Originally published in ‘The Knee of Listening’, 1972 edition by Franklin Jones (Adi Da Samraj
The death-of Narcissus had begun in me. I was stuck with the knowledge that I was soon to go mad and die. I tried as much as possible simply to observe this process in myself. I calmly said goodbye to Nina and left for school.
When I sat down to my first morning class this process was still going on in me. There was simply this absolute fear, and all my physical and mental processes seemed to be rushing to disappear and die. As I listened to the lecture on church history I felt as if my mind were a separate, material entity. It seemed to be rushing forward at an invisible point with accelerating speed. I felt as if I were to go violently insane on the spot. I began to write very rapidly in my notebook in order simply to observe this process and not be overcome by its effects.
I wrote every word the professor spoke, and if there were a inoment of silence I would write whatever I was observing in the room or in my body. Somehow I managed to get through the fifty minute lecture. When it was over I sat by myself. My body felt in a fever and my iriind close to delirium.
The whole experience seemed to summarize all the parts of the many experiences of fear and sickness and near madness I had known in my life. It was as if every one of those experiences was an event of this same kind, which could have led to some marvelous perception if only I were able to allow the death or madness to take its course.
But in this instance, as in the past, the shock and awesome fear were too great to be allowed without resistance. I had taken a few cold pills in the previous days, and so I left school to go to a doctor for advice. The doctor said the pills were mild and not aggravating or narcotic. He attributed my heightened sensitivity and alarmed condition to perhaps overwork or some kind of nervous excitement.
None the less, I stopped taking the cold pills. I went home. All day I stretched alone on the floor of the living room, revolving in this same overwhelming fear of death. When Nina came home she tried to make me comfortable, and I passed the evening in front of the TV set observing my terror.
When Nina went to bed I also tried to sleep. But the fever of the experience only increased. Finally, I woke her in the middle of the night and asked her to take me to the hospital. My breathing had become alarming, and my heart seemed to be slowing down. At times my heart would beat irregularly and seem to stop. ‘
She drove me to a nearby emergency ward. I was examined by a nurse, and then a psychiatrist, who told me I was having an anxiety attack. There was nothing apparently wrong with me physically. He gave me a sleeping pill and told me to rest. If I felt no relief within a couple of days, I should– seek psychiatric help.
When we got home I tried to sleep, but it seemed a long time before I could sleep. During the next few days I went to a psychiatrist, and I detailed to him the entire history of my life, including my experiences with drugs and my work with Rudi. He only told me I could join a group therapy session he held every week. 1 went to his session that night, and also, the next day, to a group session for students held by a psychologist at the seminary. But there was no relief, no fundamental insight, no communication I could make that made the difference.
Finally, several days after this process began, I was lying home alone in the afternoon. It was as if all my life I had been constantly brought to this point. It seemed that all of the various methods of my life had constantly prevented this experience from going to its end. All my life I had been preventing my death.
I lay on the floor, totally disarmed, unable to make a gesture that could prevent the rising fear. And thus it grew in me, but, for the first time, I allowed it to happen. I could not prevent it. The fear and the death rose and became my overwhelming experience. And I witnessed the crisis of that fear in a moment of conscious, voluntary death. I have no idea what occurred to me physically at that time. I may very well have passed through what would appear to be clinical death. I only know that I allowed the death to happen, and I saw it happen.
When that moment of crisis had passed I felt a marvelous relief. The death had occurred but I had observed it! I remained untouched by it. The body and the mind and the per*” sonality had died, but I remained as an essential and unqualified consciousness.
When all of the fear and dying had become a matter of course, when the body, the mind and the person with which I identified myself had died and my attention was no longer fixed in those things, I perceived reality, fully and directly. There was an infinite bliss of being, an untouched, unborn sublimity, without separation, without individuation, without a thing from which to be separated. There was only reality itself, the incomparable nature and constant existence that underlies the entire adventure of life.
After a time I got up from the floor. I walked around and beamed joyfully at the room. The blissful, unthreatened current of reality continued to emanate from my heart, and • not a pulse of it was modified by my own existence or the existence of the world. I had acquired a totally new understanding. I understood Narcissus and the whole truth of suffering and search. I saw the meaning of my whole life to that moment. Suffering, seeking, self-indulgence, spirituality and all the rest were founded in the same primary motivation and error. It was the avoidance of relationship in all its forms. That was it. It was the chronic and continuous – source of our activity. It was the chronic avoidance of relationship. Thus we were forever suffering, seeking, indulging ourselves and modifying our lives for the sake of some unknown goal in eternity. !‘
Life appeared to be determined by this one process of avoidance. It was the source of separation and un-love, the source of doubt and unreality, of qualification and loss. But in fact there is only relationship, only love, only the unqualfied state of reality.
