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A Birthday Message from
Jesus and Me
Adi Da Samraj
November 3, 1982
On
his birthday in 1982, Avatar Adi Da Samraj read this essay
He had just written, to a group of devotees. He then
commented on the essay.
The All-Pervading Life-Spirit, or
the Self-Radiant Transcendental Spirit-Being, is Love, the
Source of beings and worlds, the Great Power, All-Bliss,
Reality Itself. To live and Be in Oneness with the Eternal
Spirit is God-love, Salvation, Enlightenment, and literally
eternal life.
Those who love God totally (as
self-transcending spirits, surrendered as the total
body-mind, feeling as and in the Self-Radiant Energy or
Spirit of Being) also inevitably love others, Communicate or
Magnify God in the worlds, and always transcend themselves
in all relations, under all conditions, and in every state.
Therefore, be “born again” be reborn or re-Lived now
by the discovery and affirmation that you and all
beings and things are Spirit, or an eternal process of
Energy (rather than unconscious and mortal matter). What is
presumed to be mortal matter (in the form of body, mind, and
world) is only a phenomenal state of Energy, or Energy in
one moment of Its beginningless and endless sequence of
transformations. Awaken and Be in the Spirit and then
fulfill the double Law of the Spirit which is to love
God, or the Transcendental Spirit-Being, until you become
Love, and so love all others.
Be Happy and altogether healed or
en-Livened by this conversion of “matter” into Energy. This
conversion is repentance, or release of all non-Spiritual
views, acts, and “karmas”, 1 or the habit-results of “sin”
which is simply the ego-based or self-contracting
denial of Oneness with the Divine Spirit-Being. And this
same conversion is also Salvation, or restoration of
resonant Oneness with the Divine
Spirit-Being.
As a spirit (or a body-mind-self
that is only or entirely living and conscious energy), Be
surrendered into Oneness with the Transcendental
Spirit-Being. Transcend yourself in Love-Bliss. Transcend
the present world (and all materially or mortally conceived
conditions and concepts). By all of this, enter into a
totally new Destiny in God, or Spiritual Being. That
Destiny goes beyond self and, ultimately, beyond every plane
of conditional Nature. It is the Destiny of Love-Bliss, or
uninterrupted Existence in the Divine Condition, or the
Divine Domain, wherein there is no trace or memory of
conditional existence.
Only this is true and useful
religion. Religion is self-transcending Spirituality. It is
to be restored to inherently Free Spirit-living, and not
merely to submit to the myths and rituals of dogmatic
beliefs and the lifeless or Spirit-less disciplines of the
concerned social ego.
Accept the Spirit-Blessing of the
Adept Spiritual Master. Even the body-mind is only Energy.
Realize the Spirit-Being is the Reality in which self and
world are arising as spontaneous but unnecessary and
non-binding modifications of Itself. Be the Spirit-Being
only. See all things and beings in and as the Spirit. And
always Magnify the Spirit-Force, which is Love, Blessing,
Tolerance, Forgiveness, Help, Healing, Nurture, Delight,
Joy, Bliss, Peace, and total Happiness.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: I call
this essay “A Birthday Message from Jesus and Me” for
several reasons. Today is my birthday, first of all. The
essay also speaks of being born again in the Spirit, so it
is in some sense a message about everybody’s “rebirthday” or
spiritual birth. And it is “from Jesus and Me” because the
essay also paraphrases the Teaching of Jesus.
There is a likeness between my
Teaching and all of the high and great and radical Teachings
of the Great Tradition. In the book, Nirvanasara,
I explore the likeness between this Teaching and the
traditions of Advaita Vedanta and Buddhism. I suggest in
that book that one of the descriptive names of this Teaching
is Advaitayana Buddhism. This does not mean that the only
precedents for this Teaching or its only likenesses are to
be found in the traditions of Vedanta and Buddhism. I have
also suggested other descriptive names for this Teaching and
explored the likenesses between my Teaching and many
traditions outside the Transcendentalist Teachings of
Advaitism and Buddhism. But, I differentiate those aspects
of the Great Tradition that represent great Teaching and
those that represent conventions of the human mind, human
life, false religion, pseudo-religion, lesser religion. I
explore and examine all of the traditions critically, and
therefore I criticize aspects of all traditions, but there
is also a congenial likeness to be found between my own
Teaching and the great or high Teachings of all the
traditions.
Christianity is historically the
dominant religious tradition of the Western world for all
kinds of reasons, most of which have nothing whatever to do
with the Truth. Therefore, I criticize Christianity on a
number of levels. But over the years I have also considered
Christianity actually not so much Christianity as the
Teaching of Jesus in terms of its likenesses to my
own Teaching.
Jesus preached a Way of life that
involved stepping outside the bondage to tradition and
institutionalized religiosity. His was a radical
Spirit-Teaching that communicated the religion of conversion
to the Spiritual Reality, to the Divine as Living Spirit,
rather than to the Divine as the remembered and honored “God
of our fathers,” the God of the book, and so on. Jesus
preached that people should be altogether converted from
their false views and sinfulness, that they should be
transformed by the Realization of the Spirit, and that they
should make their religion a way of life in immediate and
constant Communion with the Divine Spirit.
The New Testament declares that
there is only one unpardonable sin. Among all of the
enumerated sins only one is unpardonable: the denial of the
Holy Spirit or the Spirit of God. If that is the one
unforgivable sin, then something about that sin must
epitomize sin itself. All the forgivable sins must somehow
be the lesser versions of this primary sin. Therefore, sin
itself has to do with our tendency to deny or dissociate
from the Spiritual Divine.
All that we might do that could be
called sin in the Semitic and Christian traditions is a
version of our tendency to dissociate from the Spiritual
Divine. What is unforgivable about the unforgivable sin is
not that it is merely an immediate form of behavior that
temporarily dissociates us from the Spiritual Divine, but
that it is sin raised to its absolute degree. It is
perpetual sin. It is not unforgivable because God does not
forgive or because God is not forgiving. It is unforgivable
because the act itself will not accept forgiveness. To
accept forgiveness is to become involved with the Divine.
Therefore, to deny the Divine is to be in a perpetual state
of dissociation from the Divine and, therefore, dissociation
from forgiveness. Only once we have ceased to deny the
Divine is forgiveness possible.
