The Following is from The Basket Of Tolerance, Booklet Series, number 5. Published by the Dawn Horse Press, from an Essay by Ruchira Avatar Adi Da Samraj, published in 2000.
CHAPTER 20 OF THE KNEE OF LISTENING
The Seventeen Companions Of The True Dawn Horse,
The Great Esoteric Tradition of Devotion to the Adept-Realizer
An Essay from the Ruchira Avatara Gita
(The Way Of The Divine Heart-Master)
The Divine World-Teacher,
RUCHIRA AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ
(The psychological limitations of the first three stages of life)
The entire Spiritual Way is a
process based on the understanding (and the transcending) of
attention, or the understanding (and the transcending) of
the inevitable and specific results of attachment to, or
reaction to, or identification with every kind of
conditional object, other, or state. This Spiritual
understanding (or real self-understanding) is expressed in a
simple traditional formula (and prescription for practice):
You become (or duplicate the qualities of) whatever you
meditate on (or whatever you identify with via the
“surrender” that is attention itself). Since the most
ancient days, this understanding has informed and inspired
the practice of real practitioners of the Spiritual Way.
Likewise (since the most ancient days), and on the basis of
this very understanding, Spiritual practitioners have
affirmed that the Great Principle of Spiritual practice is
Satsang, or the practice of life as self-surrender to the
bodily Person, the Transmitted Spiritual Presence, and the
Realized State of a Spiritually Realized Adept (or true
Guru, or Sat-Guru) of whatever degree or stage. The traditional term “Guru” (spelled
with a capital means “One Who Reveals the Light and thereby
Liberates beings from Darkness”. This term is also commonly
(or popularly) interpreted in a general (or everyday) sense
(and spelled with a small “g”) to mean “teacher” (or anyone
who teaches anything at all to another). Thus, Adepts have
certainly (and rightly) been valued simply (or in the
general sense) as (small “g”) “gurus” (that is, simply
because they can instruct others about many things,
including the Spiritual Way). However, the function of
instruction (about anything at all) can be performed by
anyone who is properly informed (or even by a book that is
properly informed)and, indeed, even the specific function of
Spiritual Instruction is secondary to the Great Function of
the Adept (As Guru, with a capital “G”, and, in the Greatest
of cases As Sat-Guru). Adepts inevitably (or, at least, in
the majority of cases) Instruct (or Teach) others, but the
function of Instruction (about the Spiritual Way) is then
passed on through good books (containing the authentic Word
of Teaching), and through informed others (who are,
hopefully, true practitioners), and so forth. The Great
Function of the Adept Guru (and especially the Sat-Guru) is,
however, specific only to Adepts themselves, and this is the
Guru-Function (and the Guru-Principle) supremely valued by
Spiritual practitioners since the most ancient
days. The specific Guru-Function is
associated with the Great Principle of Satsang (and the
unique Spiritual understanding of attention). Therefore,
since the most ancient days, all truly established (or real)
Spiritual practitioners have understood that Satsang Itself
is the Great Means for Realizing Real God, or Truth, or
Reality. That is to say, THE Great Means (or Secret) of
Realization in the Spiritual Way is to live in, or to spend
significant time in, or otherwise (and constantly) to give
attention to the Company, Form, Presence, and State of an
Adept who is (truly) Realized in one or another of either
the advanced or the ultimate stages of life. The Essence of the practice of
Satsang is to focus attention on (and thereby to,
progressively, become Identified with, or Realize
Indivisible Oneness with) the Realized Condition of a true
Adept (especially an Adept Sat-Guru, or One Who presently
and constantly In Samadhi). Therefore, the practice of
Satsang is the practice of ego-transcending Communion (and,
Ultimately, Indivisible Oneness) with the Adept’s own
Condition, Which Is (according to the degree or stage of the
Adept’s characteristic Realization) Samadhi Itself, or the
Adept’s characteristic (and Freely, Spontaneously, and
Universally Transmitted) Realization (Itself). Based on the understanding of
attention (or the observation that Consciousness Itself, in
the context of the body-mind, tends to identify with, or
becomes fixed in association with, whatever attention
observes, and especially with whatever attention surrenders
to most fully), the Spiritual Motive is essentially the
Motive to transcend the limiting capability of attention (or
of all conditional objects, others, and states). Therefore,
the traditional Spiritual process (as a conventional
technique, begun in the context of the fourth stage of life)
is an effort (or struggle) to set attention (and, thus,
Consciousness Itself) Free by progressively relinquishing
attachment and reaction to conditional objects, others, and
states (and, Ultimately, this process requires the Most
Perfect transcending of egoity, or self-contraction itself,
or all the egoic limitations associated with each and all of
