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 II: Renunciation
CHAPTER 7
Stand Free
November 16, 1982
MASTER DA: I have two essays to read and consider with
you today. The first one is called “Transcendence of the
Motive of Incarnation.”
Transcendence of the Motive of Incarnation
The transcendence of the necessity of reincarnation
requires the transcendence of incarnation now. To be Free is
not to exploit any mechanism of incarnation (subtle or
gross)-for that is itself an effort of incarnation. Freedom
is a matter of directly transcending every mechanism of
incarnation and Standing Free in Transcendental Happiness.
It is a matter of understanding, renunciation, and
purification of association, until the Free Position is
Perfectly Realized. (If the Free Position can be Realized
instantly, the purification stage can be bypassed. It
should, in any case, at least be reduced, or the motive of
incarnation will not cease.)
MASTER DA: In the religious and spiritual traditions of
India since ancient times, the basic purpose of life and
therefore of spiritual practice has been to bring an end to
the cycle of birth and death and the process of
reincarnation. This has always been a purpose of Hinduism,
therefore also of Buddhism and of all the traditions that
have come out of India. From the Indian point of view it is
the essential purpose of spiritual life and of existence
altogether.
In our Way there is no such purpose and no strategy that
seeks to bring an end to reincarnation. Rather, the
disposition of our practice is the single and ultimate
disposition of transcendence or unmediated Realization of
the Transcendental or Real Condition. In effect, therefore,
our Way involves the transcendence of reincarnation. If the
disposition of practice either strategically or in effect
transcends the process of reincarnation, then that
disposition must likewise transcend incarnation or present
conditional existence.
The traditions that seek to bring an end to the cycle of
births and deaths tend to develop various techniques or
strategies of life and meditation that will ultimately bring
to an end the process of being born. These techniques
project transcendence into the future and in the meantime
strategically exploit the mechanisms of manifest existence
in such a fashion that, it is hoped, the cycle of births and
deaths will cease eventually.
The consideration offered in this essay criticizes the
traditional orientation. You cannot exploit the mechanism of
incarnation and at the same time bring reincarnation to an
end. You cannot cease to reincarnate if you do not transcend
incarnation presently. Therefore, our Way is not involved
with strategies that exploit conditional existence in the
hope of transcending conditional existence eventually. Our
Way is the present transcendence of conditional existence or
the immediate Realization of the Transcendental Condition,
the Free Condition, the Free Disposition.
Our Way is not based on any problem. Therefore, our Way
does not view incarnation or conditional existence as a
problem to be strategically solved. Our Way is based on the
present understanding and immediate transcendence of
conditional existence, not because conditional existence is
a problem but because Transcendental existence is Reality.
Conditional existence is always merely a perturbation, a
limitation on Transcendental existence. Whatever form it
takes in whatever realm we may appear as conditional beings,
conditional existence is always a limitation on our Real
Condition, which is always Present and Eternal.
Thus, Consciousness or Transcendental Being becomes the
self-contraction and the mechanism of attention that pursues
various objects, states, and relations, and the Inherent
Radiance of transcendental Being takes the form of mind and
body and the relations and states of mind and body. As a
result we do not experience and know ourselves in Reality or
in the Transcendental Condition. Rather, we experience and
know the Transcendental Condition in the limited form of the
ego and its relations and states. Yet these limiting
conditions, the ego and its associations, are not a problem
which we must then overcome through the efforts of the ego,
life after life, until somehow or other existence comes to
an end. Rather, we must inspect and understand and
immediately transcend the conditional event.
Therefore, this Way is the transcendence of the entire
motive of incarnation. It is not about pursuing the various
possibilities of mind and body, the various possibilities of
the independent spirit or personality. It is not about
achieving a higher bodily state and a higher state of mind.
It is not about making a transition into higher planes. It
is about immediately understanding and transcending
conditional existence altogether. It is about the
transcendence of mind and body, the transcendence of high
states of mind and low states of mind, high bodily
possibilities and low bodily possibilities, high planes and
low planes, again not because conditional existence is a
problem to be eliminated-such is the point of view of the
ego, thinking-but because when we Realize the Real
Condition, then all that appears as conditionality, the
independent self, the self-contraction, its forms and states
of mind, its forms and states of body, the relations of
these, all is Outshined, inherently transcended in the Real
Condition. Conditional existence has no necessity. It has no
binding power ultimately. It has not even any appearance in
the Transcendental or Divine Condition.
