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I Enter the World of Dragons a talk by Da Free John August 19, 1982 MASTER DA: People have to be helped to understand precisely how the Enlightened Being incarnates and acts. It's not the same as pretending to be an ego for a lot of years. It is a matter of completely taking on all the conditions of birth based on prior Realization. But the force of prior Realization is so profound that it carries with it an innate faith that even if you enter into the lesser conditions the Realization will not ultimately be lost, or it will break through. It is a matter of abandoning a certain free disposition to take on the conditions of birth altogether--body, mind, emotion, circumstances, relations--and to be obliged therefore to go through the process of transforming those conditions. But when you're going through the process of transforming them you're doing it in the context of limitations, so it is a struggle. It's not just like going to seminary and playing the role of being a Christian. It's more like going to seminary and actually being a Christian. And Meridian Smith1 pops out of your heart at the last minute and saves you from the consequences. (Laughter) You must have faith in the power of prior Realization to break through the conditions you are going to assume. In my own case, prior Realization did break through, but only after a difficult process of life and practice. 1. Meridian Smith is a character in The Mummery (formerly Love Exit, and Water), Master Da Free John's unpublished novel, which he has called a paradigm of his Teaching. Raymond Darling, the central character in the novel, is repeatedly saved from difficult circumstances by the miraculous appearance of Meridian Smith, who refreshes his perspective and points him in the right direction. My life is entirely for the sake of Teaching others. It isn't a matter of being born in the usual manner, because of past karmas, and struggling toward Enlightenment, and then in some fashion or other, trying to pass on that wisdom to other people. My birth itself was for the purpose of Enlightening people. It was a sacrificial commitment to instructing people. Therefore, my whole life is a matter of developing the capability to instruct others and then entering into a unique kind of relationship with them in which to be instructive--a relationship of identification with them, not a relationship of abstraction from them. You could say it's a very dangerous, wild way of working. To abandon the free prior position in order to be born is a kind of dangerous or wild feat. And after going through the process of the sadhana of re-Awakening, then to submit oneself to devotees in the sense in which I have is another kind of wild feat--to dare to identify liberally with the very thing that must be overcome. Well, that's my special way of working. My life is a little bit like going into the world of enemies and dragons to liberate somebody who has been captured. You cannot just sit down and tell a dragon the Truth. You must confront a dragon. You must engage in an heroic effort to release the captive from the dragon. This is how I worked in the theatre of my way of relating to people, particularly in the earlier years, and in the unusual involvements of my life and Teaching. You could characterize it as the heroic way of Teaching, the way of identifying with devotees and entering into consideration in that context and bringing them out of the enemy territory, gradually waking them up. My biography in The Knee of Listening, should be seen in the same sense. It's heroic sadhana, not the traditional passive, dissociative sadhana. That is why my life is not characterized by traditional, ascetic, or dissociative strategies. People should also understand this about my Teaching Work. They have this idea of Teachers-"You're Enlightened, you know, so it doesn't make any difference to you what happens." They think Teaching is something you do in a role of abstraction from people. However, I do the same in my Teaching Work that I did in my early life. I submit to devotees, meditate them--take on their conditions in my own body, emotion, and mind, and do the sadhana in that context, from the ground up. It is a sacrificial act of identification with others and with conditions that appear. Teaching does not involve identification with conditions to the degree of the abandonment of the Enlightened position, but it's not a matter of being abstracted in the Enlightened position either. So, my Teaching Work is a kind of sadhana, just like the sadhana of my early life, and it is also a difficult struggle. It is the sadhana for the sake of others, which results in their Enlightenment. I have faith that the power of Realization will break through in their case, but it also requires this submission. In the earlier years of my Teaching Work I was involved in this struggle with people, waiting for them to show the signs of being devotees. That passionate involvement with people is an expression of how I worked. It's not like being the abstract swami wise man, to whom people come in some quiet room, and he just tells them what's happening, or explains things to them, you see. It's not merely that. There's obviously Transmission through pure statement of the Teaching, but there's also argument of it, the struggle with people in the context of their non-Enlightenment, and the taking on of all kinds of conditions in which to relate to people. It is a unique way of working.
