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Adi Da Articles

Radical Transcendentalism and the Introduction of Advaitayana Buddhism
Da Free John (Adi Da Samraj) - 1982

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Table of Contents

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Chapter One

The Purification of Doubt and Differences via the Introduction of Advaitayana Buddhism

In this age of scientific materialism, doubt is the only certainty and the only substance of mind. Therefore, people in this age are profoundly crippled in their ability to grasp matters of higher certainty or to relate to subtler mental and physical processes. Likewise, they have been wounded in the root wherein we are naturally moved toward Truth (rather than what is merely and temporarily factual or true). Therefore, this is an age in which people demonstrate little ability to understand and practice real religion or spirituality. Transcendental Awakening or Divine Realization has been reduced in the popular mind to the status of mere literary mythology. Because of all of this, my Teaching Work suffers a vague reception, and what I have made plain is commonly regarded to be unreal.

The Great Tradition 1 suffers in this same situation. The modern interpreters of the traditions generally do not approach their subject as practitioners and wise advocates. Rather, they approach their subject with this "scientific mind," empty of everything but doubt and doubt's opinion. The usual interpreters of religion and spirituality are not themselves really religious or spiritually motivated. At most they may represent some conventional and profoundly secularized "religious" mind (such as tends to characterize contemporary Christianity), but there is a great range of presumptions common to the traditional structures of religious and spiritual consciousness that such individuals simply cannot uphold. Such presumptions include the certainty of the continuation of existence after death, experiential presumptions about the "invisible" or non-elemental (or at least higher elemental) dimensions of the cosmos of Nature, presumptions about the reality of spirits, ghosts, subtle entities and powers magic, miracles, mystical ascent and experience, the laws of karma (or the cause and effect laws that necessarily produce the future from the actions or motions of all present processes), and the supremely valuable resource or instrument of Help represented by individuals who are either highly evolved or perfectly Awakened. It is the blind or weakness represented by the inability to make such presumptions that causes scholars to misinterpret secularize, and generally underestimate the traditional sources. And it is this same disability that makes popular interest understanding, practice, and ultimate conversion to the Way of Truth so unlikely in this age.

The tendencies I have just described represent an obstacle to the consideration of the Way of the Heart as well as the Great Tradition. The common tendency is to reduce the expressions and offerings of profound religious and spiritual consciousness to structures of mind that are basically non-religious and even anti-spiritual, characterized by doubt and minimal levels of presumption relative to what is beyond elemental or materialistic conception. The popular and scholarly commentaries of our day tend to communicate and justify a materialistic, secularized or this worldly, humanistic or conventionally socialized point of view. Everything else is regarded to be at best doubtful if not unreal, fanciful, and the product of undeveloped or neurotic human tendencies.

Before the Great Tradition and the Way of the Heart can be rightly evaluated and fully embraced, there must be a restoration of human balance and a renewal of the total mind of Man. Some individuals may be free enough to respond even now, but most of humanity must soon go through a difficult trial of purification rebalancing, and regeneration of higher and subtler knowledge about the structures of manifest existence before the real religious or spritual response can move them to the Real again.

2.

The ancient traditional origins of religious and spiritual philosophy are in the magical or shamanistic cultures. Thus, conventional religious or spiritual consciousness is basically founded on the presumptions of "animism." There are many different belief systems that are animistic (and thus religious or spiritual), but what characterizes them all is the basic presumption that energy, invisible life, or spirit-force is "behind" all and every part of Nature. It is this invisible part that is embraced via every form of magical, religious, worshipful, mystical, yogic, or spiritual belief and practice. And it is the failure to presume (really and profoundly) the existence and the availability of such energy (or Power) that characterizes the non-religious, anti-spiritual, or merely materialistic consciousness.

Just so, the differences in presumption relative to the status of invisible energies (or Energy) are what differentiate (and ultimately result in conflicts between) religious or spiritual traditions.

The traditions of elemental magic, or the earliest and most primitive cultures of religion, conceive of the invisible in terms of the obvious pluralities of gross awareness. Therefore, every thing and every one is presumed to be animated and otherwise manipulated by individual spirits. And the practice of religion is therefore directed toward the attainment of positive and useful relations with spirit-entities of all kinds.

