SPECIAL EDITORIAL INTRODUCTION DISCRIMINATIVE INTELLIGENCE AND THE SEVEN STAGES OF LIFE The liability in the fourth stage of life is the tendency toward dualistic and dogmatic or fixed symbolic interpretations of the Ultimate Condition and Destiny of the world and of human experience. It is the tendency toward vagrant psychism and illusory beliefs, founded in an experiential state of undifferentiated unity with the psychic root of the body-mind and the subtle dimension of the world. The Way of Translation of Man into God - CHAPTER 7: The Enlightenment of the Whole Body FOURTH STAGE Sometimes my heart would feel as though it were bubbling with joy, such lightness, freedom and consolation were in it. Sometimes, l felt a burning love for Jesus Christ and for all God's creatures,- Sometimes my eyes brimmed over with tears of thankfulness to Gods R.M. French, trans., The Way of a Pilgrim (New York: The Seabury Press, 1972), p. 41 The fourth stage is associated in its beginning phase with religious ceremonialism and devotional worship by such means as prayer, sacramental service, and devotional meditative contemplation of the Divine Person. The mature phase of fourth stage practice is marked by meditative absorption into the Life Current. This is the domain of traditional Hatha Yoga which is essentially concerned with the arousal of the Life-Energy (kundalini) through psycho-physical exercises. In its more esoteric aspects, however, this form of yoga pertains to the fifth stage. The present section of The Laughing Man includes two pieces. The first is by Swami Ramdas, one of the great modern seventh stage Adepts, who taught and practiced the fourth stage path of devotional surrender through "nama japa" or the recitation of a Divine Name. The practitioner of these techniques believes that by continuous repetition of the Name his being will be absorbed in and totally identified with God. It is a primary method in all bhakti or devotional schools and thought to be singularly suited for man in today's "Dark Age" (Kali Yuga), Master Da Free John writes about this devotional technique as follows: The spiritual views expressed by modern devotees of the "Name" and "Form" of God are often blissful and true reflections of the Transcendental Understanding that Awakens in the higher or ultimate stages of life. Such views have been fully expressed by many true Saints, including Sri Ramakrishna, Swami Ramdas, and Seraphim of Sarov. However, the method of Realization that is commonly proposed by devotional cultists is a conventional exercise that naturally belongs to the third and fourth stages of life, and, by itself, it is only likely, to produce maturity in the seventh stage of life (not to mention the fifth and sixth) in extremely rare cases. The method of "Name" recitation and chanting, coupled with mental evocation of Divine Images, or else spontaneous psychic Visions of the "Form" of the Eternal Divine, is the common prescription for practice in the devotionally oriented cults. But such practice is popular mysticism and yoga of the type that appeals to the mind in its earliest approach to God. Ultimately, the mind itself must dissolve in the Living God, and all "Names" and "Forms" naturally dissolve in the Process.1 The second piece in this section is a more comparative article by the European indologist Georg Feuerstein, who has recently joined the staff of The Laughing Man as Consulting Editor. In his contribution he reviews some of the traditional expectations of a mature spiritual aspirant and compares these to the criteria given by Master Da Free John. Feuerstein writes about the commitment and emotional conversion necessary to begin the fourth stage, while also documenting the trial of rigorous adaptation to the Awakened heart which makes this transition the "most difficult stage." 1. Da Free John, The Enlightenment of the Whole body, pp. 267-7 The fourth stage of human development is characterized by a mature feeling-surrender of the ego or the apparently individuated being to the universal Life-Energy. The passage into the fourth stage of life signifies the mastery of body, emotions, sexuality, will, and the thinking mind by the psychic, feeling heart. It does not imply the annihilation of the ego. The functional ego, or independent self-sense, is never annihilated in this Way of Life. It is a necessary function of the whole body, like a muscle or a thought. We cannot mature without having acquired the sense of autonomous functional existence, and we can never act without that function. However, the autonomous ego-sense must be illumined and transcended through the power of love. The heart must awaken and mature in the feeling and intuition of God.1   The transition into this stage of life is the most difficult phase in the entire spiritual process. Prior to this point of maturity, the individual is implicated