My Work in the Past and the Future a talk by Da Free John November 1, 1981 MASTER DA: The Knee of Listening is the first expression of the point of view of transcendence. This understanding is the summation of my life and sadhana and Teaching. My Teaching of others is a play with people who are disposed to turn their attention toward one or another kind of conditional state or object. I have entered into Teaching occasions with people in all of the modes of their worldliness, and all the activities to which they devote themselves in the first three stages of life. Having entered into the mode of their attachment and their conventional orientation, I have instructed them in that moment. I have attempted to awaken them to a different orientation toward the gross conditions of existence--a free orientation based on understanding the mechanics of Narcissus. I have also entered into play with people relative to their fourth stage orientation toward Communion with the Divine through the Name, through God ideas, and through the Spiritual Master as a particularized form of Divine representation. I entered into criticism of all their fanciful ideas, misunderstanding, and wrong interpretation of my function and that of Adepts in the past. The Garbage and the Goddess period is an example of my instruction relative to fifth stage phenomena, but all throughout my Teaching Work I have given people exercises to help them enter into the phenomena of the fifth stage of life as well as the necessary Transmission. Then I have criticized people's fascination with these experiences and helped them to apply the disposition of understanding. I have generated this same kind of theatre relative to the sixth stage orientation--the disposition toward the witnessing consciousness, within and exclusive of objects. I have given instruction such as intentional placing of attention in the right side of the heart, which I ultimately criticized. The seventh stage of life is the state in which everything is recognizable in Truth. It is the condition of Realization in which everything appears as Reality, whereas in the first six stages of life everything appears as unreality. The world is unreal in the first six stages of life. It is Real in the seventh stage of life, but it is not necessary. It is not binding. It is utterly, tacitly recognizable in the Radiant Transcendental Being or Brahman. It is an utterly free condition. It is the Real condition of birth. From a certain point of view birth is a matter of unreality, bondage, or suffering. In the first six stages of life it seems to be merely that. In the seventh stage of life, life is recognizable in Reality. Life is not seen as something necessary, or something that in itself is Real. Rather, life is transcended in bliss. It doesn't have the power to create the vision of unreality. In the seventh stage of life we enjoy the siddhi or the power of the Vision of Reality as a perpetual realization, which cannot be destroyed by any feature of conditional existence. My Work in the past has been to generate the Teaching, or intelligence of the Way, and its culture of discipline or practice. And so I had to work to help people awaken, or feel and intuit,beyond the limit of the conventional self. I had to magnify to them the presence of the Radiant Identity. It was a process of awakening people through intelligent consideration from their self contraction and the presumptions based upon it. All of that involved an intimate, personal, theatrical relationship with people. And it is precisely that intimacy, that personal Work with people, that I have now abandoned. In the present setting individuals who consider this Way must choose that intelligence and culture of practice and they themselves must maintain certainty of that Presence. My future Work is simply to magnify the Divine Presence universally, and in my solitary Occupation to surrender all beings and the total world in that Presence. My Work with individuals is in general finished, except where I may presume it. Thus, I may be recognized by devotees, but they must depend on the Agencies of the Teaching, including the Community, the Holy Places and so forth, rather than on me, to turn them to the Radiant Identity. So through the Work of my intimate play with individuals in the past this intelligent consideration developed and the conscious process was created. Through magnifying the Divine Presence or Siddhi in their company, I established the conviction of Its existence in those who entered into this play with me. And I've established various Agencies that not only communicate the Teaching, but which act as vehicles for this same Siddhi. Even the Teaching itself is a vehicle for that Siddhi. It is both an awakener of intelligence and a way of magnifying the Divine Presence and putting a person in touch with it. So in the future it is this Teaching and these Agencies to which individuals must resort who encounter this Teaching. On the basis of intelligent consideration and the contact that takes place through these Agencies, they must develop and maintain the certainty of the Divine Presence. If they will do so then my future Work will also be effective in their case. My future Work is not with individuals, to awaken intelligent understanding or to magnify this Presence in their individual company. My Work is simply to engage in the process of this Siddhi that magnifies and focuses the Divine universally, and in the plane of Earth. If people will make use of my Agencies then they will also be served by me. |
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