CHAPTER 36 You Are My Gift to You: Cooperative Community in the
Way of the Heart SRI DA AVABHASA: Formal cooperative community (to the
maximum degree possible for the individual) is necessary and
fundamental, to the Way of the Heart. * * * Cooperative, human-scale community is the political,
social, and cultural root-source of civilization.
Cooperative, human-scale community is also the primary
political, social, and cultural condition that civilization
tends to destroy. Therefore, the struggle to reestablish
cooperative, human-scale community, and, in turn, to
reestablish, within the larger political, social, and
cultural order, the virtues characteristically associated
with cooperative, human-scale community, is the constant
necessity and the principal political, social, and cultural
revolution whereby civilization can be purified of its
negative effects, and whereby the integrity of civilization
(and of civilized people) can be restored…. The negative evidence of the present global civilization
is obvious at every physical and human level of the world-so
much so that mankind has now clearly entered into a dark and
darkening phase, with great potential for every kind of
disaster, and yet, if truly humanizing Wisdom and real
Divine Grace are accepted, with an equally great, and even
greater, potential for a lightening, and more and more
Divine, transformation. It is not necessary that I describe
all the negative signs and mixed signs of the present
civilization. Let each one enumerate the signs for himself
or herself, and feel the human wound at heart…. Of course, some have, in the present context of
civilization, already tried to revolutionize their
“civilized” lives by engaging efforts toward human-scale
community. Those efforts or experiments have met with
varying degrees of practical and human success to date.
However, far more is required to achieve cooperative, human
scale, and truly humanizing community than present and past
experimenters generally suppose or have supposed. For
example, in the present ego-bound context of global
civilization, there is a general tendency for community
experimenters to try to create community on the basis of the
same egoic principles that otherwise characterize the
present civilization itself. Thus, present-time community
experimenters generally try to create community on the
(supposedly egalitarian) basis of the motives of competitive
individualism (or egoity itself), even though they also want
to establish cooperative principles and cooperative
structures. As a result, experimental community efforts
often are degraded and defeated by competitiveness, the
tendency to pander to egoic preferences and egoic
dramatizations (often in the name of egalitarian idealism),
and a characteristic fear of (or a rather adolescent
rebellion against) authority, hierarchy, and the
hierarchical culture of respect (which are necessary to any
truly human and cooperative community order). There is a profound difference between true (and
necessarily sacred) community and mere practical (political,
social, and cultural) communalism (whether such is viewed to
be secular or religious or even sacred in its nature and
intention). A cooperative, human scale, and truly humanizing
community is necessarily and truly sacred, rather than merely secular (or otherwise not
truly sacred). That is to say, such a community is
necessarily based on the motive of self-transcendence
(rather than on the motive of self-fulfillment), and,
therefore, it is not based on the search to satisfy the
ego-“I” and the egoic motives of any of its members, but it
is based on the devotion of each and all of its members to
That Which inherently transcends each and all. True community is necessarily one-pointed. That is to
say, it is not focused in service to (and fulfillment of)
egos (or whatever is many and separate), but in service to
(and Realization of) That Singleness Which inherently
transcends egoity and every limitation. The Real does not
rotate around each and all, but each and all are Called and
Obliged to surrender self and to forget self in
participatory Communion with the all-transcending,
all-pervading, all embracing, and necessarily Divine
Reality. And it is only the response to this Call and
Obligation that can purify and restore mankind, one by one,
each and all, by means of the benign and truly humanizing
political, social, and cultural revolution that is the
establishment of truly sacred and truly cooperative
human-scale communities (and, by extension, the
transformation of even the entire global civilization itself
into a cooperative, rather than a merely competitive,
world-order). * * * Free men and women must create a refuge, or human
sanctuary, for their growth, and this is not done in
personal isolation, but only in intimate cultural
cooperation. There is no such thing as true religion without
cooperative community. The sacred community is the necessary
theatre wherein true religious responsibilities and
activities can take place. * * * When I Speak to you about the discipline of cooperative
community, I am Speaking to you very realistically about a
condition of practice that, if rightly (and progressively)
embraced, should increase the potential for Divine
Self-Realization in the case of each and every practitioner
of the Way of the Heart. * * * True religion is not just the practice of community in
itself. It is the practice of Divine Communion in
community. * * * The internal business of the community of My devotees is
the relationship to Me, the True Heart-Master. Wherever that
is forgotten, offended, suppressed, minimized, made
artificial, not served, the gathering of My devotees fails
to be a true community. Therefore, Satsang with Me is the
prize of the community of My devotees. * * * What I call “cooperative community” is the structure of
discipline wherein (especially) the householder’s way of
life is structured in a specifically renunciate manner, and
altogether made into a circumstance of life suitable for
sadhana and real growth. * * * You are called to live the practice of the Way of the
Heart in cooperative community, but not because community
itself is some sort of ideal or utopian circumstance or even
possibility. The living community of My devotees is a form
of sadhana. Its purpose, then, is self-transcendence and
Divine Self-Realization Most Ultimately. Those who live this
sadhana of cooperation in community with one another in the
Way of the Heart are animating their commitment to Most
Perfectly self-transcending God-Realization, and they are
serving that possibility in one another. * * * If, as My devotee, you are truly practicing the
discipline of cooperative community that I have Given you,
then, as in your devotional groups you serve to increase one
another’s devotion to Me, so also in your daily life you
give one another more and more opportunity, more and more
time, more and more focus for truly God-Realizing practice.
