Adidam’s Double Bind
A Look at Adi Da’s Paradoxical and Psychologically Impossible ‘Call’
“Come to Me” (Perfectly)
Double Bind – a situation in which an individual receives contradictory messages from another person. For example, a parent may respond negatively when his or her child approaches or attempts to engage in affectionate behavior but then, when the child turns away or tries to leave, reaches out to encourage the child to return. Double-binding communication was once considered a causative factor in schizophrenia. [proposed by British anthropologist Gregory Bateson (1904–1980)].
American Psychological Association definition
Schizophrenia – its nature, etiology, and the kind of therapy to use for it–remains one of the most puzzling of the mental illnesses. The theory of schizophrenia presented here is based on communications analysis, and specifically on the Theory of Logical Types. From this theory and from observations of schizophrenic patients is derived a description, and the necessary conditions for, a situation called the “double bind”–a situation in which no matter what a person does, he “can’t win.” It is hypothesized that a person caught in the double bind may develop schizophrenic symptoms.
TOWARD A THEORY OF SCHIZOPHRENIA by Gregory Bateson, Don D. Jackson, Jay Haley, and John Weakland, Veterans Administration Hospital, Palo Alto, California; and Stanford University Behavioral Science [1956] 1(4): 251-254.
The Crisis
Adi Da Samraj:
Once you have begun to mature in the process…an event of crisis arises, there is something already familiar about it. You know the signs, you know what is about to occur, you know the kinds of reactions that will tend to build up. You know that, instead of clenching your teeth and resisting the crisis, you should find some more work to do during that time.
Instead of planning a vacation or a binge when you see a crisis coming, you cancel all forms of entertainment or ordinary distraction, everything that you would normally use to distract yourself from your usual state. You plan a great deal of work for the coming days. You plan an ordinary, functional life.
When you have matured to that degree, you make good use, really good use, of these episodes. The more intelligent you are, the better the use you make of them. The less intelligent you are, and the more capable you are of binding distraction at such times, the more you will look for means to dramatize your state, to distract yourself from the lesson that turns purification into transformation.
You must know that everything I am doing is a means to bring about this crisis. I desire this crisis in you.
I do not want it not to happen.
I do not want to console you.
I do not want you to be contented in your unconsciousness.
I want you to become sensitive to your actual state.
I want you to know very well what you are always up to.
I want you to become capable of observing yourself under all kinds of conditions.
I want you to notice the machine of your ordinary activity.
And I want that entire ego-machine to collapse. I want it to come to an end. I want the “death” of all of that.
DEVOTEE: This thing. We know we are fighting it – and, yet, we cannot seem to avoid it. Why are we avoiding it? How do we get out of this?
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: The desire to “get out of this” is another form of the same avoidance. A real transformation – in the form of the conflict, the crisis, you are now experiencing – has already begun in you. That conflict, that crisis, has become intensified. You are beginning to find your real question. It is your own death. That is the significant event. There is no distraction from it. There is no consolation for it. It is an undeniable reality.
The Failure
ADI DA SAMRAJ: No culture of devotion, no sarvadhikari, management, accountability; Just Ashvamedha ceremony. You do not have a culture of devotion to Me. You do not have a responsible gathering that sets Me apart, and relates to Me through gifts alone. You do not have the sarvadhikari force, serving Me and keeping My Authority functioning through governance in this gathering. You don’t have management and accountability. You don’t have a gathering that’s compliant and living the practice.
You have no Spiritual culture because nobody’s up to it. And this has all been institutionalized; in other words, it has become Adidam. It has become okay to be this way–not only okay, it’s the way it’s supposed to be.
So instead of you all being in this mummery which brought Me to near death 21 years ago in a profound Event, that makes it no longer possible for Me to be Submitted here. Instead of that being it, and you are utterly transformed by it, you have some ceremony to do to forget that principle, to
forget the whole point of it.
Now, it’s sing-along, dance along with a funny wooden horse. It has no meaning at all, except it gives everybody some pleasant little fire ceremony to attend; walk along, ringing bells, carry this horse. Meanwhile, what do they do for Me? All they do is defend themselves, hide themselves. Act like they own My Island like the employees do. Act like they have a right to tell Me what I’m going
to do. Act like they have a right to revise My Teaching, to change this Way into something it is not, to be something with Me that is unlawful and insubordinate.
Adi Da Samraj, 2008
A Way Out? (paradoxically speaking!)
Life is a creative opportunity, motivated by frustration of the impulse of life toward ecstasy. There is no factual end to the struggle. There is at best a human maturity, in which frustration is not permitted to become negatively dominant, permitting no change or motion. Rather, frustration is maintained as a positive or creative circumstance for motion, change, and, ultimately, ecstatic participation in the Transcendental Reality. – The Creative Function of Life-Frustration
A conversation clearly need to happen…..
“I was devoted to the understanding of the problem of the mind rather than to its solution.” – The Knee of Listening