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"In The....Way Of The
Heart, There Is A Great Secret In This Matter Of
Transition From Stage Of Life To Stage Of Life:
The... Way Of The Heart Is A Process That Is Both
Progressive and Instant"
On
transcending the Stages of
Life
Also see:
The
Seven States of Eternal Life
- Chapter 6 of The Way That I Teach
Birth
Until Death: The Culture of
Resurrection
Excerpts
from Enlightenment and the Transformation of
Man -
1983
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: My
Teaching shows how the fundamental human structure
is the base for all persuasions, all ideas, all
religions, all esotericism. The base for that is
the gross, subtle and causal structure underlying
human consciousness. And every idea, version or
tradition is based on dominance of one or another
of those functional bases--gross, subtle or
causal--without exception. It covers the world.
My Revelation exceeds all
of that. However, it does not say it is all
garbage. It just sees it in a system-based way, a
system-based means of understanding, so that you
will then understand why this Teaching is a unique
Revelation that is the Crown of the Great
Tradition, and puts it all in order.
It does not say, "none of
those other dimensions are useful". It just speaks
of them all as being progressive. Yes, they are
ego-based, but so is the human being -- so it is
not about saying they are all just wrong.
The Way I have given as a
discipline covers all the stages of life. The Way
of Adidam is not just a transcendentalist way. It
covers the entire thing from the beginning,
everything gross, everything subtle, everything of
a causal nature -- not merely exploited for the
sake of developing those possibilities, but covered
in the sense that you must go beyond them -- and
there are disciplines that relate to all of the
potential kinds of experience. [March 3,
2006]
The following is
from 'The Next Option' an introduction to the
teaching of the Johannine Daist Communion published
in 1984. It was published to introduce the
teachings and get support for the
institution.
Other parts are
taken from 'Sunlight on the Water' published to
introduce the teachings of Da Free John as it
related to children's education and was a source
book for the community school 'Big Wisdom'.
See
Education, or My Way of Schooling in the Seven
Stages of Life
Also see: The
Seven States of Eternal
Life
(Enlightenment of the Whole
Body)
The
Seven Stages of Life
The
teachings of Adi Da Samraj as it relates to the
development of the human
individual
It is the Truth upon which
the Way of Radical Understanding or Divine
Ignorance, as Taught by Master Da Free John, is
founded. Therefore, Enlightenment cannot he a
matter of progressive attainment. It is, as the
Adept affirms, always already the case. But
this is to be Realized, which is a matter of free
attention and energy. The purpose of spiritual
practice is to gradually release our attention and
energy from their contracted habit patterns of
fixation upon seemingly finite objects and goals.
In this way we become more and more open to the
possibility of the radical intuition of the
Happiness, or Truth, that Outshines all phenomenal
states of body and mind.
This occurs as an
autonomous process, guided by the Transcendental
Attraction of the Adept, of increasing
magnification of the tacit intuition of our prior
Condition. No ego based, strategic method of
self-improvement is involved. As Master Da Free
John has discovered and elaborated, however, the
spiritual process unfolds in clearly discernible
stages, what he calls the Seven Stages of
Life.
The model of the seven
stages of readaptation to the God-Realized
Disposition is unique to the Way of Radical
Understanding. It furnishes a structure that allows
us to fully examine and rightly evaluate our
spiritual and human growth as well as the mass of
spiritual teaching and experience that informs our
psyche. In other words, the framework developed by
the Adept Da Free John permits us to go beyond the
taboos and presumptions of conventional religious
and secular culture in our consideration of human
existence and our personal growth. It is thus a
most direct instrument for augmenting
self-observation and self-understanding, both being
necessary tools of a self-transcending approach to
life.
From another point of view,
the seven stages can be viewed as a school offering
seven lessons about self transcendence the essence
of true spirituality. Most people have failed to
learn the lesson of even the first stage of life,
and so the spiritual practitioner, generally
speaking, begins by readapting to what might appear
to be very ordinary human functions and
responsibilities. It is only after he (or she) has
assumed full responsibility in a more ordinary
level that higher spiritual processes can occur.
STAGE 1 (Birth to
Age 7)
The first stage of life,
occupying the years from conception and birth to
age seven, is the stage of the individual's
vital-physical adaptation to the world. He learns
"simple' skills like focusing with the eyes,
grasping and manipulating objects, walking,
talking, assimilating and convening food and breath
into energy, controlling bladder and bowels, and so
forth.
