
stress, because when we become dependent on relations,
objects, and experiences, we discover that ultimate
Happiness does not come from them.
Yet we go on, looking for others and discovering a little
bit more, getting a little bit more of the Lesson of life.
Then we become motivated in the opposite direction. We start
thinking that if we could stop desiring, get away from
relationships, get rid of the body-mind, then we could be
Happy. As I have indicated, however, Happiness is neither in
relations nor in separation from relations. Happiness is
Inherent. Wisdom, therefore, is to Locate the Inherent
Happiness of existence.
And that is all that there is to it. It is not anything
more complicated than that. I can describe it with infinite
complication, based on all kinds of observations of
phenomenal existence and the processes that become
inevitable when we become spiritually Awake, but
fundamentally it is just this one Principle: Happiness is
Inherent in the Existence-Position.
The pursuit of relations only moves us away from that
Position to be dependent on what is not Happiness. Getting a
little bit dismayed or apparently dis-eased by that
activity, we tend to take up the opposite orientation, which
is to separate ourselves from all of this that seems to be
causing our disease in order to get Happy ultimately.
Neither of these approaches is based on Wisdom. We do not
find Happiness by achieving any relational state, by
locating any object, any other, any experiential condition,
any alternative reality that is to be found in this world or
any other world, high or low. Object-relatedness does not
cause Happiness. In fact, object-relatedness is a way of
moving out from the Existence-Position and of forgetting the
Inherent Happiness.
Thus, in our fitful association with others, objects,
relations, experiences, we become less and less aware of our
fundamental Happiness, the Self-Radiant Bliss of existence.
And becoming thus dis-eased, analyzing our problem, and
diagnosing it, we tend to do the opposite, which is to
separate ourselves from relations. We start blaming the
world or blaming the body-mind, blaming others, blaming
birth. And then we try to get rid of all that sort of stuff,
as if when we finally and exhaustively cut everything away,
we will suddenly find out that we are Happy. “Not this, not
this, not this-finally get rid of everything, and there is
nothing but Happiness left over.”
The traditional practice of “not this, not this, not
this” is not just an analytical exercise. It is supposed to
be a fierce exercise of life in which you ascetically get
rid of everything, not just think yourself away from
everything. There is a difference between the “talking
school” and real practice of the philosophy behind the
talking school. In any case, even if that technique were to
be taken up fiercely, as it is by some ascetics, it would
not be the Way of Truth. It is not about Happiness.
Happiness is Inherent. Happiness is Immediate. Happiness is
most Obvious.
God, the Self, Transcendental Existence, is simply the
case, presently the case, always. The Spiritual Way is about
Locating That. To Locate It, you must become a little bit
dismayed perhaps, discover that all you efforts either to
associate with or to dissociate from phenomena are not
making you Happy, are not fruitful in any ultimate sense.
Then you become capable, perhaps, of hearing me or
considering this Argument, which is just my continuous
conversation with you to enable you to observe the mechanics
of the life of un-Happiness.
The life of un-Happiness is lived out by driven people
motivated toward objects and relations. It is also lived out
by people who are driven to dissociate from others and
objects. Neither the way of the libertine or the ordinary
desirer nor the way of the ascetic or the inward-moving
being is the Way of Truth. The Way of Truth is based on
understanding the fruitlessness of both these conventional
devices and therefore of transcending the whole life of
cure, the whole problem-solving effort founded on the
presumed disease that I humorously have named the Dreaded
Gom-Boo.
Having seen, felt, experienced, and discovered that all
your efforts of seeking are fruitless and characterized by
un-Happiness, then you can perhaps hear my Argument, and,
having heard my Argument to the point that you are not
fitfully seeking any longer either to go toward objects or
to move away from them, then you may also become capable of
seeing, or receiving the Baptism of the Living Reality, so
that you can Locate, through that Baptism, the Inherent
Happiness or Bliss of existence, the Bliss of the
Existence-Position that is prior to all your seeking, prior
to your Narcissistic or egoic life. Having heard and seen
me, then you can practice the Life of that Wisdom, which is
fundamentally to continuously Locate That Which Is
Inherently Blissful, That Which Is Existence Inherently,
That Which Is in the Self-Position ultimately.