Therefore, sin is simply the denial
of the Holy Spirit or denial of the Spiritual Divine, and it
becomes most critical when it becomes an absolute act of
absolute denial. Forgiveness is liberation from the effects
of all denials of God. It is restoration to God or
repentance, which is on this side of forgiveness. Repentance
in the Christian tradition, and in the Semitic tradition in
general, is the act of giving up sin or returning to
God.
From the point of view of Jesus, the
process whereby we become free of sin and are restored to
Oneness with God or Communion with God is not a matter of
ritual or acts in the temple. It is not a matter of
conventions of belief. It is not the ritualistic act of
repenting and accepting to some degree, psychologically and
emotionally, that we have returned to God’s good graces and
God will now bless us. From Jesus’ point of view, the whole
process of repentance, forgiveness, and restoration to God
is a matter of spiritual conversion, or the realization that
God is the Living Spiritual Reality, always Present,
All-Pervading, the Source and Substance of Existence. From
Jesus’ point of view religion is the conversion from
self-possession or withdrawal from the Spiritual Divine or
denial of the Spirit to Communion with the Spirit and
acceptance of the fact that all existence is Spiritual, made
by the Spirit, made of Spirit, arising in the Spirit,
pervaded by the Spirit.
In one of the key passages in the
New Testament, Jesus meets a man named Nicodemus, who was a
major figure in the temple. Nicodemus came to see Jesus at
night, because he did not want anybody to know that he was
going to see this renegade who was preaching a free form of
religion outside temple life. He had learned of Jesus from
others who had heard Jesus preach, and he wanted to know
precisely, beyond hearsay, what this man was
Teaching.
Jesus told him, “You must be born
again. You must be born in the Spirit even as now you are
born in the flesh. You must be Baptized in the Spirit, you
must receive the Spirit, you must enter into Communion with
the Spirit. God is Spirit, Man is Spirit, every individual
is a spirit, and all of the spirits, including the entire
world, are arising in God, in intimate, eternal Communion
with the Spirit, God. Religion is to repent or be converted
from an unspiritual point of view, the whole life of
self-possession and the mortal mind, and to enter fully into
Communion with the Divine as the Living Spirit. Only on the
basis of such conversion can the law of Israel be
fulfilled.”
Jesus was asked on one occasion, as
reported in the New Testament, “What is your summary of the
Law?” And Jesus repeated the summary that is already found
in the Old Testament: “Love God completely, with every
aspect of your being, and love all others. Treat all others
as you would be treated. Treat them as your very self and as
you would have yourself treated.” From Jesus’ point of view
that Law could not be fulfilled except through spiritual
rebirth or conversion from the mortal, self-possessed point
of view to Communion with the Divine as the All-Pervading
Spirit. The Law could therefore be summarized completely
from Jesus’ point of view in just this brief statement.
There was no need for the complicated sub-laws and rituals
and mechanical aspects of religiosity, all of which are
built upon the ordinary mind. If just this one simple
process of conversion could be realized, then the Law would
inevitably be fulfilled. However, if this conversion were
not realized, to fulfill the Law would be impossible, even
if one practiced the ritual fulfillment of the Law down to
the last detail.
In his Teaching, Jesus criticized
the tendencies of religiosity in his time, saying basically
that no real religion existed then. There was a great deal
of religiosity, a great deal of temple life and ritual, many
laws and legalisms, many beliefs and myths, but none of that
had anything to do with religion. Such pseudo-religion was
about God in the book, the God who created everything and is
now to be viewed as untouchable, holy, elsewhere. The
religious life of most people had been reduced to the
popular form of religiosity, just as it has been in our time
or as it is in any time.
Jesus preached a radically
simplified form of religion. He preached what I call basic
religion. Only one affair is religion: the conversion from
self, and all the views based on self-possession and mortal
self-consciousness, to Communion with the Living
Spirit-Being or Radiant Transcendental Being, the
recognition that all of Nature is made of that One, that
every being is a spirit and one with the Transcendental
Spirit. That which is born of the Spirit, he said, is
Spirit, is of the same nature, and, therefore, can Realize a
state of perfect Identification with that Great Spirit or
Transcendental Being, and by that perfect Divinity be drawn
into the Domain of unqualified spiritual
existence.
My own Teaching to you is
fundamentally the same. During the last few days I have told
you that ultimately the Way transcends the conventional
point of view of religion and spirituality. The Way of the
Heart is the Way of radical self-transcendence and Perfect
Realization of a state of Identification with the Radiant
Transcendental or Divine Being and Condition. Nevertheless,
the Way begins with true and basic religion, and basic true
religion is spirituality, life in the Spirit, life as the
Spirit. Such religion is not transcended in the Way
it is the essence of the Way.
The process of our submission to the
Spiritual Condition is realized in stages that correspond to
the seven stages of life. There are therefore lesser stages
of maturity in the process of Transcendental Communion and
ultimate Enlightenment, lesser stages, higher stages, and
the ultimate stage. But they are all aspects of true
religion, or spiritual existence. You cannot enter into the
process of this Way unless you are born again in the same
terms that Jesus preached. You cannot enter into the process
of the Way until you Awaken into the acknowledgment of the
Living Spiritual Reality, not merely the God to be believed,
but the Spiritual Reality that is tangibly Present and with
Which we are inherently intimate. We need only acknowledge
It and submit ourselves to Its Living Current and enter into
Its Ultimate Condition. This submission is a natural and
free process, always available to human beings if they will
repent or convert from their self-possession and their
denial of the Spiritual Reality.
I have told you that without such
conversion, it makes no difference how many of my books you
read or how many of the specific disciplines you apply. The
disciplines will not be fruitful, they are not even true in
your case, unless you first become religious in the
spiritual sense. You must first be converted. We suffer many
conditions of existence because we do not presume the
Spiritual Reality of existence. When we cannot be intimate
with God, we start to think and when we cannot be intimate
with other people, we start becoming physically
self-indulgent. All the behaviors that are called sin in the
traditions are simply the variations on these two
possibilities, indulgence in the self-mind and its mortal
views, and physically based self-indulgence.