In contrast to such pluralistic animism (and the polytheistic religions that are built on that basis), the later developments of animism (ultimately represented by the monotheistic cultures) tend to produce religious and spiritual practice on the basis of the presumption that there is only one invisible force (or Divine Spirit) behind (and ultimately transcending) all of Nature.

The religious orthodoxy of any particular time and place is always critical of other systems. Therefore, the animistic cultures that developed monotheistic religion rigidly denied value (and even the right to exist) to the cults and practices of pluralistic animism. The early Hebrews, for example, engaged in systematic and even aggressive criticism of the magical practices, "idol" worship, and polytheistic cultism that were extant in the territories they wanted to acquire. Their principle of opposition was not truly a complaint against the cultic use of holy objects to serve access to or even represent the invisible spirit-influence. The Hebrews themselves used various kinds of such cultic machinery (from the ark of the covenant to the temple and all of its trappings). Rather, the principle of opposition was the difference between the mind of pluralistic or polytheistic animism and the mind of monotheistic animism.

The monotheistic religions developed forms of religious practice that were intended to cultivate positive and useful relations, in the present life and beyond, with the One Spirit-Entity (both directly and in the form of all human relations). And the monotheistic cults (dominantly represented by the militant and politically oriented cults of the ancient Middle East—Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) systematically suppressed and eliminated the tendency toward pluralistic animism. (A more recent example of a monotheistic culture's suppressing a culture of pluralistic animism during a drive to acquire and politicize a territory can be seen in the suppression of the American Indians during the settlement that became the United States of America.)

The knowledge and the psyche represented by magical animism is gradually lost as the monotheistic cults gain a dominant political and cultural position. In place of the magical culture (in which very real association with the individualized spirits, powers, and personalities that compose the manifest world has anciently been maintained) a characteristically monotheistic spiritual or mystical culture emerges. The exoteric or outer culture of monotheism has always been associated with the cult of ethical and prayerful relations with the Spirit-God. But the esoteric or inner culture of monotheism has always been directed toward mystical knowledge of God via the shamanism of "sky magic," or mystical and yogic ascent to the Heavenly Abode of God (above and beyond the pluralities of the gross and even the subtle worlds).

It was in the traditions of mystical or esoteric polytheism and monotheism that the principal traditional religious and spiritual idea was developed. That idea encompasses the entire range of experience developed in the phase of magical pluralism (and its outer or exoteric form, which is conventional polytheism) and the phase of both outer and inner monotheism. It is the idea of Divine Emanation.

The common thread of all conventional and traditional religion and spirituality (represented by the cultures of the first five stages of life) is the idea of Divine Emanation. Basically, this idea is the ultimate conception of animism. It conceives of all of Nature (including every part, thing, or individual being) to be set upon, pervaded by, or at least emanated from an ultimate (and thus Divine and Transcendental) and invisible (and thus Spiritual) Source. This is the principal conception of all conventional religion and spirituality, and it is the underlying basis of all dogmas, doctrines, belief systems, cultic practices, systems of authority, and methods of association, reception, and return relative to the Source of all emanations.

Whenever there is a breakdown in the ability of people to base their existence on this fundamental presumption, religion and spirituality tend to be degraded into materialistic secularization and to disappear in the culture of materialistic pluralism. Such is the case in the present age, and it will remain the case until science grows beyond the prejudices of materialism and acknowledges that the psychology represented by the scientific method is a specialization of mind and thus neither the Way to Truth nor the only legitimate means (or specialization of mind) for acquiring knowledge about self and world.

