ADI DA SAMRAJS DIVINE WORK AT QUANDRAMAMA SHIKHARA:
Klik-Klak: The Pattern Patterning
A Gathering “Consideration” with Beloved Adi Da Samraj at Free Standing Man, Quandramama Shikhara, January 31, 1996
The gatherings that began at the Mountain Of Attention Sanctuary continued when Adi Da Samraj arrived at Quandramama Shikhara. He gathered with those devotees who had travelled with Him from California, and a small group of devotees from Hawaii. The gatherings were held at Free Standing Man, His Residence at Quandramama. Beloved sat on a futon couch, surrounded by the Quandra Mai.
Night blended into day, and hour after hour the Divine Lord Granted His direct and spontaneous Word to those gathered with Him. He sat cross-legged, His Body sometimes rocking slightly as He Spoke, drawing all present into the Sphere of His Samyama.
Though He had begun to develop the “consideration” of klik-klak and the pattern patterning on previous nights, it was on the night of January 31st that He elaborated it fully. This gathering is printed here almost in its entirety. In His Masterful unravelling, Adi Da conveys the nature of conditional existence and the Truth of His Divine Revelation, entirely beyond the realm of all appearances.
SECTION IV – The Zone of Transcendence
DEVOTEE: The concept of evolution as it is talked about suggests a progress in the patterning.
ADI DA SAMRAJ: I don’t know if that’s altogether true, really. That is an idea, but I don’t know if that would be a notion that would be agreed upon by people who are theorists, scientists, so forth. In other words, I don’t think they would necessarily say that the signs and the form-pattern, how forms change, suggest that it’s leading toward something better. it’s more “adaptation under certain conditions” kind of thing. Conditions can change things dramatically, destroy species, or uphold some rather than others. They are certainly always changing based on conditions, but not necessarily getting better and better.
The popular view generally is “everything started way back there with some slime and eventually, after a whole bunch of other forms appear and change into other forms, you get this human guy at the end of it and everything else is before it, less than it”. In other words, everything is just sort of leftovers of a progress, the importance of which is Man.
Man is sort of the idea of the egoic self in some way, so a lot of glamour is put on the Man-idea by human beings. Everything is seen, then, relative to it, like you see everything relative to your own body-mind position-generally speaking, people do this. So the idea that everything is getting better and better is a rather human idea then, that (for one thing) diminishes the significance of everything that is presumed to be just a preliminary to Man, including the whole Earth-world, then. But that’s the pattern wherein Man gets this notion of taking over, of controlling everything from which it sprang-including the whole Earth-world itself, all of elemental existence. So that’s the direction of Man-culture.
Just looking within species developments, probably many would say the evidence “looks like” not necessarily “progress”, but there is a lot of change-adaptation and change to varying conditions, and perhaps at some other time another form would be required, or change of form would be required, just to survive there. It doesn’t make it any better, doesn’t mean it’s any better. In fact, it might not work well under present conditions.
So, in other words, they look in terms of it just being a material process. In some respects, current science is based on an aspect of Truth, you see. They’ve got this klik-klak idea somehow going. They don’t have a philosophical understanding of it, rightly. But what they’re arguing is that everything is klik-klak. And they’re right. But they don’t know What “Else” there is, or what other truths are. They don’t know where My other Temples are, you see. They only know where the Laughing Mama is. They don’t know how to get anything greater than that, also.
But their general suggestion, the general point of view of science as it is done at the present time, is in the manner of what I generally refer to as scientific materialism. And basically such people who are involved in that discipline (or speak for it) are always saying “everything is klik-klak”. No “God made it and all kinds of mysterious this and that you should feel happy about.” No, “its all klik-klak”. it’s all “particles moving” kind of stuff. The most boring way of looking at reality-particles and lines of movement. It is an examination, something in the depth of appearances, but it’s not the same as being in the pattern and observing without any limitations.
