The Wisdom That Transcends All
Phenomena
Originally published in Vision Mound Magazine, Vol. 2,
No. 4, October 1978
BUBBA: The usual man is obsessed with his body-mind, his
psycho-physical experience. He is driven by desire,
motivated to seek conditions that give him pleasure and to
avoid other conditions that make him suffer. Thus, he
repeats the same patterns of desire and fulfillment, coming
and going, again and again and again. He animates a complex,
obsessed life based on his attachment to his own
experiential structures. In response to the suffering that
such a life represents, human beings have developed ways to
create a sense of release from that suffering – commonly via
the exploitation of money, food, and sex.
A truly human life, a spiritual life, however, is not the
pursuit of an existence that is satisfied by the things of
this world. The things and processes of this world,
including the structures of this body-mind itself, which we
appear to represent, are always changing. They are a
torment. That is the message of the universe. The world is a
great machine that is not at all conspiring to make you
happy and immortal. That is not what the universe is about.
The universe is simply a great display of possibility.
Nothing is of any ultimate or superior value and no
experience is permanent within the universe.
The universe is not made for survival. It is a great play
of changes. But because you appear in the form of an
independent body-mind, you imagine then that the purpose of
the universe is aligned with your independent existence. But
truly the universe is eternally founded in the Absolute
Reality, the motiveless Divine. It does not take independent
entities, or souls, into account. There are no such souls.
There is only the Absolute Nature or Reality. And you can
see very well that that is exactly how the universe
functions. The universe is a great program of changes, in
which everything, including all apparently independent
souls, is eaten, devoured, changed, in which everything is
temporary. Everything that one might crave changes,
everything that one might attain or own passes; it is
available and then it becomes unavailable.
But paradoxically the awareness of the fact that one is
tormented and ultimately doomed to death is an advantage to
one who is truly sensitive to it. The clear recognition of
the native limitations of this mechanical body-mind and this
world is the advantage of such a one. It is the origin of
his true Awakening to God.
Thus, to have a bad day and to wonder suddenly if you
want to live this Way of life anymore is completely absurd.
The practice of this Way of life is based on realizing that
life is filled with bad days, that life itself is a bad day,
that it is fundamentally obnoxious, tormented, and deluded,
that anytime you become possessed by yourself, your changes,
your experiences, your body-mind, you suffer the most acute
torment and bewilderment. Having recognized this, you turn
to the Way of Truth because you are no longer willing to be
tormented and bewildered. Thus, you can have profound humor
on your bad days and still maintain true intelligence on
your better days.
The awakening of such insight, such intuition of the
Divine Reality, is humorous. It establishes one in a new,
truly spiritual, or humorous relationship to the conditions
of existence, in which one inheres in the Condition of
conditions rather than in the conditions themselves, the
play of phenomena. One inheres in the transcendental
Condition of things, not in the subtle inwardness behind the
grosser quality of things, which is only another form of
suffering.
“Once we are aligned to the
insight that transcends the phenomena and effects of
experience, it is no longer possible to abandon the Way of
life in Truth, because our capacity to live it is no longer
dependent on the disposition or condition of the body-mind
itself. It is simply dependent on insight”
It is always a struggle to maintain a sense of order and
pleasurableness in your daily life. Seeing this, the
intelligent individual, the devotee who also practices the
Way of life in Truth, minimizes his associations with the
more vulgar spectrum of humanity. He minimizes his demands
and his daily needs. He finds a way to live economically and
essentially, rather than exaggeratedly, in association with
all of the craziness of the world. Even so, just to enjoy an
ordinary life, in a relatively undisturbed, natural
environment, to have shelter, food, clothing, happy
relations, ordinary household pleasures – just to have that
much order, not even on a grand scale but in relative
simplicity requires a great struggle from day to day. It
requires tremendous energy and attention. This is so even
apart from the downtown world of vulgar humanity, in which
you are constantly disturbed and aggravated.
Nevertheless, the true devotee does not renounce or turn
from the world, strategically turning inward in reaction to
experience. Rather, all the forms of his natural activity
are lived in each moment as God Communion. So he is already
free, already full of humor, already transcending the
world.
The world is absolutely without necessity. It could
vanish in a moment without consequences. There is only the
Absolute Radiant Consciousness that is the Divine, that is
Truth, that is Bliss, that is Pleasure, that is Happiness.
No phenomenon that arises changes that. The arising of
phenomena is a mystery without consequences. Therefore, only
through real insight into the pattern of experiencing can we
realize the true Way of life, not by exploiting or
suppressing the pattern of experiencing, high or low. Once
we are aligned to the insight that transcends the phenomena
and effects of experience, it is no longer possible to
abandon the Way of life in Truth, because our capacity to
live it is no longer dependent on the disposition or
condition of the body-mind itself. It is simply dependent on
insight, on present God-Communion. This God-Communion can
occur regardless of what conditions are temporarily
arising.
“All of the physical and mental
systems that you represent
must be mastered”
Therefore, the character of the devotee is strong, not
disturbed or controlled or absorbed by experience, so that
he has no regard for the Divine Reality. The devotee is a
superior person, a person of great character, not an
ordinary person. Thus, the Way of life in Truth, the Way of
Divine Ignorance, can never be a popular religion. Only
those who can awaken to a superior disposition, who can
realize great human character, can live this Way of life. It
cannot be realized by people who must maintain their
practice by hyping themselves, by dummying themselves up, by
motivating themselves through casual interest and
enthusiasm. Those who would realize this Way must truly
awaken. They must truly understand. They must truly enter
into a mature consideration of their personal life and of
Life itself, and they must engage that mature consideration
constantly.
You must overcome your immaturity, your childishness,
your ordinariness, and become superior to the changes of the
body-mind. They are inevitable. The mechanics of this
body-mind that you are living are obnoxious. They are not
fitted to God-Realization. All of the physical and mental
systems that you represent must be mastered, but in the
meantime they represent difficulty and disturbance. However,
this time of difficulty is not a time to wonder whether or
not to live this Way of life. It is the time to practice the
Way with great strength. Then the difficult periods become
the most useful of all times in this Way. They are the times
of heat, of the critical purification of the body-mind. But
if you waste these times in fretful self-involvement, making
them episodes of self-dramatization; rather than periods of
purification, then you waste the energy generated during
these times. You must instead understand the cycles of
change in the body-mind, so that you may be superior to its
phases and truly practice this Way of life without
wavering.
When the difficulties of life are lived as a form of
God-Communion, there is true asceticism. True asceticism is
not to choose the inwardness of life and to go off into
solitude. That is Narcissism, self possession only. Real
asceticism is the heroic or superior Way of life based on
present God-Communion, in which there are both moments of
pleasure and moments of pain and aggravation. But whether
the present moment is essentially pleasurable or not
pleasurable, the devotee lives in God-Communion. His
Attachment is not to his inwardness, his separateness as a
soul, nor to the inner and upward deity, glamorous in
heaven. The devotee is attached in his feeling to the
Absolute, Transcendental, Radiant, Conscious Reality, or
Divine Person. Such a devotee is more and more perfectly
combined with that Ultimate Reality, the Blissful Divine
Personality who is the Self of all existence.
|