the first six stages of life). This conventional effort (or
struggle) is profound and difficult, and it tends to
progress slowly. Therefore, some few adopt the path of
extraordinary self-effort (or a most intense struggle of
relinquishment), which is asceticism (or the method of
absolute independence). However; the Adepts themselves have,
since the most ancient days, offered an alternative to mere
(and, at best, slowly progressing) self-effort. Indeed, the
Adept-Gurus (and especially the Sat-Gurus) offer a Unique
Principle of practice (as an alternative to the conventional
principle of mere and independent self-effort and
relinquishment). That Unique Principle is the Principle of
Supreme Attraction. Truly, the bondage of attention to
conditional objects, others, and states must be really
transcended in the Spiritual Way, but mere self-effort (or
struggle with the separate, and separative, self) is a
principle that originates in (and constantly reinforces) the
separate (and separative) self (or self-contraction, or e
goity itself). Therefore, the process of the real
transcending of bondage to conditions is made direct (and
truly ego-transcending) if the principle of independent
self-effort (or egoic struggle) is at least progressively
replaced by the responsive (or cooperative) Principle of
Supreme Attraction (Which Is, in Its Fullness, Satsang, or
responsive devotional Identification with the Free Person,
Presence, and State of One Who Is Already Realized, or In
Samadhi). On the basis of the simple
understanding of attention expressed in the formula: You
become (or Realize) What (or Who) you meditate on the
ancient Essence of the Spiritual Way is to meditate on (and
otherwise to grant feeling-attention to) the Adept-Guru (or
Sat-Guru), and (thereby) to be Attracted (or Grown) beyond
the self-contraction (or egoity, or all the self-limiting
tendencies of attention, or all self-limiting and
self-binding association with conditional objects, others,
and states). Through sympathetic (or responsive) Spiritual
Identification with the Samadhi State of a Realizer, the
devotee is Spiritually Infused and (potentially, and
Ultimately) even Perfectly Awakened by the Inherently
Attractive Power of Samadhi Itself. (Even the simplest
beginner in practice may be directly Inspired and, thus,
moved toward greater practice, true devotion, and eventual
Perfect Awakening by sympathetic response to the Free Sign,
and the Great Demonstration, of a true Realizer.) And, by
the Great Spiritual Means that Is true Satsang (coupled with
a variety of disciplines and practices, which should be
associated with real self-understanding), the fully prepared
devotee of a true Realizer may Freely (or with relative
effortlessness) relinquish (or Grow Beyond) the limits of
attention in each of the progressive stages of life that, in
due course, follow upon that devotion. Of course , actual Spiritual
Identification with the Realized Spiritual Condition (or
Samadhi) of an Adept is limited by the stage of life of the
devotee, the effective depth of the self-understanding and
the ego-transcending devotional response of the devotee, and
the stage of life and Realization of the Adept. And some
traditions may (unfortunately) tend to replace (o; at least,
to combine) the essential and Great Communion that is true
Satsang with concepts and norms associated with the
parent-child relationship, or the relationship between a
king and a frightened subject, or even the relationship
between a slave-master and a slave. However, this Great
Principle (or Means) that Is Satsang (rightly understood and
truly practiced) is the ancient Essence (or Great Secret) of
the Spiritual Way and true Adept-Gurus (and especially the
Sat-Gurus) have, therefore, since the most ancient days,
been the acknowledged principal Sources and Resources (as
well as the principal Means) of true religion (or effective
religious Wisdom) and the esoteric tradition of Spiritual
Realization. Particularly in more modern days,
since Spirituality (and everything else) has become a
subject of mass communication and popularization, the
Spiritual Way Itself has become increasingly subject to
conventional interpretation and popular controversy. In the
broad social (or survival) context of the first three stages
of life, self-fulfillment (or the consolation of the ego) is
the common ideal (tempered only by local, popular, and
conventional political, social, and religious ideals, or
demands). Therefore, the common mood is one of adolescent
anti authority and anti-hierarchy (or “Oedipal
anti-“parent”), and the common search is for a kind of
ever-youthful (and “Narcissistic”) ego-omnipotence and
ego-omniscience. The popular egalitarian (or
ego-based, and merely, and competitively, individualistic)
“culture” (or, really, anti-culture) of the first three
stages of life is characterized by the politics of
adolescent rebellion against “authority” (or the perceived
“parent”, in any form). Indeed, a society (or any loose
collective) of mere individuals does not need, and cannot
even tolerate, a true culture because a true culture must,
necessarily, be characterized (in its best, and even
general, demonstrations, and, certainly, in its aspirations)
by mutual tolerance, cooperation, peace, and profundity.