The exclusive dominance of materialistic scientism has resulted in the common disavowal of the basic idea of Divine or Transcendental Emanation. The exclusive dominance of monotheism resulted in the common disavowal of magic and psychism. It tended, therefore, even to eliminate from the common culture the necessarily psychic processes of monotheistic mystical ascent, and so a sharp division between the esoteric (or secret and mystical religion or spirituality) and the exoteric (or public, social, and conventionally ethical religion) developed. Indeed, the outer stance of the monotheistic cults tends to be associated with strong taboos against mystical experience as well as magic and psychism of all kinds. (The "Garden of Eden" story in the Old Testament book of Genesis is a prime example of the taboo against esotericism that is often promoted in the exoteric domain of cultic monotheism.) This practice reinforced the separation between the exoteric and the esoteric divisions of the cult. The mystical saints were supposed to remain hidden. Neither their powers nor their state of mind was to be revealed to the masses in any manner that would upset the order of common society. And if the ecstatic saints became too public in their esoteric teaching, the cult itself would try to suppress them. Eventually, as the monotheistic cults gained broad political and social power, the esoteric dimension of the cults was eliminated by the pressures of the exoteric cult and its mind.

Modern secular society is simply an extreme development of the exclusive exotericism of the monotheistic cults that were in power previous to the age of scientific materialism. Just as the monotheistic cults suppressed and eliminated the magical cultus of pluralistic and polytheistic animism, the modern cult of non-religious and anti-spiritual or non-animistic materialism has also suppressed and generally eliminated the mystical and the religious cultus of monotheistic animism and the entire world-view based on Divine or Spiritual Emanation.

My own consideration with you involves two principal reflections on this entire history. First of all, we must review and critically examine the entire process, so that we can regain a renewed capacity for association with the invisible dimensions of Nature. Only on that basis can we again be what we are—which is a naturally or inherently living, animated, or spiritually Radiant and religiously Awakened being. And the second aspect of my consideration goes beyond the conventions of all that may be gained by such a renewal. It is a matter of understanding and transcending the individualistic or self-based limitations of the first five stages of life (represented by both pluralistic and singularistic animism) and the sixth stage of life (represented by systematic exclusion or negation of Nature and the manifest self).

3.

Materialism is an ancient philosophical tendency. It is the product of mechanical mind, an analytical (or left-brained) and sense-bound (or merely perceptual) consciousness that is fixed upon elemental processes. It is a view that presumes no invisible or spiritual forces behind and independent of matter (or reality conceived via the bodily senses). It presumes no ultimate Invisible Spirit-Power or Creative Energy that is prior to and independent of matter. And, therefore, it does not presume the world and the self to be arising dependent upon the Process of Divine or Spiritual Emanation and ultimately or inherently existing in the Condition of utter Identification with the Divine or Transcendental Being, Consciousness, Freedom, Power, or Bliss.

When this materialistic or sense-based egoity becomes the principle of general cultural, social, and political organization, we see the development of totalitarian, utopian, and merely humanistic regimes. In our day, such attempts at organizing human beings on the basis of materialistic idealism and realism are profoundly evident in the world-wide growth of technologically based political materialism. The movements motivated by such a view of life obviously include socialistic, communistic, revolutionary, radical, and dictatorial political efforts of all kinds. But this same idealism, since it is the conventional basis of scientific culture, is transforming even democratic and traditionally free societies.

Wherever political materialism (which controls bodily existence and action) and scientific materialism (or the control of mind, psyche, and knowledge on the basis of materialistic views) are dominant, there inevitably is cultural suppression of non-materialistic, spiritually based, religious culture. In the worst of such regimes, aggressive military or police tactics are used. But in all cases, at least highly organized propaganda techniques are everywhere in evidence. Thus, in Russia, aggressive political efforts are made to prevent (or at least profoundly control) exoteric or conventional religious cults from interfering with the orientation of the masses toward the purposes of social idealism. But in America there is the tendency, even at the level of the State, to use religion as a means for maintaining the secular or merely social ideal. Even though religious freedom is proclaimed, the social order is infected by a bias toward exoteric Christian monotheism and the social idealism of white Protestantism. Racial and religious bigotry are as characteristic of American society as they are of any other society in the modern world. And the roots of all of this are in the materialistic persuasion of the egoic mind.

