The following exercise by Beezone is a ‘running’ commentary on a dialogue between Adi Da Samraj and one of his devotees in 1995. The purpose of this exercise is to bring attention (and an understanding) to the ‘complexity’ and the ‘subtleties’ of what is seemingly a straight forward dialogue. Beezone picked his dialogue because it deals with a devotee sincere attempt to understand why “all of this” came to be. She is trying to come up with answers to large questions. The questions asked by this devotee are ‘good ones’ and very sincere by all accounts. She is asking simple but profound questions about the origins of the self-contraction and ‘how it all started’.
Beezone finds this type of exercise to be helpful in understanding the subtleties of what is ‘continually’ being presumed by many, many people who are STILL asking and presuming the SAME questions, as this devotee does, over and over again.
To read this exercise keep in mind the following: Beezone’s running commentaries are in ‘italics’ and the original dialogue is in regular type. The dialogue is in it’s exact sequence, word for word, and is only ‘interrupted’ by the commentary in italics.
Beezone titles this exercise, “The Liability Inherent in Reality”. I hope you find this as instructive and informative as I did.
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The “Reality” You Are Asking Questions About Is Your Own Illusion
April 22, 1995
DEVOTEE: Beloved Master,
What was the purpose for this whole event of separation to have occurred?
Why did it have to happen?
I have always wanted to ask this question.
I don’t understand.
What is the reason for the self-contraction? What started it? If ‘everyone is in the same condition and everyone is ‘responsible’ for ‘their present activity’ and since it’s obviated by ‘surrender’ and ‘sacrifice’ by ‘hearing’ and ‘seeing’ and sadhana – ‘transcendence’ – how does it seem to be ‘inherent’ in the world and beyond the body? It seems awfully real to the questioner and everyone else sitting in the room! There seems to be a ‘larger’ force ‘keeping it in place’?
ADI DA SAMRAJ: You are asking the question from a point of view of presuming yourself to be separate.
You are making a presumption with your question. You upholding ‘unreality’ as if it were reality. You are ‘in the dream’ asking why you are ‘dream’ instead of ‘waking up’.
You are engaging in the exercise of naive realism, just presuming to be a body-mind and seeing reality from that point of view.
You are ‘presuming’ you are ‘your mind and body’ – you are identified with ‘experience’ and feeling separate, independent and isolated.
And so you ask this question.
If you had practiced to the point of Realization,
and could take all of reality into account,
ALL of REALITY
that presumption of separateness,
fastened to an organism,
then see if you would still have that question.
The question is not directly answered but addresses the premise of the question itself and ‘answers’ the question with a question.
The source of the question is not that you are looking at all of reality
You should note the term “all of reality”.
and coming up with a notion about it.
The source of the question is your divorce from Reality – “How did all this separateness, all this blah-blah-blah, how did this occur?”, you see.
You presume that separation has occurred, and that it has occurred in the form in which you perceive it to exist, which is an illusion based on a gesture of ignorant organism life.
The question is based on an ‘presumption’, an illusionary one.
But, in reality, it is not so.
Reality Itself, Realized, is free of that complication that is based on your presumption.
The question is being asked from an ‘unreal’ view of things.
Reality doesn’t have to account for the illusion you are suffering from.
Reality doesn’t answer the question of ‘unreality’.
Reality doesn’t contain that illusion.
What is actually happening is not what you think, nor what you are presuming.
What you are thinking, however ‘real’ it seems, is not the case. It’s as if you are riding on a downtown local 7th Ave subway car in New York city and all of a sudden the express train comes up along side of you and you look over and see the passengers apparently sitting still, as you seem to be. You can make an irroneous conclusion based on that moment of experience that you are both ‘standing still’. Which is an illusion.
What you are presuming is an illusion, ultimately.
Keep in mind the word ‘ultimately’. Because later on He will introduce you to the ‘reality of the unreal’.
And if there was the Realization of reality, that question would not exist, because you would not be suffering the illusion.
When you wake up the ‘dream’ is not longer real.
And then, seeing even this appearance, perhaps, in that Realized State, the question would not evolve and it would have no basis, because Reality is not what you think, or, as Shakespeare says, “There is more in heaven and earth than is dreamt of in your philosophy.”
You are constructed in your questioning by egoic “self-possession”,
Self-contraction
by illusion, by results of error, and so on.
An error of perception, but also of ‘karmic’ porportions.
So you want to account for what you think to be reality by asking great questions and wanting great answers.
Questions of why? Questions of ‘First Principles”
But the question itself is based on illusion. What you think exists doesn’t exist.
DEVOTEE: I do understand that. I understand that illusion my question is based on. I just don’t understand what the point was of this whole event.