Our Way is, in effect, the transcendence of incarnation
itself. But it is not a method, a technique to be applied to
the incarnate state to advance it, evolve it, or bring it to
an end. This Way is simply the inspection of the conditional
state to the point of understanding and transcending it in
the present. Our Way is therefore inherently a renunciate
Way. It is about freedom, and freedom from the limiting
power of conditional existence.
In the plane of conditional existence the Way is
expressed as indifference, or freedom from the binding
power, the apparent necessity, the implications, of
conditional appearances. It is expressed as freedom from
seeking, freedom from the search for pleasure in low forms
or high forms, freedom from the avoidance of pain, and from
the exploitation of pain, for that matter. The renunciate
disposition is simply the free disposition, not the strategy
of asceticism, but the free disposition expressed in the
context of conditional existence until conditional existence
is altogether Outshined.
The Way that I Teach is about standing in the
Transcendental Position, the Free Position, the Prior
Position, the Real Position, the “Host” Position, the
Condition in which we already exist but which we do not know
or experience because knowledge and experience arise within
the plane of the body-mind or the conditional self. We
experience and know ourselves as the conditional personality
and we know and experience all kinds of limiting conditions,
all of which are nothing but the Transcendental Reality, the
Free Transcendental Being, but we know and experience the
Free Condition only in the form of limitation, non-freedom,
bondage.
The Way is to understand this and stand already Free. To
stand already Free is to be inherently renounced or
indifferent relative to conditional existence or the
possibilities of incarnation high or low in the scale of
Nature. On the basis of this understanding and inherent
renunciation, while we live we engage a process wherein Free
Being is released and purified of Its limiting associations
until the Free Position is Realized perfectly, expressed
perfectly, magnified perfectly, in other words until
conditional existence is utterly Outshined. In that
Outshining there is no more incarnation, no more
reincarnation, no more conditional existence, no more
migration, no more birth and death, no more change, no more
degradation of being and personality, no more aging and
diseasing, no more seeking, no more un-Happiness, but only
Transcendental Happiness, Divine Freedom, infinite
Blissfulness, existence in the Divine Domain or the
Transcendental Condition.
If the Free Position can be Realized directly,
immediately, simply, through hearing and seeing the Adept,
then the process of purification toward Outshining is
bypassed. As a practical matter and in general, people hear
and see and by degrees realize more and more free attention
and eventually come to the point of Awakening, when they are
no longer involved in the process of purification, although
limiting conditions continue to be inspected, recognized,
and released. There is no inherent bondage in the utterly
Awakened Condition even if purification, based on
understanding and true renunciation, is, as a practical
matter, necessary. Ideally we do well to establish ourselves
fully in understanding and renunciation to limit the period
of purification prior to Awakening. Otherwise the Way is
never ultimately fulfilled and the motive of incarnation
remains fundamental.
Our Way is not, therefore, a form of
“incarnation-idealism” or conventional religion that seeks
to evolve toward higher states, perhaps to be relieved of
the necessity of reincarnation in human form but likewise
seeking to be incarnate or manifest in some higher form.
This Way is not the “pro-incarnation” path. All the seeking
associated with the motive to incarnate or be individually
manifest is an expression of the ego or the
self-contraction, which is most fundamentally to be
understood in our Way. Thus, our Way is not involved in the
idealism of incarnation and therefore of reincarnation, but
our Way is also not a kind of negative idealism
strategically opposed to incarnation or reincarnation.
We neither strategically seek to bring an end to
reincarnation nor strategically seek to suppress our
incarnate state. All such motivations are founded in the
problems of the ego and express the egos notion of dilemma
or problematic existence. Neither the “pro-incarnation”
motive nor the “anti-incarnation” motive is at the base of
our practice. In fact, both these motives are transcended in
the disposition that is fundamental to our practice. Our
practice is generated from the Position of the Native State,
the Position of prior understanding of the ego and its
problems. We are not strategically involved in seeking to
incarnate or perfect our incarnation in any sense. Nor are
we strategically seeking to bring an end to incarnation, to
suppress it now or bring an end to it in the future.
