|
CRAZY WISDOM
Volume 5, Number 2
MARCH/APRIL 1987
The Survival of the Community of Devotees
a conversation with Heart-Master Da Love-Ananda
May 19, 1980
HEART-MASTER DA: The members of this Communion must
function in the realities of this world and also engage in
Spiritual practice. Yet they are acting as if they live
forever and as if the world will continue to be a TV-land
forever. Practitioners must understand the circumstances in
which we live and they must understand what the Communion
must do. There should be no “ifs”, no conditions on the
survival of this Wisdom-Teaching in the world. This
institution is not like a business that may or may not
survive. It therefore requires a profound commitment of
energy and intelligence to insure.
Many long-standing prophecies from many sources foresee
that the entire population of the world will be reduced to a
fraction of its size through a combination of wars, natural
disasters, and plagues. This dimension of the karma of
humans may affect the experience of the world profoundly,
and it must be taken into account. If the Communion is to
survive, even though many may be lost, there must be
locations in many areas of the world where a certain number
of members of the Community exist. Then the Wisdom-Teaching
in the world can survive, and centers of practice can be
part of a regeneration of the Communion in the future-if
such profound negative effects will actually be suffered.
Therefore, it is in the interest of the Communion, as a
cultural entity, to create renunciate hermitages in isolated
areas and to support them for the survival of the
Wisdom-Teaching and for the practical survival of
devotees.
The Sanctuaries and the Spiritual Masters residences will
always be the principal form of a renunciate hermitage. But
a number of places could be established in other locales so
that the Spiritual Master could reside in any one of them.
Such hermitages should be in places that are so isolated
that they would not likely be affected by war and political
influence. Each could be inhabited by a small group of
people. Each should be a repository of the Wisdom-Teaching.
Each hermitage should also contain a good library, and
people should live there who are practicing in the advanced
stages of the Way. The hermitages should be self-sustaining
environments for educational and priestly activity to
preserve and communicate the Wisdom-Teaching and to maintain
the Sacred Influence within the Community of devotees.
Even if there is no holocaust, it is still reasonable to
do all this, because we live in a world that is distracted
by itself, corrupted, and turned in on itself, a place where
human beings are easily deluded. This is the reason for the
evolution of the Spiritual Community, which must pursue its
cultural integrity through the creation of its own centers
of activity. The principle of these centers is Satsang, an
essential Spiritual life, and “Good Company”, including the
Company of God, the Company of the Spiritual Master, and the
company of devotees.
It is reasonable to do all of this if there should be a
holocaust. The Communion might well have to deal with many
eventual negative effects. The first would be a full
holocaust, such as a war or other such disaster. The second
would be dramatic political and economic changes, and the
third would be the inevitable influence of deluded humans,
which always exists.
We must therefore create cultural environments where
Spiritual life can be practiced. We must do all this while
remembering that as long as it takes and to whatever degree
possible we must function for the sake of others. The
Communion must always be the vehicle for the education of
the world and for the intelligent consideration of the
Wisdom-Teaching in the world. We must be outer-directed
while at the same time not undermining ourselves.
|