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My Work in the Past and the Future
a talk by Da Free John
November 1, 1981
MASTER DA: The Knee of Listening is the first expression
of the point of view of transcendence. This understanding is
the summation of my life and sadhana and Teaching. My
Teaching of others is a play with people who are disposed to
turn their attention toward one or another kind of
conditional state or object.
I have entered into Teaching occasions with people in all
of the modes of their worldliness, and all the activities to
which they devote themselves in the first three stages of
life. Having entered into the mode of their attachment and
their conventional orientation, I have instructed them in
that moment. I have attempted to awaken them to a different
orientation toward the gross conditions of existence – a
free orientation based on understanding the mechanics of
Narcissus.
I have also entered into play with people relative to
their fourth stage orientation toward Communion with the
Divine through the Name, through God ideas, and through the
Spiritual Master as a particularized form of Divine
representation. I entered into criticism of all their
fanciful ideas, misunderstanding, and wrong interpretation
of my function and that of Adepts in the past.
The Garbage and the Goddess period is an example of my
instruction relative to fifth stage phenomena, but all
throughout my Teaching Work I have given people exercises to
help them enter into the phenomena of the fifth stage of
life as well as the necessary Transmission. Then I have
criticized people’s fascination with these experiences and
helped them to apply the disposition of understanding.
I have generated this same kind of theatre relative to
the sixth stage orientation–the disposition toward the
witnessing consciousness, within and exclusive of objects. I
have given instruction such as intentional placing of
attention in the right side of the heart, which I ultimately
criticized.
The seventh stage of life is the state in which
everything is recognizable in Truth. It is the condition of
Realization in which everything appears as Reality, whereas
in the first six stages of life everything appears as
unreality. The world is unreal in the first six stages of
life. It is Real in the seventh stage of life, but it is not
necessary. It is not binding. It is utterly, tacitly
recognizable in the Radiant Transcendental Being or Brahman.
It is an utterly free condition. It is the Real condition of
birth. From a certain point of view birth is a matter of
unreality, bondage, or suffering. In the first six stages of
life it seems to be merely that. In the seventh stage of
life, life is recognizable in Reality. Life is not seen as
something necessary, or something that in itself is Real.
Rather, life is transcended in bliss. It doesn’t have the
power to create the vision of unreality. In the seventh
stage of life we enjoy the siddhi or the power of the Vision
of Reality as a perpetual realization, which cannot be
destroyed by any feature of conditional existence.
My Work in the past has been to generate the Teaching, or
intelligence of the Way, and its culture of discipline or
practice. And so I had to work to help people awaken, or
feel and intuit,beyond the limit of the conventional self. I
had to magnify to them the presence of the Radiant Identity.
It was a process of awakening people through intelligent
consideration from their self contraction and the
presumptions based upon it.
All of that involved an intimate, personal, theatrical
relationship with people. And it is precisely that intimacy,
that personal Work with people, that I have now abandoned.
In the present setting individuals who consider this Way
must choose that intelligence and culture of practice and
they themselves must maintain certainty of that
Presence.
My future Work is simply to magnify the Divine Presence
universally, and in my solitary Occupation to surrender all
beings and the total world in that Presence. My Work with
individuals is in general finished, except where I may
presume it. Thus, I may be recognized by devotees, but they
must depend on the Agencies of the Teaching, including the
Community, the Holy Places and so forth, rather than on me,
to turn them to the Radiant Identity. So through the Work of
my intimate play with individuals in the past this
intelligent consideration developed and the conscious
process was created. Through magnifying the Divine Presence
or Siddhi in their company, I established the conviction of
Its existence in those who entered into this play with me.
And I’ve established various Agencies that not only
communicate the Teaching, but which act as vehicles for this
same Siddhi. Even the Teaching itself is a vehicle for that
Siddhi. It is both an awakener of intelligence and a way of
magnifying the Divine Presence and putting a person in touch
with it.
So in the future it is this Teaching and these Agencies
to which individuals must resort who encounter this
Teaching. On the basis of intelligent consideration and the
contact that takes place through these Agencies, they must
develop and maintain the certainty of the Divine Presence.
If they will do so then my future Work will also be
effective in their case. My future Work is not with
individuals, to awaken intelligent understanding or to
magnify this Presence in their individual company. My Work
is simply to engage in the process of this Siddhi that
magnifies and focuses the Divine universally, and in the
plane of Earth. If people will make use of my Agencies then
they will also be served by me.
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