You accomplish things cooperatively, whereas if you left one
another to your private householder games, you would
basically be spending your life forever trying to organize
and improve your ordinary social limitations and
obligations. Nothing would be simplified, nothing
resolved. You must serve one anther’s true practice of
Ishta-Guru-Bhakti in devotional relationship to Me, and you
must understand the difference between truly God-Realizing
sadhana and social religiosity. Social religiosity is
exoteric religion, socially based religion, more or less
utopian seeking to fulfill the separate individual. That is
not the Way of the Heart. That is not true sadhana in My
Company. That is not esoteric Spiritual practice. The community of My devotees should essentially be an
environment where people live together who practice the Way
of the Heart and serve one another. The principal admonition of the Great Tradition has
always been, “Spend time in Good Company’.” Satsang, the
Company of the Realizer and the company of those who love
the Realizer, is the most auspicious association. As My
devotee, absorb that Company in Satsang with Me. Imbibe it.
Drink deep of it. Duplicate it. * * * The community of My devotees is in itself a form of
meditation, a form of devotion to Me. Therefore, when My
devotees come together, they tend to turn one another quite
naturally to Me, to Satsang with Me. Individually, they tend
to become associated with their dramas, their changes, their
limitations. But as soon as they enter into one another’s
company, it is as if they were reminding one another of
Satsang with Me, even though they might not outwardly be
saying anything about it. That reminder in itself is meditation. Therefore, you
naturally feel it more strongly at those times of gathering.
At those times you are entering into the company of many
others in whom the devotional relationship with Me is
active, perhaps in a different way than it is in your own
case. Limitations that may be yours may not be active in
some of the others, so you feel the Siddhi of My Blessing
Company more purely represented to you at those times,
because your own limitations are transcended by My Divine
Grace as it freely appears in others. Just so, there may be
areas in yourself that are not obstructed, but that are
obstructed in others, and those others feel the Power of
Satsang with Me more intensely because of your presence, or
the presence of several like you. * * * True religion (in any and every stage of life) is always
and necessarily and inherently a practice and a process that
originates, develops, and continues to develop only in the
context of a living and effectively functioning religious
community (which, as a “culture of expectation and
inspiration”, must nurture, stimulate, support, guide, and
direct, and thus both inform and test, the individual’s
religious practice and process). * * * The community of My devotees is not supposed to be
devoted to problems in people. The community of My devotees
should at least be made up of real beginners, real
practitioners of the preliminary disciplines in the Way of
the Heart, who can help one another, who constantly support
one another in their understanding, their real process of
freeing energy and attention from self-bondage and from the
presumed problems of existence. * * * You must find the ways to overcome the stresses of lower
adaptation, to transform the chemistry of the body-mind
literally, so that you can live your daily life without
personal, social, cultural, and chemical stress. Such a life
is not possible for a group of people until they manage to
create sanctuary with one another–a mutually protected,
stable, basically unthreatened way of life. * * * “We are threatened!” is the message of the news. It
reminds you of your chronic situation. The theatre of the
news is all about people who are threatening one another,
either with terrible violence or with just plain social
nastiness, exploiting one another to death. Human beings
constantly reinforce loveless society in their associations
with one another. You teach each other, and you pass on to
your children all the techniques for living as a stressful
personality. The usual person believes bodily, stressfully,
that his or her life cannot, even should not, be long, that
it is not good to be alive in the body, that human beings
are only supposed to go elsewhere. You harbor all these ideas that are life-negative in
bodily terms, but Divine Enlightenment is to become
life-positive in bodily terms, which is just the reverse of
what you are tending to do. Human beings are living way down
at the bottom of their evolutionary potential. Nevertheless,
if you, as My devotee, can personally, and with a few
others, grasp the greater realities of the mechanisms in
which you live, then you can practice a Way of life that
stimulates and develops those greater factors. You must have sanctuary, a relatively protected world, in
which to do that, because, if you are going to rise above
the civilization of the daily news, you must live in a
manner that is superior to the way that people in general
tend to live. I used to point out that this gathering around Me, this
community of a kind, even though it is not only imperfect
but rather chaotic, is nevertheless useful. Although I
criticized it more intensely than anyone, I also defended
the community circumstance of My devotees when people became
petulant or angry about it. Among its functions, and this is
a great service, was to provide the opportunity for people
to transcend themselves. After all, self-transcendence is
the essence of what My devotees are involved in. * * * To live in the formal cooperative circumstance with
others requires you to transcend your separate and
separative ego-self, no doubt. Therefore, in the Way of the
Heart, self-transcendence (in the case of each and all) is
also the function and purpose of cooperative community. * * * Community is the natural condition of all true spiritual
activity… . I intend for this Teaching always to be
displayed in relationship, because it is only in
relationship that it begins to make any sense, that it
begins to show itself. So there must be this functional
confrontation with the Teaching by those who are using it.
