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ESOTERIC ANATOMY AND THE GREAT
TRADITIONS OF HUMAN HISTORY
Human History Is One Great
Tradition
Adi Da Samraj
August 19, 2004
edited by Beezone (see
original talk)
The
Great Tradition did not arise based on understanding that
there are seven stages of life. Nobody knew they were seven
stage of life until I told you there are seven stages of
life.
So having explained that to you all,
and explaining it in terms of the esoteric anatomy of the
human being, I’ve shown you how the traditions can be seen,
each and every one of them using this key or this tool can
be seen as manifestations of one or the other of the
orientations that characterize one or the other of the
stages of life.
There are many different schools and
modes of tradition and practice, many different teachers and
many teachers with many different kinds of orientations and
manner of working.
Many different countries had
pre-existing traditions of one kind or another to one degree
or another affecting or integrated within virtually all
traditions. Any tradition that has any kind of time of
existence with any kind of history behind it has developed
varieties of itself.
So there’s no one thing that’s
anything. Well how do you make sense out of all this
complexity? Well I’ve told you. If you use the tool of my
instruction relative to the esoteric anatomy of man and the
seven stages of life, you can understand any communication
at all made within the great tradition at any time and the
basket of tolerance is a demonstration of this
fact.
If you use this tool then there is
no need to be confused because you can identify the
universals within all the particulars so you can examine any
particular tradition and see by its evidence what elements
of the stages of life and of the esoteric anatomy fully
understood are being specifically activated or addressed In
that tradition.
So there is a tool or key for
understanding traditions and I’ve given it to you and the
basket of tolerance is my essential communication about it
in relation to the great tradition.
If you read the scriptures of the
tradition, it’s a lot of doing. It’s a lot of thinking. It’s
a lot of talking, a lot of doing, a lot of philosophizing, a
lot of kinds of practicing.
All of that for a tacit
understanding? (Laughter) Nothing else? Nothing more? What
is the point? Why don’t you just understand and be quiet
then. If it’s that simple and in some sense that’s true. No
matter what arises, even attention himself, any thought,
anything at all, no matter what arises, you are merely the
witness.
You’re not doing it. You’re not
doing anything whatsoever. You’re not making anything
happen. Nothing’s happening to you. It’s always already the
case that you are just that so why don’t you get that tacit
understanding and nothing more?
You know I’ve made it perfectly
plain to you, narcissic. (Laughter) Well, as long as there
is the presumption of point of view, as long as there is the
self-contraction, practices are required. Process is
required. Thinking occurs and you think you’re doing it.
Actions occur and you think you’re doing them. Reactions
occur and you think they’re yours.
Because you’re making an error
and…you can’t stop committing
that error even when it is pointed out to you that you are
doing it. Even when I say to you and remind you plainly, no
matter what arises, no matter what arises now, even now,
apparent now, You are merely the witness neither causing nor
experiencing, not separate, always already established as
the divine self-condition itself.
You know very well that’s not true
and that’s the metaphor for your error. That knowledge is
false but you can’t be convinced otherwise because it’s
true. That’s why it’s impossible to solve this problem. It
is impossible to get on the other side of the
world.
It’s like the motorist who drives up
to a man when he was mowing his lawn and was going over to
his car and he asked him for directions to a particular
location. He thought about it for a while and he said, “You
can’t get there from here.”
That doesn’t mean there is no
process of realization. There is one.
There are ways to seek realization
but there is an actual process of realization. The way I
have revealed to you is a process of realization, not a
method or a technique for seeking it. You can change it. You
can transform it, revise it into a search or an activity of
the separate ego but that’s simply to falsify the teachings
to misunderstand the practice or refuse it.
The precise way I have given you is
the precise way of realization and it exactly entirely from
the beginning, the way that does not seek realization. It is
the way of realization, the realization of that which is
already the case.
Therefore, it is the way that is
perfectly pure from the beginning.
When you find the true water, you
give yourself up.
Today most of what is being offered
is philosophies and techniques. When the word transmission
is used they mean the transmission of philosophy and
technique.
Philosophy and techniques and the
company of the Master. That more than anything else is what
they received and were offered is that company because that
is the principle offering within the esoteric traditions.
Any principle instruction maximizes the amount of time we
spend in the company of your Realizer Master.
This will be purifying in following
your master’s instructions explicitly and completely and
unreservedly. So fundamentally you’ve got the Company of the
Master. Secondarily you get philosophy and instruction and
practices.
Occasionally there is a direct
transmission of the Master’s state, a spiritual
means.
Blessings of various kinds are given
but spiritual transmission itself in the various forms in
which it is possible is rare And there are various forms of
it depending on the nature of the Master the degree of the
Master in terms of realization, the mode of realization
associated with the master, the stage of life of which the
master’s life is associated, and the master’s degree of
realization within it.