The reason we enter into the
conditions of existence that are self-contracted, ego-based,
and self-possessed is that we become incapable of intimacy
with Reality. The first form of that dis-ease, that
imaginary disease, the “dreaded Gom-boo,” 2 is the denial of
the Holy Spirit, the denial of the Spiritual Reality, the
denial of the fact that all beings are spirits or spiritual
entities, not merely spirits somewhere inside and behind the
body and the mind, but spirits as the body-mind.
This world that we perceive is the
spiritual world in a certain form. It arises in the
Spiritual Divine, the Transcendental Spirit-Being, the
Transcendental Condition of existence. When you lose
sympathy with that Reality, when you cannot be intimate with
It, cannot submit to It, even bodily, emotionally, with the
whole mind as Jesus said, you must love the Spiritual
Divine with your mind, heart, soul, all your strength
when you cannot be intimate with the Living Spirit-God, you
as a spirit, with every aspect of your being and
personality, then you are self-contracted and
self-possessed. You fall in upon yourself, and are no longer
capable of intimacy with the Spiritual Divine or with any of
the conditions of existence.
You are not capable of intimacy with
other beings, therefore. You cannot love God or others, you
cannot be love in the world, you are not free, you are not
Happy, you become un-Happy. Then you try to become Happy
through the exercise of mind and physical possibility, but
when mind and physical possibility are generated on the
basis of the loss of intimacy, the inability to be submitted
to love, to surrender, to enter into Communion with the
Living Being directly and in the form of all beings, then
all the forms of mind and body become self-indulgent,
self-possessed, sinful, disoriented from the Divine. They
“miss the mark.” To sin is to “miss the mark,” as in the
Greek word “hamartia,” for example, which means a miss of
the mark.
Thus, human beings are suffering
from this imagined disease, this self-created or
self-imposed disease. Its root is an emotional problem, the
incapacity for intimacy with the Real or the Transcendental
Reality and all of the modifications of the Transcendental
Reality that appear in the form of living beings and
conditions of existence in this world and in all other
worlds. The Way, therefore, begins when we can repent or be
converted from this self-possessed disposition and all of
the acts and habit patterns, thought patterns, points of
view, the whole affair of the disease of egoity. We must be
converted from self. We must Awaken from self-possession to
the acknowledgment of the inherent Spiritual Reality of
existence. We must be restored to intimacy or Communion with
That One.
When intimacy is restored, the
body-mind is restored to a state of equanimity on the basis
of its resonant Communion with the Living Current of the
Spiritual Being. This restoration of intimacy with the
Living Divine is likewise a restoration of intimacy with all
other conditions of existence and all other beings. When
love of God returns, then love of others also returns. Life
is simplified. Life becomes capable of a harmonious
disposition and of magnifying the characteristics of
Spiritual Being. We cannot first love others. We must first
be restored to God. We must first be converted
spiritually.
The primary principle is God-Love,
God-Communion, self-transcending submission to the Living
Current and Transcendental Being. When that conversion is
established, then we become capable of fulfilling the second
part of the great Law. When we love God to the point of
becoming love, when we Commune with the Spirit to the point
of becoming spiritual, then we love or magnify the
characteristics of the Spirit in all relations, under all
conditions, in all states, in all possible
worlds.
HEARING and SEEING
The essence of the Way is the
spirituality of self-transcending Communion with the Living
Divine. It is spirituality, you see. It is life in the
Spirit. It is not merely a matter of developing the programs
of the social ego. It is not merely a matter of being
fitfully committed to creating the politics of social peace.
Such is the great program toward which all of Nature and all
of humanity are striving, and yet peace is not about to be
instantly created! Even so, we should not be disheartened or
become dispirited because the conditions of life are
frustrating and do not show the signs of the universal
invasion of the world by the Divine Spirit. The world is not
likely to become converted to the Spiritual Divine in all of
its billions, to become converted to the true process of
religion in our lifetime. Perhaps it will never be
converted.
It is possible that anyone who hears
and sees the Spirit-Born Adept will be converted to the
Living Spiritual Reality and enter into the process of
spiritual realization in community with others who have been
likewise converted. Such individuals magnify their
disposition in the world and are of use in the world to help
the world in the direction of Ultimate Transformation, but
without distress. Still, the fundamental process of their
existence is spiritual, or a matter of moment to moment
God-Communion. That Communion is their Happiness. By
submission to that Condition, through the spiritual process
inherent in God-Communion, they are transformed in this
world and ultimately Translated beyond all conditional
worlds, or all worlds in which dissociation from the Spirit,
or self-possession, is possible. Those who fulfill the Way
perfectly are Translated into the Divine Domain or the
Transcendental Condition.
This conversion to spiritual
Communion is the essence and fundamental necessity upon
which this Way depends. Thus, it must constantly be
emphasized. Without such conversion, without true
“hearing”
and “seeing,”
without spiritual rebirth, the Way cannot be practiced. It
can be imitated, but it cannot be practiced. None of the
disciplines are fruitful apart from such conversion. Those
who are simply listening to the Teaching, who have not
entered into this conversion in the Company of the Spiritual
Master, may as part of the natural discipline of listening
assume the various practical conditions associated with the
practice of this Way, but even so they are not yet
practicing the Way. They are listening or giving their
attention to the possibility of practice. When there is full
conversion, or “hearing” and “seeing” to the point of real
practice, then real preparation for the ultimate form of the
Way begins and not until then.
Spiritual conversion is the most
fundamental matter to be considered by beginners and the
most fundamental event for listeners. When it occurs, it
changes the entire quality of your existence. You become
Happiness Itself, and you can never become un-Happy or bound
again. You may seem to become bound again, perhaps, if you
commit the ultimate sin, if you deny the Spirit, become
self-possessed in your mind, emotion, and body again.
Bondage is always possible short of perfect Enlightenment.
But once you are established in the Principle of
God-Communion, nothing in that Principle can bind you again
or cause you to become un-Happy. Once you discover It, if
you will simply abide in It, the process of the Way is
assured.