That confrontation is the use of it. * * * An inevitable discipline is community, if one awakens
beyond the principle of egoity. Therefore, as My devotee,
you cure egoity, transcend it, work beyond it through the
discipline of community or the opportunity to do that most
creatively and effectively with those who are similarly
inclined to the Way of the Heart. You must express that
discipline in all relationships. You must overcome yourself,
transcend yourself, in all relationships. * * * The sadhana of the religious life, and, in due course, of
the Spiritual life, in the Way of the Heart is necessarily
associated with cooperative community. In other words, it
impinges on your life of relatedness and requires the
discipline in relationship, requires you to discipline
egoity in the context of relationship, egoity and
separatedness, self-isolation. Suffering is felt, seen, experienced from day to day
essentially in vital terms by human beings. The best “cave”
is an ordinary life, a relational life, a functional life.
That is where you find your discipline, that is where you
become strong, that is where you become truly responsible
for yourself. Relationships are the best circumstance of
spiritual practice. Intimate relationships, functional
conditions, these are the best “Bodhi Tree”. These are the
true “ascetic” practices. * * * As renunciates in times past lived together in renunciate
communities, ashrams, and hermitages, you, by your
cooperation in community with one another, will relieve one
another of many of the limitations imposed upon human beings
by the demands of ordinary life, and, by sharing the burdens
of even all the ordinary demands of life, you will give one
another the gift of time for sacred cultural practice. * * * It is good to live in community and develop cooperative
systems, to get out of the ego mold, or the mold of the
accumulator, the successful capitalist or communist, the
successful ego that accumulates, stuffs himself or herself
with everything from worldly goods to food to beliefs and
phony ideals of all kinds. My devotees must come to a point of understanding that to
become My devotee, to become a member of this Communion,
implicitly and explicitly involves them in an obligation to
engage a total Way of life in relation to all My other
devotees, and in relation to the world. Whatever their
position or circumstance in the world, they must move into
the society of this Communion and transcend the mind of “me
and my castle, me and my ego alone, bodily fulfilling
myself’, and see how the law of cooperation, mutuality, and
relationship, rather than independence, changes their
relationship to the use of money, ownership, and land. My
devotees must understand free cooperative association as the
structure wherein all the goods of life exist. * * * The fundamentals of life must be pre-solved at the local
level, at the regional level where the cooperative community
exists. Within the community, every member should be
guaranteed access to the basic necessities of life (provided
each individual functions responsibly and cooperatively
within the community). Basic solutions to human needs do not
generally require resort to any of the resources of the
State, but they should be managed locally in one’s own
community, and in natural cooperation with other
communities. (In other words, first establish community and
the planned solutions to fundamental needs, and, on that
basis, see what kind of agreements are useful in cooperation
with other communities and with large-scale cooperative
agencies.) * * * People in cooperative community are yet “individuals”,
and, in general, they must each have their “families”.
