The Discipline of Participation
Adi Da Samraj, 1987
The present document consists of the major talks of the “Indoor Yajna” period, which began on April 2, 1987. In the first Talk, The Discipline of Participation, Heart-Master Da passionately describes the freedom from religious idealism and the profundity of self-insight that necessarily coincides with true practice and the creation of an authentic Spiritual community.
Heart-Master Da has observed that to the degree we pursue religion or Spiritual life for the sake of consolation, our practice will fail, and we will not grow. Therefore, we must encounter and transcend our resistance to the participatory ordeal of true “sadhana”, or real Spiritual practice. Sadhana must become self-transcendence, rather than a self- fulfilling dramatization of religious hopes for consolation.
Only on the basis of profound insight into the unceasing activity of Narcissus can one choose to participate in an ordeal of self-transcendence that is ultimately liberating. We must find within ourselves the motive to engage such an ordeal of practice. Self-transcending God-Realization cannot be imposed from without, nor can it be founded on a childish desire to please the Teacher or others.
Heart-Master Da insists that the Way of the Heart be practiced in its purity. The Way is not consoling. Even to assume the beginning disciplines of practicing stage 1.1, we must uncover and “thoroughly root out” our childhood religious psychology. And all the means for this great task of self-observation and self-transcendence are given through the Teacher and His Word.
In gratitude may we return these Gifts of Wisdom to the Avadhoota Da Love-Ananda Hridayam—in the form of our own self-understanding, self-transcendence, and Heart- Realization.
Published in:
Student Text Series
For Students and Practioners of the Wisdom-Teaching of Heart-Master Da (The Avadhoota Da Love-Ananda Hridayam, Whose Teaching Name Is Da Free John.)
INDOOR YAJNA
©1987 ©1988 The Free Daist Communion.
Vol.1, No. 1:
Introduction.
“The Discipline of Participation” (4/10/87):
Prologue: On right use of the Company of the Adept.
1. On religious idealism and the failureof childhood religion.
2. On understanding and transcending childish religiosity.
3. On the motive to practice, which is itself self-transcending.
4. On the search for consolation, and the Way of self-transcending God-Realization.
5. On hearing, or most fundamental insight,and the integrity of understanding.
6. On the obligation to Shine.
7. On the sadhana of Realization.
Summary Points (SP).
(43 pp.)
The Discipline of Participation
A Talk by Heart-Master Da
April 10, 1987
Prologue: On right use of the Company of the Adept
HEART-MASTER DA: When Aniello came to me a couple of hours ago to tell me that you all wanted to have a gathering, I told him that if we were to gather, some motive in me, some responsive energy in me, had to be created, since I did not have anything further to present. I began to talk to him about how such an occasion would have to be used if we were to gather this evening.
I told him that you all must use your advantage when you come into my physical Company, use the opportunity of being in my Company to advance your practice and not merely to have an amusing evening. You are required to function differently when you come into my Company. You must come not just for fun, not just to add a little social energy to your lives, not as people always seem to do.
People who come into my Company always say they are devotees. But then when they are with me, they start playing transference games. All of a sudden they are the oedipal ego of their childhood or teenage years, relating to me as a figure in that drama. Suddenly I am the male other–father, boyfriend, rival. Instead of using my physical Company for their Spiritual advantage, they indulge especially in playing out their self-imagery in relationship with me. What do they therefore give me to address?
They give me their failed case, their failure of practice, their immaturity, their friend-of-the-Work or sheerbeginner lapses and failures. There is no advantage in any of that. I therefore find myself covering the same ground over and over and over again, at every gathering. Here, as elsewhere, the gathering is only with brand new people and beginners, many of whom have nevertheless been involved in this Way for years and years already and who are still presenting themselves as beginners.
To make right use of my physical Company, to use me to real advantage, you must come fully prepared as a true practitioner, as an actual devotee, not dramatizing oedipal ceremonies, not lapsing, but capable of this very moment of your practice. Bring things to my attention, if you like. Ask questions about any uninspected obstructions in the context of your real practice. We can consider anything you need to be honest about and find out about in order to break down the obstacles in your practice.
To ask about your limitations, to consider them, requires maturity and honesty and seriousness and humor. You cannot play the passive failed case and use my physical Company to any advantage. Nor can you dramatize the ego and realize any advantage in your practice. The ego is to be transcended.
Even in the first gathering a week ago I queried you on a number of points about practicing stage three. I pointed out to you then that your response to most of my queries indicated that you are barely beginning or are very immature or are having problems. You were not showing me the signs of practicing stage three. Since then we have been talking about The Basket Of Tolerance,2 not about your practice. You stopped bringing your practice to the gatherings for discussion or consideration. I told Aniello, therefore, that if we are to gather, your practice must be the subject of our consideration. Earlier in the day, before the discussion with Aniello, I heard your proposal for the subjects you all wanted to discuss if we had a gathering. You wanted to bring up this and that about the traditions and to discuss this and that topic in the Wisdom-Teaching.
When Aniello repeated your proposal, I said that it is fine to discuss those things, but such discussions are appropriate for occasions of “Darshan” [Spiritual sighting of the Adept] or study groups. If there were to be a gathering, then, not only should we discuss the subject of the evening, and there is always subject matter, but also the quality of the meeting must be different. You must put yourself into the consideration, discover real questions, and find in yourself those obstructions that are the reason your practice is limited to whatever stage it is at the moment.
Why is it that many of you, for example, have been practicing–or associating with me anyway–for fifteen years and yet you are still self-declared beginners, still sometimes, as in these recent occasions, showing the evidence of the complicated, ordinary street person playing out dramas with your girlfriend or your boyfriend? Why, after fifteen years?
What is the precise reason that particularly those who have been associated with me for a long time are still beginners?
My Retirement from Teaching Work last year was based on the promise by the community that a significant body of individuals in the community were prepared for practicing stage four, and not only prepared for the practice and all it entails, but prepared to exemplify true maturity in this Way and to guarantee the integrity of the Communion. As the months went by that promise proved more and more to be flat untrue.
My question is therefore serious: Why is this still so? I can certainly go out on the Yajna3 that we are considering, but is it to be merely a ceremony? A repetition of last year, but better organized? Am I still to be confronted all over the world by people presenting themselves in basically the same way you all have done in the last several days?
I hope that my reassociation with you will involve more than simply reassociation, that you will show me some evidence of real “hearing” and “seeing” and true practice and maturity. It is essential that a body of mature practitioners come out of this Communion relatively soon, for the sake of everyone, for the sake of the development of the Agency this Way requires in the future. I must have the opportunity to work with mature people.
It has not been my inclination or interest to resume anything like my Teaching Work, even to carry on the kinds of conversations I have had with all of you this last week. I think this fact suggests what you should be dealing with. What exactly is the reason for the limit on your practice? How can you use my physical Company to advance your practice? Why are you stalled at the level of response that has characterized you so far?
These are not intellectual questions. To answer them requires great sensitivity to yourself. You must be able to reach into the limit that characterizes you and make use of my Company to exceed it, instead of falling back in an adolescent way and requiring me to address you as a gathering of beginning practitioners.