in what Master Da styles a "Lawless, subhuman existence." With the entrance into the fourth stage, genuine spiritual practice begins, and life becomes "more creative and freely voluntary."2 Here the person becomes capable and expressive of the quality of authentic devotion to the Divine Reality. Master Da Free John speaks of the "submission and adaptation of all functions of the lower body-mind to the sacrificial and moral disposition of the feeling or psychic being. "3 The fourth stage practitioner has awakened to the dimension of the "heart," the functional center of the body-mind, or the agency of the-feeling intuition of the Divine. This is the stage in which one may experience bodily states of profound pleasure and emotional conversion in which the individual, in fourth stage language, becomes submitted through love to the Grace or Will of the "Holy Spirit," "maha-shakti," or Divine Presence. What is the Great and Secret Principle of true religious and spiritual life? It is Remembrance of God, or continuous and whole, bodily Love-Communion with the Living God. Such whole bodily Remembrance is not a mere mental act-but it is a matter of full and free feeling-attention, or love.4 This attitude of the loving, awakened heart of the true devotee is beautifully illustrated in The Way of a Pilgrim. After having practiced the "prayer of Jesus" for about three weeks and nearly all day, long, the anonymous "pilgrim" records this breakthrough in his devotional practice: I felt a pain in my heart, and then a most delightful warmth, as well as consolation and peace. This aroused me still more and spurred me on more and more to give great care to the saying of the Prayer so that all my thoughts were taken up with it and I felt a very great joy, From this time I began to have from time to time a number of different feelings in my heart and mind.   1. Da Free John, The Enlightenment of the Whole Body (Middletown, Calif,: The Dawn Horse Press, 1978), p. 188. 2. Ibid., p. 338. 3. Ibid., p. 206. 4. Da Free John, Bodily Worship of the Living God (Middletown, Calif.: The Dawn. Horse Press, 1980), p. 5. Stage 4 God Experience Swami Ramdas   Early in the morning of December 28, 1922, a slender man of thirty-eight boarded a train in Mangalore, South India. He had only two teeth in his mouth, a rough piece of cotton for clothing, a few books (including-the Bhagavad-Gita and the New Testament), twenty-five rupees, which he quickly gave away, and nothing else. As he headed south to an unplanned destination, he engaged in the continuous repetition of the Name of God, saying "Om Sri Ram, Jai Ram, Jai Jai Ram." His name in worldly life had been Vittal Rao, but as he left Mangalore he took the name of Ramdas, meaning "servant of God," and he began to refer to himself in the third person without the use of the word "1." He had just composed a friendly, compassionate, yet detached letter to his wife in which he stated his firm intention to dissolve their marriage of many years, abandon a householder's life with her and their daughter, and assume the life of a wandering mendicant without occupation, fixed abode, or any possessions. This man, later known as Swami Ramdas, or Papa Ramdas, was one of the most remarkable spiritual figures of the twentieth century. As he wandered all over India, clad only in a length of coarse cloth, he ceaselessly repeated the Name of God, not as a mechanical aid to meditation but in the spirit of ardent love and full surrender. He never asked for food or lodging, but cheerfully accepted whatever conditions came his way as the "lila" or play of God, practicing what he was later to describe as tivra vairagya, or "extreme dispassion." As he wandered in total abandonment to the Divine Will, he had contact with many great spiritual figures, including Sri Ramana Maharshi, whose benign initiatory glance, received at the beginning of his spiritual career, served the ultimate transformation and Realization of Swami Ramdas. Dispassion, ardent devotion, and longing for God, combined with an innate capacity for humor under almost any circumstances, made him a striking figure who saw the Reality of the Divine countenance shining through all the masks of ordinary circumstance. When asked what God looked like, Ramdas would answer with a laugh, "But he is standing right in front of me!" When Papa Ramdas died at his ashram in Kanhangad in 1963 at the age of 79, he left behind many volumes of published teaching. His life had been characterized by great energy, devotion, and contemplation of the sacred writings. Although his realization was presumably that of the seventh stage of life, he taught primarily the fourth stage path of devotional surrender to God via repetition of the Divine Name. Thus he can be regarded as a foremost modern advocate of worship of God via this practice. Excerpted from Swami Ramdas, God-Experience (Bombay: Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, 1969), pp. 80, 82-83, 106-107, 173, 175-6.   