Our Way is not established on the basis of the ego and
the egos problems. It is established on the basis of the
understanding of the ego and its problems and the immediate,
inherent, unconditional, unmediated Realization of the
Transcendental Condition in which the body-mind and the
self-contraction are arising. Thus, in effect the
fulfillment of this Way does bring an end to or ultimately
Outshine the incarnate condition or the conditional states
of existence.
And so I can go on to the second essay, which is called
“The Power of Being.”
The Power of Being
Seeking devotes energy and attention to experience (body)
and knowledge (mind). We should understand all seeking to be
the expression of the ego (or self-contraction), and so
permit energy to be devoted to Bliss (the Native State of
Energy, or Spirit, before It becomes mind or body) and
attention to be devoted to Being (the Native State of
Consciousness before It becomes attention to the
self-contraction and the activities, states, and relations
of the body-mind-self).
Therefore, Be Consciousness, recognizing whatever arises
to be only Self-Radiant Bliss, or Happiness. In this manner
transcend all conditional experience and knowledge as well
as the search for conditional knowledge and experience (all
of which only reduces and binds the Bliss of Being via the
unnecessary illusion of limitations).
Let attention be resolved in Being. Let energy be
resolved in Bliss, by recognizing all conditions in
Self-Bliss. Thus, Stand Free, prior to the conditional
gesture of attention, the self-contraction, experience, and
knowledge. Be Self-Radiant, not self-contracted and moving
as attention (or seeking for objects and states). Thus,
Outshine all conditions by the Self-Radiant Power of
Being.
MASTER DA: This essay considers the Free Position. The
Way is not a strategy for overcoming the egos problem nor
for suppressing the ego in any sense. The Way is a matter of
magnifying the Free Position on the basis of understanding
the ego and the search, animated through the body-mind, for
all kinds of states of experience and knowledge.
Everything that appears to be an object of self is a form
of Bliss, a modification of the Transcendental Energy or the
Radiance of Transcendental Being. The ego, however, does not
know conditions to be only Bliss. It does not recognize
conditions in the Spiritual Reality. Therefore, it
experiences the inherent Bliss of Transcendental Being as
limited conditions and states and everything that is
acknowledged to be the independent self. Such,
fundamentally, is its consciousness. That consciousness with
which we identify most fundamentally and the gesture of
attention by which it is expressed are a contraction from
the state of Free or Transcendental Being.
Therefore, this essay says, “Be Consciousness,”
Transcendental Consciousness, prior to the self-contraction
and the gesture of attention. As Consciousness, recognize
whatever arises to be Self-Radiant Bliss or Happiness. The
Liberator (Eleutherios) says, “Be Conscious as the Feeling
of Being and Realize that It Is Happiness.” Recognize all
conditions as that Happiness, be Free of them as what they
appear to be, and Realize them to be the Transcendental
Reality. Recover the Bliss of Transcendental Existence by
recognizing all the forms that are its apparent limitations.
Through such Self-Abiding recognition, conditional existence
is Outshined in Bliss, and everything that is not Bliss
dissolves, is Outshined, ceases to be noticed in that
infinite Bliss.
Through this Self-Abiding recognition we therefore
transcend all conditional experience and knowledge as well
as the search for these. The fulfillment of the Way is not
expressed as states of experience or knowledge, nor is the
Way expressed as a pursuit of experience or knowledge or the
pursuit of the pleasure or perfection or fulfillment of the
bodily personality or the search for or attainment of states
of mind, high or low in the scale of Nature. All conditions
are limitations on Bliss and replace the Realization of
Bliss with limited forms of experiencing and knowing that
are ego-based, based on self-contraction or the limit on
Being.
We must allow attention to be resolved in Transcendental
Being and to Locate its Source. We must let energy be
resolved in Unconditional Energy, Free Energy, Bliss,
Self-Radiance. We do this by becoming Awakened in the
Transcendental Condition of Being and by recognizing
conditions in the Self-Radiance until they are Outshined.
