This Way Is Not a Way of
Conductivity, nor a Spirit Religion, nor a Fourth or Fifth
Stage Practice
SPIRITUAL MASTER: Recently, I have tried to make clear that conductivity, the practice of equanimity, and all the life disciplines are basic practices. They are expressions of the point of view of understanding, and by application to these disciplines, energy and attention are released for the conscious process or the ultimate process of Realization. But this is not a Way of conductivity, not a conventional Spirit religion. It is not a fourth or a fifth stage practice. Thus, even the
considerations of Ignorance and the propositions developed on its basis must be viewed in the context of the argument
of understanding.
The basic proposition of the three-part consideration of Ignorance is Ignorance itself,the realization that “I” do not know what anything is. The developments of that argument are the basis for understanding the discipline of conductivity associated with this Way. But these further implications – “I” is the body and “‘I’ -am-the-body is love” – are secondary to the ultimate proposition of Ignorance, just as the argument of Ignorance itself supports the fundamental argument about
Narcissus.
If you do not found yourself in this radical disposition, then the practice of the disciplines associated with conductivity, or the maintenance of equanimity, are transformed by your conventional disposition into forms of seeking, forms of the conventional exercise of energy and attention. Everything is transformed by the unenlightened mind into itself, just as you would describe. everything as bluish if you put on blue glasses. The conventional mind, which is the expression of unhappiness or the unenlightened disposition, transforms everything into itself. Such a mind studies this Teaching, for instance, and makes it into something other than a real proposition, something other than radical consideration or understanding, a path expressing one or another or a combination of the first six stages of life.
Therefore, the Way must be founded in the radical disposition of understanding. The understanding and transcendence of the self-contraction or the pattern of Narcissus is the basis of our Way, and it is an expression of the wisdom of the seventh stage. By practicing on the basis of that disposition, you overcome the limitations, the motivations, the seeking, the conditional orientation of the first six stages of life, even as the phenomena associated with those stages arise as
states of mind and experience.
If this radical point of view is not maintained as ‘the foundation of practice, the Teaching eventually becomes not the Way of Radical Understanding but a conventional seeker’s path that begins with the fourth stage of life and ultimately seeks to attain the seventh stage of life. But of course the conventional path does not realize the seventh stage. You do not reach the seventh stage through the first six. The point about the seventh stage of life is that it is not attained at the end of six
stages. It is the transcendence of the first six stages, which are not a direct route to the seventh. The special nature of the seventh stage of life is that it is not a consequence of the first six stages, but it is their Truth. The disposition of the seventh stage of life is a radical point of view that can be developed at any time, at any point of any stage of life. Any traditional occupation or any moment of existence is the sufficient setting for the awakening of this radical point of view, which must be the point of view of practice.
In the development of this Teaching and its elaboration with people who are primarily beginners, I have developed considerations based on traditional language. I have worked toward a radical understanding of practice by first putting attention on the conventions of the stages of life. Therefore, throughout the elaborate literature of this Way, I have used such words as “Spirit” and “incarnation” and other traditional religious language. I have used the language of the traditional paths associated with the first six stages of life, but in a consideration that ultimately is oriented toward, radical understanding. I have considered those conventional conceptions because people’s minds and inclinations are associated with them.
However, you must understand that the conventions of the traditions, apart from their most radical conception, are extensions of egoity, or the self-contraction of Narcissus. This is not to say that there is nothing whatsoever valuable about them in some ordinary sense. Traditional teachings may very well represent a more positive human conception than the usual street-level mentality, but, from the point of view of Truth or ultimate Realization or true Happiness or the very Realization that the traditions all hope to attain, the occupations of the stages are fruitless.
Why? Well, consider the argument of this Teaching itself. It is often a very subtle, very profound argument that requires the real participation of attention to make its point. You must awaken to the disposition that is the ultimate consequence of this argument. Thus, none of the key words or concepts of the traditions is an appropriate expression of this Way that I
Teach because these concepts do not describe the actual Realization of the seventh stage. Having considered the use
of traditional terms, I sometimes use them in my own language as ways of expressing what I want to say in one
context or another. But only radical understanding expressed as enquiry and re-cognition is the point of view of this
Way.