There are a lot of energy
transmissions that occur in some schools of yoga but they’re
not great transmissions. They are not, generally speaking,
they are not lasting, just temporary phenomena and minor
phenomena, generally speaking, lower based.
They are more on the nature of what
is traditionally called a pranathon or a transmission of
prana or simply bio energy. Taoist traditions, Chinese
martial arts traditions and so forth that speak of chi and
all kinds of activities that are brought to this. We’re not
talking about bio energies. It’s just not spiritual of
course in the ultimate sense of what that term should be and
understood to me and so also then many yoga transmitters are
transmitting bio or lower based energy.
That’s why also the kundalini
tradition described the way it is, described his energy
rising up from below in a gradual progress upwards. That
involves purification of various levels and degrees getting
from the lowest level on up with different manifestations as
it rises.
It is being described as an energy
already in the human body and it has to be simply stimulated
and made to rise and do various kinds of purification and so
forth and be occasionally re-identified and intensified by
the transmitter and so on.
So there are many kinds of
traditions that are called spiritual traditions. It’s not
just one thing but I’ve explained these things to you given
the means and tools to understand them. If you were to study
the great tradition and I call upon you to study the great
tradition to some significant degree and to do so
formally.
What’s the purpose of this? It’s
like reading a menu at select a tradition time. No, it’s not
about doing any of that nonsense. It’s about being purified
of your own provincialism as taught to you in some matters
of belief and traditions here and the last occasion or two
we met. There are all kinds of beliefs that people believe
or say they believe or want to believe, would like to have
be true, whatever.
It doesn’t mean they are true. If
you study in depth and altogether have comprehension of the
nature of the phenomena associated with these traditions and
you can see them in terms of the stages of life, the
esoteric anatomy of human possibility, and you can also see
them in the historical terms and how they developed in the
social and cultural context of human history.
Then instead of simply being a
naïve believer or naïve agnostic, naïve
atheist or a naïve anything, you transcend the
limitations of your own thinking, your own provincialism of
mind, and can see any and all traditions clearly.
They all are authentic in the sense
that they all exhibit dimensions of the stages of life
aspects of the esoteric anatomy of human possibility. Myths
aren’t merely false. They are ways of conveying meaning that
has religious significance or philosophical significance
with some relevance to a spiritual understanding of life and
so forth.
Some things may not be historically
true and some traditions where something is said to a fact
may historically be true but that doesn’t mean that what is
said is not true in any sense at all.
Most people, even Hindus, whose
culture is the source of the Bhagavad Gita are not concerned
whether or not Krishna actually lived as a historical person
or Arjuna.
Some people want very much to
believe that but that’s just some sectarians. Generally
speaking, that’s not the point. It’s a story form, a
literary form used to convey certain meanings about the
nature of life and realization of the divine
condition.
So as a conveyor of that it has its
kinds of authenticity and its references to stages of life
and esoteric anatomy and so forth. It’s true in relation to
universals. Christianity is true in relation to certain
universals. Judaism is as all traditions are true with
respect to the universals.
Whether they are true in their
various parts historically is another question and very
often things that are said to be true some people believe to
be true historically are not historically true. That doesn’t
mean there is something extremely negative there or just
plain old wrong.
What is the difference between
Christianity as a metaphor for spiritual things and
Christianity as an historical polaroid of real happenings.
Well that of course is important to some but to many it
wouldn’t seem to be of any great importance. It’s still
conveying truths through metaphors, various kinds of stories
and moral pronouncements and so on.
So it can be seen in the
circumstance of the great tradition as being authentic
relative to universals and can be accepted in those terms
like virtually all traditions. So when you dogmatically
insist that something is true in a sense that it is not,
that’s your provincial mind and force of egoity start
working in the name of religion and that’s a great source of
conflict in the world and in the lives of
individuals.
I made this basket of tolerance to
use these tools to go beyond provincialism of your own
limitations of your own mind and learning and upbringing and
everything that was absorbed by you in your childhood in
your life altogether and in many ways it has been shocking
to do this. Getting your real education is to get a real
comeuppance and that’s relative to all elements of the great
tradition then. To cease to be naïve about it all is a
difficult experience, a difficult education, but it doesn’t
lead to despair if rightly done and if you understand all of
human history in terms, of as I’ve shown you as being one
great tradition dealing with universals beginning with that
universal context which is the structure of the human being
properly understood as a full esoterical aberration, then it
is possible to be free of all provincialism and not
despair.
It is possible to have all of your
belief systems ripped off and not despair because you can
understand even tacitly what it is about even in universally
real terms. So I call all of my devotees to endure this
basic education about the great traditions of everybody
altogether: one boat, one tradition, and still that which is
truth, that which is real god, reality itself, remains and
is not in doubt.
If you read the book of life only in
part, doubts will kill you. They will drive you mad. You
have to read the whole book and then when you lift your head
up from the last page, it will be self-evidently obviously
clearly so that it is pure from the beginning.
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