Families and households also (naturally) have, to some
degree, their own unique interests and purposes, or
(sometimes) their own unique uses of time (and even of
income)-that is all fine. Nevertheless, fundamentally (and
relative to all matters), the principles of renunciation,
simplification, and cooperation must be embraced and
consistently demonstrated by every practitioner (and by
every family or household) within every formally
acknowledged cooperative community gathering of formally
acknowledged practitioners of the Way of the Heart. * * * To create a human sanctuary for greater adaptation and
the ultimate transcendence of Man is a true urge, even the
primal human urge. Human beings inherently desire a truly
human and natural environment in which they can live without
the chronic production of stress chemistry. Human beings
want to be cured at the heart of their mind and thereby
transformed bodily. And they know, deeply, psychically, that
they cannot Realize that transformation until they can
create a culture in which people can live without
degenerative stress. Thus, sanctuary, or Spiritual
community, is the motive in Man that contains the genetic
secret of the next stage in human evolution. * * * On Sri Da Avabhasa’s first trip to India in April
1968, He visited the small town of Mulund, just outside
Bombay. His first impression was that the town was “a little
dirt-road village with crowds of people-not a beautiful
place”. Taken to a small apartment building where He would
spend the night, Heart Master Da showered and then climbed
the stairs to the roof of the building. In 1988, twenty
years later, He described to His devotees what He saw from
the roof: SRI DA AVABHASA: As I came to the top of the stairs and
onto the roof, the orientation was to the back of the
building, whereas on the road I had approached the building
from the front and the crowded, noisy town. Looking out in
the opposite direction from the roof, then, I saw a
completely different physical environment. There was no way I could have presumed that anything like
what I saw existed in this town. It was a large square with
green at the perimeter. Everything was cleanly trimmed.
There were decorative trees and plants and flowers
everywhere, and walkways through a large park where a few
people were calmly walking about, all of them very crisply
and cleanly dressed in a style of clothing I suppose is
characteristic of this group. They were all well washed and
clean in their nice evening dress-families, women and
children and men, walking together very calmly. There was no
sound, no noise at all, in the park-whereas it was all noise
beyond at the front side of the building. The park was a picture of serenity and order, of people
who lived effectively, people who could choose a way of life
and by cooperation with one another command the quality of
life that they chose. It was quite different from what one sees elsewhere, in
the little dirt-road towns that are called “cities” in the
world, with all the noise and chaos of “put up with whatever
your neighbor feels like doing” and “we all just do our
thing”. In such places, everybody puts up with what
everybody else is doing. You hang a picture or set out a
little vase of flowers, put in earplugs, and try, in your
sheerest privacy and in the smallest space that you can call
your own, to create something of the order of your own
choosing. Very few people have the chance to choose an order
together, a way of life that is based on the Truth. Rather,
everyone is wandering, doing their thing, ego-wise, and
disturbing everyone else. One of the virtues, then, of My devotees’ choosing to
practice the Way of the Heart together is that you can
command the quality of space and time, at least on a much
larger scale than you could otherwise, and more surely. If
you do that, then your environments can become beautiful
places where that order, that serenity, that quality of life
that you live in My Company is shown, as well as places that
are a sign of God-wardness and Divine Awakeness, or the
Process that Awakens toward God and in God, and Most
Ultimately As God. * * * A very powerful individual can make great changes, and so
also can a gathering of people in a right disposition. The
community of My devotees, therefore, will be very effective,
more effective than a single individual of minimal Spiritual
development. This is another reason why it is so important
for the community of My devotees to grow in size and for the
individuals within it to cooperate intentionally with one
another relative to changes of all kinds, including the will
to Divine Enlightenment for all. * * * You can assume a mutually dependent condition as soon as
you see that there is something intelligent about doing
that. You run into many difficulties, of course, because
your entire life below the conscious mind is devoted to this
private destiny, this affair of “Narcissus”. It is filled
with all kinds of equipment and strategies devoted to that
end. Therefore, as soon as you assume the discipline of
relationship as your condition of life, you are going to see
manifested in you all of these other urges and principles
and strategies and demands. Many of you have at one time or another expressed to me
your feelings about organized spirituality, organized
religion, whatever. People commonly have negative and
resistive feelings toward all forms of community and human
relationships. And the reason, the ultimate root of these
feelings, is the tendency towards separation itself. In a
certain sense you can see that it is completely justified.
There is a great deal about organized spiritual and common
life worthy to be resisted! On the other hand, Truth is
manifested only in this relational condition, and It is
perceived in relationship. It is a crisis that occurs in
relationship. Therefore, the community of Truth, the
community that lives this Teaching, is absolutely necessary.
But what makes it a thing to resist is your lack of
involvement in it, your separation from it, your dramatized
resistance to relational and community life. The spiritual
community must be alive. Every one must be alive within it.
Every one must be active in relationship and must function
within it. So if you do become active, responsible, alive,
and intimate with others who are living this way, the whole
sensation of resistance to so-called “organized” spiritual
life will disappear, because you will be dealing with the
problem of community only as that which it truly is: an
expression of your own avoidance of relationship. But if you
do not live this way, if you do not move into functional
relationship to this way, you will only see it externally.