Therefore, societies based on competitive individualism, and
egoic self-fulfillment, and mere gross-mindedness (or
superficial-mindedness) actually destroy culture (and all
until-then-existing cultures, and cultural adaptations). And
true cultures (and true cultural adaptations) are produced
(and needed) only when individuals rightly and truly
participate in a collective, and, thus and thereby (even if,
as may sometimes, or especially in some cases, be the case,
in relative, or even actual, solitude), live in accordance
with the life-principle of ego-transcendence and the Great
Principle of Oneness (or Unity). In the popular egalitarian (or
ego-based, and merely, and competitively, individualistic)
“culture” (or, really, anti-culture) of the first three
stages of life, the Guru (and the Sat-Guru) and the
developmental culture of the Spiritual Way are (with even
all of “authority” and of true, or ego-transcending,
culture) taboo, because every individual limited (or
egoically defined) by the motives of the first three stages
of life is at war with personal vulnerability and need (or
the feeling of egoic insufficiency). However, the real
Spiritual process does not even begin until the egoic point
of view of the first three stages of life is understood (or
otherwise ceases to be the limit of aspiration and
awareness) and the ego-surrendering and ego-transcending
Motive of the fourth stage of life begins to move and change
the body-mind (from the heart). Those who are truly involved in the
ego-surrendering and ego-transcending process of the
advanced and the ultimate stages of life are (fundamentally)
no longer at war with their own Help (or struggling toward
the ultimate victory of the ego). Therefore, it is only in
the non-Spiritual (or even anti-Spiritual) “cultural” domain
of the first three stages of life (or the conventional
survival-culture, bereft of the Motive of truly
developmental and Spiritual culture) that the Guru (or the
Sat-Guru) is, in principle, taboo. And, because that taboo
is rooted in adolescent reactivity and egoic willfulness (or
the yet unresolved emotional, and psychological, and even
emotional-sexual rebellion against childish and asexual, or
emotionally and sexually ego-suppressing, dependence on
parent-like individuals and influences), “anti Guruism”, and
even “anti-cultism” which (characteristically, and without
discrimination) denigrate, and defame, and mock, or
otherwise belittle, all authorities and (also) even all the
seed-groups of newly emerging cultural movements (whether or
not they have positive merit)are forms (or expressions) of
what Sigmund Freud described as an “Oedipal”
problem. In the common world of mankind, it
is yet true that most individuals tend (by a combination of
mechanical psycho-physical tendencies and a mass of
conventional political, social, and cultural pressures) to
be confined to the general point of view associated,
developmentally, with the unfinished (or yet to be
understood) “business” of the first three stages of life.
