The following is a short summary of a talk by Adi Da Samraj on May 19, 1995, entitled, ‘Being Without a World’. The discourse is included in a series of talks called ‘The Completing Discourses of the 25-Year Revelation’.
The full talk follows this summary.
Paradox
“You say you want realization but fundamentally, you as ego, do not”
Until you Realize the Witness-Position and I mean being established in it, fundamentally you would not choose it. So, here we have a paradox. You want, or you say you want realization but fundamentally, you as ego, do not. You have one foot on the gas pedal and one foot on the brake. And why is that? Because of fear.
Fear of being without a ‘you’ and fear of being without a world. Remember, they all go together – identification, differentiation, and desire – all arise spontaneously, instantly, and mysteriously.
So, until you are established in the Witness-Position (and you cannot do that by seeking) you will always seek a world, a place to be, a place, an object to identify with.
“Until you are so stabilized by purifying sadhana that you can accept the Witness you will always abandon it in order to get yourself a world.”
Adi Da goes on the explain that energies from that which is Prior to conditional existence are passed into the cosmic domain and into apparent personal existence. As this occurs, fear, the sensation of the knot of self-identification and it’s difficulties are intensified. The apparent separate one will then seek and do everything possible to have a world, a location to exist in.
DEVOTEE: Beloved, it seems interesting that in the first five stages of life the self-contraction has taken this form of wanting to make sure of having a world, but in the sixth stage it is about not having a world, in some sense.
ADI DA SAMRAJ: Exactly that! But the sixth stage of life is not only about the device or exercise to not have a world, it is about entering into that Domain that is Prior to the cosmic domain (sixth stage). And this is why, traditionally, sixth stage disciplines were not given to householders or to unprepared people. They were given to advanced ascetics, or advanced renunciates in one form or another, who had come to the point of relinquishing attachment to having a world, or to being a separate being within a world. People in the context of the first five stages of life generally do not have that disposition. They very much want a world, and do anything to keep having one.
Attention wants to have a world and insists on doing everything possible to have a world – not only a world, but a congenial one, because attention is identified with the body-mind. And no body-mind wants nothing. Identified with the body-mind, you are horrified by the prospect of absolute isolation. You exist as a personality with all of its inclinations and wants for a world.
