The Basket of Tolerance
Introduction
Adi Da Samraj – October
1981
The significance of the Great
Tradition is not that every Spiritual way may ultimately be
seen to be the same, but that all ways taken together
represent a single process of human and Spiritual growth
through the seven
stages of life. In
the following essay – intended as an introduction to The
Basket Of Tolerance – Da Love-Ananda emphasizes that
traditional literatures are inherently bound to the point of
view of one or another stage of life. Even seventh stage
literatures do not necessarily account for the practice and
discipline that must precede the Realization of
Transcendental Consciousness. Therefore, the
“Grand
Argument” is an
essential means to recognize and outgrow the limitations
represented by each stage of life.
The Truth Transcends the
Body-Mind of Man
Humanity is shrouded and sometimes
instructed by the great mass of cultural mind. Each
individual is minimized and sometimes expanded by the
universal show of ideas. And among this crowd of conceptual
influences is the most profound core, which consists of all
the forms of religious and esoteric Spiritual
presumptions.
Particularly in the time in which we
now live, when the ideas of all the provinces of Earth are
now gathering together for the first time in human history,
and all the absolute dogmas find themselves casually
associated, to be judged like a crowd of silly Napoleons or
mad Christs in an asylum, the complex mind of Everyman is
remembering itself all at once. Therefore, we are obliged to
discover the Truth again by penetrating the bizarre
consciousness of all the races combined as one.
Those who are seriously involved in
the study and agonizing practice of religious and esoteric
Spiritual teachings are now confronted by a great mass of
doctrines, absolute creeds, sacred histories, secret
formulae, and perfect paths. What is the Truth? What stands
out in the wilderness of doctrine as singly as the “I” of
the body-mind?
My Work in the world is to
communicate the summary of religious and Spiritual Wisdom,
so that mankind may again be devoted to the Way of Life in
Truth, even now that all religious and Spiritual cultures
confront us collectively and at once (rather than, as
before, when each individual was usually confronted only by
the primary institutional or cultic influence in power in
his nation or province). The literature I have already
produced, and whatever may be produced in my name in the
future, serves to clarify the Truth and the Way of Life
based on a profound consideration and Realization in the
present, prior to all of the doctrines or persuasions of our
inherited mind.
The present book is an attempt to
allow the great traditions to summarize themselves through
their most potent literatures. I have chosen and collected a
relatively small number of texts-small enough in number to
be capable of being read and surely studied by a serious
individual over a finite number of months or years. Study of
these books, generally in the sequence in which they are
listed, will allow the serious and discriminating student to
grasp the fundamental content of religious and Spiritual
esotericism. In the process, he will transcend his own
provincialism and his attachment to conventional
persuasions, including all the downtown absolutes of popular
exoteric religion. What is more, he will discover that this
sequence of individual books flows, volume by volume, as an
argument between all the parts of the religious or Spiritual
mind, and as a progressive summary of the whole. And I have
surrounded and interspersed this argumentative summary with
critical essays and annotations, founded in my own lifetime
of actual practice and Realization of all the Ways that you
can read. Thus, any serious student of these matters should
be able to get his “education” in the “school” of these
books, and, as a result, he should at last be able to
discriminate the Way of Life from all these Ways of Man, and
the Divine Truth from all these moments of human
consideration.
The Truth that Man or every
individual human being must Realize is that his present and
actual Condition is Transcendental – that is, his very
Life-Energy and Consciousness (or very Being) presently and
eternally exist as a single Transcendental Condition, prior
to all the forms of psycho-physical experience, prior to
this or any other world, prior to the psychophysical
identity or mind or soul or “I” of his present self:
reference. Once the Real or Divine Condition is Realized,
there is native Ecstasy, or inherent transcendence of all
self-limits and all phenomena. Such is true Humor,
Liberation, Salvation, or Happiness. And that Realized
Enjoyment is fully established whether or not any or all
kinds of psycho-physical or subject object conditions arise
as experience.
The Way of the Realization of Truth
is complicated in any moment by the relative psycho-physical
maturity of the individual. The particular practice of the
Way that is both appropriate and attractive to the
individual during any one period of his life is determined
by his relative position in the pattern of the seven stages
of human development and his relative freedom (or degree of
transcendence) of the stages of life through which he has
already passed. Thus, the various traditional literatures,
and the various teachers who represent the traditional
cultural, religious, and Spiritual motives of mankind, are
each and all an expression of one or another degree of
intuition of the ultimate Truth from the point of view of
one or another relative stage of life, maturity, and
self-transcendence. The “problem” inherent in the
traditional and conventional literatures is that Truth (or
the Realization of Truth) tends to be associated with one or
another kind or degree of identification with aspects of the
functional psycho-physical anatomy of Man. The Ways
described in the various literatures were written by
individuals (or prepared through centuries of consideration
by a single cultural movement) that were founded in one or
another of the seven stages of life, and thus the various
and often conflicting religious and Spiritual traditions of
Man do not express the Truth or the Way of Life in fully
Transcendental terms, free of the limitations of the
body-mind of Man.
In this book, I have selected those
literatures that are most profound, most insightful, and
also most representative of the traditional approaches to
Truth. And I have placed these literatures in a sequence,
and with certain annotations, that reveal how the traditions
speak from various levels of relative maturity (or relative
positions in the seven stages of life that I will also
describe). This list of books is intended as a guide for
serious students and practitioners. And those who find their
own minds to be clarified and informed by this study, and
who would appreciate the opportunity to consider the Truth
and the Way of Life in direct terms, free of the limitations
created by fixed cultural association with the stages and
psycho-physical patterns of Man, should consult the various
other books published in my name.
Basket of Tolerance – Beezone Introduction
First Word – Dark Time
https://beezone.com/beezones-main-stack/myfirstwordbaskettoleranceadapted.html
Book List
List of Books
Partial List
Preface – 1988
Introduction to the Basket of Tolerance – Laughing Man Magazine
Introduction to The Basket of Tolerance – Richard Schorske, Laughing Man Magazine
Basket of Tolerance – Student Series Introduction
Human History is One Great Tradition
The Basket of Tolerance – Human History Is One Great Tradition
Basket of Tolerance – Introduction
Basket of Tolerance – Hinayana Buddhism
Basket of Tolerance – Preface
Basket of Tolerance – My First Word
Basket of Tolerance – My First Word
Basket of Tolerance – Epilogue
Esoteric Anatomy and the Great Traditions of Human History