Have I Said It?
Note to reader:
As a member of Adi Da’s (then Bubba Free John’s) community from about 1973-1975, during which time I lived for nine months in Persimmon, the sanctuary where he lived. My service was to create an index of his early books. I found these writings to be compelling, along with some of the outrageous talks that have not found their way into print. Around his birthday in 1975 (to the best of my recollection), Adi Da was planning on moving with a small group to Hawaii. For that occasion, I arranged a selection of his compelling words by topic (mostly selected from his books) and hand-wrote them in a blank book for his enjoyment. As far as I know, nothing ever came of that compilation. That became Book One of two parts, the second of which I completed some time thereafter. Now through the Internet, I make both parts available to interested readers. These blank books (I made a copy for myself) have been sitting on my bookshelves all this time, and after Adi Da’s passing, it occurred to me that this compilation would be very useful to many readers.
Enjoy,
Ed Hirsch
presenceofone@yahoo.com
Ashland, Oregon
Suffering
Suffering is Your Own
Activity.
Your suffering is entirely your
own,
It is your own activity.
And it is a radically present
activity,
Not caused by something else.
You are not suffering
What is happening
Or has happened
Or will happen to you.
Your suffering is your own
activity.
Nobody put you into
Your present state.
No one is keeping you in it.
It is a present activity.
It is your present activity.
Something has already
happened.
You are already suffering.
Suffering is not your symptom,
It is your activity.
That is the paradox.
In every case
There is one fundamental
activity.
One thing is the suffering.
It is an activity, this
activity.
Our suffering is our own
activity.
It is something we are doing
Moment to moment.
It is a completely voluntary
activity.
What are you doing?
What are you always doing?
What are you doing now?
Grasp it.
Fall into truth
And grasp onto nothing after
that.
Throw away everything but
that,
And continually know that.
Fear is the very mood
Of the ego.
Fear is your creation,
Not something happening to
you.
If you are troubled
By what arises,
You are not in your proper
Relationship to things.
You are not existing
In relationship to what arises
At all.
The drama is unnecessary.
What has all of that
Got to do with you?
When you enjoy truth,
You are already free.
And if you are free,
What has all of this
Compulsive limitation
To do with you?
Why are you conditionable?
Why are you suffering
These conditions?
It is your own action.
When this contraction
Does not occur,
No conditioning occurs,
No thought binds.
There is only bliss.
All of this
Is already bliss.
Bliss is the nature of this.
Bliss is the nature of
consciousness,
Bliss is the nature of this
event.
There are lots of someplace
elses,
But they will be no more blissful for
you
Than this
if you are not
Already blissful.
If you were already free of
suffering,
It wouldn’t make any difference to
you
Whether this room appeared,
Or a ballroom in Vienna,
Or a seventh plane party!
The fact that suffering is
gone
Would be the thing
That makes you happy.
When suffering no longer
distracts,
You see that you are already
happy,
That you are happiness.
It is your own activity.
In every second,
See that it is not only
That you are disturbed,
But you are disturbing everybody
else.
You are disturbed!
You are asking questions.
You have this dilemma.
That is true.
That is the whole point.
You are suffering! Yes?
Since you are only suffering,
Why are you defending
All of this nonsense?
It is time to be rid of all of
that.
It is utterly unnecessary.
It can be abandoned!
All of that I want
surrendered.
I want to see all the beards, all the
hair,
All the mantras, all the clothing, all
of
The suffering, all of the sorrows, all of
the
Long faces, all of the yoga, all of the
visions,
All of the beliefs, all of the
philosophies,
All of the religion and
spirituality,
All of your racial and personal
history,
I want to see your birth and your
death.
I want all of it.
Such are the implications of
truth.
All attempts
To relieve the life of
suffering
By various means, remedies,
Do not produce truth.
They may heal disease.
But only truth produces truth.
Only the most radical approach
To a man’s suffering
Is useful.
I see men suffering.
While they are being truth
only,
I see them suffering.
The fact they are suffering
Doesn’t make them any less the
truth,
Any less the same thing
That is all beings, all
things.
It simply means that they are
suffering.
If you look at all beings
From the point of view of
truth,
There is only truth,
And truth has this
Little chronic problem!
It is not that truth is
absent.
Truth is always already the
case.
It is simply not obvious to
men.