Your growth toward maturity will be
limited only by the force of your application to the Way of
the Spiritual Reality once you become converted to It. This
is the great discovery to be made on the basis of hearing my
Argument and giving me your attention or living in my
Company. This is the Baptism that is always being generated
by my Presence here. When I call you to consider the
Teaching, I call you into my Spiritual Company, even if you
are simply sitting down to read my books. 4 Whenever you are
in my Company, whenever you give me your attention, then you
are as good as sitting in the room with me where this
Baptism is being given. I do not stand in a river to perform
the water ritual. I stand in the fire to perform the Spirit
ritual, which purifies, enlivens, and grants Enlightenment.
It is the perfect Baptism.
Thus, those who give me their
attention, in whatever form it may take at any moment, align
themselves to my Baptizing Power, the profusion of Grace
that is manifested through the Adept, which is simply a
magnification of the Spiritual Divine to living beings. When
you have heard and seen me, when you have understood and
located my Presence, experienced this Baptism and Awakened
to the Spiritual Reality, then you have entered into the
stream and fire of the Way. Then all of the disciplines
become fruitful, but not otherwise. This is the fundamental
import of your involvement with me in this Way of Life and
this Teaching. All of the gatherings of our community and
all of the moments in which devotees attend to this Teaching
and this practice are the moments of this Baptism, the
Baptism of the Holy Spirit, as it is called in the Christian
tradition, the reception of the Living Current that is the
substance of existence, that is Self-Radiant Transcendental
Being, Love-Bliss, Happiness.
To enter into that Happiness is to
be healed. All Power is within It. All Transformation is
inherent in It. To enter into Communion with the Living
Divine is to be Transfigured, to be Transformed, ultimately
to be Translated. To enter into the Company of the
Spirit-Baptizing Adept is, in fact, to enter into the
seventh stage of life. The processes of the seventh stage of
life, which are Transfiguration, Transformation, and
Translation, are inherent in the moment of God-Communion,
and therefore this Way begins in the seventh stage of life.
But we acknowledge that there are habits or tendencies in
every individual that must be purified, and therefore we
also acknowledge that there are stages of maturity or stages
of the development of the practice. Yet even preparation for
the Way develops within the ambience of the seventh stage of
life, or the living Environment of the Spiritual
Divine.
Spiritual Transmission is the reason
for the occasions of celebration when I sit with everyone,
whether they are in the room with me or sitting at a
distance. It is the reason that I gather with people under
all kinds of circumstances. It is the reason that I return
to The Mountain Of Attention periodically to see people
there. It is the reason that I maintain constant
communication of one kind or another with all devotees
through the Agencies of this institution. The import of my
Presence here is that I be a Baptizer, an Agent of
Transmission. Part of the import of my Presence here is that
I consider the Argument of the Way and consider the right
culture of devotees and develop the practices in your
company, but the ultimate import of my Presence here is
simply that I be Present, not merely to exist but to
Baptize, to Transmit the Spirit-Awakening.
Those who Awaken in my Company then
know how to use me. They understand why I am here. Others
who are still listening, who have not passed through this
remarkable conversion or matter into energy, or egoity into
Spirit-living, appropriately maintain a relatively distant
or formal relationship to me, although they give me their
attention. And their granting of attention to me bears the
fruit of conversion when they thoroughly intuit and feel
that all that arises is Spirit or Energy. The Spirit is not
merely behind what arises, pervading it as some sort of
invisible essence. The Spirit is this, just this exactly, as
it is all the other forms of appearance with which we might
become associated. The Living or Spirit-Current pervades all
of this, is all of this, and we may contact It intimately
through the submission of our body-minds to It.
We breathe the Living Current, we
feel It, our fundamental emotion is one with It. The Current
is felt as an energy bodily. It is also felt as an emotion,
the emotion of love, unqualified emotion, radiant feeling.
Be diverted from your thinking, your self-possessed process
of mind, and grant attention to this Living Current. Then
you will realize that the essence of that Current is not
only energy, not only love, but unconditional Being or
Consciousness Itself.
There is a very practical means for
living in Communion with the Spirit-Being or the Divine. I
have considered that practical means with you for many
years. I have described three basic Ways of practicing this
Communion the Way of Insight, the Way of Faith, and
the Perfect Practice. But all three of these Ways and all of
the disciplines associated with them can be summarized as
two basic practices: the practice that I call conductivity
and the practice that I call the conscious
process.
Conductivity is the whole affair of
physical and emotional and psychic feeling-surrender into
the Living Spirit or Life-Current. We animate this form of
our practice through all kinds of practical disciplines
related to diet, daily living, sexuality, and service to
others. We also animate it through the features of our
meditation that involve the technical process of
conductivity or breathing and feeling the Living Current,
the Spirit-Current with which you are Baptized and to which
you Awaken in my Company.
That Living Current is breathed in a
Circle, descending in the front of the body and ascending in
the spinal line of the body, between the crown and the feet
or the crown and the bodily base of the perineum. It is felt
from the heart in all directions. It is love or radiant
emotion. We should be constantly relaxed from base to crown
or foot to crown into this Living Current, breathing It in
the Circle and feeling It from the heart in all directions.
Jesus’ instruction to love God with all your heart and all
your soul and all your mind and all your strength is to
practice conductivity as a meditative process and as a
process of daily disciplines and daily living, associated
intimately with our feeling, breathing, living, physical
personality. We are not merely to go inward to find the
Spirit. We are the Spirit and we must live in the Spirit
even bodily.
The other most fundamental aspect
and the primary form of our practice, for which our practice
of conductivity of the Spirit prepares us, for which our
conductivity of the Spirit gives us a support, a basis in
equanimity, is the conscious process. As the practice of
conductivity liberates energy and attention in the Spirit,
it liberates energy and attention from the contractions of
egoity. We must devote that free energy and attention to the
conscious process, radically intuiting or entering into a
state of identification with the Transcendental Being, That
which is Self-Radiant and appearing as all forms and beings,
That which simply is.
Thus, through the artful practice of
conductivity and the conscious process, we remain in
perpetual Communion with the Spirit-Being, the Living
Divine. If we do so, we mature inevitably and by stages to
the point of Perfect Awakening, Enlightenment, Self-Abiding,
Abiding in a state of Identification with the Transcendental
Being and inherently and spontaneously recognizing all
arising conditions in the body-mind and its environs or
relations. There is nothing but the apparent, unnecessary,
non-binding, free modification of the Spiritual Radiance of
the Divine or the Transcendental Self.