This is the stage that
basically occupies us from conception to seven
years of age (or the beginning of true
socialization and complex relatedness). It is the
period in which we must adapt to our physical
individuality and basic physical capacity. Thus, it
is not only a period of physical adaptation, but of
physical individuation. That is, we must gradually
adapt to fully functional physical existence, but
we must achieve physical individuation, or physical
(and thus mental, emotional, psychic, and
psychological) independence from the mother and all
others. When this stage is complete, we will not
exist in isolation but in a state of conscious
relatedness to all others and the world of Nature.
Thus, the fulfillment of the first stage of life is
marked by the beginnings of the movement toward
more complex socialization, cooperation with
others, and sensitivity to the total world of
Nature.
Sunlight on the Water
Chapter 1
March 1, 1983 - MASTER DA FREE JOHN:
"Education,
or My Way of Schooling in the Seven Stages of
Life."
Each of the seven stages represents a unique period
of adaptation and transcendence, and each
subsequent stage is built upon fulfillment of the
process of adaptation and transcendence in all
previous stages. Therefore, we must clearly
understand what special education or schooling must
be engaged in each stage. The first stage of life
is basically the period of physical adaptation to
our functional existence, though other forms of
adaptation begin to occur as physical adaptation
matures. In addition to the obvious process of
physical adaptation, what must also occur at this
stage is physical individuation. This means that
the child in the first stage of life must realize
that he or she is an independent physical
personality. In other words, he or she must break
the dependency connection to the mother. This is a
kind of unconscious connection to another being in
which nurturing occurs. The individual must achieve
physical independence and therefore mental and
emotional independence from the mother.
It is only on the basis of
individuation from this one-on-one bond, or more to
the point, this "two-who-are-one" bond that the
individual can move out socially, into the whole
field of relationships. The first stage is complete
when we can see the beginnings of a movement toward
a more complex socialization with adults and peers,
and toward cooperation with others and sensitivity
to the total world of Nature.
I should also indicate that
the stages of life overlap one another. There are
seven stages of life, but there is a period of time
at the end of each of the first six stages wherein
some characteristics and capabilities of the next
stage begin to appear. Thus, toward the end of the
first stage of life we should expect to see the
signs of individuation, socialization, cooperation,
sensitivity to Nature, and so forth. When these
signs show themselves stably and significantly,
then the schooling of the second stage of life
becomes appropriate and inevitable.
STAGE 2 (Years
7-14)
 
The second stage of life is
the stage of the development, integration, and
coordination of the emotional-sexual or feeling
dimension of the being with the gross physical.
Just as in the first stage the individual learns
about and is expected to become responsible for the
assimilation and elimination of elemental food, in
the second stage he must learn about, adapt to, and
engage a new dimension of sustenance or food: He
must become sensitive to the Life-Current or Energy
that pervades the body and all of life, and learn
to align body, emotion, feeling, and breathing in a
basic disposition of love or relational sacrifice.
In this way, the young personality learns to
transcend reactive emotion, tendencies toward
neurotic inversion, and habits of self-destruction
and other-directed aggression.
Sunlight on the Water
Chapter 1
March 1, 1983 - MASTER DA FREE JOHN:
"Education,
or My Way of Schooling in the Seven Stages of
Life."
STAGE 3 (Years
15-21)
The third stage of life
relates to the development of mind and will, as
well as the integration of the vital-physical,
emotional-sexual, and mental-intentional functions.
This stage marks the transition to truly human
autonomy wherein the first two stages of life are
adapted to a practical and analytical intelligence
and an informed will, and the individual gains
responsibility for, and control over, his vital
life.
It is important to
recognize that the maturation through and beyond
the first three stages of life is not a matter of
"growing older and wiser" in the conventional
sense. Rather, the individual's entrance into the
fourth stage of life begins with the awakening of
the "psychic heart." In this stage, the Life-Force
or Spirit-Presence 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. Thus, devotional surrender to the Living
Reality is the essential feature of the fourth
stage of life.
p. 34
Taking into consideration
the level of sophistication of teenagers, a fairly
detailed study of the Teaching" means a basic study
of the Teaching and the disciplines. This would
entail the study of our practice of diet, exercise,
general health principles, service, social life,
and those disciplines of meditation that are
appropriate at this stage and age. In also includes
the study of various other technicalities and the
philosophical bases of the conception of the
processes of conductivity (or how to be associated
with the Life-Current) and real meditation,6 the
structure of the world, and so from from a
spiritual point of view. These subjects would be on
the curriculum for formal, regular, and continuous
study by third stagers, along with the conventional
subject matters that must be part of everyone's
schooling.