Historically, there have also been attempts to create religion on the basis of certain basic features of the materialistic view. The ancient world developed a number of traditions on this basis, the primary one still in existence being that of Buddhism. Buddhism particularly in its original form (represented now by the Theravada or Hinayana school) developed on the basis of an even more ancient "underground" tradition of asceticism. It arose in India, where most of the many schools of religion and spirituality were commonly based on the ancient Vedic tradition. The Vedic tradition was the ancient Indian version of the culture of animism. It was associated with pluralistic animism (or the tradition of elemental magic and shamanism) and polytheism. And even though India began to develop monotheistic trends only relatively late in its development, the ancient polytheistic and animistic mystical tradition was already firmly based in the fundamental religious or spiritual idea, which is that of Divine or Spiritual Emanation.

As I have indicated, there was also in the Vedic period an underground, secondary, or non-Vedic (and thus non-Emanationist) cultural process. The schools of Samkhya, Jainism, and Buddhism were built on that cultural base (although Samkhya and Jainism, like the traditional Emanationist schools, were founded on the point of view of subjective "idealism"—or the idea that consciousness, or the self-essence, is the Ultimate Principle— whereas Buddhism, at least in its earliest form, was founded on the strict conceptions of "realism," which are concerned with the methodical transcendence of conditional existence rather than the method of meditative identification with the self-essence). Even the more modern school of Advaita (or non-dualistic) Vedanta was to some degree built on that base, because of its strictly Transcendentalist orientation, but it also continues the basic line of the Vedic tradition, and it is firmly established on the base of the Vedic Upanishads and the idea of the world as Divine or Spiritual Emanation. Indeed, the Samkhya tradition was also assimilated into the mainstream of Vedic conceptions (as can be seen in the Bhagavad Gita). But the Jain and the Buddhist traditions were more resistive to this tendency to conform to the animistic or non-materialistic conception of the phenomenal world. To the degree those traditions remain intact in the Indian cultural process, they have been adapted in one or another manner to the scheme of Divine or Spiritual Emanation (so that Jain and Buddhist saints are seen in terms of Emanation cosmology and the sacred history of Divine intervention in the human world). But neither the Jain nor the Buddhist tradition has continued as a major cultural force in India. Basically, Jainism disappeared into the mass of relatively insignificant sub-sects, and Buddhism left India to develop in other parts of the Orient where the popular traditions were more congenial to its basic conceptions.

In any case, Buddhism is not a materialistic cultural influence in the same or negative sense that applies to the gross exoteric or worldly influences of scientific and political materialism. It is essentially a Way of Transcendental Realization that is based on materialistic "realism" rather than spiritual or subjective "idealism." Ultimately, the Way of Buddhism Realizes the same Transcendental Reality or Truth that is finally Realized via the Ways built upon the concepts and presumptions of the basic ancient tradition of Divine or Spiritual Emanation.

The materialistic conceptions of classical Buddhism point to a problem (that of material or conditional existence itself) to be overcome or transcended. The Buddhist Way is to overcome or transcend that problem, and successful overcoming or transcendence of material or conditional existence is the essence of the Buddhist conception of Realization or Enlightenment. Therefore, it is not materialism itself that is valued in the Buddhist view, but That which is Realized in its overcoming. And the Buddhist Way is not oriented toward outer-directed, merely social or worldly and self-indulgent purposes. Rather, even though it often employs positive social and personal means, it is oriented toward transcendence and freedom from all kinds of craving, strife, and limitation.

Just so, the spiritual idealism of the traditional ancient view founded on animism and the idea of Divine or Spiritual Emanation, viewed conditional existence as a structure of planes of manifestation emanating from the Divine or Transcendental Source. Thus, the Way of the Hindus, even though it also generally employed positive social and personal disciplines, was ultimately directed toward the transcendence of all conditions (or planes of manifest possibility), and all forms of birth, suffering, and death, in the Divine and Transcendental Source-Reality, prior to all conditional emanations.

Therefore, both materialistic realism and spiritual idealism have anciently provided the basis for the same ultimate Realization of the Transcendental Reality or Condition. The spiritual or animistic view has produced pluralistic or magical animism polytheism, and both exoteric and esoteric monotheism. It has also provided the conceptual basis for all conventional religious and spiritual language, as well as the experiential basis for the traditional cultures of the first five stages of life. Even the sixth and seventh stages of life can be described in terms of the basic spiritual concepts of Divine or Spiritual Emanation. (And such has been done, particularly in the schools of Advaita Vedanta.)

