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Entities Come Out of
God, Egos Come Out of Man
from a talk by Da Free John (Adi Da
Samraj) – December 27, 1982
January 1983, Vol 1, No.
10
The following discussion
elucidates the distinction between egoity, or the mechanism
of self-contraction, and the mere fact of bodily
individuation. In these few remarks, Master Da corrects an
error upon which entire traditions of religion and
spirituality have been founded and one which any
practitioner, upon reflection, can probably find at the
unconscious root of many an apparent problem in life and
practice. It is the tendency to presume that bodily
existence itself is the root of our un-Happiness, rather
than the egoic self-contraction that we “superimpose” upon
or add to mere bodily and conscious existence. As a member
of the esoteric order recently observed, through reading
these remarks by Master Da, we may realize once again that
“it’s okay to be a body!”
“Enlightenment…is
perfectly compatible with manifest
personality.”
DEVOTEE: Master, it seems
that there is a very important distinction to be made in
your Teaching between individuation and egoity. So much of
what passes for esotericism in the world today seems really
to be interpreted, if not actually taught, as a
confrontation with individuation.
MASTER DA: Yes, this is why I
emphasize the point that the ego is not the entity, not the
individual, but an activity. It is an activity in the
body-mind, an activity in and as the manifest personality.
It is the activity that the spiritual process overcomes or
dissolves, and not the entity, or the manifest personality.
The manifest personality would be ultimately Outshined if
the spiritual process were carried on infinitely. But the
work of the spiritual process is not an activity against the
entity.
The trouble with many spiritual and
religious traditions is that they identify the ego with the
entity rather than with the activity that is built upon the
entity. The entity is simply a modification of the Divine,
and there is no inherent bondage in that. But the entity as
ego is not merely a modification of the Divine. It is a
contraction from the Divine that occurs within and is built
upon the modification that is the entity. That contraction
is egoity, not individuality. The ego as action, rather than
as entity, is what we must understand and transcend. Our Way
has special characteristics that are not identified with
asceticism, because the motives of asceticism are built upon
and are intending, ultimately, to destroy, or else to
perfect, the ego as manifest personality. Therefore, we must
differentiate the ego, which is an activity, from the
entity, which is a modification of God. The Realization that
you are a modification of and eternally One with God is
freedom. That is Enlightenment, and It is perfectly
compatible with manifest personality.
DEVOTEE: Master, doesn’t the
ego automatically associate with the living entity at
birth?
MASTER DA: Yes, it is an
automaticity that the entity builds up from the moment of
birth, for however many births have already taken place with
any entity for countless ages.
Thus, we are not merely living as
entities within the Divine cosmos, but as egos. Entities
come out of God. Egos come out of man or out of entities.
Egoity is the deluded activity of manifest entities, and
manifest entities spring spontaneously and unaccountably
from the Divine. They are not caused or created by the
Divine, we cannot really describe the Divine properly by
assigning causation to It, but they are the Divine. Entities
occur spontaneously as modifications of the Divine. This is
true of the entire cosmos-it is unnecessary, but one with
God. The response to conditional existence, however, is such
that we develop a pattern of reactivity that reinforces the
sense of individuated selfhood in the form of separated
selfhood. Thus, we begin an adventure that pursues the
release and perfection of that separated selfhood, and that
is suffering. It is just the fact that we have become egos
in the cosmos, rather than God-born entities, that makes the
universe appear to us to be maya or an intolerable illusion.
We are each involved in our own software adventure, you see,
and we seem to be outside the cycle of the Divine in
manifestation.
Thus, the first thing we must do is
to overcome this feeling of alienation from God. Once we are
thus restored to intimacy with God, the Divine spontaneously
generates in us the Siddhi of Divine Life. Ultimately, that
Siddhi Outshines our manifest condition and we are
Translated into the Divine Domain, which is not figurable
within our conditional state of manifest being. It cannot be
prefigured, prepictured, or predescribed.
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