The Way is to Stand Free, to stand in the Position of
Transcendental Being, the Source of attention, to stand
prior to the conditional gesture that is attention, prior to
the self-contraction, prior therefore to all the forms of
experience and knowledge, all the forms of mind and body,
indifferent to all of these apparent conditions, in other
words, not bound by them, not motivated by them, not
implicated in them. In this manner the motive of attention
that expresses the self-contraction dissolves utterly, and
all the conditioning of Transcendental Existence is
Outshined in the Transcendental or Free Condition.
The Way is to be established in the Power of Being and to
magnify that Disposition. We are established in the Power of
Being through understanding the self-contraction, seeing the
whole picture of conditional existence, seeing it without
the bright eyes of youthful egoity and all our idealistic
motivations toward fulfillment in manifest terms. If we
understand conditional existence, we see it as a whole and
see that it is not merely a matter of being born and moving
toward perfection, but it is a matter of being born,
gradually being degraded by change, and coming to the point
of separation, disease, old age, and death.
To see the whole picture of gross existence is to see
that picture. To see the whole picture of manifest existence
in all its planes is to see mind in all its forms as
limitation, as a plastic chaos, not merely a hierarchy of
planes that extend downward from heaven and then lead back
to heaven. When human beings are feeling idealistic, wanting
to positively fulfill their possibilities, they turn in one
or the other of two directions. On the one hand, they may
turn into the bodily plane of life, exercise the body-mind
in gross terms, and pursue pleasure, fulfillment, and
evolution in human terms. Or they may conventionally
renounce that possibility and turn attention in and up into
the planes of mind and pursue the possibility of ascent into
subtle conditions. We must see that both these gestures are
ego-based, fruitless, and both in fact involve the Being in
limitations on Happiness.
This gross world is a parcel or portion of the plastic
chaos of Nature. It is not merely a God-made realm within
which we should pursue perfection or even relief. It is part
of an infinite, unfathomable chaos of possibilities, all of
which are stepped down from the Transcendental Position, all
of which are a perturbation or limitation on the Real
Condition. It is a massive illusion, a great machine of
causes and effects, riding on the Divine, so that there is a
sense of the singleness or Divinity of it all, but the Play
itself is a chaos of plastic Radiance of the Divine in which
all kinds of entities and powers up and down in this
political hierarchy of Nature are causing effects through
intention, force of will, and activity.
In this world exist all kinds of beings, including a
great many human beings, all different from one another and
all involved in different ways of organizing life and
pursuing various ends. Billions and billions of individuals
create their effects, create limitations of one or another
kind for themselves and others. Some people influence others
only in a very limited domain of a few associations, others
on a little larger scale, community size, perhaps, others a
nation, others the whole world. There is no singleness, no
one purpose, but many purposes, many egos, many individuated
centers of will, energy, intention, suffering,
self-possession. All of Nature is just such a chaos of
causes and effects, spirits, entities, making change,
seeking various ends for themselves and for others,
sometimes by supporting others, sometimes by limiting, even
destroying, others. This politics, this warfare, is evident
in every plane of Nature, not merely in the human.
All of Nature is made out of Light, Bliss, the
Spirit-Force, the Self-Radiant Energy or Power of Being.
That Self-Radiant Energy played upon by individuated
intentions, That which is being played upon, is the Divine.
But the Divine is not in the play as a separate entity in a
separate realm. All the many realms in Nature are a play
upon the Divine. The Divine is Realized not by moving into
some unique or high position in Nature, therefore, but by
transcending Nature, by recognizing Nature, by recognizing
mind and body, by transcending knowledge or mind and
experience or body, by recognizing all of it in the
Condition that is being played upon in the form of all of
Nature and in the form of all individuals and in the form of
yourself as an apparent individual.
The various forms of seeking that occupy living beings
are all expressions of un-Enlightenment, egoity,
dissociation from the Divine Condition. We tend to seek
either horizontally, in the plane of our present
manifestation, or vertically, in the plane of possibilities
above and below the present manifestation. All that seeking
is an expression of the same bondage, a way of grappling
with the same plastic chaos as if it were ultimately
fathomable, as if we could ultimately achieve some victory
over it. Our seeking is a fruitless search, self-bound,
ego-based, un-Happy. It is a pursuit of Happiness. It is an
unnecessary pursuit. It is an imaginary disease. The Way is
not to go higher in the scale of Nature or to be perfected
in the present plane of Nature, but to understand our
involvement, to be indifferent to the implications of
Nature, to Stand Free, recognizing Nature, until we are
perfectly established in the Divine Condition.
