The Fourth Stage of Life – as taught by Adi Da Samraj

NOTE:

The following are
selections from essays and talks and from editorial
publications of the Dawn Horse Press on the topic of The
Fourth Stage of Life as taught by Adi Da Samraj.

These selections
have been integrated, amalgamated, edited and adapted by
Beezone for educational purposes and do not reflect the
official teaching of Adi Da or Adidam.

see First
Things First

 

Preface

The understanding of the Spiritual
process in terms of the “seven stages of life”, the “Circle”
of the body-mind, and the “Heart” (as the Ultimate Seat of
“gross”, “subtle”, and “causal” states, or apparent
modifications, of Consciousness), is itself not found, as a
universally applied structure of understanding, in the
“Great Tradition”. Indeed, the “Great Tradition” itself has
only now, or since mankind has become a globally
communicated and interdependent group-presence, actually
become a tradition, or the complex but single history and
tradition of mankind. Therefore, the “Great Tradition”
itself, and as a whole, may now (and for the first time) be
fully and rightly understood, if this structure of
understanding (with all its fine distinctions) is
universally applied (as a tool of study) to the total “Great
Tradition” of mankind.

 

INTRODUCTION

 

The first three stages of life are
associated with the most basic physical, emotional, mental,
and sexual functions to which you must be adapted to. The
transition to the fourth stage of life requires a realistic
confrontation with your limitations in the first three
stages of life.

You must go
through the inevitable and natural crisis of this
transition, and that is a profound matter. If it were not
profound, most difficult, and something that people in
general are not prepared for, human beings all over the
world would have entered the fourth stage of life by now.
This crisis of transition is the most profound and unwelcome
change that confronts humanity. That change has been
unwelcome for thousands of years.

There are thousands of people all
over the world, perhaps millions of them are imagining that
they are involved with some sort of higher psychological,
religious or spiritual practice but they have not fulfilled
the condition of the fourth stage of life.

They don’t live the life of
God-Communion, they don’t transcend the heart of narcissus,
they indulge themselves childishly with all kinds of
religious organizations, spiritual cults, and all kinds of
people associated with them, and typically they are involved
with forms of renunciation, mystical inversion, and external
manipulation. None of that has anything to do with
enlightenment nor does it produce the signs of evolution

The third stage of consideration,
acculturation and humanization of the living being, is a
necessary foundation in which to realize the moral and truly
spiritual disposition of the heart. On that basis the whole
body-being is set in motion and may grow again. If you do
not pass through that transformation, it literally does not
matter how much psychic experience you may acquire in the
future, or how intellectually clear you may feel about
everything. You still must undo the disposition of the ego
before you can grow fully into the next or fourth stage of
life.

If their realization was true you
should be able to see it in their body, especially if they
are old men and women. Because such bodies have been in the
fire for a long time you see, a body submitted to God for 80
years looks a lot different you see than a body that’s just
been indulged for 80 years. So the old should be a principle
witness within the community.

But most people you see do not adapt
beyond the third stage of life, do not even come to a point
of maturity in the third stage of life. Very few people
enter into the fourth stage of life in this society which is
without culture. As a result we don’t see much of higher
adapted personalities in this culture, this society. We see
people more or less of the same kind everywhere. And not
much gracefulness, not much serenity, not much bodily
confession of the existence of God.

The first three stages of life are
about the development of individuation, socialization, and
mental development. One can’t “skip ahead” or take
“short-cuts” to spiritual development without first having
fully established the human foundation for it, one will tend
to use the spiritual practices as a means for dramatizing
one’s human shortcomings. yogis who becomes good at escaping
from this world into other astral worlds because they are
not capable of functioning or relating to others.

Most adults never pass beyond the
complications of failed adaptation in the first three stages
of life. Even those individuals regarded by society as
‘successful’ because they only represent a greater or lesser
degree of the FULL development of the third stage of life.
The third stage of life is not only about adaptation but
about failure. This failure includes not only inherent
‘dissatisfaction’ with the elements of worldly happiness as
a ‘way of life’, but the full understanding of the nature of
narcissus.

Making the transition to the fourth
stage of life is the best almost anyone on earth is at the
present time. Most people are involved in lesser stages of
complication or growth. Very few people on earth are entered
into higher stages than the fourth. And the urge of the
Teaching in the world is to draw people toward the fourth
stage of life, which is the foundation of higher existence
or human sacrifice.

The first three stages of human
growth are ordinary stages of functional adaptation. They
are stages of psycho-physical ego development. The ecstatic
process developed in the fourth stage of life is the origin
of true self-transcendence, and it provides the basis for
the fifth, sixth, and seventh stages.

The fourth stage, and all the later
stages, cannot be conceived within fixed periods of time.
The duration of the higher stages of life depends entirely
upon the individual’s qualities and his or her spiritual
practice of self-transcendence

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Key
Terms

 

DISCIPLINE
and PRACTICE

I have tried to make clear that
conductivity, the practice of
equanimity, and all the life
disciplines are basic practices. They are expressions of the
point of view of understanding, and by application to these
disciplines, energy and attention are released for the
conscious process or the ultimate process of Realization.
But this is not a Way of conductivity, not a conventional
Spirit religion. It is not a fourth or a fifth stage
practice. Thus, even the considerations of Ignorance and the
propositions developed on its basis must be viewed in the
context of the argument of understanding.

A self disciplined life – taking
responsibility for money, work, food, sexuality and
everything related to a happy functional life.

Disciplines are entirely
life-positive-and entirely a matter of establishing the
right (and necessary) equanimity of the whole body (or the
total psycho-physical complex of the individual being)
through disciplines of basic right life (understood not in
moralistic, or puritanical, or merely behavioral terms, but
understood in Spiritual, Transcendental, and Divine
terms).

A life of conscious active service,
rather than chronic self interest and random
action.

The body (or the body-mind) is the
point of view even of the first three stages of life, but in
the early (or basic) phase of the fourth stage of life (or
the practice of heart-reception and bodily reception of the
descending Divine Spirit-Power), the body is conceived to
exist in the mode of a servant. Therefore, in the basic
phase of the fourth stage of life, the practitioner
positively changes his or her character by adapting to the
attitude of a servant, or an individual who, while
nonetheless personally responsible as an individual in
relation to other individuals, is fundamentally dependent
upon the Divine for everything. And a basic characteristic
of the attitude of the “servant of God” is freedom from
reaction to whatever is not Given in any particular moment,
and freedom from attachment in relation to whatever is in
fact Given in any particular moment.