My own Teaching makes use of such language in the service of those who are culturally adapted to the religious ideas of spiritual idealism. But I have from the beginning also considered and described the Way in more radical terms, and the Buddhist tradition as a whole is, therefore, also a precedent for my own Teaching Work, since it placed the sixth and seventh stages (and even the earlier stages) on a basis that did not necessarily require the presumptions of spiritual idealism, animism, and Divine or Spiritual Emanation (or the presumption that Nature and the manifest self are necessary, and are thus to be embraced rather than transcended).

It is true that, to one degree or another, the later schools of Buddhism (in the Mahayana and Vajrayana or Tantrayana traditions) reorganized the Buddhist philosophy and practice on a basis that less and less reflected the early materialistic realism of Gautama. The later schools grew more and more along the lines of spiritual and metaphysical idealism, and they eventually created their own version of the idea of the world as Divine or Spiritual Emanation. As such, the later Buddhist schools closely resemble the later Hindu schools of Advaita Vedanta, tantrism, yoga, social idealism, and exoteric religious and devotional worship. But the original Buddhist tradition represents an alternative conceptual basis for considering and practicing the Way of Transcendental Realization.

In the original language of Gautama, or in the language of materialistic realism, the conditions of manifest existence (or of self and not-self) do not arise by emanation from a Divine Creative Cause or Source. According to that view, all limited conditions are caused by previous limited conditions. The world (and thus every self) is not emanated (and thus made necessary) by a Divine Cause. Rather, the world, or every moment of conditional existence, arises as an effect of a beginningless and endless chain of causation. Therefore, the original Buddhist Way is not to meditate on God, or the Divine Being within or behind the conditional self, but to examine and awaken insight into the conditional states of self and its objects, until there is an Awakening that inherently transcends conditional existence.

The "Nirvana" of original Buddhism is not annihilation but perfect transcendence. The Way is described in negative terms (a problem is to be transcended), but the Transcendental Realization is valued above all. That Realization is not described in Itself (since all language is the bearer of conditional limitations or "false views"), but It is clearly pointed to in the Teaching of Gautama, and his own Realization is clearly described in terms of a meditative Samadhi that is not a matter of the absorption of self, or attention, in the Divine or any emanation of the Divine, but which is nonetheless a Real Condition of Transcendental Bliss.

The entire Buddhist tradition is based on the supreme valuation of this Transcendental Realization (even in the case of schools that do not found themselves on the original materialistic realism of Gautama). Whether or not we say the world and the self emanate from the Divine or Transcendental Reality, all conditions are ultimately transcended if we Realize the Divine or Transcendental Reality. If we are not inclined to presume that self and world are caused (and thus, by implication, made necessary) by the Transcendental Reality, at least it is ultimately Realized that self and world, or all causes and effects, are arising without necessity and without binding power, in the Transcendental Reality (or in such a fashion that Realization of the Transcendental Reality or Condition makes it obvious that all forms of conditional existence are unnecessary and even unreal in their apparent independence).

Conventional materialists, who are not disposed toward Transcendental Realization, tend to conceive of Gautama's materialistic realism in conventional terms. Thus, they interpret Gautama's denial of the existence of an immortal soul to mean that Gautama subscribed to a mortalist view of human existence On the contrary, Gautama clearly believed in (and personally experienced the evidence of) personal existence before bodily birth and after bodily death. But he regarded human and all forms of conditional existence to be forms of suffering—always temporary and limited, always founded on the discomfort and deluding power of craven desires, emotions, and thoughts, and always ending in pain and separation. It was his will to transcend the automatic process of causes and effects that inevitably lead to embodiment that provided the basis for his view that human embodiment is not the expression (or emanation) of an immortal internal part (traditionally called the soul, or the atman). This view was simply consistent with his basic non-inclination to base his consideration of Realization on the conventions of ordinary language, animism, or the idea of Divine Emanation. He enjoyed an insight in which the world and the manifest self could be clearly seen to be unnecessary—and being unnecessary, they could be, must be, or inevitably would be transcended.