All of you represent a kind of commitment to spiritual
life. You accept something about it, you like something
about it, you value something about it. But yours is a
relatively superficial commitment. Your leading commitment,
the commitment that holds your attention and your energy, is
a commitment to the purposes of the ego, the purposes of
experience and knowledge, the purposes of life in this world
and whatever may be beyond it. On some level you represent a
critical doubt relative to the Transcendental Truth.
You do not thoroughly understand or you do not accept
what you understand. Having seen something about yourself,
you do not thoroughly accept the implications of what you
have seen. You do not accept what you understand, and you do
not live on the basis of your understanding. Your
understanding is in the background or superficially present
in your mind and in the relatively ordinary disciplines you
accept on a daily basis.
You are not renunciates. That is why we constantly
consider together your tendencies, your continued
involvement in your usual efforts toward self-fulfillment
and self-pleasure. The true renunciate disposition does not
avoid pleasure, but it accepts the pleasures of existence as
merely conditional realities. For the renunciate the
pleasures of life are very ordinary and they do not create
primal motivation. The renunciate is not established in the
search for pleasure. The renunciate simply accepts pleasure
as part of the experience of conditional existence.
Likewise, the renunciate accepts the pain of existence. The
renunciate accepts conditional existence as conditional
existence.
Therefore, the true renunciate does not necessarily look
anything like an ascetic. Asceticism is a style of egoic
seeking. The true renunciate is simply in the Free Position.
He is not a seeker, but he is not an ascetic. He neither
suppresses the pleasures of life nor hides from the pains of
life.
You all are not renunciates in this sense. You are not
ascetics, but you are also not renunciates. I do not suggest
that you become ascetics, but you must be renunciates if you
are going to practice this Way. You must thoroughly
understand yourself, your motivations, and the conditions of
existence, Locate the Transcendental Condition, see all
conditions from that Position, and be indifferent to them,
in free relation to them, not bound by them, not made a
seeker by them. Then you will be involved in the process in
which all conditions are ultimately Outshined, but not
otherwise, not by failing to understand, not by failing to
be a renunciate.
You represent two commitments, a relatively superficial
commitment to spiritual life and a more involving,
relatively irresponsible commitment to the possibilities of
ordinary life. You are not seriously enough involved in the
process of self-understanding and self-transcendence, and
your disposition is not characterized by renunciation, or a
clear view of limited existence and responsibility for it.
Therefore, you are always neurotically, egoically, becoming
caught up again in your tendencies as if you do not
understand yourself, as if you were not Standing Free from
tendency and results. This is your imaginary disease, the
“Dreaded Gom-Boo” that has been the subject of our
discussions. You cannot be worldly people, egos pursuing
self-fulfillment, and practice this Way. It is just not
possible.
Again, I am not calling you to become ascetics.
Asceticism merely expresses the egoic motive, the character
and the consciousness of difference, the search for an
alternative. You are called by me to understand, and if you
understand, you will naturally be renunciates and,
therefore, you will bring conditional existence into a state
of equanimity. You will be responsible, you will constantly
understand, you will constantly transcend yourself in the
mechanisms of life and the body-mind. If you do not do this,
cannot do this, or will not do this, you cannot practice
this Way. There is no possibility that the evidence of
practice will appear in your life if you do not understand
and stand as a renunciate.
Many of you, even after many years of practice, are still
very willfully involved in looking for very ordinary
consolations, manipulating your lives and being manipulated
by circumstances. You may go through a period of relative
steadiness, but then some change is introduced, and suddenly
you are disoriented and irresponsible again. You are riding
on your desiring, being ridden by your own mind. You are
simply a moving life-impulse founded in self-contraction and
self-concern. You are looking for ease, fulfillment,
pleasure, the ultimate arrangement of the body-mind, but it
is an absurd motivation.
Your search is the ego, and this is what is to be
understood. Yours is a fruitless motivation. There is no
such success in the future. You simply do not understand.