The culture of our practice is not founded on the
principles of ordinary seeking. The Way that I Teach is not
simply a better way to live, so that you can have a more
healthy life, a better sex life, a better social life. Such
is not the point of any of our disciplines, nor is ascetical
dissociation from phenomenal existence. People tend to take
up the disciplines after reading a little bit and getting
the idea that spiritual life is a kind of ideal way of life
that is desirable or philosophically justifiable. Such
people lack understanding and are therefore also devoid of
Blessing, because they lack the capacity to enjoy the
Baptism of Transcendental Happiness. They are possessed of
an ideal of spiritual life rather than the impulse toward
Realization based on understanding. They assume all kinds of
disciplines, struggle with themselves, and try to improve
their lot by adapting to these disciplines.
Such struggling with an ideal is a falsification of the
Way that I Teach. It is not the Way that I consider with
you. Self-improvement is not the significance of the
disciplines to which you are called or which you should be
moved to practice. Our Way is not based on an idealism given
to you by authority, imposed upon you because it is so
rational or sounds so good or is obligatory for any reason
you might imagine, so that having read or thought about it a
little bit, then you should impose it on yourself and start
struggling with disciplines in order to improve your
lot-that is not the Way that I Teach.
To practice the Way that I Teach you first must hear. And
to hear, or understand, you must have been moved to
listen-but truly moved! You must have struggled with the
usual principles, either to desire or to stop desiring, to
the point that you see the struggle is fruitless or you find
out that you are not being satisfied at all but you are just
bewildered. You know in at least some vague sense that
ordinary or even extraordinary pursuits are not doing it for
you and are not going to do it. Then you become sensitive to
at least the possibility of hearing the Wisdom of Truth. You
might then come into association with the Teaching, with the
Adept, with the community of practitioners, and enjoy the
opportunity to consider the Argument to the point of
understanding and of truly, fully, whole bodily receiving
the Transmitted Blessing and taking up the practice in
Truth.
The practice of our disciplines is supposed to be based
on hearing and seeing, or self-understanding and Awakening
to fundamental or Inherent Happiness. The disciplines
express that understanding and that Happiness. They are
natural disciplines. They are naturally what you would do as
a general rule if you understood yourself and were already
Happy. They are not things that you would do otherwise,
unless you were motivated by some idealistic conception of
life and were seeking still to improve your lot. The
difference is very critical and fundamental. It must
therefore be grasped by people from the very beginning so
that we will not be constantly creating or enlarging a
community of people conventionally pursuing Happiness
because they feel a certain sense of disease or are
motivated to live an idealistic way of life.
This Way is not based on the motive toward idealism or a
motive to leave the world, nor is it based on
self-destructive or self-glamorizing motives. It is based on
self-understanding. And people are only capable of
self-understanding when they have a certain sense of the
futility of the usual, and even of the extraordinary,
possibilities of seeking.
If, through self-understanding and Baptism, or Awakening
to the Inherent Happiness, you are established in the
Existence-Position, then you naturally begin to become
purified of your compulsive association or seeking relative
to relations, objects, and states of experience and
knowledge. You are released of fundamental stress if this
understanding and this Awakening to Happiness are true of
you, and they must be the case for you even as a beginner in
this Way. That Happiness Itself, founded in
self-understanding, is such that the motive to pursue
Happiness relaxes.
To seek Happiness, to pursue It, is to bring yourself
under stress. To be established in It already is to be
established in equanimity or freedom. This does not mean
that you will dissociate from phenomenal relations. It
simply means that you will associate with your possible
relations as an expression of prior Happiness, and your
relations and your experiences will not diminish that
Happiness, will not separate you from It, will not bind you.
Established in this understanding and this Happiness, you
will practice the Way of magnifying Happiness based on
understanding.
That in simple terms is what I am talking about. It is
the Way I consider with you. And it naturally shows the
signs over time of spiritual maturity and the capacity to
practice the ultimate Yoga of this Way. It will naturally
show the signs of ultimate Realization, Sahaj Samadhi,
recognition, Transfiguration, Transformation, and ultimately
the Outshining of phenomenal or conditional existence, or
subject-object confinement.