DEVOTEE: My Lord, my question is about the non-scientific concepts of evolution – like with Sri Aurobindo – the patterning in higher planes of manifestation. You’ve been making clear to us that everything within the first five stages of life is klik-klak. And I remember You once saying that to the degree that there are higher evolutionary worlds, there is the same degree of warfare within those worlds. I don’t know if I understood You rightly or not.
ADI DA SAMRAJ: Well, yes, warfare in various planes. But that doesn‘t necessarily mean there’s warfare in all planes, even the highest of the highest. But there is inherent torque, two-ness. If it is in the realm of conditional manifestation, it inherently has that association – egoity also, then. So the same fundamental struggle is there inherent in every dimension, however subtle and so on. And it still has all the characteristics of klik-klak: replicate, shift, change. It’s still the same kind of place shown in a particular fashion in the rainbow display. It’s one of the possibilities. From the point of view of a more grossly struggling condition, it seems, by comparison, heaven or very desirable. But from it’s position, with the sensitivities involved in being in that position, it’s a struggle with the same conditions.
So whether it appears as warfare or not is just a matter of how the pattern gets displayed in certain domains of possibility. But even if it isn’t warfare, it is warfare. It’s the same fundamental “consideration”, fundamental struggle, same fundamental egoity to be transcended. What about it?
DEVOTEE: You’re talking about scientific materialism as a dark vision?
ADI DA SAMRAJ: Mm-hm. Well, a dark vision because it is constantly suggesting something, and, generally speaking, everyone rather casually believes what has been suggested – that, in effect (in the language I have been using with you), everything is klik-klak, and therefore indifferent. Ultimately it’s just a pattern. They emphasize this, what basically amounts to a doctrine, rather than a discovery, over and over again, and are not telling any other truth at all. In other words, in terms of philosophy, this is the only truth they tell, and it is not a sufficient truth.
It is true . Everything is klik-klak. Anything arising conditionally is klik-klak. But that’s not the only thing I have to say to you about it all. [laughter] Whereas the scientific communication process game is more like an endless affirming of a doctrine over and over again, which each new tidbit of description of the universe kind of advances, as if – you know, after a long, long, long, long time of this – at the end of it, finally some body of authoritative scientists is going to just stand up and flat say, “Everything is klik-klak, and that’s that.” [laughter]
[chuckling] And hopefully, if it is that way, and it doesn’t take that long, then maybe they’ll quote from My Teaching when they say this. And will say that, as I pointed out, that’s not all there is to it. Because that’s what I’m saying to you. You must clearly understand though, that everything is klik-klak. It is true. There’s no point in holding your breath and hoping and being anxious about whether the scientists are right. They are completely right, with respect to what they are observing and how they’re observing it. Everything is klik-klak. It is just a material pattern and so forth.
There’s very much an angle on religion inherent in the scientific materialist doctrine. And it is specifically counter-religious, and came out of a situation historically of exactly that nature, in the West, in which you had Galileo and the Catholic church and similar things. Eventually, when science becomes the establishment, you have a science that is counter-religious and also specifically counter to the dominant religion of the time, in which new science or “infant science” got suppressed. It’s a little bit like the Christian anti-Semitism.
Do you understand what I mean about how it’s like that? There is a similar pattern. You see the Christians emerged from an establishment and also along with all their history and mythology have this thing about a Jewish circumstance in which their Teacher was persecuted. And then when it becomes the official doctrine, it’s inherent disposition and all the rest starts working historically, politically, against Judaism – as has been seen in the Western tradition. In other words, World War II and all the things that preceded it, and the holocaust among the Jews and others – a massive number of whom were, by the way, gypsies, I believe. It is interesting what Christians felt to be threatening. Perhaps in both cases (just examining it for the moment), both the Jews and gypsies are characterized by this sort of movement to leaving what may be presumed to be your homeland or whatever it is, and wandering around in the midst of everybody else kind of diaspora [refers usually to the dispersal of the Jews from Palestine to many parts of Europe, Africa, and Asia in 70 c.e.] kind of flowing. Whereas everyone else is trying to stay in place and be whatever they are there. And so this sort of pattern of exclusiveness, this one spiral in there – at one point, those in that disposition decided they wanted to keep their region clean of all this flowing in. So the Jews were among those targeted in that circumstance.
