The Dreaded Gomboo or The Imaginary Disease That
Religion Seeks To Cure.
A Collection of Essays and Talks on the “Direct”
Process of Enlightenment.
By Da Free John.
Compiled and edited with an introduction and commentary
by the Renunciate Hermitage Order.
THE DREADED GOM-BOO
Part I: Understanding
CHAPTER 2
Tell Me True – Have You Got the Gom-Boo?
August 30, 1982
Part I
MASTER DA: If you want to “get religious” in our time,
you must first decide that you have the Dreaded Gom-Boo.
Then you go to a Doctor Pope, Doctor Church, Doctor Jesus,
Doctor Mahatma, Doctor Mahatmaboo, Doctor Gombooananda,
Doctor Gomananda-Booharaj. As soon as you get the feeling
that you have the disease, you start looking for religious
answers. Ask most of the people around here how they got
involved with this Way of life, and they will describe some
symptom or other of the Dreaded Gom-Boo. The Dreaded Gom-Boo
led you all here because you were looking to be cured of the
heebie-jeebies, the hopeless Three-Day Thumb-and-Finger
Problem, the terrible jiggly meatedness! (Laughter.)
Are you telling me that you think God and Truth are
supposed to be interested in curing you of the Dreaded
Gom-Boo? Is that it? It is about time you realized that
there is no cure for the Dreaded Gom-Boo! The Gom is
terrible! The Boo is terminal! And this is why everyone
dreads it, the terrible, terminal incurableness. That is
what youve got, right? I thought so! I could see the
symptoms as soon as you came in here. Have you got the Boo?
The Dreaded? The terrible Gom? Have you? Thats what I
thought! Tell me true-have you got the Gom-Boo?
Yesterday a few of us watched a short series of medical
research films on human physiology. One of them examined the
cellular life of the body and showed close-ups of the
activities within the cells. Of course the body and the
brain are basically made up of cells. You call this cellular
colony “I,” but if you have occasion to observe the bodys
activities, you can see that there is no justification
whatsoever for calling it “I.”
In fact the body-mind is composed of many different,
independent, separate entities spontaneously going about
their business, relating to one another, breaking down,
overcoming one another, moving about, spontaneously making
shapes and organs. There is no singleness to any part of the
process, much less one entity that is all of that.
The body is a pool of organisms, a pool of single-celled
or relatively simple entities living cooperatively with one
another, and not always living very well. Yet mysteriously
you presume an association with this colony and declare it
to be “me” or “I,” an entity. This apparent entity to which
you refer has no singleness. It is a cooperative colony of
very simple organisms, and there is no suggestion of an
overriding entity that dictates to the individuals what they
should do. Rather, the organisms are doing what they should
be doing, doing what they are doing, spontaneously,
mechanically, in response to mysterious, mechanical,
chemical signals inherent in their own structure.
All these separate organisms, these cell bodies, live as
a kind of colony, a kind of cooperative community. They have
a kind of structural alignment to one another, therefore, a
relationship to one another. There is a central nervous
system, a brain-complex that can communicate changes to the
cells through the medium of the structure they all have in
common, the tree on which they are built. But the nervous
system, the central system, can be examined just as well as
the independent cell masses. It is itself composed of
similar materials. It is just another one among them, but
senior because its limbs or branches extend into all the
cell masses and can therefore have an effect on them. Thus,
we can identify with the body as a whole, but it is
mechanical. And we can identify with the core structure of
the body, the administrative system, but it is likewise
mechanical, both affected and effective, arising through the
same mechanical causation that also produces the more
peripheral cellular activities.
Very often the people who examine these physiological
facts about human beings and Nature say that there is no God
and that we need not presume therefore that a super-natural
entity is in control. They say we can account for everything
on the basis of the observable mechanics of Nature. A
similar kind of thinking can be brought to bear on our own
ego or self-reference. Yet even though everybody observes
the mechanics of manifest existence to some degree, it is
not on the basis of that analysis that we refer to
ourselves. Our reference to ourselves does involve
presumptions we make on the basis of observation, but our
reference to ourselves, our sense of our own existence,
precedes any observations of Nature. Even so, we can become
so confounded by Nature that, like most scientists, we deny
our own existence!
On the other hand, we do have a sense of our own
existence, and we do not get it by analyzing the body. It is
a spontaneous presumption, like the presumption of the
relatively independent cells of their functional distinction
from other cells. Likewise, the intuitive presumption of the
Divine is also spontaneous and justified on the basis of
direct Realization, rather than on the basis of the analysis
of what is happening in Nature, even though we are
associated with what is happening in Nature. If we would
examine our bodies thoroughly, we would have to say that “I”
does not exist, just as the scientists who examine Nature
thoroughly would have to say that “God” does not exist. But
the presumption of existence is not based on such
observations. Rather, the presumption of existence is
qualified by such observations to such an extent that we can
even make such absurd judgments as “I” does not exist, or
God does not exist.
If you examine your own body and observe its sheerly
mechanical nature, without any apparent reference to an
overriding conscious entity or force, then you would have to
make the judgment about yourself that you do not exist. Yet
it is absurd to suggest that you do not exist. To paraphrase
Descartes, “I am, therefore I am.” The force of mere
existence is self-authenticating. What is observed apart
from the reference to or presumption of “I” at most only
qualifies or to one or another degree limits the force of
the presumption of existence.