Wondrous Name Papa: There is no word in the human tongue which wields such a marvelous power, that mysteriously works for absolute good, as the Name which stands for God. The Name of the Lord is the very expression of God as a mystic sound. To attune the mind to the sweet melody of the Name is to harmonize your life with the Life eternal. The music of the Name brings about the union of the individual soul with the universal Soul. When the soul loses itself in the thrills generated by the Name, it attains a state of ineffable ecstasy in which all forms and lives are seen as the manifestation of the one supreme essence of Truth. The Name expands the narrow vision of the individual into a vision of infinite value and grandeur. The soul, who is drinking deep at the nectarine charm of the Name, rises from the lower worlds of fettered thought and action and enters into the universal kingdom of freedom and perfection. Now this transformed life reveals in all its glory the magnificence of the basic Reality of which it and the worlds are but expressions. By the power of the Name its votary distinctly perceives the inner laws and purposes which work out the external phenomenal changes in the universe. When the Name becomes the sole mainstay and refuge of the aspirant who thirsts for the highest goal of life-God-realization-he or she marches towards the ideal not only in rapid strides but also with a heart filled with courage and cheerfulness. Indeed, blessed is the soul who possesses an unflinching faith in the greatness of the divine Name! It is rightly said that a king can extend his empire to the ends of the earth, nay, he can gain even the lordship of the worlds, but it is extremely hard to conquer and subdue the mind. The real and the greater hero is he or she who has controlled and mastered the mind. This mastery is possible only when the invincible Divine energy latent in the heart of the human being is awakened and is set to work in place of the weak individual will and initiative. The Name, in reaching this ideal, proves an invaluable and irresistible means. Constant utterance of the Name arrests the restless nature of the mind and, developing a high state of concentration, conserves all the physical and mental energies for removing the veil from the indwelling Truth who is infinite power, light, peace and joy. In a word, the Name is an unfailing key that unlocks the gates of the heart permitting an outflow of immortal love, wisdom and power. Thereafter, the soul is merged in the universal effulgence of an eternal and all blissful existence.   Give Your Heart to God - Gopi's Love PAPA: You need not struggle to purify yourself. Give your heart to God. Your heart becomes pure immediately, when you love Him beyond everything else. Try and see how wonderfully the transformation takes place. The very thought of Krishna made the Gopi's [cowherd maidens] forget the body. Their lives were pure and glorious; great examples to us. The very remembrance of Krishna gave them such divine ecstasy. What a love they bore for Him! Continuous remembrance means surrender to the will of God. It destroys the-ego-sense and the mind becomes pure. Then you see Cod everywhere. The whole universe is filled by His presence. You become aware of this. Continuous remembrance, surrender and universal vision mean the same. You start with remembrance. That will remove the ego-sense, surrender becomes complete and you realize Brahman [the Absolute]-you see Him everywhere. For you then the universe is no universe; it is Brahman. Jagat [the world] as Jagat is unreal but Jagat as Brahman is real. You behold unity in multiplicity. God can multiply Himself into millions of forms. There is an instance given how the Gopi's at the very sight of Krishna used to go into ecstasies and how they had no cognition of time, place or condition. Once it happened a Gopi asked her daughter-in-law to go to the neighboring house to light a wick from a lamp burning there. She went there and put her wick on the flame. It just started burning; at that time somebody said Krishna had come; she turned and saw Krishna at the door. Krishna disappeared, but her consciousness was lost in Him. The lighted wick began to burn her fingers. She was oblivious of the world and her body. What love! The mother-in-law waited and waited, but the daughter-in-law did not return. She came and witnessed what had happened. She took off her hand from the flame and led her home. This was the state of the Gopi's. The very sight and thought of Krishna had such a powerful influence on them.   