In the case of science, we see something like how Christianity emerged from it’s position, where it was perhaps suppressed or felt it was suppressed somehow or another – politically, within the religious context, whatever, at the time. Just as Christianity emerged from that and eventually became “official”, and then it’s patterns became magnified on a political scale relative to Judaism and so on, so with science. It emerged within – well, there are many elements of it’s emerging, of course, but in terms of becoming the dominant point of view, as it has become in Western civilization, it emerged out of the Catholic Christian tradition. Of course, Islam, as much as Christianity, is behind science, and much of the ancient West also. Greece, and so forth, is a source of Western education notions and many matters relative to science. There are many sources, but the struggle in which it became politicized and became dominant by association with the state is particularly in the line of Western civilization, dominated by Christianity at the time. So the classic story about it is something like the myth.
The origin of science is the “Galileo versus the Catholic hierarchy” story. Sort of the “Adam and Eve in the garden” story of science. That’s if you look at it in terms of the Jewish tradition. Or, if you look at it in terms of the Christian tradition, it’s like Galileo is sort of a crucified savior, punished without cause, without there being a reason for his punishment in his doings, it would seem. He’s the pure knower and finder-outer who suffers under the oppressive, ignorant, massive, cultural, and political institutions – but emerges somehow victorious, in the right, and then science dissociates itself gradually from being something within the church and becomes secularized and associated with the state. And it, rather than the Catholic church, then becomes the center of the propaganda of Western civilization.
And so the inherent anti-religiosity, or critical disposition in scientific materialism relative to religion, is essentially toward the religion characterized as Western civilization, dominantly meaning the Christian, especially Catholic Christian, then. So there is constantly an edge that may be seen in scientific discourse, even on television. it’s always suggesting something that is a direct criticism of some primary proposition, especially of Western religion and as it was way back then – it was Catholic at the time. that’s what “Christian” was at that time-the religion of Rome. Not as it is today, with Christianity broken up into many forms, itself a kind of diaspora.
So the language of public communication associated with science, particularly it’s popularization language, is filled with suggestions that Christianity is not true. By extension, a lot of other religions arent true, then, too, but this is the dominant consciousness, religious-style, that’s being addressed. You find more congeniality in scientific discourse with the language and philosophical points of view of Asian traditions, generally speaking, than the Christian tradition.
So to, in effect, say everything is klik-klak over and over and over again is to say there is no God. Meaning specifically, no God of the kind Christians believe in, who is the God of this world, somehow controlling it and controlling it benignly, controlling it through time toward some great purpose-made everything, made all according to some pattern that’s somehow shown in old books and so forth. So when scientific materialists say everything is klik-klak, they are saying that, from their point of view, Christianity is untrue. And that is what is being said. It’s not that there’s a lot of discrimination in scientific materialist language, about religion itself or about Reality ultimately. There’s just this one fixation on the aspect of conditional experiencing – call it “material”, whatever you want – that is just a plastic.
And because of that concentration, and because of the historical origins of this whole cultural orientation called “science”, and it’s secularization and bond with the state everywhere and with culture even, there is a message constantly being communicated to the traditional mind of Western culture. That mind is not, at root, founded on the notion that all there is is material reality and nothing greater. Quite the contrary. But a bit of the tradition was spun off angry. it’s not really looking at religion anymore – just sort of throwing in it’s nasty shouts. And that’s one of the ways whereby scientific materialism has become wedded to it’s materialist dogma-because of this historical association, this kind of renegade adolescent kind of quality, you see, coming out of the historical situation in the West. And it needs to be purified of that, just as Christianity needs to be purified of it’s anti-Semitism. And so does everybody else need to be purified of everything. As “The Lady” says:
DEVOTEE: Laughing Mama says: “Your objections to any thing don’t mean shit!”
