“The myth I perpetually enact is
Narcissus, the separate one. I pursue separation, loss, and
thus absoluteness, immunity. I flee relationships. I am
satisfied by the loss of the beloved. I mourn for myself.
Narcissus at the pool is an image that in fact represents
the tears of him who mourns for himself. His mourning is his
self-love, his hatred of others, of the vulnerability of
relationship, of being a limited one, thus one capable of
relationship. Thus, loving himself unto separation, he fails
to realize himself in relationship. His free life is
mourning. It is paradox. It is death. This one I am leads me to
negativity, anger, self-pity, contraction, separation,
emotionlessness, flight, distraction and the pursuit of
false self-images.” Franklin Jones (Adi Da
Samraj) – Water and Narcissus, 1969 Franklin Jones (Adi Da Samraj) Sri Gurudev: You do
know that you are being killed, everything is killing you.
You are going to die, there are no two ways about it.
Devotee: I do not
feel it. Sri Gurudev: But
you know it, do you not? Devotee: Not
really. Sri Gurudev: You do
not know that this is true? Devotee:
Intellectually I know it. Sri Gurudev: Well
that is enough. You know it, but you do not want to feel it,
you do not want to live as if it is so, you are trying to
avoid it, you are trying to survive in the face of this
great imposition that you know is so. That is it, that is
Narcissus *** The Myth of Narcissus Adi Da Samraj uses the ancient Greek myth of Narcissus as
an analogy for the activity of separation and the avoidance
of relationship that is at the root of human suffering. Narcissus was a handsome young man whom all the young
women adored. But he was not interested in any of them, and
treated them all badly. One young forest spirit named Echo fell in love with
Narcissus. But Echo got herself in trouble with the goddess
Hera, who cursed her so that Echo could not say what she
wished but could only repeat what others said. Echo would
follow Narcissus around, but because of the curse she was
not able to speak her love for him. Narcissus scorned her,
and she fled into the mountains. Another goddess, named Nemesis, saw this interplay and
put a curse on Narcissus: Since he could not love others, he
would only be able to love himself. One day, Narcissus stopped at a pond for a drink. As he
stooped down to drink from the pool, he saw his own
reflection in the water. He fell in love with his own
reflection, not realizing the image he saw in the water was
only himself. He was so in love, and so frustrated that his
loved one would not respond to him, that he stayed at the
side of the pond day and night. He was only and eternally
despairing in love at the side of the pond. Finally, he
pined away and died there at the pond. Echo
and Narcissus (the
story) The
following is a collection of excerpts, compiled and edited
from the writings and teachings of Adi Da on the the concept
of ‘Narcissus’ (or self-contraction),
a term unique
to the teachings of Adi Da.
(Beezone). “In the ancient Greek myth,
Narcissus is absorbed in an image—but he does not even
notice that it is an image in a mirror. The key to
understanding Narcissus (or the ego-“I”) is not
that the “self”-image is an image of oneself.
Rather, the key to understanding Narcissus (or the
ego-“I”) is that the “self”-image is an
image reflected in and by a mirror.” “This myth, this controlling
logic or force that forms my very consciousness revealed
itself as the concept and actual life of Narcissus. I saw
that my entire adventure of the whole desperate cycle of
awareness and its decrease, of truly conscious being and its
gradual covering and the whole mechanics of living, seeking,
dying and suffering was produced out of the image or
mentality that appears hidden in the ancient myth of
Narcissus. It was the logic or process of separation itself,
of enclosure and immunity. It manifested as fear and
identity memory and experience. It informed every function
of being, every event. It created every mystery. It was the
structure of every imbecile link in the history of our
suffering. I began to see that same logic operative in all
other men and every living thing, even the very life of the
cells, and the energy’s that surround every living entity or
process. And I saw that the adventure or destiny of
Narcissus was also my own, because I saw that I was living;
this principle, I was living as this activity, this entity.
