A Beezone adapted talk by Da Free John October 30, 1985 –
See original:
A Practice Consideration in the Early Stages of Adi Da’s Teaching Demonstration
Adi Da Samraj: Your involvement in the spiritual process will move attention through stages with the result that at some point it will be natural for you to sit and observe subtle phenomena and pass beyond them, just as at the present time it is gross phenomena that you more naturally observe and pass beyond. Moving beyond gross phenomena characterizes your practice in early stages, but what you realize in meditation is the same as that which may be realized in the higher stages. What difference does it make whether you pass through gross phenomena or subtle phenomena to realize the same Condition? There is no difference.
“Your meditation will be evidenced in transformations of your ordinary life, not vice versa.”
When it is more natural for meditation to take place in the context of subtle phenomena, or higher stage phenomena, then that will be the kind of meditation you will be obliged to realize. It will come quite naturally as a result of your having fulfilled your present stage of practice, just as changes in your psycho-physical life, in the frontal personality, will occur as a result of your spiritual practice. Your meditation will be evidenced in transformations of your ordinary life, not vice versa. You will not make fundamental changes in your ordinary, psycho-physical life until you enter into the spiritual process.
Therefore, changes in the frontal life are not proposed to you idealistically. You are not called to perfect your frontal life on the basis of an ideal. Rather, on the basis of hearing and seeing you enter into the spiritual process. You must give yourself up to that completely and allow it to show evidence in and out of meditation. Allow transformations to occur on the basis of your spiritual life rather than struggle to make changes on an idealistic basis.
Thus, the practice at the early stages is the real spiritual process. From beginning to end it is a matter of Divine Communion. At the beginning of any meditation you tend to be in the position of the knots, of the self-contraction, and you move beyond them through the practice of Divine Communion (Hearing and Seeing). Ultimately, and quite naturally, you will realize a condition in meditation that transcends the body-mind, transcends conditional existence. In other words, you will realize Divine Communion. You will not realize anything other than that when you pass through and beyond subtle phenomena, and therefore there is nothing preferable about the higher stages.
What you must realize is That which is to be Realized, and you must realize it presently in the context of whatever is arising. If gross phenomena are arising, then you must realize the Divine presently in that context. If subtle phenomena arise, then you must include that in your meditation. That is the logic that produces the seven stages. The Way is not progressive God- Realization, it is God-Realization from the beginning. However, the practice of the process of God-Realization in the context of conditional existence naturally, inevitably, and progressively develops the signs of the seven stages.
What, then, are you called to realize in the early stage when you pass through and beyond the frontal knots? You are called to realize the Divine, the spiritual, Transcendental, and Divine Condition. You are called to realize That which transcends pain, fear, attachment, sorrow, sex, pleasure, frustration, anger, unlove, suppression of being, suppression of fullness of bliss, chaos of life, doubt, confusion. You must pass through and beyond those literal, ordinary, human conditions. You are not called to bypass them by imagining a visionary reality that is an alternative to gross existence. Rather, you are called to participate directly, as what you appear to be, in the Living, All-Pervading, Absolute Divine Condition.
All you need overcome at the early stages are the gross phenomena. You need not worry about subtle phenomena. You must transcend yourself. Self-transcendence is not a matter of attaining superior objects of attention or of self-fulfillment. Self-transcendence occurs in the context of what presently arises without committing the aggressive act of dissociation from what is presently arising.
I complain that there are not more people moving into the higher stages because you are not really doing the yoga of early stages. You are fans of spiritual life and you tend to think of spiritual life in terms of subtle phenomena, inwardness, states dissociated from the body, and so on. You tend not to really practice the yoga of self-understanding and self-transcendence in Divine Communion. You idealize subtler objects and do not really want to confront and deal with the grosser ones. Likewise you tend not to practice self-transcendence in life.
What I am complaining about, the basis of my urgency with you, is your being fans of spiritual life, not truly practicing the yoga you are already given. What I am really complaining about is that you are not truly practicing the stage you are in. Why do I complain when you are taking a long time being a beginning practitioner? Not because you are a beginning practitioner, but because you are not really a beginning practitioner. You are fan of spiritual life.
You think (you are) spiritual because it sounds like a good idea. You cannot truly practice that because it is not your experience. You cannot practice it in any case because you have not fulfilled the lower stages, you have not passed beyond the egoity of the lower stages of life. Therefore, it makes no difference if you do see Me in a vision. It does not change anything. You must still deal with the egoic obstruction in the frontal line. If you did that and no subtle phenomena arose you would live the life of Samadhi, because there would be no objective form, no conditional state, limiting your realization of God.
In th(e) early stages you must go beyond fear, you must go beyond sorrow and attachment, you must go beyond the motivation to indulge the body in various pleasures, you must go beyond frustration, and you must go beyond the angry reaction to frustration. All these things are quite natural to you. You experience them in daily life. They come up in daily life and they come up when you’re sitting in meditation.
However, these emotions are not the meditation. They are the natural arising objects that tend to claim attention, but you are free to pass beyond them because you are intimately aware (based on hearing and seeing) of the Divine Presence. Therefore, you can grant attention to the Divine Presence. If you feel into the Divine Presence these phenomena cease, they lose their seed. You have deflected the motion. You have passed into another motion. That reactive motion becomes obsolete by not granting attention to it in the usual way. By granting attention to the Divine Condition, these conditional motions lose their seed, their motive. They fall away in the fullness of Divine Communion.
The Yoga of the Frontal Personality
In the frontal yoga, the phenomena that dissolve tend to do so progressivel. The busy, doubting mind relaxes. The chaotic or suppressed nature of the Life-Force moving through the throat relaxes. More fullness comes. The basic cramp of unlove and emotional dis-ease relaxes. Over time you will progressively and more and more fully and deeply transcend the base emotions, the base reactivity of anger, sorrow, and fear. If you do the yoga of the frontal personality, you will transcend those reactive states and enter into the fullness of Divine Communion, utterly free of fear, sorrow, and anger—not experiencing another psycho-physical state, but transcending psycho-physical states in direct Communion with That which Is, the One who Is.
If you practice this from day to day, over time the fullness of the Current will eventually pass through the frontal personality. The chronic evidence of these contractions will relax, be more easily and naturally dealt with. The frontal personality will become more and more spiritualized by this contemplation. Then the Current is free to move more fully by turning about in the base and moving up the spinal line and on through the total course I have described to you.
As chronic obstructions that are more superficial in the line of the Current are stably, fundamentally overcome, the Current moves further. Other objects or contractions must be transcended in basically the same fashion until the whole line of the Current is fundamentally liberated from the disease of self. That is Enlightenment in the fullest sense.
Even in the seventh stage of life all of the natural evidence of conditional existence arises, but it is thoroughly recognized. There is no effective contraction. It is all recognizable. Life becomes a creative play, one with the Divine. Until then there are various knots, various signs of being a conditional being, knots in the Current, from the right side of the heart up, and down and up throughout this Circle or Arrow in the structure of conditional being.
You do not fulfill the process completely until there is complete transcendence. Conditions will continue to arise. Progressively you will see more and more and will be obliged to transcend more and more. In any moment, however, you do not have to transcend any more than what arises. Therefore, Divine Realization in the fullest sense is possible in any moment or at any stage of life.
I am responsible for this consideration and you are responsible for the practice of it.