Divine Life PAPA: A man cannot be judged by what he says or writes but how he acts. Even that cannot be the criterion; he can be known only by what he is-how he reacts to contacts with people whom he meets. There you will find the real life revealed in his movements with people. He may talk philosophy, talk of Jnana [Self-Knowledge], deliver discourses or sermons very impressively, but if he does not live the divine life, he is nothing but a tinkling cymbal. You cannot live the real life calculatingly or by planning. It must be lived out spontaneously, and that is possible when God has revealed Himself in your heart. Then your entire life is transformed and you live the real life. It is not that you live the life, but God in you lives the life. Your thoughts, words and actions are controlled by the Divine. You cannot go wrong. There is no thinking or reasoning there. That process has gone. The Divine is working in you, through you. It is He who makes you think the right thought, speak the right word and do the right action. It is not your responsibility, it is God's responsibility. God and you are not different. The instrument is He and the inspirer of the instrument is also He. There is complete transformation. There is divinization through and through. What a wonderful life! God's love is throbbing in your heart. God's light scintillates in your eyes. God's power is flowing through your hands and feet. Be conscious of this and all your actions should be done as an offering to Him who gave you all these. The gardener takes very great care to grow flower plants. After some days ho finds beautiful flowers in them, and they seem to be offering the flowers to him who nourished and brought them up. There is a Kannada poem which speaks of the plantain tree that brings out a big bunch of fruit and finally bends. It is the earth which gave all the necessary nourishment for its growth; so in gratefulness it bends to offer the fruit to the earth! You see the mango trees here. They bear many, many mangoes, and due to their weight the branches bend as if to offer the mangoes to the earth which enabled them to grow. So in gratefulness you must give this life to God who gave it to you. You should kneel down and offer yourselves to Him. In that offering, your mind, intellect, body, everything is purified and you become God's own; and God will say, "You are Mine." There is no end of joy when you know that He has accepted you, acknowledged you as His child. Such is God's love. Whatever your actions be in the past, when you turn your mind towards God, all your past is wiped away. Krishna says in the Bhagavad Gita, "Give up all other ways of approach to Me. Take Me to be your all-in-all. Surrender yourself to Me. I shall liberate you from all your sins. Grieve not." So the moment you approach and bow down to Him, surrender yourself to Him, that moment your entire life is purified, elevated and illumined by His grace. "I will liberate you from all sins." It is a great assurance. Otherwise, where is the hope for people in the world who are prone to do so many bad things?   Continuous Remembrance DEVOTEE: Ram's will is supreme. We are told by Papa that there should be continuous remembrance of God. So we have to practice' this remembrance every instant of our life and be a witness of this practice. If the remembrance is not continuous, should we repent or should we remain in a state of surrender and submit to Ram's will, feeling that God does not want the remembrance to be unbroken? PAPA: You must repent. The object is to have continuous, unbroken remembrance. When there is a break, naturally you must be sorry. Submission when the remembrance is broken, means you allow the break to take place. The lapse is your own, not produced by God, because the ego is there. If you repent you will not have, breaks again through your own forgetfulness or neglect. Break in remembrance means break in your peace. You don't like it. You do not want those breaks to recur. You pray to God not to allow such breaks: "Oh God, give me continuous remembrance without any break." When remembrance is continuous, you will be alert within. There will be no room for sorrow on any account. Repentance will help you to remove the recurrence of forgetfulness which causes the ego to come up. If light continues to burn, there will be no darkness. Remembrance is just like having light always within you. Forgetfulness means light goes out and you are in darkness. You remember God to dispel darkness and free yourself from bondage. Ignorance creates trouble. Continuous remembrance will develop into God-consciousness. Before you can develop divine consciousness and realize your oneness with God, continuous remembrance is absolutely necessary. If you are humble before Him and pray to Him, He will bring about a continuous remembrance in you. That requires contact of saints, God's grace and surrender to His will. Due to the interference of the ego, forgetfulness comes. Discrimination is to be used at this juncture. Hunger for God   DEVOTEE: I repeat Ramnam, but