This is the Principle of the Way then, as I communicated
it from the very beginning in The Knee of Listening , and in
my first talk in Los Angeles. The movement toward this Way
in general depends on getting the Lesson of life, or
discovering that your search in relationship both to find
objects and relations and experiences and to dissociate from
them is futile. No matter how you turn it around, no matter
how you manipulate it, no matter how you manufacture it, no
matter what form it takes, your seeking is constantly
producing the sense of dis-ease or un-Happiness.
Having discovered in some basic sense the futility of
your ordinary or extraordinary living, you become capable of
listening to me and then hearing. The capacity really to
listen to the point of understanding depends on this
discovery. You cannot just be some bright-eyed character who
wants to take up this Way to find the ultimate Object, or
God, or have pleasurable mystical experiences.
This Way is based upon the discovery of the futility of
seeking. Having made that discovery, then you will be able
to connect with the thread of my Argument to the point of
understanding. Such “hearing” is the first stage of the Way
that I Teach, the consideration of the Argument to the point
of understanding the mechanics of your seeking life and the
motivations both toward and away from phenomenal
possibilities, high or low in the scheme of things. When
listening has become fruitful to the point of hearing or
real understanding, then the individual enjoys the capacity
to receive the Awakening Blessing of the Adept, the Blessing
of Happiness, which is not just some energy coming from
without. It has some such experiential aspects, but It
Awakens the Bliss Inherent in the Existence-Position, the
Self-Position.
SECTION II
MASTER DA: The Way that I Teach is not a matter of
seeking Happiness or God-Realization. It is the Way of
magnifying That which is Realized through understanding and
the Power of Blessing. That magnification purifies the
conditions of manifest existence. It restores equanimity to
the body-mind. It releases energy and attention from bondage
to the body-mind in all its possible relations, objects, and
states. It therefore Transforms our being altogether. It
makes us into renunciates in the true sense, beings
established in Happiness, committed to Happiness and not to
the mechanics of un-Happiness.
The Way Transforms all our relationships, therefore.
Instead of living dependent on relations with others and
objects and states of all kinds, we live in free
relationship, already Happy, magnifying that Happiness in
the context of the body-mind and all its functions and
relations. It is true, therefore, that life will improve,
relationships should improve, become more free, become
expressions of Happiness and not of conventional bondage,
and the sphere of our experiencing will likewise tend to
expand. Our meditational life will develop a kind of
subtlety or reach into subtler aspects of our possibility.
But none of these improvements are the purpose of the Way.
The fundamental import of all these changes is that our
energy and attention are being released from functional
bondage to the body-mind and its various relations, objects,
and states, and we become more and more capable of entering
into the fullest Communion with Happiness, or That Which Is,
Inherent in the Existence-Position.
That Virtue is most fully expressed in the stage of
spiritual maturity, at which point individuals can take up
the second stage of the Perfect Practice, the practice I
described in the essay I wrote for you entitled “The
Ultimate Location,” the practice of level 6 in The
Advaitayana Buddhist Order. That practice is not different
in any ultimate sense from the practices that precede it,
but it simply epitomizes them and expresses spiritual
maturity as we understand spiritual maturity in our Way. Its
fulfillment, then, is the virtuous Realization of Happiness
without qualification and with all its Siddhis, in the
seventh stage of life or Sahaj Samadhi, the inherent
capacity to recognize phenomenal existence, the
demonstration of Transfigured Being, the Transformation of
psycho-physical existence, and ultimately the Outshining of
conditional existence, without the slightest trace of
motivation to dissociate or withdraw from or to contract in
the midst of phenomenal or conditional existence.
The Way is altogether the magnification of Inherent
Happiness. But to live the Way requires, first of all, some
kind of despair or frustration, some discovery of the
futility of seeking both to embrace and to avoid phenomenal
existence, and then the hearing of this Argument to the
point of real self-understanding or understanding of the
mechanical efforts of egoity. On that basis, then, the
Life-Baptism, the Transcendental Baptism, may be received in
the Existence-Position. It will magnify and re-Awaken the
Inherent Happiness that is the Context of our existence.
Then all the practices are simply the magnification of That
in the context of functional and relational life. When It is
ultimately magnified, then the seventh stage of life begins.
In the meantime, that Happiness appears as a gradual process
of maturing or the release of energy and attention for the
ultimate Yoga of spiritual Realization.