Thus, in the common world of mankind, even religion is
(characteristically) reduced to what is intended to serve
the “creaturely” (or “worldly”), and rather aggressively
exoteric, point of view and purposes of egoity in the
context of the first three stages of life. And even if an
interest in the esoteric possibilities (beyond the first
three stages of life) develops in the case of any such yet
rather “worldly” character, that interest tends to be
pursued in a manner that dramatizes and reinforces the point
of view (and the exoteric, and either childishly or
adolescently egoic, inclinations) characteristic of the
first three stages of life. Until there is the development of
significantly effective self-understanding relative to the
developmental problems (or yet unfinished “business”)
associated with the first three stages of life, any one who
aspires to develop a truly esoteric religious practice
(necessarily beginning in the context of the fourth stage of
life) will, characteristically, tend to relate to such
possible esoteric practice in either a childish or an
adolescent manner. Thus, any one whose developmental
disposition is yet relatively childish (or tending, in
general, to seek egoic security via the dramatization of the
role of emotionalistic dependency) will tend to relate to
esoteric possibilities via emotionalistic (or, otherwise,
merely enthusiastic) attachments, while otherwise (in
general) tending to be weak in both the responsible exercise
of discriminating intelligence and the likewise responsible
exercise of functional, practical, relational, and cultural
self discipline (Indeed, such childish religiosity,
characterized by dependent emotionalism, or mere
enthusiastic attachment, bereft of discrimination and real
self-discipline, is what may rightly, without bad
intentions, be described and criticized as “cultism”.) And
any one whose developmental disposition is yet relatively
adolescent (or tending, in general, to seek egoic security
via the dramatization of the role of reactive independence)
will tend to relate to esoteric possibilities via generally
“heady” (or willful, rather mental, or even intellectual, or
bookish, but not, altogether truly intelligent) efforts,
accompanied either (or even alternately) by a general lack
of self-discipline (and a general lack of non-reactive
emotional responsiveness) or by an exaggerated (abstractly
enforced, and more or less life-suppressing and
emotion-suppressing) attachment to self-discipline.
(Therefore, such adolescent, or “heady”, religiosity merely
continues the dramatization of the characteristic adolescent
search for independence, or the reactive pursuit of escape
from every kind of dependency, and, altogether; the reactive
pursuit of egoic self-sufficiency. And such adolescent
seeking is inherently and reactively disinclined toward any
kind of self-surrender. Therefore, the rather adolescent
seeker tends to want to be his or her own “guru” in all
matters. And, characteristically, the rather adolescent
seeker will resist, and would even prefer to avoid, a truly
intelligent, rightly self-disciplined, and, altogether;
devotionally self-surrendered relationship to a true Guru ,
or Sat Guru.) Because of their developmental
tendencies toward either childish or adolescent
ego-dramatizations, those who are yet bound to the point of
view (or the unfinished “business”) of the first three
stages of life are, developmentally (or in their
characteristic disposition, not yet relieved by sufficient
self-understanding), also (regardless of their presumed
“interest”) not yet truly ready to enter into the esoteric
process (beyond the first three stages of life). And, for
the same developmental reasons, the principal and most
characteristic impediments toward true participation in the
esoteric religious process are “cultism” (or mere
emotionalistic dependency, bereft of discrimination and
self-discipline), “intellectualism” (or merely mental, or
even bookish, preoccupation, disinclined to fully
participatory, or directly experiential, involvement in the
esoteric religious process), and “anti Guruism” (or reactive
attachment to a state of egoic independence, immune to the
necessity for devotional self-surrender and the Grace of
Great Help). It is not the specific (and Great)
Function of the Adept to fulfill a popular Spiritual
(otherwise, non -Spiritual) role in common (or egoic and
early stage) society, but to Serve as Teacher, Guide,
Spiritual Transmitter, or Free Awakener in relation to those
who are already (and rightly) moved (and progressively
prepared) to fulfill the ego-transcending obligations of the
Great and (soon) Spiritual Way Itself (in the potential
developmental context that is beyond the first three stages