The religion of the Spirit is
fulfilled in Enlightenment, in which all conditions are
recognizable. By the power of Self-Abiding recognition, the
tendency of attention to be associated with conditions is
dissolved. At first association with the grosser conditions
continues. Then as the tendency of those associations is
gradually released, a subtler disposition appears in this
life or after this life, in other spiritual worlds or again
in this world. By our continuing in this disposition of
Self-Abiding recognition, the tendency of attention to
associate with conditional existence in any plane whatsoever
is dissolved, so that ultimately the being is Translated
into the Divine Condition without the slightest noticing of
conditional existence.
We may say of Translation that it is
simply perfect Identification with the Divine Self or
Radiant Transcendental Being, without qualification. Whether
it is also associated with a sublime Domain beyond our
imagining, beyond our conception in this world, is to be
seen, but we enter into it through Enlightenment, through
recognition, through the dissolution of conditional
associations, not by clinging to ideas of a place to which
we want to go.
I also Teach, as Jesus Taught, the
radical religion of the Spirit. A religion about Jesus was
created by some who knew him, by some who did not know him,
by Christian-made priests, by all of the contingencies of
historical Christianity. That religion is just another
version of conventional religion, the kind of religion that
Jesus himself criticized. It is not the free religion of the
Spirit, and it contains no esotericism about the life of the
Spirit and the transcendence of conditional existence. It is
a myth-laden religion, a priest-laden religion, a religion
of rules, enforced conduct, and beliefs. It is not to any
absolute degree different in kind from the religion of
Israel in the day of Jesus. Thus, like Jesus in his time, I
live in a time full of religions that must be criticized. I
am a renegade outside the temple, preaching the radical
religion of the Spirit and Teaching a practical Way of
entering into Communion with the Spirit.
Jesus likewise taught esoteric means
of living in Communion with the Spiritual Divine, but those
means have been lost within the tradition. We know that
Jesus spoke of Spirit-Baptism. We know he spoke of
conversion to the Divine as Living Spirit. We know he spoke
of conversion from the flesh or the views of mortality,
including religious views that correspond to that
disposition. In spite of all the mythology laid upon Jesus
in the New Testament, what comes through is still a
Spirit-born personality who was Transfigured, Transformed,
magnified, made effective as a Siddha by virtue of
God-Communion, Spiritual Communion. All the rest of it, all
the “washed-by-the-blood-of-Jesus” mythology, all of the
salvation-through-the-death-of-Christ mythology, has nothing
whatever to do with the Teaching of Jesus. It is a popular
mythology, a conventional religion, an alternative to true
religion, which is spirituality or an essentially esoteric
process of being God-born and ultimately Translated into the
Divine Condition.
The story of Jesus reports a person
Transfigured and Transformed by intimacy with the Spiritual
Divine. It suggests also that he was Translated. Most of the
New Testament is discardable, the product of a tradition, a
church, a very worldly institution I have criticized
frequently, but the Teaching of Jesus need not be
criticized. It stands in the great tradition of the
Siddhas.
No Transmission comes directly from
Jesus now. The link with Jesus through Baptized devotees has
been broken. But many other Adepts appeared before Jesus and
after Jesus, and they too have come and gone. Some precincts
may exist within the Great Tradition here and there where
this true spirituality is still alive it is alive in
my Company. I am an individual of the same type as Jesus and
other Adepts who have Taught and Demonstrated the radical
religion of the Spirit and who have Baptized individuals in
the Spirit.
You are called first to the
Spiritual Divine, and you must enter into this conversion
physically, emotionally, psychically. You must become
practically involved with every dimension of the being in
spiritual community. Until you do, you are still a listener,
and until you have fulfilled the process in perfect
Enlightenment, you are still preparing for the Way in its
fullest sense, even though you have entered into the stream
and fire of the Way, in some sense into the Way itself,
through this Communion, this Spirit-Baptism, this
Transfigured life in my Company that begins when you have
located my Influence and become established in the Living
Current of the Spiritual Divine.
When you are established in the
Current, then you no longer view life with the mortal mind
through contracted emotion and a disharmonious physical
vehicle. Rather, you see everything as energy, you treat
everything as energy, you live as energy, you are a
Life-Bearer, you magnify the Living Spiritual Being in all
of your relations, you are transformed by It, you
accommodate It in every feature of your life. You initiate
practical changes to make your life coincide with your
spiritual disposition. You change all the factors of your
practical living that do not coincide with the spiritual
orientation of your living. You must do so. To accommodate
the Spiritual Divine in every feature of your existence, to
be devoted to It wholly and entirely, not merely in the mind
with a kind of subjective acknowledgment, but very
practically, physically, emotionally, mentally, psychically,
is the practice.
Therefore, I do not call you merely
to believe in God, but I Baptize you in this Spiritual Force
and call you to act differently, to submit to it physically,
to feel it, breathe it, relax into it, animate it, manifest
it through service and love in all relations. I call you to
worship God in Spirit, as Spirit, worship God spiritually,
through spiritual means, through living, through meditation,
not through conventional prayer. I call you to realize that
you are one with this Spirit, not merely experiencing It but
identical to It, so that you may, by overcoming every
fraction of the self-contraction, Realize a state of perfect
and uncaused Identification with It, Realize a perfect
equation with the Divine Being and Condition.
This is the secret Teaching. Baptism
is the secret method. Recently we published a book called
The Secret Gospel, by Morton Smith, about a fragment of a
letter by Clement of Alexandria, who lived in the second
century. It contains a brief description of a secret process
of Initiation or Baptism engaged by Jesus with his intimate
circle, those who had passed through the initial process of
listening, who had been converted and who had shown the
evidence of a true response, who were eventually brought to
either Jesus or one of his empowered disciples and Baptized
spiritually. The Current of the Spiritual Reality was
magnified to them so that it was tangibly felt physically,
emotionally, mentally, and psychically.
