Water and
Narcissus Hard Earth and Stone
at my Foot “I resist and take
flight from the material and life condition. The crux of the
spiritual life for me now is to see and embrace this mode of
reality. The material realm is relentless in its lawfulness.
It is all cause and effect. I am always seeking a magic by
which to overcome the laws of physics. But the matter forms
are there and hard, dragging me into the necessary
acceptance of their reality. To now I have tended to
anxiety, impatience, self-pity and despair, striving after
forms of immunity and passivity and superiority. I have
opposed the law and thus failed to transcend and master it.
Thus also I oppose the creative, endlessly active life
forms. The intrusion of life around me make my passive
artifice impossible. But when I accept these forms and their
laws as necessary reality, then I am peaceful. The effort of
work required of me to live and create and remain in
relationship is a labor I am grateful to maintain. And the
noise and process that shatters the aesthetic heaven of my
household is acceptable, being a reasonable expression of
life in the condition of material existence. Thus, being at
one with these laws, I am firm and untroubled. I master and
transcend each material problem, and I become alive and in
motion, exceeding the barriers of aesthetic space, in a mood
with all creative life. Thus the hard earth and stone at my
foot and had teach me. And thus the children teach me. It is
unreasonable to seek peace, for this aesthetic pursuit in
fact seeks to undermine and thward the foundations of life
and materiality. It is necessary to be already peaceful, one
with the law, and thus to create in the world of this
law.” Water and Narcissus,
1969 Franklin Jones (Adi
Da Samraj) Note: The period Adi Da
(Franklin Jones) was writing the book Water and Narcissus
was from 1967 to early 1970. He
completed it while living in New York.
Due to copyright restrictions Beezone is limited
in its ability to present any more of this talk.