The Spiritual attitude of the
“servant” is Good Wisdom, because it allows the Realization
of equanimity in the “natural”, or bodily, circumstance,
wherein change and limitation are never ended. (However, the
metaphor or role of “servant” should not be interpreted to
the degree of enslavement, for the idea of the “servant”, in
the context of Good Wisdom, is inherently associated with
mutual Love and the ultimate purpose, or indeed the inherent
Reality, of Perfect Freedom in the case of the “servant of
God”.)

The mind is the point of view of the
advanced phase of the fourth stage of life and of the fifth
stage of life as a whole. The process of Spiritual ascent is
fulfilled in “Cosmic Consciousness” and conditional
“nirvikalpa samadhi”. In this total process of Spiritual
ascent, it becomes progressively obvious that the
conditional mind is inherently limited but that it
nonetheless always inheres in an Ultimate Unity That is
itself always already inhering in the Ultimate Divine.
Therefore, Yogis and Saints in the advanced context of the
fourth stage of life and in the fifth stage of life
typically affirm the experientially Realized attitude of
unity with the Divine Being.

The
fourth stage is associated in its beginning
phase with religious
ceremonialism and devotional worship by such means as
prayer, sacramental
service, and devotional
meditative contemplation of the Divine Person. The mature
phase of fourth stage practice is marked by meditative
absorption into the Life Current. This is the domain of
traditional Hatha Yoga which is essentially concerned with
the arousal of the Life-Energy (kundalini) through
psycho-physical exercises. In its more esoteric aspects,
however, this form of yoga pertains to the fifth
stage.

“In the fourth stage of life, this
now complex psycho-physical being is
surrendered beyond itself,’ to and
into the Living Current of Being that pervades it and the
total world. This is done to the point of generally
harmonizing the body-mind in that Life Current and otherwise
Realizing self transcending devotional Union with that
Living Reality in occasions of Love-Bliss that involve and
simultaneously transcend the body-mind.”

Devotional
surrender (sacrifice) to the Living Reality is the essential
feature of the fourth stage of life. The individual is
obliged to persist beyond religious conventions and
customs,by means of continuous and concentrated attention
and devotion via heartfelt
feeling-attention to the
Ultimate Reality and Source Condition.

All of this is just conversation you
see until you can stably enter into the practice of the
fourth stage, until you can hear this Teaching and surrender
into the Life Current of the Living God with feeling, whole
bodily. Not only in your formal devotional practice but in
all of the forms of activity you engage in every day. You
must be morally transformed, you must be physically
transformed, you must practice the principles of a moral and
physically transformed life, as a daily regimen, without
fail, that’s what the conditions of practice are
about.

 

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Key
Terms

 

SELF-CONTRACTION
– The Three Egos

The Three Contractions – “There are
three egos or modes of the “self-contraction”

The concept or idea of the self
contraction is not just on the physical or brain level of
existence. In the teachings of Adi Da there are three basic
levels to the self-contraction and the mistake of many any
of those who try to comprehend the concept of the
self-contraction view it only on one level.

When Adi Da talks about the
self-contraction he is referring to a ‘root’
self-contraction which is then magnified ‘out’ into the
psyche, mind and body of the individual. According to Adi Da
we don’t have one self-contraction we ARE three and all
three are expressions of one fundamental contraction which
is attention itself.

In the Aletheon Adi Da
writes:

“The three modes of egoity are the
lower “self”, the higher “self”, and the “root-self” –
gross, subtle and causal”

The three modes of egoity or the
self-contraction are of body (VISHVA), mind TAIJASA), and
causal (PRAJNA). The three phases of the individual ego
corresponding to the three planes of existence of the
universal spirit which traditionally is identified as
AUM.

These three modes of egoity or modes
of the self contraction must be understood or else the
individual will fall prey to what I call the ‘root
delusion’.

The signs of contraction is a play
of opposites. And if the play of opposites is associated
with identifying with a mortal body, then you get very cagey
about it, clever perhaps, strategic, fearful, anxious, full
of stress, so that you accumulate desires and then seek to
release it.

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Key
Terms

 

HEARING
and SEEING

 

“There is no final decision
that can be made by the ego. The ego cannot make final
decisions, because it is two and not one relative to
everything. Everything is yes and no, yes or no, yes and no
both, yes and no each one sometimes, yes and no at war with
one another.”

 

The first great crisis of human
existence is the observation of the tentative, minimal, and
always temporary association between life and
Happiness—and how the mortal and limited nature of
embodiment itself makes the search for Happiness both a
necessary and a futile enterprise. I Argue that Lesson, so
that you may become serious, understand your un-Happiness,
and begin the Way of Happiness Itself.

The second great crisis of life is
this process of serious understanding of un-Happiness and
conversion to the Way of Happiness (rather than the futile
search for Happiness). Such understanding is what I Call
‘hearing’, and such conversion is what I Call
‘seeing’. It is only when such hearing and seeing
prevail that the practice of the Way can begin.

In Hearing from that point, you can,
in Communion with Me, pass directly from the
self-contraction, the act itself, and you can do this, then,
under all circumstances, in every context of experience, no
matter how the stages evolve from then. The same hearing
gesture is your capability and your responsibility. And
immediately, or very quickly, prepares you to do the Yoga of
seeing Me, such that the hearing process is taking place in
the full dimension of Spiritual existence. Then the
purification is more profound and final.

But with that knowledge, because
you’re standing in that place, you get the knowledge, the
capability, to directly feel beyond it into Communion with
Me, not through relaxing this and that or working on this
and that but in place. That’s where you have the capability,
as well as the knot. And that’s when sadhana is made
profound, you see. When you have that hearing capability,
you can enter into this Samadhi of Communion with Me
directly, constantly.

Of course, that’s, then, the primal
readiness for seeing Me. And in must be true. Or all you get
is Spiritual effects. And you won’t see Me.

You must constantly be dealing
directly with this self-contraction. And if you are in touch
with it, then you don’t like it. You want only this
Communion with Me. You don’t want this self-contraction, but
you’re having to feel it every moment. And its your doing,
you see. It’s kind of in a spasm. You’ve got to do the
sadhana to relax it and be full of Me, so that My
“Brightness” Radiates through it and releases it
quickly.

So if you have heard Me, you don’t
want to spend a lot of time getting beyond that knot,
because its not comfortable at all. You become profoundly
sensitized to it if you’ve heard Me, and likewise profoundly
sensitized to Me. That’s why seeing is next.