In fact, we do limit the presumption of existence with
all our experiencing and knowing and thinking. We qualify
our native presumption of Being, which is a priori or most
fundamental to existence. Then, having mysteriously come
into association with mechanical processes, we begin to
think about the presumption of Being, doubt It, wonder about
It. Through more and more observation, experiencing,
analysis, we more and more profoundly qualify this
presumption of Being, which is free and not based on any
observations whatsoever. The “I”-reference becomes
associated and identified with conditional states and forms.
The presumption of Being becomes this body-mind and all its
desires and relations. Such is the qualified version of the
presumption of Being that is inherent and original to our
existence. On the same basis we make presumptions such as
“Im going to die” and “When youre dead, youre dead.” Such
presumptions are the symptoms of the Dreaded Gom-Boo for
which everyone is seeking a cure-or despairing of ever
finding one.
I once went to a gallery to see a display of very fancy
specimen shells. The woman who showed them to me exclaimed
how creative the simple snails are that they can make such
beautiful objects. I told her the snail had no more to do
with making his shell than she did with making the bones of
her body. She did not particularly like the suggestion. She
preferred the animistic, creative-entity version of the
snail-ego, as she preferred a similar view of herself.
Where exactly is the Source of this presumption of Being?
The source of the qualifications of the presumption of Being
is obvious. It is the cellular, molecular mechanical entity,
which arises in the realm of Nature through all kinds of
causes and effects, through a kind of patterning that
demonstrates not an absolute will but the effects of all
kinds of secondary motions, intentions, accommodations-a
kind of magnificent structure, but not altogether benign,
since it is just as much interested in changing and
destroying forms as it is in originating and fulfilling them
for a time.
But underneath and prior to the cellular structure is the
presumption of Being with which we are directly associated.
In the profundity of our research into the presumption of
our own existence, rather than its mechanical associations,
we realize, intuitively, directly, the Being that is to be
presumed and to be ultimately associated with all of Nature.
The investigation of the mechanics of Nature may lead to the
non-presumption of the Divine Being, and likewise our
investigation of our own mechanical nature as an independent
entity seems logically to lead to the non-presumption of our
existence, but the presumption of Being is inherent and
prior, and if we enter into It, we intuit the Being that is
fundamental to all of Nature.
Whenever we become involved in the investigation of the
mechanics of the apparent associations of Being, we qualify
more and more the sense or presumption of Being Itself, even
to the point of no longer being able to presume It,
becoming, therefore, atheistic, desperate, suicidal. But as
soon as we enter into the presumption of Being, that very
presumption of Being purifies Itself of the limiting power
of all Its relations. This is the secret of the spiritual
process, then-not to manipulate the cause-and-effect domain
of the mechanical associations of attention, but to enter
into the force or presumption of Being itself and magnify
That in the context of the same associations. Such is quite
a different process than our ordinary experiencing. It is
also quite a different process than the one engaged by
science, the purpose of which is to explore the mechanics of
appearances rather than to affirm Being.
The more oriented the common mind becomes to mere
experiencing and to scientism, which is a specialized
extension of mere experiencing, the less we affirm the
spiritual disposition of our existence in general and the
closer we come to a purely mechanical and mortalistic view
of existence altogether. A culture that does not found
itself on the prior or transcendental presumption of Being
becomes more and more mechanical and desperate, and such is
the situation of world civilization at the present time.
The spiritual process is not like other conventional
activities. It is not a matter of merely experiencing and
developing experience, raising our level of experience and
analysis to the umptieth degree. The spiritual process is
not about experiencing or complex association with
phenomenal states. Rather, it is about entering into the
prior presumption of Being, the most fundamental Condition,
of which we are natively and intuitively aware, whether or
not elaborate conditions, or any conditions, arise.
Conditions are not necessary to the presumption of
Being-they are secondary to It. If the presumption of Being
is entered into most profoundly, then, ultimately,
mechanical manifestations become recognizable not as a
limiting force, but as a non-binding modification of Being
Itself. As mechanical entities, we tend toward experience
and the elaboration of experience, and therefore toward
limitation by experience and purely mechanical Nature.
Paradoxically, the more we experience and the more we know,
the more we tend to become mechanical, limited,
desperate.
We start out naively seeking to know and to experience as
a way of becoming expansive and happy and ultimately
fulfilled. But our search does not become Happiness. The
more we know and experience, the less happy we are as a
general tendency, because we are qualifying the presumption
of Being the more we experience, the more we know, the more
we observe in the conventional sense, the more we analyze
and see how we are functioning and how Nature works. Thus,
people typically come to a point of weakness and despair, a
feeling of bondage, as a result of the egoic elaboration of
their possibilities, and they approach the Sources of Truth,
communicated through religious and spiritual culture, as if
seeking a cure for this dilemma, this Dreaded Gom-Boo, that
is the basis of conventional religious culture.
Everyone is asking that this dreaded thing be taken away
from them now that they have gotten themselves into it,
naively at first and more and more volitionally. Now that
they have found themselves to be trapped by virtue of their
naive, egoic functioning, they look for an ultimate source
of Help that in effect will function as a cure for their
disease. The conventional interpretation of religion and
spirituality, therefore, is that they are a kind of
medicine, physician, process of cure, something to do until
you are completely cured and Happy again.
In truth, the religious or spiritual process has nothing
at all to do with the Dreaded Gom-Boo or its cure. It has
nothing to do with the disease you want to make the premise
of the spiritual process. The first thing you must do when
you truly become involved in the process associated with
Truth is to understand, and, immediately, directly,
presently, to transcend the disease that you seek otherwise
to cure. The pursuit of the cure of the disease is the same
activity as the one whereby you first acquired the disease.
It is a version of the disease, something you do because you
are diseased. It is not another process than disease. At
most it involves a different relationship to the disease.