***
Study
Death of Narcissus – The Seminary Event
“It was the awakening of the fundamental enjoyment which is the root of this work.” – 1971
“We could say that this death was the perfect Samadhi, or Amrita Nadi, or the formless intuition of God, of the Heart.” – 1973
“My “Seminary Experience” Was A Sign Of Utter Fulfillment Of The Work Of self-Transcendence In The Context Of The First Four Stages Of Life.” – 1985
“It was an extraordinary Spiritual Event. Spontaneously—instead of all this Circle work—there was the Heart-Awakening to the Witness-Position.” – 1993
“The event in seminary was like the transition from level three of the general practice to level six.” – 1996
“It need not happen in discrete stages—do this for some period and then that for some period. Basically, that is how it works in your case because I have Given you My full Wisdom-Teaching on the total process of Divine Self-Realization. But, in My case, it was all a very spontaneous matter. The reason I have described those transitions is that they occurred in My case.” – 1996
“What was so terrifying about this event was the dislocation of the sense of ‘I’ from its familiar anchor in the body-mind. All the sensory and mental and psychic input that is normally patterned around a presumed ‘self’-center was thrown into chaos, like iron filings blown to the winds without a centralizing magnet.“ – 1996
“I understood Narcissus and the entire cycle of suffering and search. I saw the meaning of my entire striving life to that moment. Suffering, seeking, self-indulgence, the seeker’s Spirituality, and all the rest were founded in the same primary motivation and error. It was the avoidance of relationship. That was it!” – 2004
“My “Seminary Experience” May Rightly Be Regarded As A Spontaneous and Temporary Incident Of a self-Transcendence In Jnana Samadhi. (Invert upon the essential being is to enter into Jnana Samadhi – Bodily Location of Happiness)” – 2004
“Indeed, The “Seminary Experience” Was Only A Tentative Realization Of Jnana Samadhi, Because The Motives Of Seeking Relative To the phenomena Of Spiritual Ascent Were Yet Latent and Potential In Me.” – 2004
“The body-mind, even attention, was no longer associated with My State. I was simply Realizing the Native State of Being.” – 2008
Hearing and the Awakening to the Fourth Stage of Life (in the context of the sixth (Witness))
“The fulfillment of sadhana in the context of the first four stages of life”
“When all of the fear and dying had become a matter of course, when the body, the mind and the person with which I identified myself had died and my attention was no longer fixed in those things, I perceived reality, fully and directly. There was an infinite bliss of being, an untouched, unborn sublimity, without separation, without individuation, without a thing from which to be separated. There was only reality itself, the incomparable nature and constant existence that underlies the entire adventure of life.” – 1971 Edition, The Knee of Listening
“When all of the fear and dying had finished their course, when the body, the mind, the apparently separate ‘person’ (and the act that made its apparent separateness) had been released, and my attention was no longer fixed in those things, I Knew Reality, tacitly and directly.” – 2004, The Knee of Listening
The following is a Beezone study in the early teaching of Adi Da Samraj, at that time known as Franklin Jones. This study focuses on two events that spontaneously occurred. One was while Adi Da was a junior at Columbia University in the spring of 1960 (described in The Knee of Listening, Chapter 3, ‘Hearing’) and the other is known in the literature of Avatar Adi Da as ‘The Seminary Event’, also called ‘The Death of Narcissus’, which took place at the Lutheran Seminary in Philadelphia during the years 1966-1967.
Avatar Adi Da has repeatedly emphasized that his sadhana years were not just for him; they were for every one of his devotees. He always spoke in universal terms. Why?
One can make all sorts of assumptions about this, but when you see the totality of his life, you begin to see that, in his terms, it was to make the ‘tour’ of the first six stages obsolete: “If you’re most direct with Me, then there need not be excursions into all of these time-consuming, perhaps distracting embraces of what’s on the left and right, what comes up in the course (of your sadhana).” – 1993
Again, in 1993, in an exchange with a devotee, he said:
“In order to ‘consider’ everything with My devotees and Demonstrate everything in My own case, all the visions had to be seen, all the experiences had to be experienced. Everything had to be experienced in My case. Otherwise, you all would be here now listening to Me tell you about the passing on from the frontal Yoga to the sixth stage of life and then to the seventh stage of life, and you would be wondering, ‘What the hell does He know about it?’ if, when you asked Me about ascending experiences and fifth stage conditional Nirvikalpa Samadhi and visions, I said, ‘I did not Realize that.’”
