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"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 use of Paradox does not spring from a desire to mystify the hearers or oneself.
It arises from the inablilty of language to say two things at once.
Paradoxes are the bright banners of the liberty of the mind...reasons grips life with a stangle-hold, but life says, 'to win is to lose' and as in Judo, uses the power of the enemy to escape from it"
R.H. Blyth
"But I awakened and would not serve madness. I turned back and joined the ranks of those who have corrected Thy work....to-morrow....(we) will hasten to heap up the hot cinders about the pile...(and) burn thee for coming to hinder us. For if anyone has ever deserved our fires, it is Thou.
The Grand Inquisitor
Fyodor M. Dostoevsky 1879 - The Brothers Karamazov, Chap 36
- Pontius Pilate speaking to Jesus
"It is I who have created all! I am the source of everything in creation." Upon hearing these ecstatic declarations, an angry mob of fanatic Baluchi soldiers buried the old woman alive. Over ten years later, when some of these same soldiers happened to be in Poona, to their utter amazement they saw the same old woman, Hazrat Babajan, giving her blessing to a group of devotees. Realizing their terrible mistake, the soldiers approached Babajan and begged for her forgiveness, placing their heads at her feet in reverence.

Hazrat Babajan of Poona

page 5 - Lord Meher


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


In fact, the knowing of the common and ordinary order of life in Truth is a greater form of realization or liberation than the knowing of the extraordinary states of the higher or subtler levels of the psyche, because we are conventionally bound at that ordinary level. We are truly experiencing this great fear, this conventional limitation, in the midst of ordinary states, so to be realized, to be happy in the midst of functional life, not to escape it, is the great release. The ordinary is the condition that we fear, the place where we are threatened.
Garbage and the Goddess
..paradoxically, and most unfortunately, 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.

Beezone


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)


The confusion of negative thoughts is naturally purified in space. Ordinary mind, free from accepting and rejecting, loss and gain - May we realize the truth of (simplicity)

Karmapa Rangjung Dorje

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'.

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.


Life or the Cosmos is itself a modification of the Great Divine. What heresy to assume that the Lord's Power of modification is false or to be gotten rid of! It is all God's work, God's happiness. It is to be known and lived in Truth. It is not modification that is to be undone, but the strategy by which you direct yourself through these conditions that are arising in God. And the fundamental strategy is the assumption of this limited self existence rather than the perfect intuition of the Divine as one's Nature and Condition. All that arises is to be realized consciously as the Conscious Theatre of God.
Garbage and the Goddess

"Guru as God is not the human individual, ego, magnifying itself dramatically to itself and thinking it is God exclusively over everyone else. That sort of confession of divinity is insanity."
Life of Understanding, Week 11 (unpublished)
See:

Can the Guru Awaken Individuals

 

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"The perfect among the sages is identical with Me. There is absolutely no difference between us"
Tripura Rahasya, Chap XX, 128-133

 


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