Whereas previously you unwittingly did everything that
compounded the disease, now you want to do everything to get
rid of it. The search for the cure is still another way of
being diseased. It is not the Way of Truth. It is not the
Way that I Teach. It is not true religion or true
spirituality. True religion, true spirituality, is the
process that takes place when you are already well, when you
are in your Native position, when you are established in
Truth, Happiness, or Reality.
In the Way that I Teach, I do not casually indulge
patients who are suffering from the Dreaded Gom-Boo. The Way
that I Teach is a confrontation, a great fire of
consideration. It is not a matter of entering into a
hospital where you are consoled and possibly made
comfortable until someday, perhaps after death, somewhere
along the line, you will suddenly have a magnificent
experience that will be God or Heaven or Enlightenment. When
you conceive of the Truth in such terms, then the Truth
becomes experience, a version of the same thing from which
you are suffering, in other words. Experience in general is
the non-presumption of Being, the abandonment of the
position of Being so that you may explore the mechanical
associations of Being. Experience weakens the presumption of
Being until it becomes so weak that you regard yourself to
be ill, un-Happy, un-Enlightened.
The spiritual process is to understand how you contracted
this disease, understand the mechanics of your presuming it
always in this present moment so that in every present
moment you will be established in the Free Position, the
Position of Happiness, Truth, or the presumption of Being.
The spiritual process, then, becomes the magnification of
non-disease, prior Happiness, the prior presumption.
As that presumption once again becomes effective and
magnifies itself, changes occur in the apparent personality
and its relations, including forms of purification,
balancing, restoration of equanimity, freeing of energy and
attention, Awakening most fully without qualification to the
Condition of Being, Realizing fully Its states, recognizing
the ultimate Status or Source of the conditions associated
with Being, and passing through the changes we call
Transfiguration, Transformation, and Translation. In the
context of the Way of Truth these changes are not steps on
the way to all ultimate cure. Rather, they are the
inevitable changes that occur in the already cured
condition, the condition of well-being or spiritual
Happiness.
The Way cannot begin, therefore, until there is true
hearing and seeing. It cannot begin until you can practice
on the basis of the presumption of Being, rather than on the
basis of the presumption of your disease, the Dreaded
Gom-Boo, the egoic dilemma, the psychology of Narcissus. The
Way begins only when you have thoroughly understood the
disease not as a symptom external to you, but as a process
with which you are thoroughly involved in this moment and
which you are capable of observing, understanding, and
transcending in every moment by entering most fully into the
prior presumption of Being. Then you have the capacity to
practice this Way, and not until then.
Many people come into association with me, confronting my
Argument, my consideration, my Presence and Agencies, and
they begin to engage in activities that they consider to be
religious or spiritual, but that are religious and spiritual
only in a conventional sense. Such people are involved in
activities the import of which is the search for cure from a
presumed disease. They take on the various disciplines as a
kind of remedial effort, a struggle with oneself and ones
limitations, and they are seeking some ultimate change or
experience that will occur as a result of their effort.
Beginning students in The Laughing Man Institute may
typically be described in these terms. They are beginning to
make certain changes in their lives while listening to the
Teaching and responding to my Influence, but until that
process of granting attention, that alliance, becomes true
hearing and seeing, they are not practicing the Way
itself.
People are always seeking justification of the Way in the
mechanics of their existent. They must rather understand
that very mechanics, their very interest, their very
strategy. You, for example, are looking for some reason to
be established simply and directly without any doubt, in the
presumption of Being. But the more you examine the relations
of Being, the more you become associated with forces that
qualify that presumption and reinforce your doubt.
DEVOTEE: Master, you have said so many times that we
become what we meditate on. As long as we are looking at the
body-mind, we just keep becoming it.
MASTER DA: Yes. Whatever you look at, whatever you turn
attention to, you are tending to take on that form, tending
to be qualified by it. This is a law of the psyche, a law of
manifest individuality, as absolute as the laws of
mechanical Nature. Adepts and saints and devotees throughout
history have therefore recommended that since you become
what you meditate on, meditate on That which is Absolute,
That which is Happiness, That which is Truth, That which is
the Source and Condition of the ego and the individual self
and all its relations, even all of Nature. Meditate on That.
Give yourself up to That. Presume That. Enter into the
disposition of faith, or inherence in That. And allow the
presumption of That to magnify itself to the point that you
become perfectly identical with It.
The same proposition, however, has been made part of a
culture of cure. People think that they can take up the Way
mechanically, just by thinking of a Divine Name or creating
with the mind some sort of belief in the Divine, without yet
truly, fully, absolutely intuiting and accepting the
existence of the Divine, the prior Force of the Divine, and
Being Itself. Thus, people seek by a little remedy to
eventually Realize what is Great. They pursue what is Great
through their own changes and mediocre gesture, whereas the
Way begins only on the basis of the absolute presumption or
faith that inheres, doubt-free, in That which is most
Obvious.
The only process whereby that most profound presumption
or Enlightenment can be established from the beginning and
provide the basis for the Way itself is the consideration of
the Argument of the Adept, which is not merely to accept
propositions and ideas you must believe because they are
given to you by an authority, but rather to observe yourself
most profoundly and directly, and to truly see how the
disease you suffer is arising, truly see the mechanical
nature of your own presuming, your own effort, your own
strategy of life. Having come to the point of understanding
your mechanical nature, then you may live moment to moment
on a basis that transcends the disease, then you may live on
the basis of the presumption of Transcendental Being, free
Happiness, prior Happiness, Consciousness prior to
limitation. This unique Principle underlies true practice of
the Way that I Teach and distinguishes it from conventional
forms of practice.