All this being so, then you can see something more,
perhaps, about my constant criticisms of you and the kind of
play I engage with you in various extraordinary and ordinary
ways, all of which are an effort on my part to help you to
observe and understand the mechanics of your seeking and
your ordinary bondage. You should also be able to see that
the spiritual process as we engage it is a renunciate Way,
and that it transforms everything in your relational and
functional life. Thus, you notice that I criticize you all
the time for the kinds of relationships you are creating,
the social life you live, the intimate life, the sexual
life, the games of life, the seeking life of desire, the
impulse toward fulfillment, and you can understand why I
criticize the arrangements you make and the emotions
associated with the events of life, such as separations and
death.
You must understand the mechanics of your egoity, how
your relational life is tending to be created on the basis
of dissociation from Happiness and therefore how you become
dependent on the relationships and states of the body-mind,
objects, experiential possibilities, and states of
knowledge. You must understand that you become dependent on
them, that you pursue them, that you become driven to them,
and that you are never Happy except in certain moments of
fulfillment, when you may get a glimpse of Happiness because
the usually contracted mechanism relaxes in million-dollar
moments of fulfillment.
When you are a little younger, a little more naive, those
moments come a little more easily, as they do to a child
with some little offering. But as you get older and practice
the driven life more and more, the moments of fulfillment
become fewer and farther between. You experience less and
less, through all the means you have developed in your life,
that actually Realizes a full state of Happiness.
You are all driven in sexual terms, for instance. When
you were first sexually active, a little masturbation, a few
photographs, or seeing a little bit of nudity was a supreme
delight. It totally transformed your state of existence in
that moment. But as you get older and practice sex more and
more, fewer and fewer incidents of sexual activity produce
anything even remotely like that Happiness or Bliss. What do
you do? You become promiscuous, or you manipulate yourself
to make the sexual experience more and more profound. Yet
sex becomes less and less profound, because your involvement
with sexuality is in fact a process of stepping out of the
Well of Happiness and thereby becoming dependent upon
objects and relations to stimulate the sense of
Happiness.
Sexual activity should not become taboo. But if we are to
continue to be involved in sex, we must first understand
ourselves and become established in this Well of Happiness,
and then practice sexuality, as everything else, on that
basis, as a magnification of that Happiness. The only right
sexual activity, then, is sexual communion as I describe it.
Sexual communion is not dependent association with another
or with sexual stimulation. It is complete immersion in the
Force of Transcendental Existence, the Blissful Domain, the
Happiness Inherent in Existence. Any other sexual practice
is simply egoic sexuality, ordinary functional stimulation,
ordinary seeking for release or self-pleasure. And until you
understand me completely, and have received or Awakened to
this Blissful Transmission, and are capable of really
practicing life as a Yoga in every circumstance and in every
function, then none of your ordinary occasions of
relatedness or experience will be a circumstance of
Happiness, except perhaps partially and in some moments here
and there.
The only reason relational life grants us at least
moments or degrees of such Happiness is that in certain
exotic moments of involvement the self-knot is released-but
just for a moment. The Happiness that comes into play in
that moment does not come from without. It is the Happiness
that is Inherent in ourselves, also in the other, also in
the total world. It is the Happiness that is Inherent. It is
not outside. It is not other.
Not knowing this, however, you involve yourself
functionally with others on the basis of dis-ease, a
presumed un-Happiness, and you try to become Happy with all
this sexing. You cannot do it. Less and less do you find any
Happiness in sex, and you find only the sorrow, the
attachment, the possible threats, the betrayals, the
jealousies, the boredom, the need for extreme activities to
feel even the slightest bit amused. Life becomes more and
more boring and desperate-and you also get older and older
and more corrupt.
The sexual communion I consider with you is nothing like
the ordinary round. The sexual communion I consider with you
is not ordinary egoic sexuality. It is a Yogic process
wherein we magnify the Bliss of the Existence-Position, the
Inherent Condition. Until you Realize That Condition,
therefore, there really is not much point in carrying on
sexually. You would be better off to stand in the
brahmacharya position and not be sexually active for a
time.
You all became sexually active when you were younger, and
you married or did whatever you did, and now you are
considering the development of a spiritual Way of life. At
the same time you want to carry on the usual occupations.
