The ‘Use’ of The Spiritual Master
a talk by Adi Da Samraj, November 1983.
“Most people are using me only to the degree that will improve their human circumstance”
ADI DA SAMRAJ: I spent all those years developing the culture of your approach to me. Now approach me. Become involved in the Siddhi of my Company. Spend your time here doing that.
It is no easy matter to use me perfectly. It is not even an easy matter to use me seriously, significantly. The more profound you want the result of my Company to be, the more difficult the course becomes. It is easiest of all to deny or relinquish my Company altogether.
Most people are using me only to the degree that will improve their human circumstance, their general state of mind, of body, their general social condition. Such improvement is good, but it results from a merely exoteric or conventional use of my Company. It is not that you should not use me for that purpose at all, but it is the least of it, and it is also the easiest to do.
Truly, I am calling you to use my Company so that you will, at the very least, outgrow human embodiment. I am not calling you to bring an end to the cycle of reincarnation as Hindu seekers do, because of a negative view of manifest existence. I am calling you to Realize the Divine and truly fulfill the purpose of human existence. If you do, then you will fulfill human existence. And because you can only fulfill human existence through self-transcendence, you will outgrow human existence. To do so, you must go through the entire course of self-knowing and self-transcendence. It is an immensely difficult process. It requires you to deal with conditions in and below consciousness, beyond the ordinary mind, and also in the depths of your personality, deeper than the social personality. You must be willing to encounter your weak side, your dark side, your confused side, your hidden side, and you must be willing to make your submission in the depths of the personality rather than in its superficial, outer aspects.
Those who have been living with me face to face in Fiji are—I would not say used to it by now, but somehow or other accustomed to this obligation. Even if they were not terribly serious at the beginning or did not even want to become serious, and even if they do not want to be serious about it now, they have nevertheless dared to come and live here with me, and so they have all become involved in this course that requires dealing with the depths of the personality, going beyond the conventional arrangements of the personality that merely serve the outer improvements in the quality of living. Therefore, they have all become involved in the struggle with self and the struggle involved in self-knowing and self-submission.
I am engaged in this struggle with them because this Hermitage must become a unique place that serves unique people, people who are serious about and advance in the practice of the Way that I Teach. The Hermitage community is the “place” where individuals will come on pilgrimage. The members of this community are just as much the place to which devotees will come as the physical environment here. Anyone who lives here, then, must submit to this difficult course.
November 17, 1983