ADI DA SAMRAJ: Exactly.
DEVOTEE: Beloved, having practiced scientific materialism myself, I remember it was almost presented as a religion in science education.
ADI DA SAMRAJ: Yes, it’s just basic doctrine.
DEVOTEE: Right. And the main hook, or at least where it hooked me in a certain way, is it became a way to inspect and examine klik-klak, in greatest detail that you seemingly could. It’s funny that it’s hook in a certain way is this fascination with klik-klak and never moves beyond that.
ADI DA SAMRAJ: The more you examine the phenomenal itself the more klik-klakkish it gets.
You see, weve been talking about the Pleasure Dome – the Yogic principle, the God-Realizing principle in the midst of this, and how it works as a process, until it becomes the “Perfect Practice”, beyond the conditional reference. If you observe, understand, establish the disciplines that “trick” klik-klak (so to speak), that enable you to maintain the zone of transcendence and Yoga and some kinds of order and so on-then klik-klak is used to your advantage, so to speak. But it’s a constant art. And when klik-klak is used to such advantage, it is just pattern, so it will show signs that overall you would say are positive – Pleasure-Dome signs. It doesn’t mean you stay there, it means this is the process moment to moment in which, ultimately, all this is transcended.
But if you don’t introduce the heart-disposition, then, the going-beyond disposition, the Pleasure-Dome disposition, into klik-klak, then you’re just going to see klik-klak, klik-klak, klik-klak. You’re just going to see the thing itself, and it’s not a thing in itself – but it may be viewed as such.
So by the emphasis of point of view and process (or method) and propaganda current to science, it is inherently reductionistic. It doesn’t see klik-klak in any other terms but klik-klakking-no greater process. Right, it is just klik-klak. It is just plastic. So you can either just be klik-klakked into nothingness, or there’s another process, somehow, to “consider”-that is not only benign, but absolutely Satisfying, ultimately.
Well, you don’t find any such discourse in the context of science, because they don’t have any wideness, broadness, or point of view of multiplicity of possible points of view that are standard to the discipline. there’s only the one-assume the identification with the gross point of view. No other asana is permitted. And that becomes the doctrine about Reality, then. That point of view determines the doctrine about Reality.
You do the same thing when you identify with the body, in individual terms. That, then, becomes the basis for your presumption about Reality. It should be self-evidently clear that you’re not going to find out about Reality in any ultimate terms by doing such a thing. In fact, the least directly revealing aspect of the pattern that’s patterning is the effect level, the gross level.
We’ve talked about how some people belonged to the same pattern – in our discussions referring to them even by a number. But you see that when it’s a matter of a physically existing human being, there are all kinds of differences, all kinds of individualities – unlike any other when it comes down to the full individuation and physical form. But where are they still identical, then? Well, it’s in this pattern level, prior to that level of particularity. Pattern is particularizing, but it is not at the level of particularity yet – the place where the pattern is patterning altogether. it’s not at that same level of particularity and complication as the gross.
So to be really scientific, to really find out about the pattern and how it’s patterning and everything else, the physical or gross would not be the position to assume if you are practicing science based on real discriminative intelligence and want to really “consider” these matters. You wouldn’t take up the position of the physical, you’d take up the position of the pattern that’s patterning. That is already a leap into what scientists might call metaphysics, although they’re not prepared to do that. No, according to science, you have to be the physical – just like Freud said there has to be this sexual principle, you see, or Darwin said whatever he said about the laws of evolution, you know.
Doctrine may be an interesting principle to establish for the sake of some kind of “consideration” – go into an experiment or look at things as if this were so and see what it shows you. that’s interesting, perhaps. But to establish it once and for all, and you never take up any other position in order to see what other possibility there may be – thats not science, that’s not true religion, either it’s a doctrine-based structure for thinking and acting and all of life altogether, ultimately. So it is false. Hm?