there is no progress. PAPA: If you really want it, you will get it. Where there is demand, there is supply. Ramdas will tell you how. Ramdas himself hungered for the Truth, went to saints and got it. If he had no hunger he would not have got it. They cannot do anything for you if you are not receptive. You must feel the want. You must have a burning thirst for it. The condition is "hunger for God." You have seen so many saints. How is it that nobody was able to do anything for you? DEVOTEE: A saint can do what he likes. You must give me that thirst. PAPA: Ramdas is trying his best to see that everybody is awakened, but nobody responds. Otherwise, he would have transformed the whole world in a second. Do constant repetition of Ramnam with full faith in Ramdas' words. Then you will get everything in course of time. DEVOTEE: Papa should give it. He has the power to give. PAPA: Ramdas is giving, but nobody is prepared to take. You are full of Kama [desire], Krodha [anger], Lobha [greed], etc. There is no place inside. You must leave the ego and surrender to the Guru. The more you repeat Ramnam with faith and devotion, the more you will become ready to receive the grace of the Guru. You must do the Sadhana [spiritual practice] and utterly surrender to. God. At once you will realize God. Try for yourself by taking the Name constantly with full faith. Everything is in Ramnam. DEVOTEE: We have thirst for God, but don't get time to repeat Ramnam. PAPA: Where is the thirst, if you do not take the Name? Every minute available you will utilize for Ramnam. How much time you waste in useless talk. DEVOTEE: Domestic worries prevent us from taking the Name. No concentration is possible. PAPA: Concentration or no concentration: repeat Ramnam. Your thirst for worldly things is more. If you have real thirst for God, you will repeat the Name and all worries will disappear. DEVOTEE: But when worries are there, how to repeat Ramnam? PAPA: If there is no worry, what is the necessity of Ramnam? It is because of worry that you want Ramnam to save you from the worry. By discussing you cannot get anything. Intellect leads you away from God. It is through the heart you get God. Accept the saint's words and act up to them. Give all your love to God and call Him in utter surrender. That instant you will have Him.   Come to Me When You Are Already Happy The Paradoxical prerequisite for the happy way of life taught by Da Free John by Georg Feuerstein The curbstones of one of the walks at The Mountain of Attention Sanctuary1 carry in white paint the message, "Come to me when you are already happy." This seemingly paradoxical saying was the title to a discourse given by Master Da Free John in late 1977.2 In this important talk Master Da made the following comment: The search for happiness is not the position from which to enter truly into spiritual life. You must approach God as a devotee, already blissful, already free of fear, already alive as love. Therefore, come to me when you are already happy.3 1. The Renunciate Sanctuary and Meditation Retreat of The Johannine Daist Communion and the principal residence of Master Da Free John. 2. This talk was published in full in The Way That 1 Teach: Talks on the Intuition of Eternal Life by Da Free John (Middletown, Calif.: The Dawn Horse Press, 1978), pp. 55-68. 3. Ibid., p. 63. 60   To the outsider this last remark will presumably sound like a casual witticism. To the conventional seeker it will be a perplexing demand. Is happiness not the target of all our spiritual aspirations? Are we not constantly engaging in strategies which are meant to alleviate and, hopefully, surmount our usual condition of unhappiness? How, then, can Master Da expect his disciples to approach him only when they are already happy? His saying is a profound "upadesha" or initiatory utterance, which points straight to the wisdom of radical understanding. It is given from the seventh-stage disposition, and is intended to remind the questing disciple of his innate Blissfulness, of his permanent inherence in Truth. In order to bring out, and come to appreciate, Master Da's humorously serious utterance, it might be helpful to take a closer look at the qualifications traditionally looked for in a worthy disciple. This article has grown out of a special scenario which Master Da graciously created to sensitize me to the condition of "satsanga" or spiritual relationship which he offers to all who will prepare themselves to live it. I had been invited over from Europe by The Laughing Man Institute to work with the editorial team on more scholarly presentations of Master Da Free John's teaching, and was welcomed 6y the spiritual community as someone who had done a certain amount of academic research into Indian spirituality. Although I have been involved with Yoga practice since my adolescent years, my intellectual outlook has