Three Degrees of Understanding

From the

The Early Writings

Franklin Jones (Adi Da Samraj)

1970-1971

The Three Degrees of Understanding

One who is beginning to understand considers the avoidance of relationship in relation to the differentiated form of the gross world. His or Her understanding is free of the knot of differences, and is capable of Love.

One whose understanding is becoming deep considers the avoidance of relationship as various desires and the pattern of desire in the subtle mind. His understanding is free of the knot of desire, and he conceives his life as non-separate from what is.

But one whose understanding is directed and intense sees the avoidance of relationship in the original and causal form, prior to the forms of mind. His understanding is free of the very knot of identification, which is reaction, disturbance, contraction or attenuation in the heart of bliss. He enjoys relationship as the form of all conditions.

The three degrees of understanding indicate the essential categories or forms which understanding confronts at any moment. It is differentiation, duality or radical multiplicity. It is desire or radical separation. It is identification, non- relationship, the self-complexity apart from bliss. Therefore, at any moment, the man of understanding is enquiring of the vision of world or objects apart, the configuration of desire, or the sense of self apart. And all three must be obviated in radical understanding if there is to be conscious truth.

The man of understanding cannot rest his enquiry simply because he is free of the vision of separated forms. If he does, desire attacks him. He cannot rest his enquiry simply because he is free of the modifications of desire. If he does the separated awareness of himself will obsess him and turn him out of bliss. And even when he is free of the “I” apart which is the attenuation of bliss and unconsciousness of the true Heart, he continues to enquire. His very being is enquiry, the obvious force of the Heart. He stands as the stream of enquiry. The current of the Heart, and the worlds rise around him like mountains leaving the deep incisions of enquiry in the midst.

His enquiry may cease as confrontation, word, thought or gaze within, and become identical to the current of the Heart itself, Amrita Nadi, but such is the very and absolute form of enquiry and understanding. Understanding is the Heart itself, present as the current of Amrita Nadi, the siddhi of the Heart, whereby the worlds we lived as truth and then abandoned in the Heart of Bliss.

“He simply remains as the heart itself, the bliss of light, like a stream that always remains on a certain course, so that the mountains rise around it, leaving a canyon where is was.”

Franklin Jones (Adi Da Samraj), unpublished notes, 1971