It is said that this process was
conducted at night and that it was associated with a certain
ritual of purification. The initiate came dressed in a white
garment and was brought into a closed room for the
initiation, which was Spirit-Baptism, or true “Shaktipat”
(without certain of the peculiar philosophic and psychic
limitations of the Hindu tradition). Shaktipat is popularly
associated with the orientation of the fifth stage
realization, which has been superimposed on the process that
is true Shaktipat. Shaktipat is Spirit-Baptism. It is the
same process that occurs in my Company, but to which you are
freely oriented, without fifth stage limitations. In this
Way you are called to enter into a process of perfect
unification with the Living Spirit to the point of
Enlightenment, transcending all conditional realizations at
the level of experience or presumed knowledge. Shaktipat is
experientially associated with the Awakening of the
Life-Current in the spinal line. Aspirants in the Hindu
traditions of the fifth stage are thus devoted to a process
of strategically raising the Current to dissociate from
existence in this world. Such an orientation, common to the
conventions of Hinduism, is not really part of a tradition
that acknowledges the Divine Spirit fully. It views the
individual self as a spiritual being behind the body-mind
and separable from it. It conceives of God as the Being that
Pervades the world and is separate from it, ultimately to be
Located elsewhere. Thus, the conventional orientation to
Spirit-Baptism or the Shaktipat of the traditions is
generally ego-based and dissociative.
I call you to understand that the
Spirit is the Substance of ths world. The body-mind is one
with that Current. Therefore you are not rightly devoted to
attaching yourself to one aspect of this Current in order
strategically to dissociate from this world. You must enter
into Spirit-Communion utterly, breathe the Spirit in its
full Circle, be sublimed in It, Transfigured and Transformed
by It, transcend yourself in It. And then, quite naturally,
association with the limiting conditions represented by this
world and other planes beyond this world will disappear.
Otherwise, the strategy of egoic dissociation and attachment
to the ascending quality of the Living Current will only
produce temporary, ego-based results.
Spirit-Baptism, therefore, is a
greater affair than is commonly understood in the yogic
terms of Shaktipat, but it is a communication of the same
spiritual force. It is also a communication of more than
force or energy that we may feel over against ourselves. It
is a communication of the Reality, the Transcendental Being,
which is Radiant, manifesting as all beings and worlds,
manifesting as the present body-mind, which is not merely in
the body-mind but is the substance of the
body-mind.
Therefore, I call you to acknowledge
that you are in the Spirit presently, that you are in the
Domain of the Spiritual Divine presently. If you can Awaken
to this realization, then you will be Happy presently and
you will not need to ascend to become Happy. Ascent is
natural at some stage and true to Enlightenment in the
seventh stage, but you need not go through the process of
ascent to be Happy or to be God-Realized.
As I said in The Knee Of Listening,
this is the other world. This is the Spiritual Domain. This
is the Spirit World.This is the world of God. God is not
merely invisible and inside us. This is the manifestation of
God. There are many other manifestations of God as well, but
we must not deny this manifestation. We must submit to God
in the context of this world and transcend it. To do so is
our obligation. Our ascent will not be final or true or free
if we do not Realize God in this moment and in this
condition.
To seek God elsewhere is to deny the
Spirit presently, to deny that the Spirit is Present, that
the Spirit is the Substance and Condition of existence
presently. To go within and seek for God elsewhere is
therefore a form of sin. It is a form of un-Happiness. We
become Happy when we realize that we are in the Spirit
presently. Therefore, those who Awaken through free
spiritual Baptism become Happy presently. They are enlivened
by the Spirit. They are liberated emotionally by It. They
are liberated in their minds by It. They become blissful,
Self-Radiant, manifest as Love, Happiness, Joyous Feeling,
Freedom. These qualities, rather than the dismal qualities
of the inverted ascetic, are the qualities of the God-born,
the Spirit-Baptized, those who live in Communion with the
Living Divine presently.
This is not to say that life in the
Spirit in the world is not in some real sense a school or a
trial, and a hard school at that, but it is a trial that
occurs within the Domain of God. It is a necessary trial. We
ascend from it, but only by transcending ourselves and
allowing the Spirit-Current to ascend naturally when the
free conditions for its ascent have been established. Thus,
we do not merely enter into this Current to ascend. We allow
It to ascend, we allow It to descend, we live in It utterly,
submit ourselves to It utterly, and are purified by the
Happiness of the inherent Spirit of God.
This Way is not therefore associated
with a problem but with the inherent Happiness to which we
Awaken when we are Baptized by the Spirit, when we Locate
the Current of Bliss, the Current of Happiness. When we thus
Awaken, all our darkness disappears and all our negativity
and our negative views are weakened. If we continue to
submit ourselves to the Spiritual Reality, all these
contractions, states of mind, states of emotion, states of
the psyche, states of the body, states of relatedness are
purified and transformed.
You must cease to be troubled by the
mortal and self-possessed vision of life and enter into the
Spirit, be possessed of Its Vision, Its Radiance, which
shines through us physically and emotionally and mentally
and psychically when we Awaken to It whole bodily, fully,
and in Truth. Such religion is free. It is native religion,
God-made religion.
Those who enter into such a
religious process may live with one another, create a
structure or an institution for association with one another
and the communication of the Teaching, but their religion
itself is free and immediate. It is a process that is always
intimate, that one can practice in every moment of
existence, that one must practice in every moment of
existence. It is not a practice to be engaged only sometimes
in meditation or in weekly church gatherings. It is a
perpetual obligation, but it is also a perpetual Happiness.
It is to allow your body and your emotion and your mind and
your psyche to be converted by this Baptism, this
Transmission, to be changed in your minds, in your feeling,
in your bodies. Breathe It and feel It. Circulate this
Living Force and grant your attention to the Being that is
Self-Radiant, the Consciousness that is inherent in every
fraction of existence.
All this is arising in that
Consciousness. All the things that seem, all the
differences, are a play upon one Force, one Energy, one
Light or Life, one Love, Bliss, Happiness. If we contract
upon ourselves, then life seems otherwise. Therefore, we
must be converted from our self-contraction and Locate the
Spiritual Reality in every moment.
This is my Teaching. In essence it
is also the Teaching of Jesus. It is a kind of renegade
Teaching. It is not smiled upon by religionists and worldly
people. It is resisted by the ego. It is resisted by sin or
the effort of self-contraction, the denial of the Spiritual
Reality. It is resisted by you, therefore, and I call your
attention from yourself to “hear” and “see” this Living
Being and to find this Current.
