THERE
IS A LAW
Adi Da Samraj (Bubba Free John
- Prasad Day 10/7/73)
From The Communion
Vol 1. No. 5 - 1975. Dawn Horse Communion
There is a peculiar law to the form
of sadhana I teach. It is quite different from the
traditional forms of sadhana and from the usual worldly
forms of action. How is traditional sadhana created? A
person lives, and he finds that something is wrong; life
becomes problematic, difficult. Traditionally, once an
individual has discovered this in one way or another, he
does something about it. He performs some action whose
purpose it is to do away with that problematic awareness,
that difficulty. All traditional paths and methods are forms
of action which are determined to quiet or eliminate the
mind, raise the kundalini, make you realize God, or
decondition you. All traditional and usual human actions are
forms of "doing something about it." They are reactions, in
other words, to some conceived difficulty or
problem.
Examine this principle. It cannot
work. There is a law: For every action there is an equal and
opposite reaction. How can you perform some action that will
fundamentally transform your condition? All you can do is
create changes. You cannot undermine the principle that you
are suffering through any kind of action. All of the life
difficulties, the mentality, the obsessions, the tendencies
that you suffer and call your problems are the
manifestations of a strategy or principle of life which I
have described through the imagery of Narcissus. The
avoidance of relationship has created everything that you
suffer. Narcissus is the principle of your suffering and all
the forms of your suffering are its expressions. To merely
react to the forms of your suffering in order to change
them, to do away with them, is false. It can never do
anything to the principle upon which it rests. It only
creates modifications based on the same
principle.
The sadhana I teach is of an
entirely different kind. There is another law:
Whatever is not used becomes
obsolete. I teach a sadhana that is not a matter of doing
anything about your troubles. It is not a matter of
performing action with concern for any experience, any
difficulty, any aspect of your life. It is a matter of
living another principle. It is not by "trying not to avoid
relationship" that you cease to be Narcissus. It is by not
being Narcissus that you cease to be Narcissus. A principle
other than that of Narcissus must awaken in an individual's
life. When this other principle is lived, all the qualities
that were created by his previous principle of living become
obsolete. They begin to weaken and fall away. But what is
this other principle? It is Satsang, the prior condition,
the radical condition of relationship. Satsang is not
"trying not to avoid relationship" or "trying to be in
relationship." Satsang is simply relationship. Considering
the words of the Guru you begin to become aware that
relationship is your condition. It is not something you must
try to create. It is not something that, in any sense, has
been disturbed by your previous action. It is simply the
case. In every moment of real intelligence you fall into
that prior Condition, without effort, without struggle,
without problem. So the principle of sadhana is Satsang, not
any approach to your problems or to your qualities or
tendencies.
Nevertheless, when you begin to
live in Satsang with the Guru, the sense of dilemma is not
magically destroyed. Satsang is the principle that is Truth.
It is not magic. Living in Satsang does not mean that your
tendencies have disappeared or that you have some means for
making them disappear. Quite the contrary, to live in
Satsang is to become, at times, profoundly sensitive to your
apparent difficulties and tendencies. I have described this
through the image of the sun moving over a well. At noon,
when the sunlight passes down into the well, all of these
creeps that lived in the dark begin to slither up the sides
and pass out into the landscape. But when the sun is not
directly overhead, they stay inside in the dark. This is the
quality of Satsang. It is like high noon. So your apparent
difficulties and problems do not disappear simply by virtue
of contacting the Guru. They may seem to be intensified. A
real process has been engaged.
From a practical point of view what
is the nature of sadhana from day to day? It is continuous,
unbroken, surrender of self to the Guru. The discipline of
Satsang is to live in the form of relationship under all
conditions and not to be concerned at any moment for what
arises. So if you sit in meditation, and the mind is active,
full of desires and tendencies, this is not to become the
ground for some sensed problem or a demand for relief. Your
sadhana is not properly concerned for these things that
arise. Regardless of what arises you must live in Satsang.
You must maintain yourself in the discipline of relationship
under all conditions, in the form of all relationships. In
other words, you must live this principle. Rather than the
principle of Narcissus, you must live the principle of
Satsang.
Secondarily, over time, you will
observe that the force of your inner experience is becoming
less apparently problematic. But the principle of sadhana is
not to make the inner life quiet and problem free. That is
not the goal, or the intention, or the principle, or the
method of spiritual life. Just secondarily, you observe it.
Because this principle of Satsang is the principle of your
life, everything that is created by Narcissus is undermined.
In other words, the principle is removed. It is not used.
And everything supported by Narcissus begins to dissolve
because it has no ground, no support. Without concern for
the problems that arise, you live Satsang and the discipline
of all relationships, and you do this not willfully, not as
a method, but because you have found the Guru, because you
have heard the Guru, because in some functional, practical,
ordinary way the insight upon which sadhana rests has begun
to live in you.
Prasad Day 10/7/73
|