You are not serious enough about understanding because you
are so profoundly committed at the level of your conscious
mind, and below it or outside it, to the motives of the
body-mind. That commitment prevents you from being serious
about understanding your motives. You examine them on some
superficial level or in certain moments, but at other times
you are so driven by the mechanical effort that you simply
submit to it and become an ordinary person again.
You all generally look like this. You are all very
ordinary people, at times looking hyper-ordinary and at
other times temporarily looking like some sort of
practitioner because periodically you accept certain
life-disciplines. But even then you are mediocre
practitioners because your understanding is weak. You are
weak-minded, weak-bodied, weak in the vital, weak in the
psyche, weak in emotion. You do not stand firm, you do not
stand free, you do not use what you are given. You do not
hear, you do not see me, you do not accept what you are
given, you do not accept this Baptism as It is and fully use
It in the form of practice.
This is the criticism I have long been communicating to
you and to all the members of our community. Today is simply
another moment in which I communicate this criticism to you.
After everything I have said and done with you in these
weeks of our gatherings here, I can summarize the Teaching
to you as I did with these essays earlier, but then I must
also summarize our time together and I must summarize it in
the form of a criticism.
You remain as you are, superficial egoic personalities,
Narcissus, self-bound. However great the Teaching, however
great this Baptism, as long as you remain a superficial,
self-bound personality, you cannot use That which is Great.
You can like It, you can enjoy being around It, you can
enjoy coming into my Company, you can enjoy thinking about
It when you are in my Company or at other times when you
feel interested or leisurely enough to examine It outside my
Company, but otherwise you are involved in the mechanical
continuation of the incarnation of Narcissus or the
independent personality.
You are mechanically involved in dissociation from the
Divine. Therefore, you are basically committing what is
called in the New Testament the unforgivable sin. You deny
the Spirit. You deny not only the Presence and feeling of
Energy, but you deny the State of the Spirit. You refuse to
enter into that State. The essence of your refusal is the
self-contraction or Narcissus, and the theatre of that
refusal is your ordinary life, your ordinary destiny, your
seeking.
I cannot do anything about the self-contraction other
than to Teach you about it. I cannot bring it to an end. You
are in the position of Transcendental Being. To Realize It,
to recollect It, to Awaken into It, you must realize
responsibility at the level of your personal existence.
Therefore, you must understand, you must use my Company, you
must practice. If you will not hear me, see me, use me,
practice, then the Way will not be fulfilled in your case.
It will not even be animated really in your case.
I recommend that you truly practice and enter The Crazy
Wisdom Fellowship and the esoteric order. But beyond
criticizing you, instructing you and goading you, hoping you
will do it, and Blessing you to do it, I cannot make you do
it. If you will not do it, that is your business, your
problem. I hope you will all enter into a mature stage of
practice as soon as possible. I hope you will all begin to
practice really and immediately. But I have been hoping and
asking you all to do that for all these weeks and for years
before, and yet the evidence of non-practice and immaturity
continues to appear. The reason for that immaturity has
nothing to do with me. It has nothing to do with any absence
of the Gift to you. It is an expression of your own
Narcissistic luxury, self-indulgence, weakness, refusal of
what you are given, refusal to use it, refusal to be
animated by it, refusal to become committed to the One Great
Matter that is the spiritual process rather than to this
ambiguous life in which you are superficially interested in
spirituality and most fundamentally oriented toward
self-fulfillment, the self-exercise, seeking toward various
ends.
I have basically summarized what I have to say. Does
anybody have anything they want to ask me or say about
it?
DEVOTEE: Master, I am grateful to you for returning me to
a level of practice that is true. I am sure it could not
have taken place outside your Company, and for that I am
completely grateful.
MASTER DA: But it would be unfortunate if it could not
happen outside my personal Company. Truly no one exists
outside my personal Company. Everyone exists in my personal
Company through Agency and everyone exists in the sphere of
my spiritual Company. But I certainly hope that not only
your practice but anyones practice does not require me to
enter into the kind of theatre I have engaged personally
with you here. If so, then our institutional community is
not working.