You want to continue the search in the midst of this culture
of understanding, while you hope for practice. Until you can
practice the Yoga, which means until you can practice the
Way altogether, as a true renunciate, you would be better
off just to drop sex, just to forget about it
completely.
Since I cannot require you to do that, I have suggested
ways of economizing sexuality while you study it and while
you deal with one another. The problem or non-yoga is not in
sex itself but in the emotional disposition of those who
practice it. What you really need is spiritual conversion
and not some highly developed technique that will make you
more successful sexually. Really, I would recommend to
people that when they become students in The Laughing Man
Institute they stop having sex until they learn about sexual
communion, after they have passed through the fullest
realization of hearing, seeing, and practice of this Way and
are really involved with spiritual life.
Of course, I cannot insist on a period of celibacy. It is
not even necessarily so that it would be absolutely best not
to have sex, because for most people to stop sex is a way of
dissociating. The principle of dissociation would tend
perhaps to cause more problems than the discipline of
celibacy is worth. But if you were really free and would not
become aberrated by being celibate for a time, you can see
that it at least makes a great deal of sense to just drop
sex until you can practice the Yoga of sexual communion.
From a spiritual point of view there is no right sex except
sexual communion. All other forms of sex are continuations
of basically aberrated, egoic interests. You would be better
off just to relax it for a time or at least economize it,
and the economization of sex is the least that I expect from
people practicing in The Free Communion Church.
I say all this a little bit “tongue in forehead,” but I
am trying to get you to become involved with this
consideration and this practice, and to leave yourself
alone, as well as leave me and everybody else alone, with
your sex problems and all the extensions of your sex
problems. This sexual matter is so profound that it invades
every aspect of your life. You are meditating on it every
minute to the degree you are un-Happy. Sexuality really
represents to people in general their most basic capacity to
attain a little sense of release.
This is why people are so fitfully and obsessively
involved in at least thinking about sex. In fact, however,
those who are thinking about it all the time tend to spend
very little time doing it. Even if they have sex every day,
they have sex for only about three or four minutes every
day. Sex has no great weight, no great force or
significance, except to release tension and create temporary
relief from stress. Such sexuality is an over-the-counter
medicine of some sort-or under-the-counter medicine,
perhaps, depending on exactly what you do! (Laughter.)
By trying to be reasonably sexual while you are a
beginner in this Way, you are just trying to make an
accommodation to ordinary living. Yet there is something
profound with which you should become involved instead,
something of which most of you have just a little glimpse
even at this moment. The Inherent Happiness or Bliss of
existence, the Transcendental Sufficiency of Existence,
impresses you only slightly even at this stage of your
practice. You still are driven to associate with, to relate
to, and to depend upon others and to constantly
remanufacture experiential states, and all your dependencies
are inherently sorrowful.
Everything you depend upon is going to change or pass
away. Everything you now own or cling to could be taken away
from you in a moment, and knowing this, even before it
happens, makes you sorrowful, driven, and angry. What
purpose is it serving, then, other than to disturb you and
to disturb others? The whole connection of dependency is a
disturbance! The only right relations between beings are
free relations based on Spiritual Happiness, in which people
magnify the sufficient Radiance and Happiness of Inherent
Being to one another. All the rest is garbage, just a
torment, just the usual stuff, just the daily news. To try
to accommodate the usual life a little bit while you are
still an amateur at spiritual life is just a way of
accommodating the dis-ease although, perhaps reasonably as a
beginner, you should accommodate it a little bit, because to
try to divorce yourself from it might make you more uptight,
so that you have even less attention for the spiritual
process.
In general, I think I can therefore reasonably recommend
that you at least economize your sexual life and your life
in general, and simplify it, while you spend your time, your
attention, your life, your energy in most profoundly
considering this Argument and this Teaching and in throwing
yourself into the Well of this Blessing hour after hour, day
after day, until you break the spell of your bondage and
become a sane human being.
A sane human being, spiritually Awake, can be sexually
active, just as you now can have lunch and do all the
functional things that are native to this body-mind. But as
a sane human being you will not be dependent for Happiness
on the body-mind or its relations. You will exist in free
relationship. You will transcend your relations even though
you persist in them.
This Way is a renunciate Way but not an ascetical Way.