And I gathered from examining the archetype as it appeared
in literature in the form of Narcissus what must be the end
phenomenon of such a life, and what is it always? What is
the result of this contraction, this self obsession? It is
death.” “The archetype of Narcissus, who
avoids the world by gazing into a pond at his own image, is
a metaphor for the ego, the independent self-mind. Like the
pond, the mind is a reflective mechanism. Therefore, the ego
or the self or Narcissus is a reflection, an illusion of
independence. To enter into the realm of the mind, to
persist in our flight toward subjectivity, our obsessive
experience of separate self, is to be possessed of the self,
not of God, no matter how profound the inward phenomena may
seem to be at any time.” “Narcissus appears
in the form of self-involvement, ego, or individuation. But
in fact he is self-doubt. This is his origin, as it appears
to understanding. To himself, Narcissus appears as
aggressive self-enforcement and survival by stealth. He is
his own disease. He dies as a function of his own drama and
nature.” “You are Narcissus. You are
looking at an image, and you think the image is actually
“there”—as something outside you, as
something that has nothing to do with you, except that you
are seeing it as an “object”. As Narcissus, you
are controlled by that “known-object”. You have
already taken up the ego-position—and, from that
position, you even regard Me as a “known-object”,
“digitalizing” Me into the checkerboard that
extends from your little block of
presumption. Aletheon The foundation of my Teaching
Argument is this: You are, as a matter of habit, and in
every part, conformed to the activity and the results of
self-contraction. It is not possible to affirm and Realize
the existence of God, or the Living Spiritual Divine, or the
Condition of Self-Radiant Transcendental Being until the
self-contraction is thoroughly observed, understood, and
transcended. Therefore, all other propositions of my
Teaching are built upon the proposition of necessary
self-transcendence. The ego, or the essence of every
person (personified as “I”), is not an inner entity or
subtle essence. The ego is the activity of self-contraction.
And it is observable in the person of the “I,” the body-mind
or psycho-physical persona, as the feeling of separateness
and the performance of every kind of separative activity.
Therefore, as I have indicated in The Knee of Listening ,
the ego may be recognized and transcended through consistent
self-enquiry in the form “Avoiding
relationship?”
“When my Argument has been
thoroughly considered, when the self is discovered to be
Narcissus or the activity of self-contraction, and when all
the forms of self-contraction, appearing as self and
not-self, have been re-cognized and transcended, then the
Transcendental Reality is Realized as the Obvious. But only
then.” Study The
Knee of Listening.
What – relative to the traditional paths of life and seeking
– was The Fundamental Discovery, and The Fundamental
Demonstration of My Early Life, It was The Discovery and The
Demonstration that all six of the first six stages of life
are ego-bound and ego-binding. Ordinary life, “religious”
life, “Spiritual” life, Yogic “method”, “Kundalini”,
visions, asceticism, “Transcendental” dissociative
introversion, and even all the seeking-strategies of
“inward” concentration-everything of the first six stages of
life is the dramatization (or search-evidence) of
“self”-contraction. What was the point of going
through all of that and making This Great Discovery, and
then telling It to others? The point was so that others
would not have to go through all of that, so that others
would have a basis for directly transcending what arises in
the midst of life in every moment – whether the moment is
tending toward “religious”, or “Spiritual”, or
“Transcendental”, or sexual, or disturbed, or whatever
ordinary or extraordinary search it is. The point of making
This Great Discovery and Communicating about It is so that
others would have a basis for understanding and transcending
the “self”-contraction in all of its forms – so that others
could utterly bypass the ordinary life-search, the
“religious” search, the “Spiritual” search, and the
“world”-excluding “Transcendental” search.
“Even Narcissus Could Find The
Way To My Oasis, In The True Heart’s Room and House.