Everywhere you will only see your reasons for separating
from the Guru, the Teaching, and the community, because you
will have made it into something without life, something
worth resisting. Therefore, it is the responsibility of
those in this Ashram to live this way, to become active in
it, to use it, and to become responsible for it. * * * Truly human politics is in the sphere of relationships,
experienced on a daily basis, where the individual’s voice
and experience can be heard and dramatically felt. * * * I have described the practice of the Way of the Heart in
the context of what I call a “cooperative democracy”, in
which men and women are, in principle, politically,
economically, and socially free. Therefore, as a matter of
your practice of the Way of the Heart, you must demonstrate
this principle. I presume the liberated state of women. It
is part of My fundamental address to women. Likewise, I
presume the liberated state of men. Now, My devotees, both
men and women, must presume it about themselves, and,
therefore, they must enact it in daily life. * * * As My devotee, give yourself up to practice of the Way of
the Heart in community rather than living as an ego in a
conventional model of society. Everyone, whether male or
female, should enjoy the benefits of the community of My
devotees. Women should not need an intimate partner to
survive in the community of My devotees. Women should live
equally with men. Women are more domestic when they have
young children, but the responsibility for older children is
shared by the community. Single women or women separated from a relationship
should be able to work and survive simply in the community
without any problems whatsoever. The community, and not the
household or the game of couples, should be the economic
unit for My devotees. Therefore, women should not depend on
their intimate partners for financial support. Women should
make their own money and share in the economic support of
the community. In the community of My devotees, men and women should
function on an equal basis. Women should not depend on or
exploit men. Women should not be in a position to be owned
by men. Women should function freely and freely make the
life that they choose. The medieval and ego-based
householder model does not have a function in the Way of the
Heart, and it certainly does not have an economic
function. * * * At one time in the past, the town meeting was a common
model of local government, whereby all men and women could
participate in decisions that affected everyone. At such
meetings, people decided together how to fulfill their
mutual obligations in the community. That is how the community of My devotees and the culture
of the Way of the Heart must operate. * * * There must be regular meetings of the entire collective
body of My devotees, at which all the workings of the
community are fully disclosed and decisions are made on how
to improve things. Each and all of My devotees must
participate fully in these meetings. * * * It is not that people come together to decide the
Principles, Callings, and Agreements of the Way of the
Heart. I have Given My Instruction, and, as My devotee, you
are here to fulfill My Instruction. Of course, various
details can be proposed to Me for My further
“Consideration”. There should not be any petty factions struggling with
one another and imitating the models of conventional
democracy. I Call each and all of My devotees-and not just a
group of administrators, managers, and leaders-to full
participation in the community. * * * For the sake of making things work, the membership of the
community of My devotees must represent themselves through a
group of individuals who are specifically trained in
administration, management, and leadership. The community of
My devotees must function in a manner that I describe as
“cooperative democracy” and always handle the business of
the community without fail. The “herd mentality” of passivity and weakness is
childish and dependent. It is the pose of the “sheep”, and
it must not be permitted within the culture of My devotees.
Likewise, independence, adolescence, and high visibility of
someone in charge (which is the pose of the “wolf”) must
always be addressed and undermined within the culture of My
devotees. * * * As My devotee, stop living like one of the herd and
leaving the creation of your community life to a few
spokesmen. Everyone must be involved in the life of this
community. Do not relinquish your life to the decisions of a
few, and never allow a failure. My devotees are to maintain their integrity by virtue of
their devotion to Me and their adherence to My Heart-Word.
What is needed is not conventional leadership but a truly
cooperative gathering, where My devotees meet one another on
an equal basis and transcend themselves by devotion to Me
and strict adherence to My Heart-Word. Those who fulfill certain cultural responsibilities are
not superior, nor should they be viewed as leaders in any
conventional sense. Only the true renunciates among My
devotees, those who are worthy of a greater position in the
culture of My devotees by virtue of their real devotion and
submission to Me, are qualified to be addressed as leaders
in the culture of the Way of the Heart. Although such renunciates may serve the culture as a
whole to intensify everyone’s devotion to Me and adherence
to My Heart Word, the worldwide culture of My devotees must
always be undermining the tendency of people to, make
themselves cultural insiders. You all, as My devotees, are My Gift to you. You have My
Silent Person here, My Heart-Word, that always Speaks to
you, in Eternal Conversation. I Give you the Gift of one
another, My devotees together, to make a culture of
“inspiration and expectation”.
Table of
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Table of
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