always been essentially that of a scholar. This makes for a predilection to think before J leap-which in itself is neither good nor bad; it is simply a psychological disposition, one's particular starting-point. Now, even though my acceptance of the Institute's invitation has been wholehearted and enthusiastic (and by no means for scholarly reasons alone), the face-to-face confrontation with the bodily reality of the spiritual culture at once led me into all kinds of silent monologues. In Master Da's language, I reacted to my new environment by "contracting." An anthropologist might have diagnosed my condition as "acute culture shock," but this would have missed the crucial spiritual ingredient in my inner discourses, which consisted of a whole string of unanswered questions, doubts, and more doubts. Since Master Da does not grant "darshana"4 to anyone who is not prepared for such a meeting-irrespective of a person's background or reputation-I simply dropped my urgent hope to sit with him and abandoned any idea of courting his attention. Nor could I conceive of a way out of my inner dilemma, other than. by shelving the whole, matter. At this point the first message arrived from Master Da: I should pick up my garbage and dump it! It took no particular powers of comprehension to grasp what was meant. I began to make a more conscious and determined effort to cultivate the equanimity which he recommends in his writings and to understand my contractions the very moment they occurred. In other words, I started to dump my garbage. A few days later the second message was conveyed to me: I should compile a list of three columns. In the first column I should list the qualifications traditionally expected of a competent disciple (adhikarin). In the second column I should write down the qualifications required by Master Da of a pupil or devotee, and in the third column I should enter all my hang-ups. 4. The word "darshana" literally means "sighting." Because of the Realized Condition of the Adept, such sighting implies the transmission of spiritual Energy and Consciousness. I was surprised but not offended. Soon afterwards I came to see the astonishing wisdom in this curious assignment, and I received an impression of the compassion and concern with which his advice seemed imbued. I took the assignment quite seriously, and as my research progressed I found that I was beginning to enter into an inner relationship with the Spiritual Master which perhaps did not answer all my questions or remove all my doubts but which created the vital precondition of motiveless "listening." In this article I will summarize, and reflect upon, my findings with regard to the first two columns. I will, however, spare the reader the tedium, and myself the embarrassment, of publishing the entries of the third column! The relationship between teacher and disciple is fundamental to the whole spiritual enterprise. All true spirituality is of an initiatory nature. On the one side there is the one who "knows," the guru, and on the other side there is the one who thirsts for "knowledge." This "knowledge" is not of the ordinary, conceptual variety. It is knowledge, insight, or understanding which is conducive to, and ultimately even equivalent to, Self-realization or God-realization. As the Shiva-Samhita, an important Hatha Yoga scripture, declares: Only the knowledge which comes from the teacher's mouth is alive. Other forms (of knowledge) are barren, powerless and the cause of suffering. (3:1) Mundane, word-dependent knowledge is barren because it is short-circuited; it remains within the conceptual realm. Wittgenstein conceded as much when he said that philosophy could not remove a fly from the fly-bottle. At best conventional knowledge can lead to new experiences. It cannot, however, act as a lever for making the transition from "having" to "being." It is not capable of changing a person at his very core. It may have the force to refashion a convinced capitalist into an equally convinced communist, or a totally committed atheist into an equally committed theist. Yet it can never transform him essentially, radically. It cannot turn a rogue, or even a God-fearing citizen, into a God-realizer, one who lives in, through, and as the Divine. For this radical transmutation to occur, all knowledge and all experiences must be transcended. The human personality must be utterly undone, uprooted. As Master Da explains: It requires a transformation in him that exceeds all that he is, all that he tends to be; and all that he prefers. It requires an absolute turnabout.5 5. Da Free John, Garbage and the Goddess (Lower Lake, Calif.: The Dawn Horse Press, 1974), p. 218.   