I do not believe that it could not have happened
otherwise. It must happen otherwise. It might not have
happened otherwise, but that does not mean it can only
happen if people can come into my personal Company so that I
put my attention on them, criticize them, deal with them,
get them to reveal themselves in various ways, show them to
themselves. I have created the Agencies of the institution,
the community, the Teaching to serve the change in people.
You must realize that the fundamental quantity that must be
brought to this possible change is your own consciousness,
your own intent, your own will to change, your own will to
understand. If you will not animate such intent, whatever
your circumstance, then whether you come into my Company or
make use of all the Agencies I have created makes no
difference. You cannot give enough to somebody who does not
want to change or is willfully involved with a commitment to
what he or she otherwise must change.
You cannot do enough for such people. People can come
into my Company for a period of time and see themselves
clearly-you cannot be around me and not see yourself,
because that is what I show you all the time-people can
spend time in my Company and see much about themselves and
feel that they are profoundly changed, but then they go
elsewhere, as hundreds of people have already done, and
return to their former disposition. This is evidence of a
childish relationship to me, not a responsible one, not a
manly one, male or female. It is evidence of their lack of
potential responsibility, and if that responsibility is
absent, the Way cannot develop, whether I spend time with
them here, or there, or not at all.
What you described might not have occurred in your case
immediately if you did not live around me. One would hope
that it could have occurred. But in general we must expect
people to bring that quantity of maturity, real interest,
real inclination toward the Way, into the setting of study
and participation in our culture. If they do, then the
Agencies I have created are sufficient and useful. And if
they do not, then those Agencies will not be sufficient-but
neither would my personal Company be sufficient.
What is missing, you see, is not the Siddha. The Adept is
not missing here. The Blessing is not missing. The Teaching
is not weak. The Teaching is not partial. Nothing that you
must be Given is missing. If anything is missing, it is that
quantity of self-presentation, the gift you must bring to
this occasion. If the quality and quantity of yourself that
you bring to the possibility of listening, hearing, seeing,
and practicing is weak, superficial, or profoundly absent,
then it makes no difference if this Help exists and has been
Given and is constantly Given. My Work is to replace my
apparent personal human effort gradually with Agencies that
will continue to do the Work or serve the Gift I Give to
people, without requiring that I personally be involved with
individuals. Otherwise, the Way can never develop for
significant numbers of people.
I have not yet duplicated all my Functions in the form of
Agencies. I am present to serve a strictly spiritual
Function, but Access to me personally is useful to people
only when they have used all these Agencies and my Spiritual
Company, without Access to me in personal human terms as a
rule, to the point of truly hearing and seeing and maturing
as people seriously involved in this Way of life. I remain
the ultimate Agency in our institution and our community, I
am spiritually accessible to people, my Gift is Given to
people in various forms, and I stand ready to be available
to them, but only when they are at a certain stage of
readiness or preparation, a certain stage of their capacity
to use Access to me in personal terms.
You must permit me these Agencies, therefore, and relieve
me of all other obligations. They are my Form, they are my
Work, they have been manifested, they are tangible Prasad.
You must use the Gift that appears in the realm of
visibility or tangible availability. It is sufficient to
deal with your curious, vital, and egoic problems and
obsessions. But to use the Divine Gift or not is your
business.
You also must be gift-givers, the bearers of the gift of
your self-presentation, your attention, your availability
altogether for this consideration, this listening, this
hearing, this seeing, this practicing. Such is your portion.
If you withhold it, then the Gift I bear is of no use to
you-it might as well not exist. I call devotees to use these
Gifts, this tangible Prasad in all its forms: the Teaching,
the community, the institution, the Sanctuaries, the
empowered places, the gathering of practitioners, the mature
practitioners who are available to instruct and provide
leadership. Use them all in the setting of Centers and
households and community organization, and allow me to live
freely in my natural manner, freely available to you in
spiritual terms, and free in human terms to live in the
seclusion of a renunciate, where I am not separate from
anyone but where I am spiritually available to everyone. In
my seclusion I am Working spiritually and also continuing to
be available to practitioners personally, when they have
used all the Agencies and my spiritual Company to the point
that they can grow further and magnify their practice by
spending time on retreat and in personal association with
me.
If anything is missing here it is this quality of
self-presentation, your gift, your portion. I have noticed
that particularly people who cannot bring this gift crave my
personal presence. They are the ones who want to make a
cult, to confine me, use me up, and depend on me childishly.