Gautama's view of no-soul is simply a form of radical "realistic" language that is free of the need to regard human existence as necessary or desirable for its own sake. Gautama's orientation was strictly in the direction of ultimate transcendence. The animistic idea of a soul is part of the ancient animistic philosophy of Divine Emanation, and it can, in the conventional mind, tend to support the idea of the necessity or inherent desirability of self and world. Gautama wanted to communicate the non-necessity of self and world, and so he was sympathetic to the unconventional language of the esoteric underground of materialistic realism, according to which the manifest self is not emanating from an internal soul and the world is not emanating from a Divine Cause. Both self and world are conditional, not Divinely Emanated, but unnecessary. This is the principal idea of Gautama. And on this basis he communicated his version of the Transcendental Way.

The original Buddhism of Gautama was free of the limitations of animism and Emanationism, but it was based on a problem-consciousness. Thus, his version of the Way is a progressive strategy of ultimate transcendence based on transforming the actions of the manifest self (in order to purify the self of bad karma, or negative future effects), until the desire to create more effects utterly ceases. Later versions of the Buddhist Way were attempts to avoid this limitation (which was based on the future transcendence or mechanical discontinuation of self rather than the present or inherent transcendence of self). Therefore later versions of the Buddhist Way developed more along the lines of metaphysical idealism—or a direct appeal to Realization of the Transcendental Reality (or the Inherent Condition) rather than to the progressive elimination of manifest conditional existence.

The later schools of Buddhism tended in a direction that bears many similarities to the basic tradition of Divine Emanation, or at least the idealism of direct appeal to the Transcendental Reality. In the process, the tradition of Buddhism adopted many features of culture and practice that characterize the first five stages of life as well as the sixth and the seventh stages of hfe, whereas the original formulation of Gautama was a strictly sixth stage practice that could, if successful, lead ultimately to the seventh stage disposition of Realized Enlightenment (which indeed it did in the case of Gautama).

The Hindu school of Advaita Vedanta is based upon the traditional Vedic concepts derived from the original animistic tradition. It is, therefore, founded on the basic idea of Divine Emanation. However, it views self and world to be unnecessary hence illusory, since all conditions are inherently Identical to (and, therefore, not separate from) the Divine or Transcendental Being, Self, Consciousness, Freedom, Happiness, Bliss, or Reality. The tradition of Advaita (or non-dualistic) Vedanta springs from the ancient Vedic culture and the schools of the Vedic Upanishads. But it is founded on an Intuition not at all different from that ultimately Realized by Gautama. It is the Realization of the Transcendental Reality, inherently transcending self and world (or conditional existence, in all its planes). Therefore, the ultimate Realization of Advaita Vedanta is no more attached to conceptions of necessity, soul, Creator God, Divine Emanation, or desire for this or any other world than is the ultimate Realization of Buddhism.

The only significant difference between the basic traditions of ultimate Realization according to the Vedic and the Buddhist (or non-Vedic) traditions is in the language of the Way toward Realization. The Upanishadic schools of Advaita Vedanta are the principal sixth to seventh stage schools of Vedic spiritual idealism. And the schools of Buddhism are the principal sixth to seventh stage schools of non-Vedic materialistic realism. But both traditions are oriented toward and originally based upon the same ultimate Transcendentalism.

It could even be said that both Buddhism and Advaita Vedanta develop their Ways based on one of the two basic options of ultimate consideration. In the simplest sense, two principles coincide in every moment of human existence: the self and the not-self (or the world of objects). The Way of Advaitic idealism is based on the consideration of the Source, Identity, Nature, or Condition of the manifest self, prior to the apparent emanation of the conditional body-mind-self and the world. The Way of Buddhism takes the alternate route. It is disposed to consider and transcend the whole process of conditions, differences, or the total cause and effect world (which includes the body-mind-self as only one of its conditional features). If we embrace the Great Tradition as a whole, then the Vedic Advaitism and the tradition of Buddhism can be understood simply to be the two principal traditional limbs of the sixth and seventh stages of life. There is no possible conflict between them once they are rightly understood in this manner.