Your suffering is not happening to you. It is a form of
your own activity. To enter into this Enlightened
disposition, therefore, does not necessarily or immediately
result in remarkable changes at the experiential level of
your existence. Even in the midst of that Divine
Presumption, you are apparently associated with the
mechanical body-mind and its field of relations, its habits,
its karmas, the accumulation of the effects of activity and
reaction. Thus, the apparent state of the body-mind may
remain more or less unchanged. The body-mind may continue to
pass through various changes, some of which are pleasurable
and some of which are not, even in the midst of an Awakened
life. The process of magnifying that Awakening will also
demonstrate itself over time as changes that in summary may
be regarded to be benign. The psycho-physical personality
will be purified over time, but the process of purification
is not cure. The Truth does not come any closer as a result
of purification. Any changes are just a demonstration of how
the living individual manifests itself when it is
consciously founded in its own ultimate Principle.
Part II
DEVOTEE: Master, a few years ago we had a discussion
about the spermatic being. It is an interesting way to
consider the presumption of Being.
MASTER DA: In what way?
DEVOTEE: Perhaps there is a way of looking at a process
of the body and seeing the presumption of Being as a form of
esoteric anatomy.
MASTER DA: It is interesting to consider how the
psycho-physical entity comes into existence, to consider the
father as the bearer of life in the form of the sperm, which
has the appearance already of a living entity, something
like a tadpole. It has a head and a tail, it moves, it is
associated with energy, it looks like a miniaturized version
of the central nervous system without all the extensions of
nerve-force that move into the body-mass. This tadpole, this
living being, enters into the body of the female and comes
into contact with the egg-mass, which is potent with
biochemical potential but which, in comparison with the
living entity or the sperm, is relatively inert.
The sperm enters this form of body, this egg-mass, and in
association with it begins a process of cellular
multiplication and the development of a complex life-form
that eventually looks quite different from the original
“tadpole.” However, the actual process of the mating of the
sperm and the egg is more complex than the sperms sort of
lying on the back of the egg and being the spine forever.
Sperm and egg join with one another very profoundly. The
union between them is perfect, so that they are no longer
separate from one another.
In any case, the fundamental Being, the real Being, is
not inserted inside the body or lying across your back with
its mouth stuck into your brain. The Transcendental Being is
That in which both sperm and egg are always arising. The
Transcendental Being is always the Condition of any
phenomenal appearance in Nature. Therefore, when we enter
directly into our own Condition, directly into the
presumption of Being, the Feeling of Being, the primal Force
of Consciousness, we are not merely entering into a portion
of our anatomy. We are not merely identifying with the spine
or the brain or some nerve in the heart. These structures
are associated with the various processes and events that
develop on the basis of our spiritual understanding, but
That with which we come into unity on the basis of the
presumption of Being transcends the mechanics and the
structures of the body-mind. We cannot say that the Being is
one part of the anatomy, and the rest of it is Prakriti or
separate Energy. In fact, we do not exist in time and
space!
The Radiant Transcendental Being is not inserted in the
body-mind, but It is Transcendental, That within which the
body-mind is arising and also That within which all of
Nature is presently arising. It is utterly Transcendental.
We cannot stand in our Real Position and say It is
Infinitely far out there, nor can we say It is deep inside
here. It has nothing to do with spatial or temporal
conceptions. It is not locatable in terms of structure
merely. We can use the structures of the body-mind as an aid
to the meditative location of That with which we must
Identify, but What is ultimately located through the
spiritual process is utterly Transcendental and therefore
did not come into existence with the sperm or at a certain
moment in the history of the development of the fetus. The
changes of the body-mind from birth to death have to do with
structural or phenomenal appearances, the development of
egoic personality or self-consciousness in the frame of
Nature.
That which is ultimately to be Realized is prior to the
frame of Nature, and prior to the development of the
organism of egoity. To examine the sperm and the egg and the
play that seems to be associated with their union is
interesting, illuminating something about the quality of our
individuated development. But beyond providing an analogy of
the two primary dimensions of our experiential life, that
is, consciousness and its relations, the process of the
sperm and the egg suggest to us the Great Idea or the Great
Condition That is to be Realized.
The dichotomy of the sperm and the egg is the source of
dualistic thinking. It is a better analogy for philosophies
like Samkhya and other philosophies that presume existence
to be made of two eternal and independent principles, one of
them being Consciousness, and the other being the Energy
that takes on form, or Nature. That dichotomy is evident in
our ordinary or conventional experiencing of self and
Nature, but it is not an expression of That which we Realize
ultimately in Enlightenment, or Transcendental
understanding.
In Enlightenment, there is one Principle, not two. That
which is to be Realized, therefore, ultimately involves
Translation into a state of absolute Identification with
That which is eternally Single. It is Radiant Being, not
merely consciousness separate from form. It is Self-Radiant.
In the setting of conditional manifestation and conditional
consciousness, that Being is self-conscious. It views Its
own Radiance in the form of objects or modifications of
Itself, which it does not recognize to be modifications of
Itself, but rather, in the convention of experiencing, views
to be other than Itself.
The Upanishads say that wherever there is an other, fear
arises. Wherever this structural dichotomy appears, wherever
the convention of experiencing appears apart from
Transcendental understanding, we become founded in fear,
disease, the struggle for release. We become confused. Many
ways are therefore communicated to mankind that involve a
forceful identification with consciousness to the exclusion
of phenomena, either the exclusion of grosser phenomena in
the embrace of subtle ones, or the exclusion of all
phenomena, gross or subtle, high or low. All such exclusive
presumptions are ego-based and reflections of
un-Enlightenment.