Relations are not taboo, but the Narcissistic version of
relations is obviously something to be transcended. Most of
what you call “relationship” or “life” or “you” is simply
aberration. It is the Dreaded Gom-Boo, an imaginary disease,
but one you experience and presume.
I know you people, having known you for so long and known
all kinds of people like you and people other than you, and
I know that you really cannot play fast and loose with your
aberrated life and expect ever to develop this practice. You
cannot casually indulge this practice. You cannot cut just a
couple of corners and otherwise remain your ordinary self,
consoling yourself with a little bit of this Teaching and
supporting yourself with our community, and expect that you
will enter into the advanced stages of this practice. It has
never happened before. It is proven by our own history that
it does not happen. To casually indulge in this Way does not
result in spiritual maturity or the real capacity for this
Way at all. Those who are beginning this Way, having first
gone through the student life of The Laughing Man Institute
and come to the point of understanding themselves and the
mechanics of their living, would do well to practice
self-economy very profoundly, very really, very practically,
and not indulge in any casual sense the tendencies or the
ordinary demands of living.
For years I have watched people try to practice while
they remained attached to aberrated habits of living, and it
does not work. The only ones who have ever broken through
and gone at least a little beyond the usual life are those
who stopped playing fast and loose with themselves and
became serious and accepted the discipline of self-economy
for a significant period of time. The length of such a
period of discipline depends on your own seriousness, but
you must be serious to practice this Way of life. You cannot
do it otherwise. There is no un-serious spiritual life.
Celibacy is not an ideal in our community, but it is a
reasonable temporary practice, as is sexual economy. Such
practices may be particularly useful for beginners, not only
sexual economy or celibacy but all kinds of other
simplifications-the minimization of dependent relations, the
minimization of involvement with relations, experiences, and
circumstances wherein you usually feel most dependent, most
bound, most disturbed, wherein your dreams tend to become
most animated.
These are precisely what you must discipline. If you
fail, you will not develop the practice. It just will not
happen. You can fool yourself and perhaps be a beginning
practitioner for years, but you will not really be
practicing, because you have not yet even gotten the Lesson
of life. You are just fooling yourself and fooling around
with yourself, even pretending that you could perhaps do
without spiritual life. You think that now that you have
cleaned yourself up a little bit, maybe you should just go
out there and do it as you were doing before, only now a
little more intelligent about it, a little more crafty.
At any rate, you think you can be an ordinary Joe or Jane
and superimpose the ideal of spiritual life on yourself,
that you can use the community to support you and apply a
minimal external discipline to yourself, and that all of
that will somehow become the Siddhi of Divine Enlightenment.
That is bullshit! Absolute and total bullshit! You might as
well go out and write books, like the other bullshitters who
only read about the Spiritual Way and deny Wisdom to the
people with all their talk.
The un-Enlightened character is the dependent character.
The Enlightened character is the totally free personality,
even though existing in the plane of relations. The really
practicing character is just like the Enlightened character,
somewhat less mature but established in the Principle that
is free of relational bondage and the self-contraction,
working in the domain of relational bondage and
self-contraction, not with a strategy of dissociation or
indulgence, but with the principles inherent in Happiness,
developed constantly in every moment through the real
practice of Remembrance, conductivity, real meditation, the
“conscious process” in its various forms, using the
intelligence of self-observation and real self-understanding
to become liberated, to unbind energy and attention from the
lock, the knot, the mechanics, of ego-bondage. Either you
are moved to do this or you are not. Either you have gotten
the sufficient Lesson to hear me and see me and practice or
you have not. There really are no two ways about it.
Everybody has character limits and habits and tendencies.
It is not that you must be a person without such limitations
to practice a spiritual Way of life. What must occur,
however, is that you understand something about the futility
of your limited life, that you can participate in a process
of self-understanding in the moments of ordinary existence,
and that you have become established in the inherent
Principle of Divine Existence or Inherent Happiness, so that
you can override and transform or release this bondage
through real practice.
Neurotics practice spiritual life, you see, not
non-neurotics. Neurotics are the only ones who can practice
spiritual life! Except for the neurotics practicing
spiritual life, there exist only the Sublime Beings who have
fulfilled spiritual life. The practitioners of spiritual
life are not non-neurotics, but they are neurotics who have
seen the futility of their devices, who can understand
themselves, who can override their tendencies, not through
mere self-effort, but through immersing themselves
constantly in the Spiritual Divine, the Transcendental
Self-Principle.
