Adi Da Samraj
Response to Caitlin Q.
” (does) The Mummery Book makes use of that subconscious mechanism so that the unconscious can be seen”
November 25, 2004
CAITLIN Q: Beloved Lord, thank You for drawing me here to Your Feet, for the Gift of retreat in Your Company. I’m so grateful.
After Your beautiful instruction regarding The Mummery Book at the last gathering, I did some study of Your Divine Word on the mind, and in particular, I looked in Sutra 48 of Your Dawn Horse Testament where You speak about the unique capability of man, and I found it just incredibly beautifully interwoven with the Gift of The Mummery Book, and it helped me to appreciate The Mummery Book. And I had a question about it based on Your instruction.
I also wanted to just read one paragraph: [reads] The unconscious is simply the totality of what is real but not yet fully conscious or brought to fully conscious acknowledgement and realization. Since mankind has gone so far as to become self-conscious or mentally and egoically self-aware about death, mankind must be surrendered to a process of becoming really and not egoically conscious of what is yet hidden. And this requires truly human growth beyond the first three stages of life via the human and spiritual and transcendental and most ultimately Divine Process of participatory ego-transcendence. Through such ego-transcendence, the presumed knowledge of the psycho-physical potential of death progressively becomes heart realization of the self-sacrificial wound of Divine Love-Bliss.”
That paragraph spoke particularly to me because of the hidden becoming seen, and I have experienced that in Your Mummery Book in participating in the Puja, in the Enactment.
And earlier in this Sutra, You also say that the subconscious is a mechanism for the communication from the unconscious to the conscious. And so, I wondered if The Mummery Book makes use of that subconscious mechanism so that the unconscious can be seen, as You say is necessary in this process with You.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: Certainly, yes. Whether it becomes this for the reader or someone attending a dramatization of The Mummery Book requires the individual to participate in The Mummery Book or in its performance in a manner that is a truly and profound subjective event. If it’s superficially attended in the reading or in the performance event, you see, then the assistance made by the performance or made by the Words themselves to begin with doesn’t become this depth or this profound process I’ve indicated in the Words you read. There is no breaking through of what is just below consciousness or what is beyond the grasping of mind into the field, somehow, of awareness. It won’t happen unless there is the giving over to participation.
But presuming that that does happen, then yes, what I’ve said in these terms is true, and that’s how it works. That’s how the Literature is used when it is altogether right. That’s how it is used as a performance. It makes that subjective profundity possible by assisting it through the medium of the Words, the medium of the performance based on the Words, and so on. It is intended to get at a depth, at that profundity of depth and participation, not merely to be a kind of gross entertainment or diversion for necessarily a few hours and so on, a social diversion, you see, an outward distraction. That’s why I have recently been reminding in particular those who are in the guild who perform, who will be performing it soon and over time on any number of occasions.
You must understand that you are not there merely to be diverting or to be seen or to be entertaining or to become objectively something in itself. That’s a, that’s a dead-end, so to speak, of gross conditional appearance. The performance event must assist a subjective process in those who are participating in the form of being in the audience, you see, listening, watching, experiencing it. It’s not merely to distract them outwardly. It is to work in them inwardly as it’s said. And if it doesn’t work inwardly and reach into the various depths that are in the subjective domain, then it’s not being anything except entertainment. It must be a performance-assisted subjective process, not merely an objective performance for its own sake.
So, that’s the key to how to perform it then. Obviously, there are living human beings there and a lot of other technology and modes of artistic activity and so forth, but none of it is a something that’s to be merely objective and a something in and of itself. That’s vulgar, you could say. It’s gross, grossly binding, unsatisfactory, like Bue Ma’s dance imitating Quandra. It’s not satisfactory. It’s vulgar. It has no greater dimension. It’s an outward distracting display. It’s mere imitation. It objectifies desire. It makes much of object in and of itself. The subjective participation is prevented as well as lost. It creates emptiness and despair then.
Well, that’s the nature of mummery, the merely objectified world, you see, is a kind of dead-end. There must be in-depth participation, and it must be profound in order to locate what is great, what is satisfactory, and be given to it, given over to it. Well, realization is not the event to, that’s made possible for the audience by a performance of The Mummery Book, but this kind of participation certainly is to be made possible by it. And it can be the beginning for people, the beginning of a response to Me and to potential recognition of Me such that people may become My devotees or being My devotees already, they may enter into profundity of being My devotee, by something uncovered by this mysterious drama that is about reality, about the totality of mind, the totality of human possibility, mocked, unmasked, played, suffered. There are many dimensions to it, but it must be followed or participated in in-depth. And that’s why I’ve also said those who are the audience must be undisturbed. They must know they are not going to be disturbed. They’re not going to be approached or required to be socially interactive. They should be able to feel it as profoundly as they do, to be moved by it, to weep or whatever, to laugh, all of the responses that are unselfconsciously possible or possible when there is no self-consciousness should be possible in the true theater of The Mummery Book performance.
