THE METHOD OF THE
SIDDHAS
this is an excerpt from a talk ‘The Avon Lady’ published in
the Method of the Siddhas, by Franklin Jones (Adi Da Samraj)
in 1973. To see the full article go to:
The Avon Lady on Beezone.
DEVOTEE: Are all awakened men
Gurus?
FRANKLIN: No. Guru is not a kind of
status. It is a specific function. There are some who
awaken, but who simply live, without becoming active as the
function of Guru. There are others who awaken and do in fact
perform that function. Truth, not the “role” of Guru, is the
enjoyment of all who are awake.
DEVOTEE: It’s hard to figure out
what I have read. One “realized” man wiped out his father,
another killed off his whole family. How can such phenomena
be explained?
FRANKLIN: There is a point where
one’s search becomes inappropriate. This is that point. All
of the Scriptures a person reads, all of the remarks and
experiences and traditions come to an end when the import of
those Scriptures ceases to be academic. In the presence of
the Heart, seeking is inappropriate.
It makes no difference what those
sentences meant. That’s not the point. The universe devours
billions upon billions of entities every second. If we were
to judge by actions those to whom enlightenment should go
the universe itself would be the last. Only the righteous
fools within it would be enlightened, but the universe would
have to wait until the very end on account of its crimes. It
is not any kind of significance, any appearance, any
suggestion, any implication of what we see that is the
Truth. The traditions say that you can’t find the Guru in
his actions. In other words, it is not by watching how
various people act and speak that you find the Guru. He is
always a paradox. His action is a paradox, like the universe
itself.
The old texts that talk about
realized beings killing others are allegories for spiritual
transformations within a man. One of the classic statements
of Vedanta is that once a man has realized the Self he could
slay a hrahmin and it would not be a sin for him. It
wouldn’t affect him. All of these statements are simply
suggesting or somehow trying to imply the freedom of the
Jnani, the Self realized man. So it is that Self, that
Reality to which these Scriptures are trying to turn you. If
you miss the point, and the Self doesn’t become your
direction after reading such Scriptures, you are stuck with
something you can’t understand. You are stuck with something
that seems to say what can’t be true. So all of these old
Scriptures are loaded. There are always two sides. But they
only have one purpose, which is to create interest in the
Truth, in realization. After the interest has been created,
the Scriptures have served their purpose. They just serve to
move you along and entertain you for a period of time until
this whole possibility becomes significant enough that a
crisis, a breakdown in your ordinary functioning begins to
take place. And, hopefully, when this crisis begins, you
will also find yourself in the company of a truly Self
realized man, one who lives as the Self. When that contact
is made, all of these suggestive sentences become obsolete.
They lose their function at the point where that meeting
takes place. The more you have accumulated before that
moment, the more there is that becomes obsolete. And so also
the more resistance there is.
Truly, the Self is mad. The Self is
unlearned. The appropriate foundation of human life is not
an entity, a separate self sense, an ego, even a soul. Such
is not the appropriate foundation for human life. The
appropriate foundation for human life is the Heart, the
Self. It is utterly mindless, utterly free, uncontained,
unqualified. But, paradoxically, when the Heart is lived the
human being becomes functional, usable, alive, moved. Such a
one makes no complicated use of the things an ordinary man
uses to survive. Like a child, he moves by delight. He is a
man of pleasure, of enjoyment. Like a madman, he learns
nothing from life. He doesn’t helieve what he sees. He
doesn’t take it to have any limiting significance. He throws
away all the things that seem to everyone so profound, so
serious. He attributes nothing to them. So the realized man
is like a madman and a child. But apart from actual
realization, radical understanding, what I have just said is
a form of entertainment. It doesn’t affect your impending
death. And your death is what interests the Guru.
DEVOTEE: What about Lord
Yama?
FRANKLIN: Lord Yama, the storybook
Lord of Death? He barely enters into it! He is only a symbol
in consciousness. As if death were some entity, some being
or other. But your death is your concern. It is not the
concern of any “other.” That “other” is your Self. So it is
only the true Guru who is very interested in your death.
Your death, not all the things you call your life. And he is
very interested in bringing it about very quickly. He
doesn’t want a long engagement! He wants a sudden “death”
for everyone.
DEVOTEE: What if a guy’s heart,
breath and mind were suspended for twenty minutes. He’d be
free then, wouldn’t he?
FRANKLIN: It depends on what has
occurred during those twenty minutes. Many people have been
in a coma for months, or even years, but they didn’t wake up
any less immune to death, or any more intelligent. The
“death” I am talking about is not the death of which you
suspect yourself. It is not simply that physical, that vital
event. The death I am talking about is the turnabout, the
dissolution of the principle by which you live, the
fundamental activity that you are animating, dramatizing,
considering to be yourself, living to others, your state. It
is that death which is significant.
DEVOTEE: Sir, would you like to
compare that with, say, the physical act of
suicide.
FRANKLIN: The physical act of
suicide is an impairment. It is an obstruction. It takes
away from you the functions you have available for
intelligence. So the mere act of suicide is not it, any more
than extreme fasting, self immolation, deprivation of the
senses, exclusive internal concentration. None of these
psycho physical events is the crisis of Truth. They are all
experiences. They are symbolic at best. They don’t achieve
the thing that is needed.
We have talked about traditional
yogic methods of seeking Self realization or God union. They
are something like sitting in a room, breathing heavily, and
looking at erotic pictures. You can generate something that
is like passion, but you are never going to make love! It
never becomes that. Just so, you can sit and breathe
methodically, turning inward, contemplating Divine images or
God ideas, but it is never going to become God union. God
has never entered into it. It is a very hopeful practice at
best. There is no God union until God is there to be unioned
with. As a lover depends on his loved one, the God seeker
depends on the living Presence of God before there can be
any God union. And when God appears you are not going to
have to do your spiritual breathing! It will all be very
obvious. You won’t have to think about what is necessary to
be done to become one with God. It is only the absence of
God, the suffering, the ignorant condition that gets you
involved in all of this seeking. It is only where God is
already not that all of these practices begin.
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