But the knot is there, and its
unavoidable, and you don’t like it. It is pain. It is fear.
This is what makes a renunciate out of people, the discovery
of Me and the self-contraction at the same time. In full
hearing and seeing, that’s what makes people renunciates,
because it is pain. It’s extraordinary pain, at the same
time extraordinary bliss but the pain is where you sit, and
you are moved to feel out of it, and be relieved of that
enclosure, that divorce from the Divine, that sinfulness.
You dislike it so much, you dislike that knot so much, that
you become utterly concentrated in going beyond it. It’s not
that you have to just sit in a room all the time, but you’re
just all the time feeling beyond it, practicing the exercise
of going beyond self-contraction into the state of Radiance,
Love-Bliss, Energy, Light. And you would not be distracted
from It, because you do not want to be simply sitting in
that pain of self-contraction.

If there is true hearing in this
Way, then the individual, always, in every moment, has the
capability-because he or she is dealing with the root
contraction, the basis of all other contractions or signs of
contraction-has the ability to demonstrate the capability of
moving beyond the self-knot and the contracted state, in any
moment. And must demonstrate that, you see. Whereas previous
to hearing there can be authentic practice, but you’re
dealing with all of the different forms of contraction. So
in some moments you may go beyond something, but then when
something else comes up it is a further test, and so forth.
And then it is all piecemeal. There can be improvements and
all that, but the fundamental capability is not there yet.
It’s only when all contraction is understood, most
fundamentally, as your own activity, and as just that,
self-contraction, that there is a unique capability that can
be exercised in every moment.

Hearing is not the case until there
is this most fundamental capability, universal to the
character, such that movement beyond the self-knot can be
demonstrated every moment. And if that is done, of course,
then it deals with whatever associations there may be in any
moment, you see. Whatever the circumstances, whatever the
qualities otherwise of the body-mind, in any moment there
still is this fundamental root-capability. That’s the
profound nature of hearing.

Hearing is not merely meditating on
the self-contraction or the signs of dissatisfaction.
Hearing is not just noticing the self-contraction and not
liking it, you see. These are changes that any devotee goes
through in the listening process, you see, that do give you
a feeling that you’re responsible for something about what
you feel is self-contraction, you see, reactivity, all the
rest. But they don’t indicate hearing.

Hearing is the capability to
transcend the self-contraction, because you’re in the root
position, which is the equivalent of the closed fist, in
your own nature. You are right in that position, you’re
noticing that you are clenching your fist and that’s why
your hand hurts, and you open your hand up. You see? Or
another simile I’ve Given is that you’re pinching yourself,
and you’re suffering the pain, and you’re thinking and
emoting, trying to do all kinds of things to be relieved of
this, and you never figure it out, and the pain is constant.
Then, maybe somebody points it out to you, or you somehow
notice that you’re pinching yourself, and you take your hand
away and all of a sudden the pain is gone. Well, hearing is
this discovery of your own fundamental action that is the
root and cause and nature of your own disturbance and your
search. So its not meditating on the self-contraction and
regretting it. It’s enjoying the capability of going beyond
it.

Adi Da described Hearing (editorial
Crazy Wisdom, Vol 6., No. 4, 1987) as a profound Samadhi,
whose significance is greater than any of the conditional
samadhis that may be experienced in the course of human
evolution. Hearing is the penetration of the first three
stages of life by Radical Understanding. It is the
breakthrough into life of unqualified Consciousness. The
conscious process Awakened in hearing continues as the same
unqualified force of understanding that penetrates and
transcends the fourth, fifth, and sixth stages of life,
until that same Consciousness is fully Realized in the
seventh stage of life.

When the ego is understood and
transcended, then conditional Nature is seen in the Light of
Reality Itself. And, in that case, the egoic struggle in
conditional Nature or against conditional Nature is also
understood and transcended. Then life ceases to be founded
on the need to defeat the dynamic of conditional Nature via
conventional “knowledge”, power, immortality, or mystical
escape. The “world” is no longer conceived as a drama of
warfare between “Good” and “Evil”. The righteousness of the
search for the “Good” as a means of “self”-preservation
disappears along with the “self”-indulgent and “self”-
destructive negativity of possession by “Evil”.

In place of
this dilemma of opposites, an ego-transcending and
“world”-transcending equanimity
appears. In that equanimity,
there is an Inherent Self-Radiance That Transcends the egoic
dualities of “Good” and “Evil”. That Self-Radiance Is the
Free Radiance of egoless Love. In That Free Radiance, energy
and attention are inherently free of the ego-bond, or the
“self”- contraction, or the “gravitational effect” of
phenomenal “self”-awareness. Therefore, dynamic equanimity,
or the free disposition of egoless Love, is the “window”
through which Real (Acausal) God may be “seen”-not in the
conventional mode of “Creator”, the “Good”, the “Other”, or
the “Heavenly Place”, but as the Real, the Self- Evidently
Divine Self-Nature, Self-Condition, and Self-State of
all-and-All.

The ultimate moment in the “play” of
conditional Nature is not the moment of egoic success. The
ultimate moment is beyond contradiction. It is the moment of
equanimity, the still point in the midst of the wheel of
Nature’s motions and all the motivations of the born “self”.
The Truth-and the Real Self-Nature, Self-Condition, and
Self-State-of “self” and cosmic Nature is Revealed only in
that equanimity, beyond all stress and bondage of energy and
attention.

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Key
Terms

 

SPIRITUALIZATION
– Emotional conversion and beyond the body-mind

Commitment and emotional conversion
necessary to begin the fourth stage, while also documenting
the trial of rigorous adaptation to the Awakened heart which
makes this transition the “most difficult stage.”

The most difficult stage is the one
of transition from Lawless, subhuman existence to the
responsible beginning of spiritual life. After that, the
whole affair is more creative and freely voluntary. Thus, in
the earliest stages of life, where personal, moral, and
religious preparation is developed, much attention still
remains in reactive and self-indulgent physical, emotional,
and mental patterns. But as the stages of true practice of
the Way develop, there is less and less of the mechanical
and self-conscious attachment to the structures of the
body-mind.

 

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Key
Terms

 

RELATEDNESS

The subtle dimension, which is
senior to and pervades the gross dimension, consists of the
etheric (or personal life-energy) functions, the lower
mental functions (including the conscious mind, the
subconscious mind, and the unconscious mind) and higher
mental functions (of discriminative mind, mentally presumed
egoity, and will), and is associated with experience in the
dreaming state. In the human psycho-physical structure, the
subtle dimension is primarily
associated with the middle station of the heart (or the
heart chakra), the spinal line, the brain core, and the
subtle centers of mind in the higher brain.

Therefore, as one matures in the
fourth stage and beyond, the quality of self-transcendence
becomes effective and ultimately prevails. This manifests as
a growing sense of inherent freedom and growth of the
qualities of equanimity and inherent desirelessness.