of life). The only proper relationship to such a Realized
Adept (or true Guru, or Sat-Guru) is, therefore, one of real
and right and ego-surrendering and ego-transcending
practice, and that practice becomes (or must become)
Inspired (and, soon, Spiritually Inspired) and
ego-transcending devotion not childish egoity (or “cultic”
dependency), and not adolescent egoity (or willful or,
otherwise, ambivalent independence). Of course, individuals in the
earlier (or first three) stages of life who are not yet
actively oriented (or, otherwise, rightly adapted) to
ego-surrendering and ego-transcending practice may be Served
by Adept-Gurus (or Sat-Gurus), but (apart from special
instances where an Adept must Work directly with such
individuals, in order to establish a new community of
devotees , or in order to establish a new Revelation of the
Spiritual Way) those not yet actively oriented (or actively
committed), or (otherwise) rightly adapted, to truly
ego-surrendering and really ego-transcending practice are
generally (except perhaps for occasional glimpses of the
Adept in his or her Free Demonstration) Served (or prepared
for ego-surrendering, ego-transcending, and, soon, Spiritual
practice) only through the written (or otherwise recorded)
Teachings of an Adept, and through the public institutional
work (and the “outer Temple”, or beginner-serving,
institutional work) of the practicing devotees of an
Adept. The Realized Adept (or any true
Guru, or Sat-Guru) is, primarily, an esoteric Figure, whose
unique Function Serves within the context of the advanced
and the ultimate stages of life. The advanced and the
ultimate stages of life are themselves open only to those
who are ready, willing, and able to make the truly
developmental (or progressively Real-God-Realizing, or
Truth-Realizing, or Reality-Realizing) sacrifice of separate
and separative self that is necessary in the context of the
advanced and the ultimate stages of life. Therefore, the
necessity (and the True Nature and Great Function) of a
Realized Adept (or true Guru, or Sat-Guru) is obvious (and
of supreme value) only to those who are ready, willing, and
able to embrace the Ordeal of the advanced and the ultimate
stages of life. Except for the possible moments in
which the Divine Person (or the Ultimate Reality and Truth)
may (for some few) Serve (temporarily, and, to whatever
degree, significantly, and, in any case, never to the Most
Ultimate, or Most Perfect, degree) in (or via) a nonphysical
(and/or perhaps even non-human) Revelation-Form, the
Realized Adept (or a human and living true Guru, or,
especially, a human and living true Sat-Guru, or, at least,
a human and living true, and formally Acknowledged,
Appointed, and Blessed, devotee Agent of a once living, or
even, perhaps, yet living, and, certainly, yet Spiritually
Effective, true Sat-Guru) is an absolute (and never
obsolete) necessity for any and every human being who would
practice (and Realize) within the esoteric (or advanced and
ultimate) stages of life. Therefore, the necessity (and the
True Nature and Great Function) of a Realized Adept (or true
Guru, or Sat-Guru) is inherently (and gratefully) obvious to
any one and every one who is truly ready, willing, and able
to embrace the esoteric Ordeal of Real-God-Realization (or
Truth-Realization). Any one and every one who doubts and
quibbles about the necessity (and the True Nature and (
Function) of a true Adept-Guru (or Adept Sat-Guru) is,
simply, not yet ready, willing, and able to enter the
esoteric (and, necessarily, ego-surrendering) Ordeal of
advanced and the ultimate stages of life. And no mere verbal
(or otherwise exoteric) argument is sufficient to convince
such doubters of the necessity (and the True Nature and
Great Function) of a true Adept-Guru (or Adept Guru), just
as no mere verbal (or otherwise exoteric) argument is
sufficient to make them ready, willing, and able to truly
embrace the ego-surrendering esoteric Ordeal oi advanced and
the ultimate stages of life. Those who doubt the Guru-Principle,
and the unique value and ultimate necessity of the
Adept-Guru (or Adept Sat-Guru), are those for whom the Great
and (Spiritual Way Itself is yet in doubt. Therefore, such
matters remain “controversial” (and access to the Spiritual
Way the Adept-Company is effectively denied to ordinary
people by popular taboos and the psychological limitations
of the first three stages of life) until the truly
developmental and (soon) Spiritual Motive Awakens the
heart’s Great Impulse to Grow Beyond.
Spiritually Realized Adepts are the principal Sources,
Resources, and Means of the esoteric Way. This fact is not a
matter of controversy among real Spiritual
practitioners.