Truth is not absent.
Men are suffering.
Wherever we are
Fundamentally concerned,
We are also
Fundamentally in conflict.
The you who does all of that
Is itself the suffering.
It knows nothing.
It is itself the suffering.
The man having an ecstatic
vision
Is in the same condition
As the man watching a tv
commercial.
The state of the ordinary yogi
Is as much an illusion
As the state of the
Dying, suffering man.
The only ones
Who are not suffering
Are those who are living
truth.
We are mad.
The ordinary state of our
existence,
Although it is usually kept
intact
And relatively calmed
By the politics of human
society,
Is founded in the madness of a prior
logic,
A schism in reality
That promotes the whole
suffering
Adventure of our lives
In endless and cosmic
obstacles.
All our suffering and all our
deaths
Are endured only in the
concepts,
The functions and mentality
That are guided by the unconscious
logic
Of narcissus.
Narcissus begins where there
is
A frustration of creativity.
Where there is no narcissus
There is simply unqualified creativity
and presence.
Narcissus is the reduction of the
world
To the form of his own separate
person.
Seeking is the drama of
narcissus.
He waits outside the heart.
There is no salvation for
narcissus.
Salvation is reality,
Which has nothing to do with
narcissus.
There is only reality, which is not
narcissus.
Understanding is the absence of
narcissus.
Where there is understanding, narcissus
does not arise.
Where there is the absence of
narcissus,
There is only reality.
Narcissus is dead.
Man, like every other
Manifestation in reality,
Is a totality, non-separate,
Unqualified, powerful and
perfect.
His life is universal life and
consciousness.
However, he lives as a
composite
Of separate, limited and rival
functionsm
Or as an entity
Identical to its lowest
And mortal form.
Man can enjoy God, Truth and
Reality
So he must realize that
consciously
While alive.
It requires a transformation in
him
That exceeds all that he is,
All that he tends to be,
And all that he prefers.
It requires an absolute
turnabout.
How great is that occupation,
Compared to all the bullshit
That human beings live!
This life
As it is commonly lived
Is insane.
From the moment
Of its awareness,
This life is a question.
It seems absurd
To be actually existing
And yet not to know
What actually existing is,
And to spend the entire period
Of actually existing
Trying to discover
What actually existing is!
This is an insane condition!
You want to be consoled and
fascinated.
That’s what it is.
That’s what you’re up to.
It’s not that you are trying
To understand and really
can’t.
It’s just that you are
Fundamentally, presently
Committed to that thing
That understanding would make
impossible.
If you could truly grasp
What it is
Your life is making out of
you,
You would be terrified by
that,
Not by God and the universe
And the nature of things.
You would be terrified
By your own tendencies.
Just to perceive
The point of view of the
search,
If you could truly see it,
Would be terrifying.
Suffering is the primary fact
For individual life.
Everyone is suffering
In exactly the same way.
Everything happens
appropriately,
Even for those who live
In ignorance of Truth.
It is just that, apart from
Truth,
Apart from the life of Truth,
The appropriate thing that
happens
Is suffering and death!
Nothing is about to happen
To any of you
Except death.
That’s it!
That’s your dues
For a distraction,
A good dream.
That which seeks release from
death
Must die.
Every moment
Is the moment of fearful death
And the attempt to create
That which shouldn’t die
But must die.
Everybody dies.
Everybody who has ever lived
Has died.
There is no escape from death.
Every single one of you
Is going to die.
You are going to die:
Literally and absolutely.
Not just a little bit.
It is not just your body
That is going to die.
You are going to die,
And that is the truth.
You are going to die.
Nothing that is conditional
Survives.
What is amazing,
In this manifestation of billions of
beings,
With millions of human beings,
Is that one can appear to be
born
Among so many and yet have so little
company
For a lifetime.
Because every one is obsessed!
Every one is moving that way,
The other way, at light-speed.
In the midst of all these
distractions
That we try to generate every single
moment,
As often as we can,
Basically no one knows what this
is.
No one! No one knows what it
is.
The usual man stands as a human
being
In the world
Without the slightest idea what that
is.
You don’t know where it began.
You don’t know fundamentally what it
is,
You don’t know where it goes.
Nobody knows what it is.
There is far more involved in
life
Than that of which people
Have even a little awareness.