The process that leads through the
stages begins with listening and hearing. You practice in
the sphere of relations and experiences, and you realize
fundamental equanimity and relatedness. You progressively
observe, understand, and feel beyond the limitations of the
stages of life.

This process culminates in the sixth
stage process or in the transition to the seventh stage of
life in the event of transcendence of the feeling of
relatedness itself. In that event, the process is made
single.

In the earlier stages the process is
associated with the feeling of relatedness and therefore
with a variety of objects, according to the stage of life.
Thus, the agent of the
process leading to the seventh stage of life is the feeling
of relatedness, which is a natural realization developed on
the basis of listening and hearing. In the equanimity prior
to self contraction, the feeling of relatedness is wholly
felt, wholly allowed, and in any moment in which the
self-contraction intervenes, it is observed, understood, and
felt beyond, or felt prior to. Instead of self-contraction
generating your experience, the feeling of relatedness,
simple being, feeling toward, feeling through, and feeling
beyond, is awakened in every moment of true self-enquiry or
True Prayer.

 

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Key
Terms

 

NON-USEFULLNESS

The fourth stage of life and beyond
really doesn’t have much significance in the common world.
It’s not desirable. It has not use. And this is why it’s so
subject to taboos. It’s why any of the stages of life higher
than the third are so subject to taboos because they don’t
have any use in this common world which depends on
everybody’s participation to guarantee, in some kind of way
guarantee, survival, you see. Everybody’s got to get down
there and be politically, socially active, productive,
intentionally a part of this movement of humanity to fulfill
various goals that are associated with survival.

Well, the fourth stage of life and
so forth beyond, you see, do not add to that survival
ability. In fact it’s commonly felt that they distract you
from that survival intention. So they don’t want people to
get too rapturous, you see. Governments don’t want people to
get too rapturous, too ecstatic. If you’re going to be
religious, they want to check and find out what kind of your
religion you belong to. They want to make sure that all
you’re getting out of that religion basically are moral
imperatives that improve your life as a socially productive
personality, you see. They don’t want you going to a church,
typically over the world, it’s frowned upon for you to go to
a church or involve yourself in religious practices that are
about getting ecstatic or mystical.

When you move
into the higher
stages (of mind) then you move
beyond the circuitry of ordinary, mind or lower mind where
things like will, free will, or not-so-free will, are
important, or dominant factors in consciousness. You still
associate with mind in the higher stages, but it’s a
different kind of domain of mind.

What
is commonly called the will is an intention directed toward
the bodily personality, toward bodily purposes, social
purposes, survival purposes, you see. What kind of will is
involved in rapture? It is still in the domain
of mind, but can it be called
will any longer? Is it anything like free will? It seems not
so much that because it’s directed at the only that that is
and is not spinning in its independent fashion. So a
different kind of mind begins to be explored even in the
fourth stage of life.

You can in
your ordinary life, of course, look after your
daily
business, survival business.
There’s nothing about spiritual life that calls you to not
take care of your ordinary business.

The fourth stage of life must
eventually appear, in which the limitations of the first
three stages are transcended. The fourth stage of life is a
bridge between the gross and the subtle. It involves an
opening of the body-mind to the dimension of Spiritual
Energy, which transforms the beliefs and observances of
merely exoteric religion into a real heart-practice and
potential mystical experience.

With the entrance into the fourth
stage, genuine spiritual practice begins, and life becomes
“more creative and freely voluntary.” Here the person
becomes capable and expressive of the quality of authentic
devotion to the Divine
Reality.

When
you begin to adapt the Life Current will begin to move in
the vital being
and in the Heart. When it does
so, the thinking mind you see gives way and the higher mind
begins to show its signs in Consciousness. And that is how
the fourth and fifth stages begin to develope.

All Yogic, and
religious (or mystical) practices associated with the
process of Spiritual ascent (via the spinal line and the
brain
core, to and through the subtle
levels of mind, and to and through the crown of the head,
and, ultimately, to the “Highest” Realization, above the
body, the brain, the mind, all conditional knowledge, all
conditional experience, and all conditional worlds) may, in
some general sense, be described as “fifth stage” practices.
However, that ascent is made
in two distinct phases (or steps). The first step is
associated with ascent to the “ajna door” (or brain core)
[in the fourth stage of life], and the second step
is associated with ascent above the “ajna door” [in the
fifth stage of life]. The first step is associated with
bodily exercises
(of posture, breath, and so on)
as well as exercises of feeling (or intentional emotion) and
attention (and mind in general), whereas the second step is
almost exclusively associated with the exercise of attention
alone.

In
the fourth stage of life, this now complex psycho physical
being is surrendered beyond itself, to and into the
Living Current
of Being that pervades it and
the total world. This is done to the point of generally
harmonizing
the body mind in that Life-Current and otherwise Realizing
self transcending devotional Union with that Living Reality
in occasions of Love-Bliss that involve and simultaneously
transcend the body-mind.

Love is the
principle of human functioning. It is the principle of
relationship. Love is what is to be Realized and expressed.
You must overcome all limits upon it. Spiritual life is many
things, but at the level of human relations, its essence is
love.

In the
fourth stage of life, the purpose of adaptation is to gain
positive control over the unconscious
and lower subconscious
motivations that create the conventional patterns and phases
of gross physical and mental (or psychological) behavior,
desire, emotion, thought, and will.
Thus, the processes in
the fourth stage of life purify, harmonize, and positively
transform the fixed, self-possessed, and self-divided
behavioral patterns of the unconscious and lower
subconscious dimensions of the body-mind.

The means of
this evolutionary procedure are spiritual. That is, the
extended body-mind (controlled by the autonomic nervous
system and the unconscious and lower subconscious tendencies
of the bodily being) is consciously submitted to the
Transcendental Reality and made to be obedient to the Law of
sacrifice, or love, in the pattern of all
relationships.

The submission of the body-mind to
the Transcendental Reality, or the Divine Person, is a
matter of aligning the gross body-mind (or active
feeling-attention) to the All-Pervading Life-Current, which
is directly communicated to the central or cerebrospinal
nervous system. Thus, in the fourth stage of life, the fixed
association of the Radiant Transcendental Consciousness with
the extended body-mind, the unconscious and lower
subconscious mind, the superficial conscious mind, and the
dual or dynamic patterns of the autonomic nervous system is
transcended. The Radiant Transcendental Consciousness,
communicated via the cerebrospinal nervous system, is
permitted to Master, purify, harmonize, and positively
transform the gross dimension or lower coil of the human
body-mind.