Enlightenment is not merely to identify with
Consciousness to the exclusion of some or all phenomena. The
Enlightened disposition is established in the Transcendental
presumption of Being and tacitly recognizes whatever arises.
To recognize whatever arises in the Self-Radiant Condition
of Being is to be Free. To not recognize whatever arises is
to be self-bound, bound to a separate principle and a
dualistic sense of existence, and therefore to be motivated
through strategies of seeking toward release or superior
experience. Enlightenment is to be established fully in the
Transcendental Truth of Being and to simply recognize
whatever arises, to Abide in That without distinctions.
The more profoundly this Self-Abiding recognition
magnifies itself, the more the modifications of the Radiance
of Being become still, Outshined by the force of
Transcendental Being Itself, so that ultimately, after the
Free Radiance has completed its cycle of making various
changes, the Self-Radiant Condition Itself is established as
a Principle, without distinctions, not based in any effort
to separate from conditions, but based simply in a native
recognition of conditions.
Our Way, therefore, is not associated with the
conventional ascetical orientation, the basis of which is
dualistic philosophizing, the search for the cure for the
Dreaded Gom-Boo, the ego-based or Narcissistic effort
associated with traditional spirituality and religion and
ordinary life without religion or spirituality. A native
economy is associated with our practice that is not based on
this dualistic or ascetical principle.
The ultimate maturity of this unique form of practice is
not the conventional strategic asceticism but the Force of
Self-Radiant Being presently active as tacit recognition of
whatever arises, and that Self-Radiant Being simply
Outshines the phenomenal associations and conditions of
ordinary existence. In that case, the life of the apparent
individual may begin to look relatively ascetical, but it is
not based on any ego-based, dualistic illusion. It is simply
a matter of enstatic immersion or Abiding in and as That
which is Perfect Happiness, Perfect Radiance. Until the
power of Radiant Being thus begins to Outshine phenomenal
conditions, the individual, even in the Enlightened
disposition, will continue to manifest as a play of
phenomenal possibilities, which will begin to become more
uncommon over time, extraordinary perhaps, in this life and
after this life, but the individual will continue to
manifest itself in the form of the play of apparent Nature
until the Self-Radiant disposition simply Outshines rather
than separates from conditional phenomenal states.
So-what is this disease, this Dreaded Gom-Boo, that
everyone is seeking to cure? Most fundamentally and
essentially it is the doubt of Being. If you examine
yourself, you will observe that you are chronically
suffering from just this doubt, the limitation on the
ability to affirm Being Itself without qualification, on the
ability to have Faith in That Being-not merely the believers
faith, but the faith that is native to the Realization of
Being. You are simply so associated by convention and habit
with conditional states that the effect or limiting force of
those conditional states has begun to overwhelm the
possibility to affirm your very Condition. Thus, you are in
a state of doubt. You are complicated, self-conscious,
afraid, and your doubt motivates the strategies of the usual
life, even when it takes the form of religious or spiritual
effort of a traditional or conventional kind.
This Way that I Teach is founded first of all in the
restoration of the capacity to affirm or presume or be
established in the Transcendental Condition of Being, prior
Happiness, Consciousness Itself. When that presumption, that
Radiant affirmation, is strengthened, then the ultimate
spiritual process is naturally displayed, the process that
begins after the stage of “listening” and the stage of
original conventional discipline have become true
understanding, true hearing, true seeing.
They are only listeners, or beginners, who have not
passed through the crisis of hearing and seeing, who have
not entered into the capacity for the inherent affirmation
of Being, Consciousness, Self-Radiant Happiness, Love-Bliss,
Freedom, expressed as moment to moment understanding,
self-transcendence, surrender beyond self. Until this
affirmation develops, all meditation is essentially a
fretful concern with the states of the body-mind. Therefore,
even though beginners may meditate, eventually they must
come to this understanding, even of their meditation. And
this understanding makes possible real meditation, the
“conscious process” that transcends the limiting force of
experience.
Part III
MASTER DA: You think, in the conventions of your moment
to moment existence, that you simply are the body-mind, so
in deciding to move your arm or have a thought or say a word
you do not acknowledge any separation in time or space
between your decision and the act. As a matter of convention
you simply continue to presume that you are the body-mind.
But actually you have a telepathic relationship to this
body-mind. You are not communicating with it or being
effective upon it from some other place in space, but you
are communicating with it from the Transcendental Position,
prior to time and space.
You always already exist in that Transcendental Position
or Condition, prior to time and space, and that is “Where,”
we could say, your Consciousness is, even at this very
moment. Consciousness is projected through the medium of Its
own Radiance, a will based on identification with this
body-mind. It broadcasts this will upon the body-mind so
that you seem to have an effect on the actions and
tendencies and thoughts and experiences of this body-mind.
But in fact the body-mind is a completely mechanical entity
that is arising and going on and dying completely on its
own. Your effect upon it is simply an illusory, or, rather,
metaphysical drama wherein you are bound by the limitations
of this structure. You are bound to it to the degree you do
not Realize your actual Condition and do not recognize the
body-mind as a modification of that real Condition.
To the degree that this Realization and recognition are
not presently true in your case, you are simply being
commanded by a colony of insects piled upon one another in
the shape of a physical body, organizing their relations
with one another the way ants organize themselves through
minute underground tunnels. You seem to be it, you seem to
be in charge of it, but you are fooling yourself to the
degree that you do not Realize Who you are really, What you
are really, what your Condition is truly, and on that basis
simultaneously recognize the actual ultimate Condition of
this mound of ants.