The Seventh Stage Way is the Direct and Prior Realization of Reality Itself. There is no progressive step—paradoxically—and there is no method to understand it—dumbfoundedly. But there is a Way, oddly and confoundingly so. For The Way of the Heart has stages, and the practice has been revealed, demonstrated, and taught as a progressive, purifying relinquishment and transcendence in an ever-brightening Revelation. Adi Da also says that one gains True Humor even in this world that is a purgatory.
I would like to link a specific and technical term of the teaching which I feel is a real stumbling block and has been bypassed in discussion and demonstration in the practice of The Way of the Heart. The term is ‘Hearing’. As far as I know, there has not been anyone at the level where ‘Hearing’ has been fully established.
There is a level of practice that is designated as 1.1, which from my understanding is recognized as the ‘most advanced’ level of practice presently in Adidam. (I’ll summarize what that practice is and how it shows itself.)
First Congregation 1.1 Practice is called the “Intensive Listening-hearing” stage of practice. It refers to a Devotional and Spiritual Relationship to Avatar Adi Da, the Person and the Truth of Existence. This practice is not “practicing a rule book” but requires honesty, clarity, and “self-understanding.” It requires full responsibility for hidden character—what is underneath the social ego (Oedipal). It must be established as a “root-basis.” And lastly, but not least, Searchless Beholding of Avatar Adi Da Samraj (the Person and the Truth of Existence) – Open-Eyed – including the transcending of ego with the capacity to hold/keep connected – infilled – with the All-Pervading Transmission by means of Conductivity.
This is ‘known’ by the brightening of the body/mind, an establishment of equanimity coincident with His Transmission. Free of errors such as using the body/mind elements and will to subtly (unconsciously) attain or conform or submit to ‘something’ else, an object, person, place, or thing.
PRACTITIONER: You have talked about how the death of the ego, which occurred for You in the seminary event, is indicative of practicing stage six.
HEART-MASTER DA: In my own case the seminary event can be said to be an expression or a realization of Jnana Samadhi, but it was not the end of the process. It was something like you all having a Spiritual experience at practicing stage one. The experience may be true enough, but the process has not advanced sufficiently for the experience to be conclusive. Therefore, it is just an experience, a sign of the deepening of the process, but it is not a representation of your actual level of practice and responsibility. Thus, in my own case, even after the seminary event, a wide variety of fifth stage phenomena developed. The true sixth stage process occurred later.
The seminary event was another event like the observation of my hand. Even from the beginning of my life there were many profound and summary experiences. But the Spiritual Process itself necessarily develops by stages of increasing responsibility. Thus, even though those summary events occurred and a fundamental awakening was a constant throughout my life, the process developed in its natural form by stages.
This does not mean that you must necessarily have the same kinds of experience or that you must go through all the levels of the experiential process that I did. I have certainly addressed this thoroughly enough by now. It is possible to make the transition to practicing stage six at maturity in practicing stage three. Perhaps this transition will not be common, but it is certainly a possibility in principle. Others could make the transition at any time within practicing stage four. Certainly at maturity in practicing stage four there may be sufficient evidence for the transition to practicing stage six. Some may enter into practicing stage five but move on to practicing stage six prior to the awakening of Conditional Nirvikalpa Samadhi, even prior to the most profound forms of Savikalpa Samadhi, perhaps. Some might pass through all the basic dimensions of the Spiritual Process. It remains to be seen.
If you are founded in the listening and hearing process, this listening and hearing then becomes an instrument with which to cut through all the stages, because they are all stages of limitation. In principle, if the basis of practice is profound, early transitions are possible, and even likely. In fact, they become likely only because you found the Way on hearing.
Otherwise, early transitions are not really possible, certainly not likely, because you will tend to identify with the limits of each stage of life, just as you do now in the context of the first three stages of life. When would you ever make the transition to the seventh stage of life? When would you even make the transition from the fourth to the fifth stage or the fifth to the sixth stage? It is not likely that it would occur in one lifetime. But if you establish the Way in hearing, then the specific content of any stage of life, even the first three stages of life, is not a limit to be identified with. Rather it is there to be understood and transcended, and the instrument of that transcendence is true hearing.
That’s a summary of the 1.1 practice. You will notice that ‘Hearing’ is not yet fully established. Which means that the ‘act that made…apparent separateness’ – the ego-act – has not been understood, revealed, nor has the capacity and responsibility for it been established. Not as of yet.
Ed Reither
Beezone
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