It’s a
recapitulation in that sense. All of the structures of the
body-mind and the world are, as if in repetition of all of
the previous stages of life, apparently arising and
Recognized. In other words, “Brightened”.

Spirit-Baptism
is first felt as a Current of energy descending from above
the head, down through the front of the body to the
perineum, or bodily base. This descent is forceful, sublime,
and very effective in purifying and Spiritualizing the human
personality, bringing forth the signs of radiance, peace,
and universal love that characterize a Spiritually Awakened
being.

When you come to the point of having
become purified in this extended nervous system, this lower
life, purified in your mind and your vital, so so that that
it is harmonious, stable, the two sides, the sympathetic and
parasympathetic mechanisms are harmonious, balanced, the
left and right are balanced. So that this body-mind can rest
in the life current. Then the higher evolutionary stage of
the spiritual process may begin.

The fourth stage of life is the true
and critical beginning of fully human and spiritual life. It
is the beginning of literal functional and psychic
submission of the extended body-mind to its own
root-processes and its Transcendental Source or Divine
Condition. In the fourth stage of life the gross patterns of
the body-mind are realigned to their roots in the central
nervous system (expressed via the higher brain and the
spinal line as well as the whole bodily disposition of love,
or self-surrender) and to the Radiant Transcendental
Consciousness, which is the Matrix of the central nervous
system, and thus of the entire body-mind. Therefore, in the
processes of the fourth stage of life, the central nervous
system is released from fixed and irresponsible or grossly
controlled association with the functions of the autonomic
nervous system and the gross body-mind. In this manner, the
gross behavior and status of the lower body-mind is
purified, harmonized, and positively transformed.

Even though the fourth stage of life
represents a profound and auspicious advance beyond the
foundation stages, in the “big picture” of the seven stages
of life, it is only the beginning of truly Spiritual growth.

The
Spiritualizing makes the patternings obsolete by not using
them, by moving the faculties into Communion. Radiant,
benign human qualities body-mind is “Brightened”
consistently in the course. Unqualified Radiance,
Unqualified Love-Bliss. That’s not something you can put on
with the faculties of the body-mind, this play of opposites
adapted to suffering. That can be manifested, truly and
consistently, only if there is true Enlightenment. its not a
matter of the disposition, in the egoic sense at any rate,
moving into a Lightless moment at any time. It is always
Enlightened.

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Key
Terms

 

SIGNS

The truly human being appears only
in the fourth stage of life, wherein the vital, elemental,
emotional-sexual, and lower mental functions come into the
summary and unifying dominion of the heart, the psyche of
the whole bodily being. Such is the awakened moral and
spiritual disposition, in which Truth becomes the Principle
in consciousness, and higher structural growth becomes the
benign, non problematic possibility. Thus, the Law in the
truly human realm is sacrifice as the individual, whole, and
entire human body-mind, through love, founded in prior
intuition of the Divine Reality. The human sacrifice is the
spiritual practice of love and intuition of the Real under
all conditions of experience and higher growth.

The passage into the fourth stage of
life signifies the mastery of body, emotions, sexuality,
will, and the thinking mind by the psychic, feeling heart.
It does not imply the annihilation of the ego. The
functional ego, or independent self-sense, is never
annihilated in this Way of Life. It is a necessary function
of the whole body, like a muscle or a thought. We cannot
mature without having acquired the sense of autonomous
functional existence, and we can never act without that
function.

When you are fundamentally
responsible for the egoic disposition you may enter fully,
consciously, morally, and spiritually into the true incident
that is the foundation of spiritual life, the foundation of
the fourth stage of life, or the real beginning of this Way
of Divine Ignorance. In the fourth stage, when one enters
the stream of spiritual life, all of the dimensions of the
being that lie below the heart are already adapted to its
true disposition, which is love, and the heart is freed of
its egoic presumption, its contraction. Only then can you
truly enter into spiritual realization of higher dimensions
of human development, the dimensions that exist above the
heart.

As maturity in the fourth stage
develops, the quality of ones existence becomes more and
more self-surrendered and ecstatic, and the process of ones
existence becomes less and less oriented to the development
or fulfillment of the self-based programs and lower or
exclusively vital level conceptions of life.

As
one matures beyond the fourth stage of life, the conditions
of existence as defined and limited by the vital or merely
physical self and its possibilities and relations become
more and more obviously unnecessary, trivial, even vulgar,
burdensome, and fruitless.
And the sense of unqualified Existence, fullness of inherent
Being, and spiritual Reality or unconditional Radiance
becomes more and more profound and
transformative.

The free, feeling disposition of
free energy and attention, the natural state of equanimity,
is realized. The second aspect of the same realization is
that you are restored to relatedness. In the context of the
first three stages of life, then, this self-understanding
restores you to the variety of relations that pertain to the
grosser dimension of the body mind.

The fourth stage of life is founded
upon equanimity, or prior transcendence of any and all
conceptions of a dilemma or inherent problem of existence.
And expresses itself and is founded on the conservative
equanimity of the body-mind.

The
principal evidence is a profound availability of free energy
and attention. Thus, when the Way has been practiced to the
point of true spiritual maturity, energy and attention are
free to Realize their Source, Identity, and
Condition.

The fourth stage of life is founded
upon transcendence of the mood of recoil from bodily
existence, or preference for confinement to the mental,
psychic, or non-bodily illusion of self.

It is only at the end of the third
stage of this Way that attention itself is translated into
the Divine. Even at that stage the feeling dimension is yet
to be translated into the Divine. That translation is the
business of the fourth stage of spiritual practice, the
true, spiritual stage of life. Then you are free of all
subjective changes and all the tendencies and commitments of
this and all other worlds. You are no longer the independent
ego. You are in Communion, one with the absolute
Consciousness. Spiritual practice truly begins then. The
ultimate sacrifice or translation into the Divine occurs
then, and not before.

In the fourth stage of life, this
now complex psycho-physical being is surrendered beyond
itself, to and into the Living Current of Being that
pervades it and the total world. This is done to the point
of generally harmonizing the body-mind in that Life-Current
and otherwise Realizing self-transcending devotional Union
with that Living Reality in occasions of Love Bliss that
involve and simultaneously transcend the
body-mind.

The first three stages of human life
are the stages of lower functional (physical, emotional, and
mental) adaptation to the universal Life-Energy.

The fourth stage of human life is
the stage of whole bodily surrender and adaptation to the
universal Life via Love-Communion (the disposition of the
heart or deep psyche of pure energy).