Awaken to the Spirit, and you can
see the Radiance pervading the space of the room. You can
feel It Shining out of your eyes. Awaken to the feeling of
It, and all negative and therefore self-contracted emotions
disappear, and the emotion becomes Radiant. Submit to It
physically, and all the disharmony in the body disappears.
The body becomes Radiant and enters into a state of
equanimity or balance, in which the Circle of the
Life-Current is continuous, always being magnified, always
purifying every aspect of the personality.
When you enter into such enlivened
Union with the Living Spiritual Reality, then you naturally
magnify It or express It in all of your relations. Service
is therefore not a conventional discipline, a means of
eventually realizing the spiritual state, but the natural
expression of the spiritual state. It is not possible to
enter into the disposition of service or community with
others and the ability to live with others spiritually until
you Awaken to the Spiritual Divine. Those who are Awakened
to the Spiritual Divine naturally do love others, tolerate
others, magnify help and blessing to others, and become a
benign presence.
Such service makes it possible for
us to fulfill the various obligations of life we assume, but
because our disposition is fundamentally involved with the
Divine, our lives are fundamentally involved with the Divine
in the process of God-Communion. Our devotion to Communion
with the Spirit economizes our involvement with the world
and our involvement with others. It does not in any sense
make our involvement with the world and with others
negative. It simply economizes the amount of time, energy,
and attention we grant to the conditional states of life, so
that we may be more and more profoundly magnified in the
state of God-Communion.
At some stage, therefore, we appear
to renounce the world. Our lives become simplified and,
ultimately, we leave this world at death. We should have so
fulfilled this process that, at the very least, at death we
will not return to this dimension. We will have completed
this schooling and have no fraction of habit-energy left
over to make this particular experience of the spirit worlds
necessary. We must make this experience unnecessary through
fulfillment of the Way. At the very least, your fulfillment
of this discipline should be thus effective, but even if it
is not and you are reborn in human form, you will continue
this Way. You will reconnect with this disposition
somehow.
There is no higher world to which we
should aspire. Our aspiration should be toward the Present
God, toward a state of perfect Identification with the
Living God. This disposition does not aspire toward
transitions to other worlds or a temporary transition out of
this world and a return to it. The perfect fulfillment of
this Way is demonstrated through Translation, or the
complete dissolution of the habit-energies of attention that
lead toward conditional embodiment and experiencing. It is
not by aspiring to go elsewhere that we enter into the
Divine Domain but by entering directly into the Living
Divine, always, presently.
All aspirations move attention
toward conditional states. In other words, all the motives
of attention lead toward conditional states, except for the
primary motive, wherein attention is dissolved in its
Source. That process leads toward the bypassing of
conditional existence in all planes and makes possible
direct Translation into the Divine Domain. Lesser
fulfillment of the Way may lead toward embodiment in a
higher or subtler plane after death, simply because
attention has not been released perfectly in the Divine
Condition. But perfect fulfillment of the Way is
demonstrated in Translation, wherein there are no further
transitions, no returns, no ascents, no descents. We enter
into a state of sublime resonance with the Divine Condition
and do not move from It, but Awaken more and more profoundly
into Its Domain. This is the fulfillment of the spiritual
disposition.
All transitions to other worlds are
the products of a psychic intention, a tendency of attention
toward conditional fulfillment. If we do not transcend the
habits of attention relative to this world and the
possibilities associated with gross human embodiment, then
we will return to these conditions and be reborn in human
form again merely by repeating this exercise, which has no
independent necessity, but to which we grant necessity by
submitting to the self-contracting disposition of the ego.
We must transcend all of the appearances of necessity that
we seem to find in this world or in any other worlds. We
must be free of the aspiration toward conditional existence
and be full of the aspiration that is
God-Communion.
Therefore, you are called to enter
into the perfection of Enlightenment, the fulfillment of
God-Communion to the point of Translation, not to the
development of the psychic ability to ascend, to be embodied
in after-death realms, the world of high yogis and great
beings in the higher scale of Nature. Thus, we do not use
this Baptism for the sake of psychic ascent but for the sake
of self-transcendence, the dissolution of all the
conditional tendencies of attention in the Spirit Being, in
Enlightenment. We are not devoted to the conventional
possibilities of yoga or mysticism, just as we are not
devoted to the possibilities of being spiritual and blessed
in this world. We are devoted to God, the Transcendental
Condition Itself, and this devotion, rather than any
intention to be here or to go elsewhere, dissolves all the
tendencies of attention.
The Way is demonstrated as
Translation in Enlightenment. This is one of the principal
distinctions between this Way and the various conventional
and traditional paths. The traditional and conventional
paths associated with the first five stages of life
generally lead toward the improvement of conditions for
spirits in the spirit worlds, to an improved life in this
world or an improved birth in other worlds. The sixth stage
of life is truly a transitional stage that should lead to
the seventh, but in and of itself it is based on an
heretical disposition toward exclusive inversion, a
problematic view of life that wants to dissociate from the
conditions of existence because it is not Spirit-born,
because it has not recognized and Awakened to the Spirit in
the moment of conditional existence. The sixth stage of life
should lead to the seventh or the recognition of all
conditions in the Spiritual Divine, which ultimately
dissolves all the habits of attention.
If we enter into the seventh stage
of life most fully, we will not accumulate karmas in other
worlds. We may see other worlds or become associated with
the possibility of the transition to other worlds, but we
will recognize those possibilities as they arise. We will
not become involved in the psyche, but we will recognize the
psyche. Therefore, we will fulfill the Way perfectly in the
seventh stage of life and not migrate after death but be
dissolved in the Living One, allowing the Living One to
generate our destiny in Its own Domain.
You could say, therefore, that my
call to you is a call back to the Transcendental Domain. But
that Domain is not a someplace else. You cannot get There
from here. No road leads to It. It is not up, It is not
down, It is not within. It is present. We see It when we
Outshine what seems to be in the present. We are already
There. We need only Awaken to It. It is not like another
place. It is simply not visible to us because our vision is
qualified by the modifications of the Spirit that are
presently arising. The more we enter into the Spirit, then,
the more this arising world is Transfigured to the point of
being Outshined, and we will discover that we have been all
the while sitting in the heavenly Domain, as people awaken
from dreams and find they have been lying in their beds all
night!