The cells of the body are like simple organisms, amoebas,
little creeps in a swamp, perhaps more highly organized but
basically the same guys. Your body is just a pile of those
guys, the same guys that have only learned through the vast
eons of evolutionary time how to organize themselves in
relation to one another and to specialize their tasks. They
are not conscious. They are a mechanical breed, a potential
within this particular kind of gross manifestation.
You are just a stack of these guys, a pile of poles,
which are related to one another not as conscious entities
but as mechanical entities, little computers, little robots,
each one of which is nothing much more than a little bug, a
little slimy character living in the medium of water, which
is basically the bodys composition. They permit the
Transcendental Being, the Living Consciousness, the Divine
Personality, to have a vehicle of manifestation, but if that
Divine Personality forgets Its own Condition and no longer
recognizes this pile of poles, this mound of creeps, then
the mound of creeps becomes “I,” begins to command the
Living God and cause the Living One to conceive of Itself as
the ego, as the individuated personality necessarily limited
and bound by the mounds of individuated slime out of which
manifest existence is composed.
We are all at this moment, literally-not metaphorically,
not figuratively, but literally-the same One, not someone
else, not separated from one another, not individuated
except in conception. If you enter into the Consciousness
that is observing the act of attention and all Its
relations, which are individual in the conventional case of
each one of us, if you simply enter into the Consciousness
in Which this is arising, that Consciousness is the same One
in every case. There is not even the slightest difference.
And that One is not extended in time and space. It is not
that One here and a different One over there. It is simply
the same One. It is prior to time and space. It is precisely
and only the same One, and everything else arises in a
Matrix of the forces of Its own Light, mysteriously
fractioned and complicated.
As long as that Living Being is disposed to be controlled
by phenomenal possibilities, It will consider Itself merely
to be the entity with which It is apparently associated. It
need not enter into every entity from outside. Every entity
arises within the Transcendental Being. Therefore, every
entity is already ensouled by God wherever it is arising,
and the capacity for Consciousness in its Condition is made
possible through biochemical apparatus. The One
Transcendental Being becomes self-conscious according to the
references presented by the individuated entity, but It is
always the same One.
All of this that looks so solid to us by virtue of our
brain-mind perception is actually an infinite fluid of
refracted Energy or Light. It is just one Force. It is
nothing but our own Face Shining, but we do not recognize
Its forms. Thus, there is all of this complication and
wondering about where we are and what is going on, and
thinking matter-of-factly according to common sense that “I
am this body-mind and body-minds die and I am going to die
and thats it, so while I am living here I might as well get
it on as best I possibly can.” Our idea of “getting it on”
is to pleasurably stimulate this body-mind as much as
possible, and as much as possible to avoid any interference
with the pleasurable states of this body-mind.
I recognize you as well as observe you, and I call you to
begin a process of observation and ultimate recognition,
instead of simply carrying on mechanically, just living
according to desire and impulse and circumstance. I ask you
to consider truly, directly observe the processes of your
own existence. Do not merely believe in God and become
emotional. Truly observe your Condition of existence.
Understand the process whereby you generate any action,
spiritual or ordinary. Observe your own life. Consider this
argument in the context of your life. Do not just hear it as
a mass of concepts you may or may not be disposed to
accept.
I call you to consider the structures of your living, the
forms of the processes of your own activity. In the mood of
this discussion, examine this body-mind, not merely as you
observe it in everyone sitting here in an envelope of
individuated flesh. Really observe, even using what you know
through the service of those who scientifically investigate
the human individual. Observe this fleshy form, these legs,
these organs in here. They are all made up of little cells,
little mechanical, biological entities, little amoebas,
little fish, and they link up with one another without
losing their mechanical individuality, established in
connection with one another through the lines of the
movement of fluid and nerve force.
Examine this fleshy body. See how all these cells are
doing their job. Observe in what sense you have anything to
do with them. Where do you observe yourself doing anything
to them? Where do you observe yourself growing these nails,
making this hand or these hairs? You are not doing that in
any sense whatsoever! Well, who is doing it? Who is in
charge of this mechanical mass of cells? What does it have
to do with you? Where do you enter into this body-mind?
Look at the cross-sections of the brain cells-they are
just more masses of these gelatinous little buglike
creatures with their little filaments extending and their
little chemical specializations. There is no deciding
entity, no separate conscious entity controlling them. Where
are you represented in this body-mind? You are fully aware
as yourself, as Consciousness, but where are you represented
in the body-mind? Where can you see yourself, if you dissect
the body and analyze the functions of mind commanded by
brain and body commanded by cellular motions?
If you thoroughly examine this entire body and mind, you
will not find a single place within it where you are
represented or where you are active. You are simply
observing it. You are not present as an actor. These cells,
these ants, these insects, these amoebas, are the actors,
commanding one another through their voluntary cooperation,
their singular association with one another whereby billions
of them are organized for a single purpose, that is, to be a
kind of nation of individual cells in cooperation with one
another. They cooperate with one another to create the
apparition of singleness, but they are not single.
The “nation” of the body-mind is not the president or
some administrative officer. The nation is all these
individual entities. But nations and states tend also to
become self-conscious through kings and emperors and
presidents to create, as in the case of the ego, an illusion
that a single commander, a single entity, is the meaning and
enforcer and power of the state. Actually, however, there is
no such person in the body-mind. The singleness that appears
there is a reflection of the cooperation of billions. There
is no single one.