My first Teaching Sign to everyone
was this Gesture of My hand, clenching the fist versus
opening the hand. Well, its presuming darkness versus being
Radiant. And the fundamental process, then, in sadhana-I
just outlined it to you in terms of all kinds of matters,
and there are many ways I could Describe the fundamental
process as well-but one way to describe it is that, in every
moment where there is the dark tendency to identify with
self-contraction and all the things that come with it, or to
identify with the body-mind, just in and of itself, and all
that comes with that, in every moment as that comes Up, the
process is about being Radiant instead. But you cant do that
just by willing to be Radiant, or merely doing that. You
have to visit the root of every kind of contraction, and the
self-contraction itself, ultimately, and feel beyond
that.

And the
sign, then, in somebody who’s My devotee, who’s advancing in
the practice, is that you are feeling beyond the knots
consistently. It’s noticeable by those who know you over
time that previously you showed certain kinds of signs in
certain situations, had a certain disposition, or whatever
your egoic personality showed itself in some way and now ten
years later, somebody who’s known you all along can notice
for you how those things have changed, they’ve disappeared,
even, you see. You may feel you’re still dealing with a lot
of it on some subtler level, but others notice all kinds of
signs in your physical, emotional, and mental qualities,
your relational qualities and so on as well, and all your
behavior, that it’s become-one good word for it is benign,
relatively En-Lightened, so to speak. In other words, Light
has been brought there. You released it in Communion with Me
and found the State of Light. It is Radiant, Love-Bliss, not
contracted, not negative. And so It shows itself in
everything about you.

Samadhi won’t
lapse from it so that you get busied with doing other things
to satisfy the broken impulses of egoity.” – Fundamentally,
you are dealing with the beginnings of the fourth stage of
life and all of the first three stages of life. That is the
sphere of your observation. The contraction is the same, in
any case. It is the same self-contraction that is present in
the fifth stage of life, or the sixth. It is the same
act.

Sensitive to his own process of
existence sees that equanimity, or union, is his condition
always and already. Equanimity is not the condition realized
upon release or the fulfillment of a desire. Rather, it is
the prior condition of all relationship. It is the quality
of enjoyment or happiness itself.

Therefore, samadhi, equanimity, or
union is not attained. It is not grasped by manipulation of
any functional energy or process, high or low. Rather, it is
realized to be always, already, radically, and thus
presently the case. Relationship itself is the union.
Existence itself is enjoyment or conscious and unqualified
happiness. Such is the knowledge of one who understands, and
in this understanding he is free of dilemma, vital shock,
seeking, the whole force of dramatized desire, and the
distractions of every kind of goal, high or low.

Basic and growing understanding of
the futility of a stimulated or distracted life altogether,
even a despair of it, and the consequent willingness to
persist in or be restored to Samadhi, no matter what is
arising, and to move on in practice as quickly as
possible.

Samadhi in the sense of a “natural”
state of ecstasy or state of Realization is continuous even
during moments of ordinary occupation.

“The ‘point of view’ toward Reality
is based on either the memory or the residual effects or
something of the perpetuation of conditionally attained
fourth stage or fifth stage ecstasy . . .” and that
“philosophical presumptions and expressions arise that
resemble, but do not otherwise achieve higher expressions or
Realizations”.

 

In The “Basic” Context
(and Also In The, Possible, “Advanced” Context) Of The
Fourth Stage Of Life In The Way Of The Heart, the act of
attention Is Naturally and More and More Easefully “Tuned”
To The Revealed Spirit-Current In The Circle Of the
body-mind. In This Manner, the act and the results (or the
relations) of attention Are Progressively Transcended In The
“What” (or The Free and Inherently Formless Spirit-Substance
That Is Apparently Modified By the act of attention, and
That Is Appearing Modified as all conditional forms).
Adi Da Samraj – The Dawn Horse Testament
Chapter 45 – I Am Perfectly Certain Of All Of This

 

In the fourth stage the Divine
Presence or Life-Force is felt to exist independent of, or
senior to, the body mind. By cultivating a conscious
relationship to this Presence, the spiritual practitioner
begins to demonstrate and enjoy the spiritual qualities of
faith, love, and surrender.

In place of this dilemma of
opposites, an ego-transcending and “world”-transcending (or
cosmic-Nature-transcending) equanimity appears. In that
equanimity, there is an Inherent Self-Radiance That
Transcends the egoic dualities of “Good” and “Evil” (or the
conventional polarities of the separate “self” in
conditional Nature). That Self-Radiance Is the Free Radiance
of egoless Love. In That Free Radiance, energy and attention
are inherently free of the ego-bond, or the
“self”-contraction, or the “gravitational effect” of
phenomenal “self”-awareness. Therefore, dynamic equanimity,
or the free disposition of egoless Love (rather than the
egoic disposition in the modes of “Good” or “Evil”), is the
“window” through which Real (Acausal) God may be “seen” (or
intuited)-not in the conventional mode of “Creator”, the
“Good”, the “Other”, or the “Heavenly Place”, but as the
Real (or Reality Itself), the Self-Evidently Divine
Self-Nature, Self-Condition, and Self-State of
all-and-All.

The ultimate moment in the “play” of
conditional Nature is not the moment of egoic success (or
the temporary achievement of the apparently positive, or
“Good”, “effect”). The ultimate moment is beyond
contradiction (or the dynamics of polarized opposites). It
is the moment of equanimity, the still point (or “eye”) in
the midst of the wheel of Nature’s motions and all the
motivations of the born “self”. The Truth-and the Real
Self-Nature, Self-Condition, and Self-State-of “self” and
cosmic Nature is Revealed only in that equanimity, beyond
all stress and bondage of energy and attention.

This disposition of equanimity (or
free energy and attention) is basic to the sixth and seventh
stages of life. In the sixth stage of life, the disposition
of equanimity provides the functional base for the ultimate
and final investigation of the ego and the dynamics of
conditional Nature. However, it is only in the only-by-Me
Revealed and Given seventh stage of life that Fundamental
(and Intrinsically egoless) Equanimity Is Inherent and
Constant, expressing Prior (and Permanent) Divine
Self-Realization.