We “get along” with one
another,
And just don’t deal with anything
fundamental.
So we don’t live as if there were God,
Truth and Reality.
But we don’t really live
As if there were not God, Truth and
Reality either.
Truly, human existence
Has not appeared in the world as
yet.
Watch human beings,
I mean literally, just watch
everyone.
All these idiotic beings.
There are billions upon
billions
Overpopulating the earth, bombing one
another,
And making treaties with one
another,
And they are totally deluded.
Not a single one of them
Has enjoyed a moment as
enlightening
As a wave on the beach!
I’m not trying to be amusing,
But that’s the way it is.
All of that
May be amusing to you,
And the dumber you are,
The more likely you are
To be amused by it!
Maybe i’m getting out of line,
But that’s the way it seems to
me!
I can’t understand how people
Can go on with it.
I mean it overwhelms me.
As soon as i think about what people
do
From day to day, I literally cannot
believe it!
I can’t understand how you put up with
it
Without screaming your brains
loose.
You just want to get it on, you
know,
Watch the news,
Suck it down and wait until
death.
I can’t understand that kind of
mentality.
But as soon as you get a little
bit
Hip to it,
As soon as it all gets really
amusing
To you,
Then Bubba Free John – Adi Da Samraj – is
here.
The world is absolutely
insane.
The world in itself and as it
is
Does not have any capacity
whatsoever
For enduring the Divine
Presence.
The Divine Manifestation
Is not permitted in this
world.
It is the ultimate taboo.
The world is a massive
resister
Of the Divine Event.
The cult of narcissus,
The cult of this world,
Is all about
The suppression of ecstasy,
The suppression of happiness.
We deny one another
The life-force
In the absence of love.
To love is to share principal
food,
To share the Divine.
We are starving.
We do not love.
To seek to find god,
To seek to be realized,
Why does that seem so obvious to
you,
So reasonable? Because you are only
reasonable.
You have ceased to be
unreasonable.
You have ceased to live in your
fundamental
And prior condition, which is
enjoyment,
Bliss, happiness, fullness in which
everything
Is justified, in which all functional
conditions
Are justified and eternally
free.
This absolute blissfulness is too
happy
For people in the usual condition to
tolerate!
It is really too much.
They can’t live with it,
They can’t function with it,
They can’t accept it.
They are always looking
For something that is just
A little aggravating!
A cultic object is allowed to be
Divine
In this world,
A conventional guru is allowed to be
Divine,
A God in a book is allowed to be
Divine,
But you are not allowed to be
Divine!
In this moment you are not
permitted
To be happy.
It is taboo.
It is taboo to be already
happy.
You must seek happiness.
It is all right to seek god.
But to realize God, Truth and Reality
while alive
Is the absolute taboo.
To start talking about God, Truth and
Reality,
To think God, Truth and Reality,
to act God, Truth and Reality,
To make the Divine
The present condition of the
world,
To life that Divine Power,
To live that light, to be
full,
That is unacceptable.
That is not permitted.
The cult of this world
Is based on the assumption
That there exists a separate
one,
Who needs to be realized
Or fulfilled or made healthy
Or made happy or whatever.
All of that is a colossal lot
Of nonsense, because there is no such
one.
There is already no such one.
You do not have to run through
Aeons of time for there to be
No such one,
To destroy this phantom ego.
There is already no such one.
He does not exist
To be destroyed.
He does not exist.
There is no reason at all
Why it should complicate
existence
To make the little reference to
“me.”
There is no profound reason
why,
On the basis of that simple
Little social reference,
You should get involved
To the depths of your psyche,
High and low,
In this egoic drama,
This assumption of narcissus.
It is just a concept,
A modification of your own
awareness,
It has no fundamental existence at
all.
You will continue to be
frightened
Of its dissolution
Until you know its
nothingness,
Until you know the Divine
Who is Omnipresent,
Who is Existence.
You are not an ego now,
And truly,
You cannot become the self of
God.
You are already that
self-nature.
The Divine Person
Is always already your
condition.
Your very Consciousness,
Your own Consciousness,
Is the Divine Self.
It is presently that Divine
Self.
It is infinite, formless,
Unqualified, unconditioned,
Absolute Consciousness.
That is your nature,
That is the nature
Of every being.
There is only
The Divine Consciousness.
And you are that.
Have I Said It?
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