This is another reason why it is appropriate for me to
withdraw from general availability. Breaking the link with
that childish character requires you to be responsible. To
use the Agencies I have created and not indulge in my
personal Company, you must generate the gift of self,
because your childish, dependent character is not being
indulged.
I do not permit people to use me as the “star” of our
institution, a public figure, casually available to
everyone. I have served this purpose at times because it was
necessary to generate the Teaching and develop the
institution and the community. But those times have only
been lilas, temporary occasions for a specific purpose. When
the purpose is served, then your obligations must be made
plain, and then it is up to you to demonstrate your
response.
I have nothing more to say to you beyond this. Now you
must create this community. Every individual among you must
come to terms with the obligations of this practice.
There is a little too much seriousness here!
DEVOTEE: Master, I am aware of my aberrations and my
refusal, but beyond that I feel in random moments and also
in meditation this Spirit-Feeling of Remembrance of you. I
am interested in feeling that all the time because it is
real to me. I am very grateful.
MASTER DA: That is good! Just remember that the reception
of the Spirit-Blessing of the Master is not something you
can do and be the ego at the same time. Narcissus likes to
luxuriate in all kinds of amusements, among them the company
of something Big, some great Energy, something Attractive
and Shiny, something in which one can indulge. You can
indulge in my Spiritual Presence just as you can indulge in
dinner or sex or any other amusement. You simply apply It to
the ego and luxuriate in It. Just remember that you cannot
use this Blessing, you are not using It, by merely
luxuriating in It, merely enjoying the buzz in your body and
engaging in an absurd romance with God.
The Divine Being is not the kind of Individual with Whom
you can indulge in romance! You cannot be casually and
playfully and amusedly involved with the Divine. You must
overcome yourself. Then your relationship with the Divine
can also appear playful, but it is most profound. You can
feel my Presence and still be self-possessed, but that is
not practice. To use my Presence is to enter into my
Condition, the Condition of the Spirit-Force, not merely to
associate with It as a pleasurable Other, Someone fun to be
with, an Energy that makes you feel better in yourself the
way an infant feels better when it sucks the tit and feels a
little full. An infant sucking the tit is not Enlightened,
and likewise a devotee just breathing the Excess and
superior Energy of the Spiritual Master is not Enlightened,
not practicing, not being a devotee. You must give the gift
before you can use the Prasad. You can feel It, because It
is there, but you cannot use It. You are not truly using It
unless you give your own gift, which is self-surrender,
self-transcendence.
To surrender and transcend yourself you must understand
yourself. You must know what you are all about, appreciate
it, and Stand Free of it. Then you can use this Blessing,
this Baptism, but not otherwise. Even though you can say
that It exists, even though you can acknowledge this
Blessing, this Baptism, you may still not be a practitioner.
Hundreds and hundreds of people have spent time in my
Company and know very well there is a Blessing there, a
Force that came upon them, but they did not become
practitioners. They were self-possessed when they were there
and they were self-possessed when they left. They felt the
Divine Power, they know It exists, but It does not make a
difference to them. For them It is just some unusual, big
Thing among a number of other unusual and interesting things
in life.
You cannot therefore engage romance with me or with the
Divine or reduce practice to romantic loving of the
Spirit-Force or What you acknowledge to be me. To get
romantic with me is not to give a gift. It is to grab the
fruit out of the basket without offering anything first. It
is to take heaven by storm. It is an intrusion, a violation,
and inappropriate, and it will cause you to experience
difficulty ultimately because if you come into association
with superior Energy and remain self-indulgent or
self-possessed, that very Energy will begin to disturb you,
disorient you, cause you to react, individuate yourself, and
aberrate yourself.
The only way rightly to relate to the tangible Blessing
of the Adept is to hear the Masters Teaching, understand
yourself, bring the gift of attention, self-surrender,
self-transcendence. Then you can receive the Blessing. You
can know the Blessing experientially without giving your own
gift, but you cannot receive It, accept It, and use It
without first submitting yourself. You cannot suck the ear
of the Infinite and get away with it!
The Dreaded Gom-Boo – Table of Contents