Still asking for an answer to “WHY?”
ADI DA SAMRAJ: What event?
Here you can go back to the first question that was asked to Adi Da (at the time Franklin Jones) when HE asks the question “Has everyone understood?” and a person in the room says he has not and Adi Da answer the statement with “What have you not understood”.
The event you are suggesting exists and asking “What’s the point of it?” is not what it seems to be to you.
So there is no ultimate answer for it
No answers.
There are not ‘final answers’ to the ‘why’ or ‘when’ of the self-contraction and the ‘illusion’ generated by it.
– like
“Did it come from some Divine Intention, blah-blah-blah-blah-blah?”, because it doesn’t exist.
The ‘product’ of the self-contraction – the illusions of mind, body, self, world and others – has no ‘basis’ in reality. Maya, the play of illusion – the dancce of Shiva – the mummery – Is our own fabrication with illusionary stories, indivdual and collective that accompany it.
Its just a presumption.
A belief that something is true even though it has not been proven.
An act of accepting that something is true until it is proved not true.
Willingness to do something without the right or permission to do it.
Synonyms: Assumption, premise, supposition, basis, conjecture, opinion, stab, a shot, a guess.
Reality is actually much more profound than your question suggests.
“Something much more profound, and dramatic would have to happen for you to grow beyond your current wheel-spinning state. Your playing the game of ego, or egoity and you have not found your self out.” Adi Da Samraj
DEVOTEE: I intuit that, Lord.
ADI DA SAMRAJ: Yes, but then you still
STILL – CONTINUALLY
ask,
“But why is all of this happening?”
All of what?
The exchange at this point reminds me of Adi Da’s first public talk in 1972 (23 years earlier).
FRANKLIN: Everyone has understood?
QUESTION: I haven’t understood. Explain it to me.
FRANKLIN: Very good. What haven’t you understood?
QUESTION: Well, you said “Did everybody understand?” and everyone seemed to understand but me. Would you explain it to me?
FRANKLIN: Explain what?
WHY?
You see, the “all of this” that you are asking the “why” of is your illusion of Reality.
Your illusion of reality, then, is your creation.
You create (and perpetuate) your own ‘non-reality’ and take it as real.
NO ANSWERS or EXPLANATIONS
I don’t have to give you some metaphysical, theological explanation, and so forth, you see.
That reality which you are asking Me about-
“Why does it happen, and what’s the point of it?”
-is entirely your creation,
and is not a universal reality or condition.
Universal reality; The sense of separate existence implies a general reality, a “world out there”.” That presumption that there is a ‘world’ (independent) is as much an illusion as the presumption of being ‘an individual’.
It’s entirely your creation, this separate thing
The Individual
and all the rest of it you perceive on the basis of it,
Others and the world.
you see.
RESPONSIBILITY
Why did it happen?
You did it.
You tell Me – why are you doing this? Hm?
The self-contraction
STILL
DEVOTEE: Well, my question is, why are any of us doing this?
Now the questioner goes to the larger ‘individual’ – the US – the ME and YOU together. This method of questioning brings it beyond the individual into the ‘collective’.
ADI DA SAMRAJ: Well, I have thoroughly accounted for it: self-contraction.
It doesn’t have any great purpose.
You are doing it out of fear.
“As long as there is a self-contraction and presumption of separateness there is fear and there are no two ways about it. It’s inevitable. It’s inherent, so transcend this (raises fist clenched). The Way is the way of transcending the self knot, the self-contraction which is not just something somewhere inside the body.
“It’s the totality of the body mind that is participating in this and that is reflecting this act. This is what must be gone beyond. This knot IS fear, is also separateness. It’s the feeling of difference. It’s the feeling of relatedness. It’s the presumption of being identical to the body, or the body mind limited by, limited to it, limited by and to all of the ordinary appearances of conditional existence all of which pass and all of the grosser appearances of human existence all of which are mortal.” – Adi Da Samraj- 2006
FEAR
You are perceiving reality out of fear, because you have reacted to your apparent association with a mortal organism,
Body/mnd identification
QUESTIONS AND PERCEPTIONS
and your questions come from this.
But not only your questions –
your perception of reality comes from this, you see.
So that thing that you’re wondering about-
“Why isn’t it, what’s the purpose, blah-blah-blah-blah-blah?”-
doesn’t have any purpose.
No Purpose – ‘The Divine has no Purpose but Itself’
You are doing it.
DEVOTEE: I don’t understand why, in the whole cosmic creation, this had to happen.