DEVOTEE: Beloved, You said earlier that there are two things that can’t be taken into account in klik-klak, are not part of klik-klak-and that is Consciousness and Energy.
ADI DA SAMRAJ: You can’t reduce either one of those to anything further.
DEVOTEE: Right.
ADI DA SAMRAJ: They can seem to be separate, because there’s torque, two-ness in klik-klak. But you can examine anything, any object – break it down to all it’s parts, getting deeper and deeper behind it all, you know, going from sheer, grossest of gross to molecular and atomic, break everything down to all of it’s different parts and levels – eventually you get to Energy, or Light. And you can’t get any further. there’s no further anything to break It down into. Light Itself doesn’t break down into anything next, and there’s nothing on the other side of It.
Well, the same thing with examining anything associated with Consciousness, any so-called “subjective” matter. there’s the body, but the mind is aware of the body. Well, then, behind the mind there is discriminative intelligence. You go back farther and farther, there’s attention, then attention is arising in the view of Consciousness Itself. So then what, you see? It can’t be reduced any further. You can’t break It down to any parts. there’s nothing behind It.
So by investigating the subjective, you get to its irreducible base, which is Consciousness. By “considering” or analyzing the objective, you come to it’s irreducible base or constant, which is Light, or Energy-Shakti, if you will. So there are these two fundamental elementals evident in klik-klak.
And, however, another aspect of klik-klak is that these two are always different, it seems, somehow. You’re unable to find an irreducible “something” that is both of those, because then there would be no difference between Consciousness and Light, between subject and object. There would be no torque left. So Consciousness and Light can only be Identical, Non-“Different”, Prior to torque, Prior to attention.
So, in the Domain of the “Perfect Practice”, it’s not subject-object, it’s the practice of Non-“Difference”. And there’s no “difference”, then, between Shakti and Awareness, Energy and Awareness, or Energy or attention, there’s no attention there at all. Attention is what makes the division to begin with. Because there is attention, everything in klik-klak is in twos, or multiples beyond that.
So, what were you saying?
DEVOTEE: It seems that when you look at science and scientific materialism, and then in examining, say, human beings, that science can pretty much figure out a crude explanation for everything except for the matter of Consciousness and the matter of Light.
ADI DA SAMRAJ: Well, that may or may not be so, but it could just be that at the present moment there’s not enough investigation that’s been done and so forth. Scientists havent gotten around to making their explanation in a final form that they think (generally) has enough in it to last. So an explanation for Consciousness, and whatever else, may yet come about. But the explanation for it, that accounts for it, will be in the context of klik-klak. You can’t reduce Consciousness to klik-klak, but you can examine it, account for it, in the context of klik-klak. And thats what you do all the time.
That’s why you think Consciousness is conditional. You do. Tt’s not just that science does, you think that science could come up with some way, perhaps somewhere along the line, to explain it. But you already make this presumption, act as if it’s so. So science someday will be able to come up with an explanation for Consciousness. But it will be in the context of klik-klak as an element in the service of the pattern patterning, or some functional this or whatever. But it will not be the Truth. It will just be true. True, in other words, with reference to the characteristics of klik-klak. But it will not satisfy, or be the end of the “consideration” of Consciousness.
But since the discipline of science currently does not allow for the presumption of anything but the standpoint of the physical or the gross or the material and so on (unless the discipline changes it’s view), that will be that. So it is looking now toward a day when a description can be given that accounts for Consciousness. And it won’t be total bullshit. It just won’t be the Truth. And that’s one of the problems with the language of science, it’s communications – it often is telling true things. What it’s saying is true. It’s just not the Truth, it’s just divorced from a fundamental element that cannot be investigated or affirmed. And so it is reductionistic in it’s communication. It makes everything seem klik-klak, that’s it. Everything is klik-klak, then.