The phenomenal Signs That Are
Significant In The Practice Of Either Technically
“Elaborate” self-Enquiry Or Technically “Elaborate”
Mahamantra Meditation Or Technically “Simpler”, or Even
“Simplest”, “Lay Congregationist” Meditation In The Context
Of The Fifth Stage Of Life In The Way Of The Heart Are Not
Those I Have Described In Terms Of The Frontal and Spinal
Lines Of the gross and subtle personality In and Previous To
The “Advanced” Fourth Stage Of Life In The Way Of The Heart.
Such (Earlier and Preliminary) Signs May Yet Appear At
times, but The Dominant Characteristics Of Right Meditation
(By Grace) At This (Fifth) Stage Are Total (and Deep) bodily
Equanimity (In The Spirit-Current), Easy Steadiness Of The
Spirit-Current and attention At The Ajna Door, and Deep
Meditation (Even With The Spirit-Current and
Feeling-attention Yielded, Up and Back, Up and Back, Far
Above The Ajna Door and the Total brain, To the upper rear
of the top of the head, or Even Above The Total General
Surface Of the head). Therefore, The Significant phenomenal
Signs At This Stage Are Those Associated With The Immediate
Transcendence Of gross bodily Awareness (and conceptual
mental activity) and Progressive (or, Perhaps, Immediate)
Transcendence Of subtle mental (or psychic, and, Most
Basically, perceptual) Awareness.

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Key
Terms

 

KUNDALINI-SHAKTI
– Descending Frontal
Yoga

Among All Of These Signs There
Should Appear Progressive Evidence Of What I Have, Since
Childhood, Called “The Thumbs”. Beginning In The “Basic”
Context Of The Fourth Stage Of Life In The Way Of The Heart,
There Should Be At Least Occasional experience Of An Intense
Invasion Of The Frontal Line By The Grace-Given
Spirit-Force, Beginning At the top of the head and
Descending Into The lower vital Region To the bodily
base.’

In the fourth stage the dimension of
the heart or psychic being as love, rather than as the
contraction of independence, or Narcissus, awakens, making
possible the integration of the whole body-being, above and
below the heart. In the fourth and fifth stages the
kundalini-shakti,2 or lower psychic dimension, awakens, and
then the dimension of the mid brain, the higher psyche,
awakens and projects itself upward toward the limits of the
body-being. Individuals tend to view this development as a
movement toward cosmic dimensions of experience beyond the
head, beyond the crown, beyond the sahasrar. But this
movement is primarily the development of the potentials of
the brain itself and its human ability to contact the more
and more subtle ranges of its own conditional and
psycho-physical existence. Then in the sixth stage the
contraction of even such exalted mystical and transcendental
awareness is penetrated, and attention comes to rest in the
Heart, as Self-realization or Jnana Samadhi.

Also, the senior tradition of the
Kundalini Shakti is associated with a process in the total
Circle of the body mind (including both the frontal line and
the spinal line). This is because the descending and
circulating Spirit Power moves in the total natural circuit
of the body mind. Thus, the descending and circulating
Spirit Power first enters the frontal line, where the
foundation work of opening and purifying the physical, the
etheric, the emotional, and the mental (or general psychic)
personality must he accomplished. Then, potentially, once
the frontal line is sufficiently purified (or, at least,
sufficiently surrendered and opened) to allow the descending
Kundalini Shakti to turn about at the bodily base, the
Kundalini Shakti spontaneously begins the upward Yogic
course. Thus, because the true process Generated by
Kundalini Shaktipat Works first in the frontal line and then
(potentially) in the spinal line, the Kundalini Shaktipat
tradition actually begins in the Event of the truly
Spiritual Initiation of the “basic” fourth stage of life
(and, potentially, to some possible degree, even in the
rudimentary Spiritual context of the “original” stage, or
foundation stage, of the fourth stage of life), and,
thereafter (in due course), it continues (potentially) in
the “advanced” fourth stage of life and the fifth stage of
life. But the lesser tradition of the Kundalini Shakti is
based on a system of Yogic philosophy that idealizes Yogic
ascent (not descent), and, therefore, the lesser tradition
of the Kundalini Shakti (and the derivative traditions of
“ascending Yoga” in general) is associated with systems and
techniques of practice that are intended to strategically
develop the ascending Yogic process in the context of the
‘advanced” fourth stage of life and the fifth stage of life,
thus (in general) bypassing (or, at least, minimizing) the
foundation Yogic Ordeal associated with the ‘original” and
the ‘basic” fourth stage of life. (And, as a result of this
bypass, the lesser tradition of the Kundalini Shakti, and
the various, and variant, traditions of ‘ascending Yoga”,
such as “Kriya Yoga” and ‘Shabd Yoga”,20 that are derived
from the generalized tradition of Kundalini Shakti Yoga, are
often associated with a point of view that would achieve
extreme detachment, or strategic dissociation from the body
mind and the conditional world, and, otherwise, in general,
with programs of practice that do not pay sufficient
practice, time to preparing the right and effective
foundation that must precede Yogic activities in the context
of the “advanced” fourth stage of life and the fifth stage
of life, if the potential ascending Yogic process is itself
to develop truly, rightly, and fully)

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Key
Terms

 

EXPERIENCE – Gross, Subtle or
Causal

“We arise within the Spirit Being,
Who is entirely Awake as this moment, Who is the
consciousness and energy in which we are arising. That One
is being all of us right now. Everything we seem to be is an
expression of the qualities of that One. The more aligned we
become to this understanding, the more spiritual we become,
and the more wisdom we represent. This is the fundamental
discovery, you see. No experience is senior to this
realization. It is the Truth of experience.”

The stage of psychic adaptation,
corresponding to the awakening of the feeling dimension of
the heart, and the subtle mechanisms in the throat and the
lower rear of the brain. The centers above the heart are
awakened via the spontaneous placing of attention in the
internal Life-Current of the body-mind, and the
repolarization of the Life-Current and attention itself toe
to crown, rather than crown to toe (which is the
polarization of the Life-Current previous to the fourth
stage of life).

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Key
Terms

 

THE THREE
HEARTS

Higher Evolutionary Mechanism – The
Yoga of Enlightenment

This evolutionary mechanism of the
cerebro-spinal nervous system is your future. The Fourth
stage of life is the beginning of an association with this
evolutionary mechanism and it is fulfilled in the fifth
stage. This higher evolutionary mechanism in man is just
another part of you you see, it is just an expression of
this atom, this ego, this narcissus also, and it must be
transcended in the sixth and seventh stages of life. But it
cannot be bypassed. You must become responsible for the
whole body-mind. So you can’t merely think you are
enlightened you see, you can’t really quiet the mind and be
enlightened. The life current must be awakened in you
bodily, in your feeling, in your psyche, in your brain you
see, this mechanism must be awakened and then transcended.
There is no enlightenment without that.

The left side of the heart is
associated with the first three stages of life, and the
“general” and “basic” contexts of the fourth stage of life,
and thus the descending or frontal line of the body-mind.
The left side of the heart is associated with the physical
heart itself.

The middle station of the heart is
associated with what is often known as the heart “chakra”
(or “wheel”), a center of energy in the subtle dimension.
The middle station of the heart is linked with the ascending
fourth stage of life, and the fifth stage of life, in the
spinal line.