In my own time and place, my own Realization and Teaching have appeared spontaneously and with characteristic and unique features. But I can now see my own Way in the perspective of the Great Tradition. My Way is a radical Teaching that enters into consideration of all the stages of life and the entire Great Tradition of the ancients and their modern representatives. But the Way of the Heart is ultimately most radical—an expression of the Intuition that is fundamental to the seventh stage of life itself. Even so, I enjoy great sympathy with the sixth stage traditions of Buddhism and Advaita Vedanta, since they ultimately transcended themselves in the seventh stage Enlightenment. The Buddhist Way ultimately goes beyond its problem-based views and its search to strategically bring an end to the conditional or karmic self. Likewise, the Way of Advaita Vedanta ultimately goes beyond its subjectivism and its search to strategically dissociate consciousness from conditional objects. When rightly understood and embraced as the two primary limbs of the sixth to seventh stage schools (and even accommodating the schools of the first five stages of life) of one Great Tradition, Buddhism (as a whole) and Advaita Vedanta (as the epitome of the entire Vedic or Emanationist tradition) may be described as a single and heretofore unacknowledged tradition. That tradition is now made evident and whole by my own Teaching. My own Teaching is the epitome of and the historical basis for the acknowledgment of this tradition, and my own Teaching provides a new structure of understanding which unifies and fulfills that tradition as well as the total Great Tradition. Therefore, the Way of the Heart may be called "Advaitayana Buddhism" (or the ultimate, unified or all-inclusive, but also radical tradition of both the Vedic, or Emanationist, and the non-Vedic, or non-Emanationist, schools).

That Way of the Heart is a complete view that makes it possible to understand the unity of the Emanationist and non-Emanationist views. My own Teaching is the basis for the proclamation of this new "yana" (vehicle or Revelation) of Buddhism. Earlier Buddhist yanas have arisen in India, China, and Tibet. This new yana stands in positive relation to each of the earlier three yanas—Hinayana, Mahayana, and Vajrayana—as well as to the world-wide Emanationist tradition, epitomized in the Upanishadic Advaitism of such sages as Ashtavakra, Shankara, and Ramana Maharshi, and it has arisen in the West, in America, thus fulfilling many long-standing prophecies that a Dharma-Bearer would arise in the West to renew the ancient Way.

The Way of the Heart is also the epitome of the entire Great Tradition. The consideration of the Way of the Heart may at first be expressed via disciplines that encounter the limits, conventions, and absorptive meditations of the first five stages of life (but free of the subhuman limitations of conventional materialism). Even so, all of that is eventually gone beyond via the critical intelligence and insightful meditations that consider the characteristics of the sixth stage of life, and even that process is ultimately transcended in the radically intuitive Realization or meditation-transcending Samadhi of the seventh stage of life.

The Way of the Heart is, like the Buddhist Way, realistic, since it is, in its mature form, expressed via free insight into the limiting mechanics of the self rather than via any process of strategic inversion of attention upon the self-essence or of contemplative absorption of the attention of the egoic self in the Divine Spirit or the Transcendental Other. But the Way of the Heart is also, like the Way of Advaita Vedanta, openly oriented toward ultimate transcendence of self and not-self in the Transcendental Reality, Being, Self, or Consciousness. Therefore, the Way of the Heart does not bear an exclusive affinity to either Buddhism or Upanishadic Advaitism (or non-dualism), but it acknowledges both as its most congenial ancient likenesses, and it acknowledges the entire Great Tradition, in all times and places, in all of the stages of life, and in the person of all true Adepts, to be its inherited Tradition.

The Way of the Heart stands on its own merits, and it has arisen freely and spontaneously, without fixed deference to the point of view of any part of the traditions, and without the benefit or the hindrance represented by a significant previous cultural training in the philosophies and practices of the traditions. Even so, the total Great Tradition is the true tradition of all of mankind, and the Way of the Heart is a complete fulfillment of that Tradition as well as a radical point of view that rightly and critically understands and values that Tradition as a whole. Therefore, the Way of the Heart can be called Daist, or Radical Transcendentalism, or the Way of Radical Understanding, or the Way of Divine Ignorance, or the Way of Advaitayana Buddhism.

1. This term refers to the totality of mankind's religio-spiritual traditions, past and present.