A talk by Avatar Adi Da Samraj’s during his visit to New Zealand – 30 March to 7 April 1988.
hat’s what it’s about, sadhana. It doesn’t, this obstruction, this contraction and all of its forms doesn’t disappear because you believe something of it. Doesn’t disappear magically. It’s a matter of sadhana. You must observe and understand yourself. And then you have to use that understanding, intentionally in every context of existence to outgrow these limitations.
You have to put yourself back to school. You have to start growing again, you see. Human beings generally stop growing at some point, basically, they stopped growing. They stopped growing in various parts of themselves at various times in life. And by the time you got to be what is called an adult, you’ve stopped growing basically altogether.
Find this out about yourself and be willing to grow again and you have to go back to school. Then it becomes not a matter then of simply, uh, going on as things as they are and as people conventionally do them. You must make a unique choice to school yourself, to transcend yourself to endure the ordeal of the spiritual process, ultimately you have to be willing to enter into that school, that process then, or there won’t be any great change in this….what we might call a problem you’re suggesting (the failure to love). Everyone has their moments when they feel relatively open and happy and so forth, you see. But apart from those moments, you can’t expect any more than that without sadhana.
If you expect anything more of existence? Basically, you’ve all stopped growing as human beings tend to do, and you’ve reached a certain limit of possible experience and are basically repeating that over and over again now. And you’ve divorced yourself from the totality of your possibility and of your ultimate condition.
So unless you just want to repeat this, whatever this is, whatever your up to at the moment, you have to start to grow again and you have to go beyond this first three stages of life that humanity in general stuck in.
I was saying to some others here, the other evening, basically what human beings are suffering is the limitation of their own experience. You ask questions and think, and so on, whatever you might presume on the basis of all that asking and thinking and so forth, your experience is the limitation on want you to can presume. So you must have a greater experience. That means you have to grow. An infant, has to grow, to have the greater experience of a teenager, you see, or an adult. If you want great realization, great freedom and so on, you’ve got to start to grow again. And that requires a great ordeal. It requires a lot more experience than you’ve had so far.
I said to some others just shortly before I left Hermitage, a week or so ago that the Westerners don’t know a damn thing about spiritual life. Nothing! basically, you don’t have such a experience. Your only experience basically is, is that what is limited to the conventional domain of ordinary life, the first three stages of life, that’s it. You say you have no greater experience than that. All the rest of it is basically just talk. Not only for Westerners for everyone. Basically, everyone is becoming a Westerner these days. Don’t you think? Everyone is becoming associated with this? What I call Omega mode of life, whether they live in the east or the west. And even though they may have known something about spiritual life in the past, or forgetting it, throwing it away with both hands in order to, to join in the stream of self-indulgence, self-possession, and self-fulfillment in the ordinary context of life.
What we are here to consider today as the great matter of God Realization, ultimate, absolute, and that whole process that leads toward it. And you are coming to me out of a framework of life, thought of experience and so forth that is far removed from that possibility. And there’s very little that you’ve enjoyed by way of experience or even information that has anything directly to do with the Great Process.
So, in order to link up with it, to grow in that sense, you have to go back to school, you have to be, you have to fit your life back into the stream of growth, a greater experience, greater realization, and move beyond your adolescence. Whether there is anyone else is interested in doing that or not? If you are going to grow, you must do that.
Luckily here you find others who are interested. That gives you an advantage, you see. The sangha of the community, the gathering of practitioners is a great help in the spiritual process. So, if you can make community in this spiritual process, you have a greater advantage.
But there’s nothing that I’m going to be considering with you here today that does not require this ordeal. This schooling, this continuation of growth. So it’s not a matter of thinking philosophy and so on apart from that ideal. You can’t expect a significant changes in the limitations on love or anything else of great significance without going back to school without submitting to an ideal of growth.
So, this is the limitation on love you described and your interest in transcending it, that’s good. I mean, it certainly can be done, But you’re going to have to put your on the ass on the line and it’s not going to happen otherwise. You know my point of view about spiritual life, right?
continue listening….