The culture of the Way of Divine
Ignorance may also be related to the traditional scheme of
seven stages of growth. But it is founded on the Awakening
of the heart, from self-possession to free
feeling-attention, via all functions, in all relations,
under all conditions. Indeed, the whole Way is the Way of
the heart. The first three stages purify and readapt the
whole bodily being via the lowest dimension of the heart,
the gross physical epitome. Thus, they involve the
foundation growth of the vital-physical, the
emotional-sexual, and the lower mental dimensions including
the will, or integrated responsibility for the whole of the
common human foundation. The fourth and fifth stages purify
and readapt the whole bodily being via the middle heart, the
subtle epitome. Thus, they involve the higher growth of the
conceptual mind, the psyche, the subtle intuitive gnosis of
the elemental world, and the higher or cosmic gnosis of the
planes and “heavens” of the Great Process of manifest
experience. The sixth stage purifies and readapts the whole
bodily being via the upper or right heart, the epitome of
the independent conscious entity and the Place of
self-transcendence. Thus, it is in this stage that the
presumption of independent, separate, and separative
conscious existence is dissolved in the true Heart, the
“Ignorance” or Unqualified Consciousness that is our
Condition in Truth. The individual bodily being is not
“snuffed out” at this stage. It simply persists free of the
irreducible illusion of separate existence, and exists in
utter Identity, or radical Love-Communion, with the
Condition of all beings and conditions. Thus, in the seventh
stage, the whole bodily being exists in a fully responsible
alignment with its Source, “Food,” and Condition, and
continues to grow at Infinity. This leads into more and more
perfect identification, even bodily, with the Light, Love,
and Consciousness that is the Absolute God and Self of Man.
Thus, this final stage, which goes on into Eternity, shows
the Divine Signs of Transfiguration and Regeneration while
alive, and ultimate Ascension or Translation of the
individual into the Divine Plane, the Heaven above all
heavens, which is God and Truth.

The
seven stages of life is what Avatar Adi Da Samraj has called
the “vertical” dimension of the body-mind. The vertical
pathways contain both the descending and then ascending
energy, associated with the fourth and fifth stages of life,
which, in the sixth stage of life, finally falls into its
source in the heart. This description is corroborated by
many traditional descriptions, which speak of the chakras
rising from the base of the perineum, and reaching the apex
at the top of the head.

The three aspects of the heart all
appear in the great heart region, or the chest area of the
body. Avatar Adi Da calls the three aspects: the left side
(or station) of the heart, the middle depth (or station) of
the heart, and the right side (or station) of the heart.
Consciousness has traditionally been understood to have
three basic states, called the “avasthas” in Sanskrit. These
are the states of waking, dreaming, and deep sleep that
everyone knows.

The Left Side Of The Heart Is The
Base Of the waking state, bodily experience, The Descending
or Frontal Line Of the body-mind, and The First Four Stages
Of Life.

The Middle Station Of The Heart Is
The Base Of the dreaming state, all that is the deeper
psyche, or subtle mind, The Ascending or Spinal Line Of the
body-mind, The Deeper Purpose Of The Fourth Stage Of Life,
and The Total Purpose Of The Fifth Stage Of Life.

The
context of the deeper personality is in the center of the
heart.

The gross brain animates the subtle
functions of intelligence and mind altogether, but also
limits them. Not everything in the domain of the subtle body
gets through into the gross physical. The brain cuts it off
or limits what can be experienced. It is only when there is
higher development, Spiritual development, psychic
developmentand so on, that the subtle body is able to appear
more fully, through the physical brain and into the domain
of the gross body-mind. Such developments can occur, through
total psycho-physical purification and Yogic practice and
Yogic Transmission. But apart from that kind of growth, the
gross body-being a kind of lump, without intelligence-limits
the faculties. But scientists do not know about this,
because they are concerned only with the gross body and want
to deny everything else. Well, that is an example of how the
gross brain and body limit the exercise of
intelligence.

DEVOTEE: Is the experience of going
beyond the doorway in the brain more likely to occur in the
fifth stage of life or at an earlier point in
practice?

ADI DA SAMRAJ: It is a specific part
of the process in the fifth stage of life. Experiences of
it, in one form or another, could occur at any time,
depending upon the characteristics of the individual, and so
on. Full penetration of the Ajna Door leads to fifth stage
conditional Nirvikalpa Samadhi. Less than full penetration
can lead beyond the gross domain and into forms within the
subtle planes. So it is the phenomena of ascent-and that is
specific to the fifth stage of life. But as I said,
experiences of a subtle nature, even going beyond the
physical, could, in principle, occur at any time.

 

“You must fulfill
the evolutionary law but you must also transcend
it.”

 

The evolution of the body-mind is
the the end result of spiritual practice. It is simply that
the mechanism native to man, which is an urge in human
beings toward evolution within the cosmic scheme must be
awakened in you. It is part of your body-mind.

The purpose of existence for one
established in the fourth stage of life is devotion, a
moment-to-moment heart-intimacy with the Spiritual Reality.
That intimacy is tangible and ecstatic, and it changes one’s
sense of reality. Everything that appears, everything that
occurs, is now realized to be a process full of
Spirit-Presence. This new vision of existence is given
through Spirit-Baptism, an infilling of Spirit-Power
described in many different religious and Spiritual
traditions. The source of Spirit-Baptism is almost always a
Spiritually Awakened Master (either in this life or a past
life).

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Key
Terms

 

FOURTH STAGE
ERROR

The Fourth Stage Error Is The
Tendency To Prolong The First Three Stages Of Life (and The
Patterns Of Un-Happiness That Are egoically Associated With
The First Three Stages Of Life) and To Make The Fourth Stage
Of Life An End In Itself (Rather Than A Transition, or A
Transitional Means, For The Realization Of The Stages Of
Life Beyond The Fourth). This Tendency Takes The Form Of A
Fixed Idea Of The Divine (As An Ultimate Entity Eternally
Separate From the conditional self-entity) and A Fixed Idea
Of the personal self (As Either a mortal Or an Immortal
entity that Is Eternally Separate From and Dependent Upon
The Divine). On The Basis Of This Tendency, The Fourth Stage
Of Life Is Made Into A Never-Ending Search For The Divine
and A Never-Ending Appeal To The Divine For Intimacy,
Relief, and self-Satisfaction.

The Dawn Horse Testament –
Sutra
47

---

See more:

The Dawn Horse Testament – The
Fourth Stage of Life – Sutra
44 (Beezone Study Sheet)

Confront
the Crisis of Transition to the Fourth Stage of
Life

The
Seven Stages of Life