An outside observer sees the cells functioning so
cooperatively with one another that they seem to be one, and
that one is then given a name. It calls itself “I” or Ninth
Mary or Bodha or Mulund, some name like this. Then that
apparent entity, that illusory “one,” seems to be the
president, the emperor, the king. But the “I” holds merely a
ceremonial position. “I” is not anywhere represented. “I” is
the people, the entities, the amoebas, the cells in their
fluid mechanical cooperation with one another. They are the
body-mind. They are the state, not this fool propped behind
his great desk, looking for something to do, who when
interviewed says, “I am this, I am that, Ill do this, I
think this.” The ego is like the Wizard of Oz.
There is no one in charge who is single. The
in-chargeness itself is an illusion. There is simply the
cooperation of countless movements producing relatively
discrete individual entities that are still only the
expressions of the cooperation of many entities. Even those
discrete individual entities, such as the individual body,
exist in total dependence, not only on other bodies like
themselves but also on the whole realm of natural entities
and forces and cosmic processes. There is no ultimate
individuation. There is only an infinite field of
cooperation, and even that cooperation breaks down and
produces destruction and change. There is no singleness.
Therefore, you cannot find yourself in the body, and you
cannot find yourself in the brain. Yet even so, your most
fundamental awareness is of Consciousness, Being, Which is
Single but not anywhere represented in the body-mind or in
any sense ultimately in charge of the body-mind. The
body-mind is superimposed upon It.
So-instead of pretending to be the commander, the actor,
the one in charge, or the one who is shown via the face of
all these millions, instead of pretending to be the
president, who thinks he is the people, let the people be
the people! Let the body-mind be the state, and observe
yourself, or enter into your own Condition directly. You are
not a consciousness that in some conventional sense pervades
the body and is in charge of it. Rather, the body-mind
superimposes itself upon you who are Consciousness. You are
never anything but Consciousness. With the advent of the
sense of identification with the body-mind you start
thinking of yourself as the emperor, the queen, the
president, but that self-image is only an illusion, a
ceremonial position. Like the emperors new clothes, you are
a false show, and the body-mind is like the fools who bow to
the king, “Oh, what a wonderful outfit, what a beautiful
body-mind you have there.” They do not give a damn! They are
not trying to be emperor. They are content to be the
entities in the hive without any ultimate individuality,
just mechanical processes of cause and effect.
You most see that you are not anywhere, that you are not
represented by the body-mind, that you represent only the
agreement within the hive to function as this entity. You
only reflect the agreement of this mass of individuated
cells. It is just an illusion, just a habit of mind, a
convention, to presume yourself to be the king or the queen,
the male or female president, the chairman of the board of
this pile of glup! (Laughter.) You are not there. You are
not inside, and the body-mind, because it is a fool without
self-consciousness, is perfectly willing to kiss your ass
and tell you that you are the great one, for the time being
at any rate.
You should therefore examine this body-mind and see that
you as you are-not as “I,” because when you say “I” you mean
the body-mind-are not the king or the queen of the hive and
not the hive itself. You are What you are . The hive
superimposes itself on you. It is related to you within the
context of conditional existence, but you are always simply
the Consciousness, the primary sense of Being, the
fundamental Bliss of Free Being or Free Radiance.
The first thing you should do is observe this. See how
your presumption of the monarchy is a pretense, a
self-contraction. It is a ridiculousness, Narcissus, the
self-contraction, creating an illusory self-image. When you
understand this, then, instead of doing all the things you
do by virtue of the process of identification, you will
simply Abide as That in which this sense of identification
with the body-mind is arising. You will enter into That
Itself, that Consciousness, that primary sense of Being.
Enter fully into It. Relax all these efforts, reactions,
impulses relative to the body-mind. The body-mind will
become more easeful, and you will do nothing but become more
and more free or indifferent relative to it, as you enter
into the Ultimate Domain of your own Being.
And, entering into the Domain of your own Being, Locating
That in which attention and the objects of attention are
arising, you will enter into the recognition of your own
apparently individual consciousness, and more and more
profoundly, tacitly, directly, you will awaken to the
Condition of that consciousness. It is Transcendental. It is
prior to time and space, prior to individuation, prior to
relatedness. When you have Awakened to your actual
Condition, which is not an individuated Narcissistic state
but the Divine or Transcendental Condition Itself, then the
mechanical processes of attention and its relations will be
spontaneously permitted again, but as they arise, they will
be recognizable, directly, simply recognizable as they
arise, as nothing but the perturbations or apparent
modifications of Consciousness Itself, without binding
power, without necessity, just That. They are nothing but
dream-like impositions on Consciousness Itself and they are
nothing but the figures of Its own Radiance.
In that Enlightened Condition, in which the ultimate
Status of What you truly are is completely obvious, you
recognize all the features of extended or conditional
existence. And in that recognition, or Self-Abiding, the
inherent Radiance out of Which everything is made is set
free in the circumstance of body-mind and relations, and the
phenomena of Transfiguration, Transformation, and ultimate
Translation appear in the apparent plane. In Truth, however,
there is always, only, profound Identification with
Transcendental Consciousness, Being, Love-Bliss, Happiness,
and that is Enlightenment.
Enlightenment, therefore, is the true position in the
context of manifestation, not merely a condition we may
realize after we escape manifestation. It is the Truth of
our position, and it becomes obvious to the degree that we
become capable of observing and understanding our actual
circumstance and the process of manifest existence. If we do
not engage in that process of understanding and
self-transcendence, we will simply grant power to the
mechanical processes of existence, which will command our
future, our present, our sense of self, our destiny
altogether. This is also possible.
