Paradox (3:31 minutes) Listen to Bubba Free John (Adi Da) respond to a students question about paradox and confusion - 1975 "All truly or fully human communication is art....and Paradox is the essential content of human experience, all art" The Paradox of Instruction, 1977 The (Guru) analogy is that of a snake in a bamboo tube. When you put a snake in a bamboo tube, the snake has to face either up or down. Relating with the guru is very powerful, too powerful. Chogyam Trungpa, The Collected Works Series, Vol Four p. 198 The Man of understanding is a wild man, and one who approaches him should be ready for anything. Even so, all those who approach (him) will be turned by numberless subetlities and tricks for which they have no armour....No man is prepared for the encounter with a man of understanding, and all who meet such people must suffer kinds of craziness and offense until they understand. Franklin Jones (1971) Our Unfortunate Dilemma in the Realization of Ignorance Lately I've been reading some of the bulletin boards and web pages on the Internet that discuss Adi Da. Many of these discussions (if I can be so generous) center around the questions of Adi Da's sanity and authenticity of realization. There seems to be an inconsistence in Adi Da's questionable ethical behaviors that date back to 1974. In spiritual life, particularly in the east, the problem of ethics and questionalble behavior from a Guru have long been a question of legitimacy. How can individuals who 'claim' enlightenment do so many hurtful and nasty things under the name of truth? Why would Upasani Maharaja throw a rock and hit Meher Baba (Meher Baba devotees say about his abuses) in the head and cause it to bleed? If Adi Da is enlightened the how could he do all the bad things people obviously experienced in his company? How does this 'square' with truth and enlightenment? It simply does not square with anything! It doesn't and it can never be 'reconciled' with our notions of enlightnement or what is good. But yet it still exists and it is a paradox. Even if one were to inquire in real spiritual terms as to the condition of an enlightened being which is suppose to be all about Bliss and Love, how can "wackin" someone around or performing strange sexual behaviors be in any way 'consistent' with Bliss, Love and Awakening? As unenlightened beings we are left in our own questions and logical inconsistencies, our own wanting and needing things to be 'good' and 'right'. We don't want to be duped and 'had' by some mad man or woman! The only 'explanation' is it's a paradox. The word paradox is used to describe something that seems to be a contradiction but is in both cases true. Something is both GOOD and BAD at the same time. Unfortunately our minds think in a logical and sequential manner and we can never fully come to terms with a paradox. We can never come up with final answers that will 'solve' these questions. We can come up with 'relative' answers, based on the laws of nature but not absolute answers. If we poist a question and try and solve it by using our minds we will ultimately come to an unresolved 'pair of opposites'. So when we look at Adi Da or any other 'realized' being, there is no way to ultimately resolve these outrageous and inappropriate behaviors, which are by all logical and common sense accounts 'hurtful' and wrong. We have ideas that enlightened masters should be like holy saints. "Saints would never have contradictory natures." They'd always be on one side; they'd always be good, morally and spiritually. It is exactly this 'not wanting to be duped' that continually keep us in the contradictions and impossible dilemma's of our own mind. Somewhere along the line, the line to infinity, we must let go of ALL ideas and expectations and every speck of what we think ourselves to be. We must ultimately lose ourselves and that means lose all sense of what we think is RIGHT, GOOD and SANE! There is no other way to do it. Nargarjuna, the famous Buddhist philosopher of the 2nd century postulated his 'four corner negation', pointing to the most ultimate answer he could give to this question of logic. He said that you can't ultimately say (1) Yes (2) No (3) Both Yes and No (4) Neither Yes and No. All possibilities of Eternalism or Nilism are confounded in the 'infinite realm of contradictory opposites'. ADI DA SAMRAJ : ..... There is no answer. All of our complication, all of our thinking, is animated as if we have answered these questions. We act as if we have answered these questions, but we never answer these questions. We have never answered these questions, and yet we carry on in an orderly fashion living, acting, eating, shitting, sexing, as if we had already answered everything. Human beings have never answered anything ultimately. We have merely adapted to the ordinary facts of what appears to us. We have never understood these ordinary facts. We cannot account for these ordinary facts. We cannot account for the ordinary fact that we are here. Enlightenment does appear to be a kind of madness. (see Crazy Wisdom article) (also see: Transcending Madness, Chogyam Trungpa 'Crazy Wisdom') To come up with a moral certainty in this climate is .....forget it! It can't be done. Reconciling Adi Da's behavior or even the rationalizations of our own contractictory nature is impossible. NO ONE can claim Absolute Knowing. Adi Da, Meher Baba or whoever can claim that the adept is That Which is Beyond All Opposites and therefore WHATEVER that one does is 'purifying' and 'balancing' but the claim can't be either proven or denied from 'this side of infinity'. Our fears (Fear and revulsion account for most of the spiritual adventure of mankind. Paradox p. 30) tell us that this kind of stuff is 'crazy' and that kind of logic can be used by manipulators to do evil and perform self justifying actions. And that IS true. We have to be aware of 'deception' and protect ourselves from falling into the spell of someone's evil intentions. But paradoxically the higher up one goes up the scale of things the less and less the things of this world can be brought with it, and that includes logic and the concepts of good and bad. "the question comes down to, what it really is, is an expression of doubt. If I Am you, there does not have to be any way it works! There is not any difference between us to need something to work. So I have completely accounted for what you are asking about. It is just that My answer is not satisfying to the egoic mind. Only in the mode of Communion with Me, direct Realization in My Company, would you be satisfied by some of these descriptions. As long as there is that knot in the heart, then What is Great is not perceived, and so you look for signs, structures, to open the heart, to relieve you of yourself so you can see plainly." Introduction to Dawn Horse Testament - Saniel Bonder "Whatever the model of the universe in the context of which any Spiritual Adept is conceived to arise in the human plane, the teaching of the great Spiritual Adepts (whether historical or legendary) always speaks in contrast to the conventional “wisdom” (or popular culture), and (therefore) in contrast to the way of social morality for its own sake, or the conventional way..." The Dogmas of Social Morality Versus the Esoteric Spiritual Teaching That Is At the Origin of Traditional Religions See: Can the Guru Awaken Individuals D.B. Sleeth's excellent letter on 'why' Adi Da

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