You have been given all the means that could possibly be
given to you for that process. If you will not use them, I
can do nothing more for you. You must use these means, and
you must be disposed to use them. The disposition to use
them comes from observing the insult of life. If you are
just a naive, bright-eyed character who thinks life will
somehow mechanically fulfill itself in heaven after death or
with Happiness while alive, you are just a fool, a child, an
adolescent, Narcissus full-blown, fully expressed with all
his dainty clothing and foppish attitudes.
What we ultimately must discover is not ourselves, not
the ego, not merely our inwardness. We must discover That
Which transcends our mere inwardness and our separateness.
Yet That is in our Place, in the Existence Place, not in the
other place. Realize this Truth and you will Outshine the
world. Of course, then you do not need any relations! And
you are also not other than your Self. This is what there is
to Realize, the Self-Sufficiency of mere Being. The Divine
Being does not require worlds or others or a body or a mind
or difference. It is an incomprehensible Domain of Infinite
Bliss, but It is right where you Are, right in the Existence
Place. Right There.
You are habitually bound up with all kinds of motions.
That is why you feel uncomfortable. You must stimulate
yourself with something, someone, somewhere, some state or
other yet to be achieved. You are always motivated this way.
In other words, you live under stress! You are a stressful
being. The one you call “I” is stress itself. It is
straining on itself, on its own knot, and so it looks to
relations or it turns from relations onto itself, always
trying to discover this Sufficiency, never discovering It,
just involved in an adventure, sometimes amusing, sometimes
not.
That which you must discover is in the Existence Place,
but it is not merely inside the self and it is not outside
the manifest self. It is Locatable directly. If you have
sufficient free energy and attention left over from all your
bondage in this moment, you can find this Current in the
heart. It is Radiant. It is Blissful. It is Happy. It
requires nothing. It is merely Being. It transcends self,
transcends other, transcends the world. It is Consciousness
without the slightest qualification, infinitely Radiant.
You are just this bubble of Happiness Itself. That is
what there is to discover, and the Sufficiency of It is what
there is to be Realized. In the midst of Realizing It, you
do not separate from relations, being apparently established
in the relational state, but Happiness overrides the field
of relations. Happiness Radiates in the field of relations,
embraces it, encloses it, surrounds it, transcends it. Thus,
all the relations of the functional being are Outshined by
this Sufficiency.
This is why some rare beings throughout human history
stopped doing everything. They did not do anything. They
just stayed in Place. There is a difference, however,
between lying in the Well of Infinitely Blissful Being and
just hanging out in yourself and separating from everybody
else. You must Locate this Great Condition that is Given to
you, on the basis of your understanding, by Blessed
Transmission. And once you Locate It, you should increase
your devotion to It. If you increase your devotion to It
absolutely, then Its Sufficiency Outshines the world, the
body-mind, and all relations. Even in the meantime you cease
to be a dependent character. You become a character capable
of relations, humorously and freely.
This sounds like a good idea to me! Discover the
Sufficiency of Being. Then how much are you going to do? How
much is there to do? If Being is Sufficient, what is there
to do? Even though you are established in that Being, the
body-mind is a characteristic of your apparent state. You
may feed it-you must do a few things to feed it-and wash it,
and so forth, but this Realized Disposition would certainly
minimize your action and ultimately release the motive of
action completely.
In the event that all these active functions are
Outshined, then even while they exist, how much is there to
do in such a Condition? What is there to do? A few basic
things. You people are doing a lot of stuff, a lot of stuff,
a whole lot of stuff. You are very complicated people. What
kind of simplicity do you represent? All these strange, hot
relationships with one another, all your working
motivations, your life-stresses, your pursuit of knowledge,
all kinds of changes of state and experiences-you need not
do any of that.
People who have Located this Great Well can create a
different kind of life with one another, you see, a life I
call spiritual community. It is not a commune of busy
people, except that perhaps among beginners it may look
rather busy. But the community of such Sublimed beings is a
simple renunciate community. Just a few basic things. That
is it. What is there to talk about then? How Great the Great
One is. That is it!
The Dreaded Gom-Boo – Table of Contents