Still asking the same question but upleveling to ‘the whole creation’
ADI DA SAMRAJ: What you are presuming to be the whole cosmic creation,
The big bang
or whatever, or what you are perceiving to be reality,
is just an evolute,
The locus of the centers of curvature of a given curve. The evolute of a circle is a single point at its center.
“To say what Franklin Jones is trying to say is like drawing an asymptotic curve, a curve which is always getting nearer and nearer to a straight line, but only touches it at infinity. Perhaps it could be said that his curve is approaching it a little faster than some others, knowing, however, that there is no hurry. Beyond words, in the silencing of thought, we are already there.” Alan Watts – Forward to the Knee of Listening, 1972
an extension,
Projection
of your own self-contraction.
It’s not the universal reality,
There is not ‘one world’ out there and we’re all viewing it.
its your illusion, the result of your self-contraction!
It
(the self-contraction)
doesn’t have any purpose, except for you. You see?
What you perceive to be a universe,
a cosmos of separate things, and blah-blah-blah,
doesn’t really exist.
It’s a result.
Your perception suggests that it is such.
And all the dreamlike characters and happenings in it
It is not in reality such.
What you perceive to be reality
is a naive realistic notion
based on your own fear,
your own self-contraction.
Its not a universal reality.
The universal reality is quite different than you perceive it to be
in your self-contraction.
There is Universal Reality and and there is universal reality.
So this great cosmos that you presume
to be a separate something,
full of separate some things,
and separate beings,
and so forth,
is not so!
Not so in reality
It is your presumption,
based on a local activity
self-contraction.
And so
you must go beyond that,
and,
by this Process
in My Company,
Realize reality itself,
no longer asking questions
from the egoic point of view
and no longer perceiving reality
from the egoic point of view.
When you wake up…even a ‘little bit’..’Hearing’
Then,
in that Realization Itself,
your question is answered,
Intuited, understood without (beyond) mind, without body, without thinking
vanished,
undermined.
It no longer exists,
because the illusion doesn’t exist, you see.
Then, bereft of illusion,
self-contraction,
egoity and its effects,
Indentification, differentiation and desire
there is the Realization of reality.
NOT
And the reality of the cosmic domain
is not what you are now perceiving it to be.
It’s not that way.
I tell you quite frankly and directly,
it is not at all what you are thinking
and perceiving it to be.
So that which you are referring to
does not exist,
except as an illusion on your part.
So it’s not a universal reality.
It’s just an effect of your own self-contraction.
The cause
of that thing
you are asking Me to account for
is you.
Even the cosmic domain
is quite different
than you perceive it to be
in your self-contracted illusion.
No First Principles or Unified Theory
So it doesn’t have to be accounted for
by some universal
or ultimate description of cause.
It’s not caused
by That Which is universal
or Ultimate.
Its caused by you.
By virtue of your self-contraction,
you think
and perceive reality
to be a particular kind,
and that’s not what it is.
So relative to your question,
the true answer, then,
is that even the question itself
and all of your perception
and the thing you’re wondering about
is an illusion
based on your own fear.
And it is not necessary.
It is not caused
by any Divine or otherwise universal Force.
It’s caused just by you,
in your fear.
You feeling identified
with a mortal organism, you see,
(this fear) produces all kinds of illusion
and, therefore, questions.
And you expect answers
to your questions to somehow
be satisfactory
from your egoic point of view.
An illusion
does not
have to be accounted for
in ultimate
or universal terms.
An illusion
must be transcended.
It is false. Hm?
This great cosmos
how much of it do you experience, by the way?
this great cosmos
does not exist
in the form that you presently think it exists.
It’s like,
you look up into the night sky
and-Ah!
there are the stars!
They are all at different distances
from earth,
which is your point of view for perceiving them.
And light in the functional domain of the cosmos
has a certain speed.
It takes a certain time
for things to be perceived
at a distance.
All those stars
are at different distances.
So you look up at the night sky
and you see the stars and so forth,
and there they are
but they are not there!
Those stars are actually
in quite different positions
than you perceive them to be,
in this location.
You’re looking at an illusion of light.
You’re not only looking at an illusion of light,
you’re looking at it from
the point of view
of a presumed separate perceiver,
self-bound
in a body
and full of fear.
So, how much
of the cosmic domain
are you actually accounting for?
You’re just suffering yourself,
and looking at everything
from the point of view
of that suffering,
that limitation.
You are not seeing it as it is. Mm?
Speaking from the point of view of ordinary knowledge,
the term “universe” refers to a local system,
in some location in space-time.
The totality is not rightly described as “universe”.
So I call it the “cosmic domain”.
In reality,
the cosmic domain exists in Infinite Ecstasy,
The Cosmic Domain, the universe, is NOT a place but a STATE of Being (Consciousness).
without the slightest differentiation.