But No, and Yet, the thinking mind of ego-“I” Is
Never Bathed In Light – and, So, it sits, Un-Washed, Like a
desert dog that wanders in a herd of flies”. Letter to
Narcissus 1970 Dear Narcissus, Those who cannot embrace the
radical Way of understanding may render themselves to My
Presence. I will teach you understanding if you accept My
Love. I have surrounded all things with this Love. If you
accept this relationship to Me, you will know My Love. You
will know Me. If you know Me, you will also know
yourself. Receive my love and accept it. I
am the one who loves you. Knowing my love, enquire of
yourself, “Avoiding relationship?” Enquire whether you are
avoiding Me and My Love. Thus you will remain with Me. I
will always love you. If you do not remain with me, I will
always love you, but you will not know it. Then you will not
know Me or My Love. But I have always loved you. I am the
One Who Desires understanding in you. If you receive and
accept My Love, you will understand. Then you will know who
I Am and you will know who you Are. I am the One Who Knows
who you Are. You need not love Me. Only receive and accept My Love. My
Love will become love in you. When My Love has become love
in you, then you will only love. Then you will know all
things. My love will become understanding in you. When you
understand, then you will know me and all things. Then you
will also know who you are. You will become a lover like
myself. Dear Narcissus, I love you.
“It has been given to me to
Awaken from this terrible Script. And the Way of Life for
Man has been clarified in my heart. This dreadful destiny of
recoil and self-possession must be transcended. Every
tradition of Narcissus must be overlooked. We must be
reestablished in the native equanimity of fearless birth.
This is the Secret: We are a Universal Divine
Incarnation.” Scientific
Proof of the Existence of God Will Soon Be Announced by the
White House
The First Thing You Should
Do “The thing that makes you unhappy
is your own contraction. That’s it, absolutely! Have I
always said this? (audience affirms) That is it. That is it entirely
but it is a terrible effort, a terrible joint that separates
you from God. You MUST hear this because it separates you
entirely from everything given and mankind has never been
denied this force, this grace. Human beings are attached to
this effort as reflected throughout their body minds. The
first thing you must do is understand my
argument. You are devoted to this effort of
Narcissus, this reaction, this vital shaft which shuts you
down so that you cannot experience something
greater. So the first incidence or
spiritual act is to hear the argument of the
Adept.” Adi Da Samraj – The
First Thing You Should Do
The Discovery of
Narcissus The following is taken (edited and
adapted) from The Aletheon (see link below). All the words
are Adi Da’s but the order and fullness of the sentences
have be changed. “At first, the individual becomes
tacitly aware of his or her habits of seeking, desiring,
doubting, believing, manipulating, betraying, and always
returning to the same distress and want. In that tacit
“self”-awareness, it is self evident that all of
that seeking is being motivated by a constant feeling of
distress, which is the result of
“self”-contraction in the face of all relations
and conditions. This discovery is most
profound. …it is discovered that it is
the result of a chronic contraction of the total body-mind,
or the habitual avoidance of psycho-physical relationship
and psycho-physical relatedness. The tendency of every
conditionally manifested individual is to contract into
separateness, or a “self”-defended and
“self”-contracted emotional, mental, psychic,
physical, and social state of isolation, presumed
independence, and dramatized want. This tendency is chronic in every
one, and it is generally not even inspected, nor is it most
fundamentally understood. Therefore, every one seeks. And
all seeking is inevitably frustrated. The
“self”-contracting habit is not transcended in the
search, because the search is itself the dramatization of
the “self”-contracting habit
itself. It became clear to Me that the
“self”-contraction is un-necessary. …when what is un-necessarily
superimposed on Reality is released, What Stands As The
Obvious Is Reality Itself. I Named this disease –
contraction – “Narcissus”.” Aletheon
– pp. 563-612
Dialogue with Adi Da about
Narcissus Sri Gurudev: You do know that
you are being killed, everything is killing you. You are
going to die, there are no two ways about it. Devotee: I do not feel
it. Sri Gurudev: But you know it,
do you not? Devotee: Not
really. Sri Gurudev: You do not know
that this is true? Devotee: Intellectually I
know it. Sri Gurudev: Well that is
enough. You know it, but you do not want to feel it, you do
not want to live as if it is so, you are trying to avoid it,
you are trying to survive in the face of this great
imposition that you know is so. That is it, that is
Narcissus, that is a reason for it. That is the
cause of the dreadful egoic life. And of course you are
trying to immunize yourself in every possible fashion —
physically, emotionally, mentally, socially, functionally,
practically, relationally, in every possible fashion you are
trying to immunize yourself against this imposition that you
know, absolutely, the best you can do is avoid it maybe for
a little while. You are avoiding the very fundamental nature
of existence by trying to survive. It is paradoxical but it
is true. All the dead wake up, all the living
can. The thing you think is an evil is a great source of
Beatitude. Not the common every day evil, not negativity
merely in the normal context, but the great one, the great
matter, the great event. The snuffing out of all your
survival efforts, all your self-possession, all your
separateness, the utter dissolution of it beyond any
capability on your part toward it. This is what you are
avoiding. This is Narcissus, this is the
self-contraction.” The Universal Drama of
Narcissus “the trauma of realizing
independent existence—which is the case for all of you.