You can’t encapsulate people in little booths. That would even make them somehow self-conscious just by itself. So, it has to be a, they have to be given permission to be unselfconscious and know that it is acceptable, encouraged, safe to do this, to be moved fully and responsive and grasp what the message is in this event, you see, and not have to just be a mummer in the theater like the men in their chairs in front of Bue Ma, emptied and externalized in your attention and just being a social performer, applauding at the right moments, laughing at the correct moments, getting the inside jokes and showing how clever you are to the people sitting next to you, about how you got that turn or phrase. “Did you get that?”, you know. [When He says this, Beloved Adi Da glances to His right as if speaking to someone sitting next to Him] –all those kinds of social exchanges people do in an ordinary theater perhaps, when it’s expected that they continue to be mummers, continue to be just social personalities when at the theater.
People sometimes manifest what you would call private emotions in the theater when they’re seeing a dramatic performance or somebody singing perhaps, or any number of things might move people to tears and so on. It could happen spontaneously, perhaps wouldn’t happen if people didn’t feel free to be that way. They’d have to feel like they’re somehow among friends or they don’t have to be self-conscious about it and hide it.
So, whatever makes that kind of depth of participation possible in people, that’s the business of the guild or the guilds that perform The Mummery Book. It was written then to be used that way, to be experienced that way, participated in that way in the reading of it or in the performance of it.
And so, the Narrator, who is an extension of My Own Person, instructs people at the beginning in the language of the Prologue about how to participate in this. Of course, it’s all put in a rather poetic mode, so it might be useful before the performance begins for the audience to be put at ease and told what’s possible there, what it’s about, what everybody should feel free to do, how they should participate in it. And then they’ll understand what the Prologue address from the Narrator is actually suggesting. That they’re actually supposed to do this, you know. It’s not just words to listen to and figure out. It’s actually an instruction that the audience is supposed to carry out.
CAITLIN: It seems also –
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: And understand who it’s from and so forth. Who’s doing this and who this Narrator is, because that person is going to continue all throughout the whole event. This is a manifestation of the Narrator. All the characters are a manifestation of the Narrator. Being at home with the Narrator is basic, at home with Me, in other words, is basic to right participation in the event of the performance. And to know fully and at home with Me that all of this is Me, showing Myself in forms that are intelligible to you, showing you to yourself, showing you a revelation about My Person, about the nature of life, the nature of the ego, the importances that need to be accepted and addressed in life and in ultimately the right understanding of Me.
It’s not just about romance. Romance isn’t about, just about romance, you see. It’s a terminal and terrible event. It’s a confrontation with death and not just your own death, the death of anyone beloved, you see. It’s a terrible message at the same time that it has its presumably pleasurable associations. Well, that’s not usually understood by people who feel attracted to one another. They may notice it eventually when they get old and start rotting in front of one another’s eyes, but [laughs] at first, they’re sort of ideal, transfigured characters for one another, and they get a real sales job done on themselves by one another, and become believers in the myth of romantic fulfillment and are being carried to their death by it. Usually, that’s not noticed until later, perhaps never admitted.
But the characters Raymond and Quandra, you see, are, they have many dimensions, but they’re incarnating that noticing in the quick, the instant of the profundity of their meeting. So, there’s no consolation in it whatsoever. And this produces unique events to follow, not the two happy householders walking off into the sunset after a brief expensive ceremony.
[Laughter]
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: They never walk toward the sunrise, you notice. It’s always they’re going to the sunset. Everything is going to an end after that, you see. [Laughs]
To know its death to begin with is terrible knowing, and it’s not entertaining, and it must be deeply, profoundly felt. And to be brought to that noticing by a performance in the theater is a profound matter, and it’s touching on a great and terrible difficulty in people, and they’ve got to be able to get at it and feel it, and feel the importance of it, the meaning of it, and go along with it to find secrets about it, you see, and really do it, not just objectify it so they don’t really feel it, you see. Be in that position, in the context of your life itself, you see, unavoidably so.
So, whereas most people just delude one another in their romancing, Raymond and Quandra become instant renunciates, committed to the absolute, even the absolute that is implied in their finding of one another, but it is not satisfactory in its mortal show. So, it is a mysterious and profound and terrible, unanswerable question.
Well, the audience or anybody participating in this or just reading the book, you see, must be disposed to go into that kind of feeling which connects everyone to an unnamable depth which you could call unconscious, or the unconscious, you see. It’s a territory people don’t, generally speaking, want to wander in. They want to stay in the waking mode or maybe a little bit fantasy-land, you see. They don’t want to go into that depth which seems merely dark, which is about the reality which imposes itself in every moment of conditional experiencing, but which you avoid by any means or measure you can possibly manufacture, and usually meetings such as romantic, emotional-sexual meeting of some kind is used in quite the opposite manner. It is used to objectify one’s attention, to forget the mortal realities rather than amplify the suffering of it or the awareness of it, you see.
The loved one is not supposed to immediately put you in touch with absolute death. [Laughter. Beloved Laughs] But that’s in effect what goes on in The Mummery Book, you see. In other words, what is unconscious is made conscious in the theater event, in the Book. This is what’s underneath beloveds in love, the Hollywood diversion, the TV commercial’s worth of the news of daily life. It’s a fake, you see, that diversion. It’s untrue. It’s a false belief, an illusion, which lovers are supposed to satisfy in one another, conventionally speaking.