And,
while in some sense
it may be said to appear,
Planets, stars, appearances, hard earth, subtle mind, transcendental being….etc.
it does not.
When transcended
In reality,
there is not the slightest differentiation.
There is Only One
So the Condition of even the cosmic domain
is Infinite,
Unbounded Ecstasy,
without the slightest differentiation.
Form is Emptiness, Emptiness if Form
You have asked Me your question,
describing,
even in your question,
the cosmic domain
as being about separations
and separate persons,
separate beings,
separate things,
separate everything,
and all the things
that go along with it
in human terms
the suffering,
the limitations, and so forth.
But that’s not how I just described the cosmic domain.
In reality,
the cosmic domain is
as I just described it.
It is,
and it is not.
It is in Ecstasy,
Consciousness
and it is without differentiation.
That is reality.
THE REALITY OF THE ILLUSION
Mysteriously, then,
in that reality,
there can be
the illusion of separation.
THE ‘IS’ WITHOUT A ‘WHY’
There is no “why” about it,
as if it is caused.
It is not caused
by some Ultimate Will.
God, the Devil or the Big Bang
It’s an illusion,
a presumption
A mathematical presumption, a mind presumption, overlaying mind on ‘matter’.
possible within this Infinity,
because everything exists.
But even though everything exists,
it is without differentiation,
without error.
Perfect sublime bliss
It is Ecstatic,
it is all Love-Bliss,
and without the slightest separation.
So,
there is no Divinity
causing egoity,
separateness,
and suffering.
That is a local-universe gesture
so local a universe,
it’s not very large.
It takes forms
like your own body-mind
which is a kind of universe,
which,
by a subtle gesture of reaction,
Three Egos, gross, sublte and causal
has entered into
the presumption of separation,
or non-Ecstasy,
has entered into
the presumption of differentiation,
and is under its own illusion.
This illusion is not necessary.
The self-contraction itself
is not necessary.
It is not caused from without
by some universal or Divine Cause.
It is a possibility
in the context of everything.
So you are making that presumption,
but you are making it.
It wasn’t forced upon you.
It is not necessary,
and you can transcend it.
And you can Realize
the True Condition,
the Reality-Condition,
from Which even the question you just asked
is nonsense!
But it’s not nonsense
It’s quiet serious..the is suffering and death involved!
from the point of view
of your own contracted condition.
By self-contraction
you cut the lines of Force
Create knots in the body/mind
that are the mechanism
of universal Ecstasy and Unity,
without differentiation.
No one caused it.
There is no universal Force causing it,
no evil force causing it,
no Divine Force causing it.
It’s a strictly local manifestation
that can be overcome.
“The body-mind must receive the signals that the stressful world has been overcome, that we need not fear, that we presently have a peaceful human society, not a society full of bombs and benighted craziness.” – Adi Da Samraj – The Urge for Sanctuary
Perhaps you did not know this before.
That’s why I am here
so that you can be Drawn out
of your illusion,
Realize the circumstance of reality,
transcend your suffering,
your questions, and so on.
Now, speaking locally then,
not only local universe,
but local you
– you are living
on the basis of self-contraction,
fear of your own locality,
fear of process.
You want to be a “thing”,
you want to be some “one”.
But the proceedings of reality are
process,
without differentiation,
without separateness.
Although you are clinging
to your own position,
no position
can be maintained forever.
All positions dissolve
into other positions
in process.
There is no fixed position,
no separateness
at all.
“Death is utterly acceptable to consciousness and life. There has been endless time of numberless deaths, but neither consciousness nor life has ceased to arise. The felt quality and cycle to death has not modified the fragility of flowers, even the flowers within the human body. Therefore, one’s understanding of consciousness and life must be turned to that utter, inclusive quality, that clarity and wisdom, that power and untouchable gracefulness this evidence suggests. We must cease to live in our superficial and divided way, seeking and demanding only consciousness and life in the present form we grasp, avoiding and resisting what appears to be the end of consciousness and life in death.” – Adi Da Samraj – Prologue, The Knee of Listening.
To presume it
is to be
under an illusion
and to cause
your own suffering.
(and confusion and false knowledge)
Your own suffering
and confusion
of why’s and wherefore’s
is not caused
from without.
Your egoity-
your suffering, in other words-
is not caused
by the Divine
or some universal Force.
It is not necessary.
It’s a liability
inherent in reality,
but its not reality itself.
DEVOTEE: But why is it a liability inherent in reality? Other than the fact that everything can arise within reality? I’m not looking for a moral answer (I don’t think), but I just don’t understand the necessity for that.
The human heart cries for why’s….why, why, why…..
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for more read the original talk
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