And you not only have the sense of independent existence,
but at the experiential level you seem to be something that
can be destroyed. You recognize that everything with which
you are related can be destroyed. Everything upon which you
would want to depend can be destroyed or taken away from
you. This basic recognition is present from the beginning of
life because each person is bodily existing.” “The Great Lifetime
Illumination,” The Laughing Man, Vol. 4, No. 2, p.
21. Where Narcissus Lives
– “The true psycho-physical “root”
or “center” of the human body-mind
is the entire body-mind itself, rather than some center
within the body-mind. Thus, the reactive contraction that
separates the body-mind from the All-Pervading Life is the
reactive contraction of the entire body-mind, which curls
upon itself in every part, toward self-possession and
problematic commitment to the survival and fulfillment of
the independent -U’ However, the characteristic signs
of that self-defining reaction to Life in the case of the
usual individual may be read in a specific organ and
function complex. Thus, the usual individual displays
chronic psycho-physical tension at the perineum, anus,
genitals, navel, solar plexus, heart, lungs, throat, mouth,
face, spinal line, and brain. The bodily “base” or “floor,”
which includes the anus, perineum, and sex organs, is the
common functional “lock” that separates the individual or
whole body from the foundation that is Life. Likewise, the
bodily “ceiling,” which tends to be created by reactive
“locks” or chronic tensions at the mouth and the visual,
verbal, and speech centers of the brain, creates a
continuous and unpassable barrier to aspiration and
intelligence. All the rest of the body-mind composes the
“four walls” of self-enclosure. Only when the “door” or “window”
of the heart awakens the whole and entire body-mind in the
intuition and spontaneous love of Life, or the Divine
Ignorance-Radiance, does this house and hedge of
Narcissus dissolve in the ecstatic Regeneration of
Happiness.” The Enlightenment of the Whole Body
– The
Bodily House of Narcissus
“You talking
about “Narcissus” and how, as “Narcissus”, or the ego,
you’re helpless, bound by your tendencies and you must turn
to me, and so forth. It’s true enough, but that’s not an
expression of hearing. My discovery of
“Narcissus”, the nature of the ego, or the nature of
bondage, was liberating. I didn’t simply notice something
and then thereafter simply have some description of myself
that explained why I was so bound. The understanding, the
realization was utterly transforming, liberating. It wasn’t,
“Meaculpa, I’m the ego, I’m Narcissus, I am bound, I am all
kinds of tendencies, I am boring, I’m limited and a seeker
and I cant get out of it.” The understanding
of “Narcissus” is not a self-description. It’s a liberating
understanding. To come to this understanding doesn’t merely
give you a means to describe yourself and your bondage. That
understanding itself is profoundly clarifying, and its
coincident with self-transcendence”
The
Myth of Narcissus – Week 2 – Life of
Understanding
Nirvanasara
– Chapter 14 – Realization and
Belief
Aletheon
Franklin Jones (Adi Da Samraj)
Adi
Da Samraj