It’s not true that everything is klik-klak. Everything objective, everything conditional-that’s klik-klak, yes. But that’s not all that there is. But if you believe a reductionistic argument that Consciousness is nothing but klik-klak – end of the investigation. Then there is nothing that is not klik-klak-and that is a lie. “Everything is klik-klak” is true somehow, but it is not true that there is not anything that is not klik-klak.
Because if they asked Gautama this, traditionally (its that kind of paradox), “Is there Consciousness Prior to and apart from consciousness in association with phenomenal awareness?”, some question like that, any answer carries within it the potential (if you use that structure of language as a base for responding) to be interpreted in a way that is itself klik-klak and, therefore, not the Truth. So, according to the traditional story, Gautama had a lot of reluctance there to make affirmations or give descriptions or yess, even, in response to primal questions about, “Does such-and-such exist?” Because even using words to begin with, and therefore the dualistically based mind, there is always this tendency, this pattern patterning tendency, to turn any answer into klik-klak. Or anything given in answer can be turned to klik-klak.
I mean, to believe that Consciousness is only klik-klak to begin with is klik-klakness. [laughter] there’s no greater view. So that person, then, asking a question, in klik-klak language, wants Gautama, or whomever, to affirm the Great Matter. And Gautama, or whoever, knows that, no matter what he says, it’s in klik-klak, and this guys going to interpret it according to his pattern. If I say as much as say, “Yes! There is Consciousness, Prior to the body-mind,” from the view of that guy asking the question – already klik-klakked-its klik-klak. It means the opposite of something else. it’s not an answer that grasping it will move the guy out of klik-klak. it’s a dilemma even to talk to the man. [laughter]
So this is what is suggested in the traditional histories of Gautama and his responses to great questions. Because in some sense he was aware of klik-klak-in the manner he was. He didn’t, in other words, use My Words and so forth. Basically that’s what he noticed – that everything phenomenal is klik-klak. it’s all unsatisfactory. It changes. there’s no permanent anything or anyone. These are very basic klik-klak descriptions, or klik-klak noticings – noticing of the pattern of phenomenal existence or what it’s really about. And it’s not what you want to believe about it-that it is, or can be, satisfactory ultimately, or there is something, someone, even you, that never changes. These are associated with your basic klik-klak presumptions. And he was noticing that that’s just bullshit.
You’re saying klik-klak isnt klik-klak because you are investing it with the glow of your own uninspected realm-having fastened your eye to attention.
DEVOTEE: It reminds me, Beloved, in 1986, You, seeing a statue of Gautama, a great big gold statue on one side of the river, and on the other side a big smile button painted on the wall. And You turned around to everybody and said, “Life is suffering, have a nice day.” [laughter]
ADI DA SAMRAJ: Created a whole new button.
DEVOTEE: Those two points of view, right there.
ADI DA SAMRAJ: Yeah, right there, across-either side of-where were we? In London?
DEVOTEE: Yes, it was London.
ADI DA SAMRAJ: One was a monument, shrine, statue, and the other was a sign on the wall or something on the opposite side of the river. Those two messages came together. Amazingly contrary. And yet, somehow, together they do make sense, if you understand it. [Adi Da laughs.]
DEVOTEE: It is like the left and right. Life is suffering, and then there is God.
ADI DA SAMRAJ: That is one way of putting it, in your humble one-liner fashion.
DEVOTEE: Uh-huh.
ADI DA SAMRAJ: Humble one-liners are sufficient for most people to generate in them a sense of feeling consoled. They are like teddy bears. And so a lot of people reduce the religious life to something like one-liners that they pull out to snuggle with. [laughter] But how can one settle for that couple of sentences worth of comprehension as the attitude of ones existence? It is a profound matter. The only way to save yourselves from the destiny of religious one-linerism is to constantly and directly study My Word . Stay in the process of this great “consideration”, instead of just sitting around on your official “Adidam pillows”, constantly consoling yourselves with another teddy bear piece of the Way.
Discourse – Klik-Klak: The Pattern Patterning
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