Apart from this, the
individual should develop sensitivity to the deeper
psyche, or the spontaneous processes of mind that
are deeper than ordinary thinking and the social
personality. Thus, appropriate meditative exercises
of a devotional type should develop in this stage,
and the exercise of imagination should, even as
earlier in life, be emphasized and rewarded. In
addition, the individual should be taught to be
sensitive to dreams, even to keep a regular diary
that describes nightly dreams and experiences in
meditation. And the contents of dreams and
meditative experiences should be frequently
discussed with adult counselors. In this manner,
the individual will develop an
5. "Conductivity"
is, in general, the capacity of the body-mind to
conduct, or be surrendered into, the All-Pervading
Life-Current. Such conductivity or surrender is
realized through love, or radiant whole-body
feeling to Infinity, and such love involves
coordinated engagement of body, breath, and
attention in alignment with the Universal Current
of Life-Energy.
6. Real
meditation, or what Master Os calls the "o Concious
ness," is the senior practice and responsibility
Elf practitioners in each stage of the Way. Founded
upon true "heating" of the Teaching, or release of
self into the Transcendental Condition of Divine
Ignorance, it is the discipline of conscious
surrender of attention in the Divine to
Transcendental Being.
awareness and a with all of
its ex subtle or astral I experiences, ex
phnomenon, and so
Sunlight on the Water
Chapter 1
March 1, 1983 - MASTER DA FREE JOHN:
"Education,
or My Way of Schooling in the Seven Stages of
Life."
STAGE 4 (Years 21 and beyond)
The fourth stage of life
marks the beginning of spiritual life and true
humanness. In this stage the individual's psychic
depth is awakened and adapted to profound intimacy
with what Master Da Free John calls the
Life-Current.
Unlike the first three
stages, which unfold in a semiautomatic fashion,
the fourth stage of life and all the other higher
stages have no fixed period of time. Rather, they
depend entirely on the individual's qualities and
application to the practice of
self-transcendence.
The realization of the
physical, emotional, mental, and moral
responsibilities of the first three stages of life
provides the necessary foundation for the testing
and transformation in the higher stages of life.
Without that basis one may come to enjoy yogic or
mystical experiences, for instance, but remain
unable to exercise real intelligence, freedom, and
love under the most ordinary of human
circumstances.
STAGE 5
The fifth stage is
associated with the mystical aspect of
spirituality. The individual's attention is
withdrawn from the theatre of external activity and
experience and inverted upon the inner world or
'subtle physiology" of the brain-mind. The mystical
ascent of attention through the psychic centers of
the body-mind is conditioned by the nervous system.
Experience in this stage reaches its peak in the
state of conditional "formless ecstasy" or
nirvikalpa samadhi. This elevated state of
consciousness is only conditional and temporary,
because it still contains the seed of a
differentiated self.
STAGE 6
The sixth stage of life is
the profound stage of "ego-death or the
transcendence of the separative self-sense. It
implies the transcendence of the mechanism of
attention itself and thus of the sense of being a
subject over against objects. It represents the
individual's Awakening to Transcendental
Consciousness, the "Witness" of all conditions.
However, this Realization is exclusive of all
objects, because it is founded on the inversion of
attention. Thus, the individual intuits his
essential Identity as the Transcendental
Consciousness hut fails to include the objective
world in his Realization.
STAGE 7
"What
is the seventh stage? It is simply that Disposition
in which your response to the Divine is complete.
What are the stages previous to that? They are just
stages of less than complete response, in which
certain dimensions of your existence are not yet in
the responsive condition or disposition, but which
are somehow locked, contracted, unopened. "
Adi Da Samraj, November 10, 1980
In the seventh or ultimate
stage of life the Liberated or Enlightened
"individual recognizes everything as a modification
of the Radiant Transcendental Being. Now the
Transcendental Self is no longer pitted against the
phenomenal world. Instead, the world is recognized
as continuously arising in the Ultimate Being,
which is co-essential with the absolute
Self-Identity. This sacrificial act of moment-to-
nli)ment recognition of the true nature of
phenomenal existence continues into infinity. That
is the Disposition of Sahaj Samadhi or native
Ecstasy.
In moments where no
conditions happen to arise, the Liberated being is
immersed in Transcendental Formless Ecstasy (or the
Condition of nirvikalpa-samadhi that occurs against
the background of Sahaj Samadhi). Master Da Free
John also refers to this Disposition as Divine
Translation.
In Sahaj Samadhi, which is
a permanent Condition.
Sunlight on the Water
Chapter 1
March 1, 1983 - MASTER DA FREE JOHN:
Also see:
See
Education, or My Way of Schooling in the Seven
Stages of Life
The
Seven States of Eternal Life
(Enlightenment of the Whole Body)
Also see:
The
Seven States of Eternal Life
- Chapter 6 of The Way That I Teach
Birth
Until Death: The Culture of
Resurrection
Excerpts
from Enlightenment and the Transformation of
Man -
1983
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