Apparently, in this time, in this eon, on this planet,
most beings seem to opt for granting power to manifest
existence as it appears. They grant power to that which
superimposes itself on them, and they accept this marvelous,
ridiculous, illusory position of monarch of the body-mind as
compensation for the penalty of submitting to this
illusion.
DEVOTEE: Master Da, it would seem that when one enters
into that disposition of identifying with Being Itself, the
cells are also Transformed.
MASTER DA: Yes. They are Enlightened, or Transfigured by
the Self-Radiant Power of Transcendental Being.
DEVOTEE: But do they still manifest as what they are,
except that their cooperation with what is arising in that
moment is different?
MASTER DA: You are also, by virtue of your identification
with the body-mind, deluding the body-mind itself or
communicating to all the entities out of which the body-mind
is composed a false sense of their actual Condition. Through
the self-contraction you restrict the force of Radiance in
the context of the body-mind and grant to all these discrete
structures the sense of their independence, mortality, and
conditionality. But if you make the Enlightened disposition
profoundly intimate to the body-mind, through your
Awakening, then even all these cell forms, these masses of
apparently individuated beings, become Enlightened by that
Radiance. They submit to the Transcendental Being, but not
as the false king submits to the people, to the entities, to
the mechanism itself.
I have described Enlightenment as “whole bodily”
Enlightenment for this reason. To Awaken in the context of
the body-mind is to do the service of Awakening the
body-mind to its Condition, not by making every cell
individually self-conscious, as if it were an individuated
being, although that metaphor is not altogether false, but
by aligning conditional existence to its Ultimate Source, so
that instead of just being cells, they are sublime masses of
Light.
Thus, in the truly Enlightened Condition, the body-mind
is also Radiated or Enlightened by the force of its intimacy
with Transcendental Consciousness. That is why the changes
of Transfiguration and Transformation take place and why
true Enlightenment can be described as even a bodily
condition.
DEVOTEE: Master, the other night you were also speaking
about the mind. We were talking about how the mind must
first be transcended and then the body. The body is full of
Light when the mind is transcended.
MASTER DA: The spiritual process is not a matter of
trying somehow to dissociate from the body without first
understanding your Condition. Rather, it is a matter of
transcending the force of mind or presumption that causes
you to feel diseased, in need of strategic or dissociative
escape from phenomenal conditions. We must first transcend
this subjective disorder and not try first to escape the
bodily condition. The only reason we want to escape the
bodily condition is that we are possessed of this
un-Enlightened mind, this mass of presumptions, this mass of
egoity, this subjective reasoning that makes us think,
“Well, the only possibility of Happiness is some sort of
dissociation, some sort of conventional escape.”
Rather than attack the body, therefore, this blade of
grass that everyone is always condemning, one must examine
the self, examine the ego, the apparition of egoity,
identification, differentiation, and desire, the act of
self-contraction, the drama of Narcissus, the drama of
non-transcendence. Understand this, observe it, understand
it thoroughly, transcend it directly. Then the body-mind
will be aligned to the Condition that is True, Ultimate,
Transcendental.
Such is the case in the seventh or fully Awakened stage
of life. In that case, there is no limiting mind. There is
mind, but it is associated with Free Consciousness or
Transcendental Being. Therefore, the mechanics of mind and
body and the conditional states associated with mind will
all be Irradiated, Transfigured, Transformed, and then
ultimately Outshined, without the intervention of any
strategy of dissociation.
What must first be overcome is not the body, not the
condition of apparent manifest existence in limitation, but
the fundamental subjective presumptions we have developed
through association with the body, the whole affair of
Narcissus or self-contraction or identifying with the
body-mind and accepting the role of the naked emperor,
thinking that we are fully clothed, whereas even these poor
insects, these amoebic cells, know very well that we are
fools. But they are very passive. They generally have no
great aspirations to becoming emperors.
The body will permit us to be fools, just as it will
permit us to be wise men or wise women. The body will allow
us to be Enlightened, just as it will allow us to be
un-Enlightened. The body has no inherent desire for
un-Enlightenment. It is simply arising. And this
Enlightenment must take place in the position of
Consciousness, of fundamental Being. If it does not take
place there, it will never take place.
DEVOTEE: Master, you have described that when the body is
full of Light, there is “mindless embodiment, Consciousness
without inwardness.”
MASTER DA: When the mind is transcended, then the body is
inherently full of Light. It is Radiant with Self-Radiance.
I wish you would all get into this. (Laughter.) You must
abdicate.
DEVOTEE: Can you imagine a cells trying to take over?
DEVOTEE: Maybe cancer is a revolution of the body, a
protest of the cells.
MASTER DA: It is. It is just a mass of cells in a kind of
disposition, not as a conscious entity but as a process, so
that the rest of the cells of the body regard it to be an
alien, like a poison taken into the body, and the body
begins to treat its own vital resources as enemies. There is
obviously no consciousness associated with this process,
just as the body self-destructs at death without any
self-consciousness. But because you are self-conscious, you
think you are in pain and dying, somehow betrayed and
afraid. Yet you are simply Consciousness, Which is
inherently Blissful, Free, Transcendental, Perfect
Being.
This body-mind is superimposed on Consciousness.
Consciousness must recognize the body-mind and Realize that
It is Itself. Merely as the body-mind, It is not Itself. It
is a relation of the body-mind. Samsara must first be
understood and recognized before samsara, including the
body, can be Realized to be Nirvana or the Transcendental
Being. Merely to say the body-mind is the Transcendental
Being before Realization or prior recognition is to be a
fool, to be a public prattler of traditional wisdom, to
smile when there is no justification for smiling-except that
It feels better.
The Dreaded Gom-Boo – Table of Contents