Someone who immediately reminds you of absolute death doesn’t make you feel all kissy-kissy exactly. [Laughs. Laughter.] That’s, you would presume, something that would you would be moved to by seeing somebody extraordinarily unattractive rather than somebody extraordinarily attractive, you see. Generally speaking, at least in romantic terms, somebody who’s attractive is supposed to make you forget your mortality and collapse and depression and all the rest of it, and make you feel deluded by passions that are extreme. That’s what you buy by agreeing to romance somehow, you see, or the emotional-sexual relations in their conventional form.
And just to enlarge the statement then, you see, in this Way, it’s possible for people to be entered into emotional-sexual association with another. It’s possible for devotees to be sexually active, but it is a yogic discipline. It’s a devotional discipline. It’s a profound matter. You got to be in touch with what’s profound to do it rightly and have it be compatible with this Way.
So, you can’t be unaware of the realities of which Raymond and Quandra are aware and do the yoga, emotional-sexual yoga in the Way of Adidam. If you can be aware as they are and still go on with it, okay. [Laughs loudly] But if you have to forget it, push it aside, to carry on in emotional-sexual terms with somebody, you can’t afford it. You can’t afford the price. You can’t practice. You can’t do yoga and be deluded that way.
I know you all don’t really get this. I’m just saying it again. [Laughs loudly] Keep on reading The Mummery Book, attending those performances every year. Maybe everybody, all devotees, should have a snapshot taken of them each year when they go to see The Mummery performance. And the pictures should all be collected in a book. [Laughs] How many performances will you have to attend before you get the point? [Laughs]
SUKEY LEWIS: Before and after pictures.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: Yes. The forever after. Everything is always after. Anything else about it?
CAITLIN: Yeah, I was just, in terms of the performers in The Mummery Book Enactment, feeling like that we all need to be in touch with what You’re talking about as much as possible and also be free to respond to Your Text even during the Enactment within, of course, the structure and whatever character you are.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: Yes, only My devotees who are practicing in the “Perfect Practice” should be permitted to perform–
[Laughter]
–The Mummery Book – [Laughs] I guess there won’t be any performances for a while. No, we can’t make that the requirement, but obviously, it would be best. You see, you’re not merely like a summer stock group, theater performers in the ordinary sense. [Beloved Adi Da’s BEAUTIFUL Feet are outstretched and moving about now.] You are a sacred guild, a Sacred Theater guild, sacred arts guilds coming together in a theatrical circumstance of a sacred kind. So, that means, although it hasn’t always been the case, but basically, the performers should all be devotees of Mine, and optimally, they should be as exemplary and advanced as possible in real practice of this Way, because that’s what would give them the unique depth that should be the tool of right performance that truly serves all who attend and mutually serve everyone who participates together in the performance, and know how it is a sacred performance, what is required for that to be the case, and what’s the difference between that and a rather gross or vulgar, or vulgarized or secular ordinary theater performance, you see?
Well, how do you really know the difference? It’s not merely an intellectual matter. You–it is practicing that makes it so. That’s what makes art sacred, not merely their subject or the tradition of its method, you see. Chant isn’t sacred in itself. It’s truly sacred in the true, full sense of the term when it is engaged by people who are sufficiently developed in practice to do it in a fully sacred manner, to participate it in that sense most fully. Otherwise, they inevitably vulgarize it or merely imitate it, imitate the sacred because they’re playing on a traditional mode that is said to be sacred. So, it’s not inherently sacred just because it has a certain form. It is sacred by virtue of the kind of participation that is of the nature of the sacred.
So, the best group to perform it would be a group of people most fully practicing this Way and most mature in it. Optimally, that’s the way it should be. Optimally, that’s what a guild should be or certainly become. If there were a group of people who maintained the guild association over a period of years, their performances should become more and more effective, not only because they become more practiced at it, but because they develop the practice of this Way more profoundly. This is what equips them, not only the Text, but their participation and right relationship with Me and their sensitivity to Me, and they’re ability to be given over into the Communion with Me and the living of the Text in what is transparently the subjective domain in which the audience is expected to participate.
It doesn’t mean that performers become like ghosts, etheric, twinkling on stage kind of stuff. It’s very visible, like a lucid dream, but it is a subjective space, not merely an objective space. It is sacred space, not vulgar or merely gross space for the body.
Again, that’s the difference between Quandra herself in relation to Raymond and Bue Ma imitating her. One is sacred and the other is profane or vulgar. One enables profound participation in-depth, however terrible it may nonetheless be in what it gets in touch with in terms of the implications of living and dying and so on. But the other, the Bue Ma imitation, you see, externalizes attention and empties the participants. That’s the difference between vulgar life and the sacred way of life, you see. It’s not just a different kind of sex theater, you see. It’s a way of understanding life itself and knowing the difference between what is auspicious and what is not, what is profound and what is not, and feeling that difference, and then being able to identify then in your own living.
CAITLIN: Thank You, Beloved. I love You.