Because the possibility for
Translation exists in death, death is for the Enlightened a
blessed process, a process of Translation, ultimate Samadhi,
Outshining, the moment of the arising of the perfect Vision,
the moment of infinite Brilliance, not of darkness and
unconsciousness and all the weirdness we seem to feel may be
associated with death and the afterlife. But we will enter
into that Brilliance, that clear white Radiance, only if we
have lived a spiritual life to the point of becoming
perfectly resonant with the Spiritual Reality, enabling it,
therefore, to Outshine conditional existence when this
body-mind comes to its natural end.
The ultimate form of death is
Translation, or the Outshining of conditional existence. It
is to enter into the Brilliance, the Radiance, the Bright of
God, not to make a transit to another world, but to be
Sublimed and overcome by the blissful Radiance of the
infinite God at the moment of death. If we are still subject
to the self-contraction, then we will withdraw and fall into
the outer lights of the Cosmic Mandala into the spirit
worlds, gravitating back to those conditions toward which
our habits of attention gravitate.
Those who fulfill the spiritual Way
perfectly Outshine all worlds at the point of death and
enter into the Divine Domain represented in the Cosmic
Mandala by the central white Brightness, what is called the
“clear white light” in the Tantric Buddhist tradition,
represented in the visualized sphere of lights as a white
star. The cosmos manifested in the Spirit may be seen as a
sphere of lights, a system of concentric circles, at the
outer reaches of which is reddishness and golden yellow,
then a moonlike whiteness, then a brilliant blue, and at the
center a white star. When we enter into the white star, we
enter an infinite place of Outshining Radiance, the Divine
Domain.
Yogis make much of the other lights,
but all the other lights are associated with conditional
existence. High realms appear in the blue field, but they
are not the Divine Domain. They represent conditional
possibilities of the manifest ego, and most human beings
will gravitate toward the lesser lights, the outer field,
toward grossness, the etheric and lower astral planes,
re-embodiment in human form. But by living a spiritual life,
by becoming spiritualized through God-Communion, we enter
into that disposition that ultimately Outshines all
conditional realms. Therefore, death in its perfect form is
Translation into the Divine Domain beyond all the
lights.
Translation is the perfect
furfillment of this Way. It is the last stage of the Way.
The Way begins with hearing and seeing, understanding the
self-contraction, repenting of it, moving beyond it, and
seeing or locating the Spirit of God, Which is Transmitted
in the Company of the Spiritual Master and thereafter found
in all times and places by maintaining that Communion
constantly and submitting to the discipline of the
Adept.
When this Baptizing Power is
contacted, It is felt as a pleasurable force enveloping and
pervading the body. It may be felt to be Shining through the
eyes. It creates a melting sensation in the heart of the
emotional being. It creates feelings of the movement of
energy in the body. As we enter into the life of Communion
with That which we Locate through Baptism, then we enter
into a process in life and meditation wherein we are
purified. All of the chronic tendencies, physical,
emotional, mental, and psychic, are brought to the surface,
to some degree lived through, struggled with in spiritual
terms, eventually transcended. The Way is the entire
process, not merely meditative enjoyments. You must
appreciate that the Way involves these purifications and
that we must be actively involved in submission to the
Spiritual Divine in the context of our
limitations.
We grant more force to this
purification through our meditation. We not only experience
pleasurable meditative conditions, but by opening in the
process of meditation we liberate more energy into our daily
lives and consequently experience more of the purifying
difficulties, perhaps, as well as signs of Blessing and
enjoyments in life. Then in the meditative process, in the
cycles of conductivity and the conscious process, all kinds
of physical and emotional and mental and psychic changes
develop. As they arise, we must not become attached to them,
cling to them, and become self-contracted on the basis of
them, but we must continue to submit ourselves into the
process of conductivity and direct attention into the
disciplines of the conscious process.
Thus do we always go beyond or
become purified of our meditative enjoyments. Whatever
arises is the “Garbage of the Goddess.” There are simply
modifications of the Spirit. We must continue our practice
and not become distracted by them. We must relate to them
naturally and persist in the essential disciplines. All the
spiritual and meditative experiences and the experiences of
ordinary life described in the esoteric traditions are
potential in this Way and may be experienced at one time or
another by devotees, but the thrust of our practice is in
the conscious process toward which we are liberated through
our discipline. In every moment of our practice we free
energy and attention from the habits of the
self-contraction. Therefore, we can practice the conscious
process, perhaps in the form of true prayer or perhaps in
the form of enquiry and re-cognition or the forms of the
Perfect Practice. Ultimately the Perfect Practice is
fulfilled in the Awakening to Sahaj Samadhi and Self-Abiding
recognition in the seventh stage of life, which becomes
Transfiguration, Transformation, indifference or motiveless
renunciation, and Translation or Unconditional Nirvikalpa
Samadhi, which is ultimate rebirth into the Divine
Domain.
The purpose of all the gatherings of
devotees is to consider the Teaching to the point of hearing
or self-understanding and to grant attention to the
Spiritual Master in the Forms of his Person, his Agencies,
and his Spirit-Blessing magnified to devotees to the point
of the tangible Awakening to and acknowledgment of the
Spiritual Divine. This entire institution and this whole
community of devotees should be devoted to these
purposes.
Practice daily. Gather constantly
for the sake of hearing and seeing and communicating to one
another about actual hearing and seeing. Tell the stories of
your practice. Support one another’s Awakening. Give one
another opportunity for the demonstration of the Way in good
company. And call everyone to the real discipline and
technical practice of this esoteric Way, this radical Way,
in daily life.
Do this as individuals and do this
as a gathering, a community, and an institution, and you
will see the fruits of my birth and of your own birth. Then
this institution and this community will be unique and will
have great value. They will be real, they will grow, they
will stop stumbling and falling back. It all depends on true
hearing, self-understanding, and the acceptance of this
Baptism.
See more:
1. ‘Lost
Christianity’ and the Seven Stages of Life
2. Beyond
the Beginner’s Spiritual Way of Saint Jesus and the
Traditions of Mystical Cosmic Ascent via
Spirit-Breath
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