If we understand in the radical sense, if we understand the pattern of Narcissus or the self-contraction, it is obvious that “I” do not know what anything is. It is also obvious that “I” is the body. And the natural state of the body is continuity with or surrender into the universal Life-Field. “I’ is the body” is a confession of Love or Radiance or Bliss. All three of
these considerations follow from the first or ultimate one of understanding the pattern of Narcissus, and all of them
together express the point of view of this Way. This radical disposition is expressed in application to disciplines that
conserve the body-mind and maintain its equanimity, leaving attention free for the conscious process, the ultimate
Occupation.
If we are rightly practicing, our life is expressed through the disciplines and through bodily surrender into the Life-Principle. But the life-disciplines and surrender are only the secondary aura of the fundamental disposition of understanding that is operative in this moment.
To try to base the Way on descriptions of Reality prior to the Realization of Reality is a difficult business and makes room for the errors of the unenlightened. From the radical point of view, the Enlightened point of view, it is obvious that there is only the Radiant Transcendental Being, which is the Identity of all beings, the Condition of phenomena, the Condition of the world. This is the same as saying “Brahman is the world.”5 As a consequence of that Realization you could say that the world is a modification of the Transcendental Reality. Therefore, you could say that the world is pervaded by the Divine or the Spirit, or that the world is the Divine.
5. The expression of the ultimate Realization of Upanishadic Vedanta and one of the traditional formulae by which the seventh stage of life is confessed by the Free Adept.
However, description is the only part of the conception of Realization that the unenlightened mind tends to grasp. Taken by itself the Spirit message is a consoling message, like, “Oh, there is God everywhere. I can feel into That then.” The Enlightened point of view, when taken on by the unenlightened mind, is transformed into unenlightened propositions. The world is not God except from the point of view of Enlightenment. The world is not Brahman except from the point of view of Realization.
Thus, the idea that the spiritual process in its ultimate form transforms the body-mind, transfigures it, makes it a locus for the incarnation of the Divine is a natural basis for considering the ultimate implications of understanding. Scientific Proof of the Existence of God Will Soon Be Announced by the White House among other books, meditates on this aspect of the logic of the Way. On the other hand, the point of view of incarnating the Divine is part of the consciousness of Spirit religion, and to become exclusively involved in the ideal of incarnating the Spirit is a way of bypassing the radical point of view of this Way. Egoic religionists like the conception of the world pervaded by a Spirit that is, helping them and that they can incarnate ultimately. This ideal is congenial to the ego, the self-center, the self-contraction that wants to preserve its own status. But the real laws of incarnation are bypassed by this same proposition. The Spirit that can be incarnated is the Spirit of Love, the Spirit of Sacrifice, the Spirit of self-transcendence, of no-self. The Spirit is not merely a substance that the ego can contact and draw into itself, like a universal ectoplasm that fattens you with bliss. That is not the nature of the Spirit of the Divine.
This Way is not about the idealism of incarnating the Spiritual Divine, which is an egoic proposition. Yet the Spiritual Divine is Really incarnated on the basis of this ultimate Wisdom. It is a paradox, you see. You must found yourself in the radical Wisdom in order to understand properly the true implications of Ignorance. Realization of Communion with the Spiritual Divine requires self-sacrifice, self-transcendence. The process of incarnation, therefore, is sacrifice, self-transcendence. It is not love in the conventional religious sense, which is just a kind of romance with God. It is Love in the Enlightened sense. It is Wisdom, crucifixion of the ego, passing through the hard school of self-transcendence.
Conductivity, therefore, is a basic practice in this Way. It is associated with the attitude of going beyond the self-contraction and allowing attention to be focused in understanding in this moment through the conscious process. By the conscious process I mean enquiry and its ultimate development, which is re-cognition. The conscious process is the Way, the practice. Conductivity or the disciplines of equanimity are expressions of this Way if we are founded in understanding. Apart from the foundation of understanding, even the disciplines are an ordinary occupation, fruitless for the sake of Enlightenment.
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