Advaitayana Buddhism Da Free John (Adi Da Samraj) 1982
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From the Introduction by Georg
Feuerstein
3.
The Seven Stages of Life
The main conceptual tool by which
Master Da Free John appraises, and allows others to
similarly understand, the spiritual status of the many
idiosyncratic expressions of human life and thought is the
schema of the seven stages of life. The seven-stage model,
which is among Master Da’s original contributions to the
theory and practice of spiritual life, is a map of man’s
total potential for psycho-spiritual development. As Master
Da explains:
In the traditions of spiritual
culture, the development of a human being has commonly been
described in terms of seven stages, each spanning a period
of seven years. There is a rational basis in Awakened Wisdom
for this scheme. That basis is the very structure of the
total bodily being (or body-mind) of every human individual.
We are a composite made of elements and of functional
relations, a coherent life-form expressed via the nervous
system and brain, and levels of mind that may consciously
reflect not only the gross or “material” realm but the
realms of Life-Energy and all the cosmic realms or media of
light. At the root of this system is the heart, the primal
organ not only of life but of consciousness in man. It is
here that the presumption and conception of egoic
independence, or the separate “I,” arises in every moment.
It is on the basis of this presumption that the human
individual is predetermined to a reactive life of fear,
vulnerability, flight from mortality, and a universal
constitutional state of contraction, That contraction
encloses consciousness in the limits of skin and thought,
and it separates the whole bodily being of Man from the
Divine Radiance and Perfect Consciousness that is
otherwise native to it and eternally available to it in
every part…
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