For obvious reasons nobody-or practically nobody-can achieve this great undoing by himself. It is far easier to jump off the Golden Gate Bridge to end one's life than to consciously and from moment to moment grind away the hard layers upon layers of resistive egocentricity which conceal the Divine Light. Hence virtually all scriptures emphasize the need for a true teacher (sad-guru) who has transcended the ego. Master Da describes the function of the guru in this picturesque way: The Guru is like an elevator. He's in the hotel lobby with a nice marble casement and a needle above pointing to the numbers of floors. It looks perfectly stable. You know it has been there for a while. You dare to walk up to it. You see buttons on the wall. The doors open. You look inside. It is nicely decorated. A couple of people nicely dressed come out and go to the cocktail lounge. So you step in. You expect to rise, as all the traditions say. But you fall right through the floor! He doesn't support it, but he appears ordinary. His activity is nonsupport in endless subtle forms.6 Further on in the same book Master Da describes the teacher as a "constant waking sound" (p. 152). This awakening of the disciple is the teacher's highest function. According to the Kularnava-Tantra (13:128ff.), an important Tantric text which has much to say on this topic, there are six types of gurus. The "impeller" (preraka) is the one who stimulates a person's initial interest in spiritual life, leading to actual initiation. The "indicator" (sucaka) introduces him to the particular spiritual method (sadhana) in which interest has been awakened. The "explainer" (vacaka) explains to the student the process and its goal. The "demonstrator" (darshaka) shows to him the working and goal in more detail. The "instructor" (shikshaka) supervises the actual spiritual practice. Lastly, the "illuminator" (bodhaka) bring to fruition the work of the previous five teachers by lighting up in the duly prepared disciple the "lamp of knowledge." Of course, these six teaching functions can all be fulfilled by a single guru. Whatever else these several functions may appear to be on the surface, their common denominator is, as Master Da puts it, the gradual undermining of the limitation called "disciple." Therefore, spiritual life can be looked upon as a succession of tests and crises in which the "seeker" is confronted with the absurdity of his seeking and with the untenability of his present state of being. The teacher constantly makes the pupil face himself. 6. Da Free John, The Method of the Siddhas (Los Angeles: The Dawn Horse Press, 1973), p. 43. Thus spiritual pupilage is demanding, at times excruciatingly difficult, and sometimes even painful and dangerous; looked at dispassionately, it is a matter of life and death. The Mahabharata (XII.300:50), one of India's two celebrated national epics, contains this stanza: This great path of the wise' brahmanas is arduous. No one can tread it easily, 0 Bharatarshabha! It is like a terrible jungle creeping with large snakes, filled with pits, devoid of water, full of thorns and quite inaccessible. The Katha-Upanishad (1.3:14), a Sanskrit scripture dating back to the fifth or sixth century B.C., employs the metaphor of a razor to highlight the difficulty of the spiritual path. Understandably, all authorities are in unanimous agreement that only the most determined and keenest travelers on the road to Freedom will be blessed with success. In the days before the term yoga came into vogue, its equivalent tapas was widely used. This word captures very well the intrinsic ardor of spiritual life. It is derived from the verbal root tap meaning "to burn, glow, be heated." It is descriptive of the "stewing which every aspirant must undergo in order to reach maturity. He has to stew in his own juice just as-in mythological language - the creator-god Prajapati had to "heat" himself, through tapas or austerities, to be able to "sweat out" the whole universe. In Master Da Free John's words, "When ordinary conditions of life are themselves made forms of loving sacrifice, then ordinary life itself becomes a form of ascetic practice or 'tapas' which means 'heat'). The true Way involves re-adaptation of ordinary actions and relationships to the Law. Thus, such ordinary relations and enjoyments and responsibilities become ascetic in the truest sense. They awaken the 'heat' which is the sign of the frustration of old adaptation. And this 'heat' (mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual) purifies and transforms us in our habits and liberates us from the illusory consolations of experience."7 7. Da Free John, Breath and Name (San Francisco: The Dawn Horse Press, 1977), p. 103. Because of the perpetual demand to transcend himself during the whole course of his spiritual practice, the disciple must come fully prepared to the sad-guru. What this entailed traditionally, can, -for instance, be gleaned from the Shiva-Samhita (5:10ff.). This manual speaks of four types of aspirants. According to the intensity of their commitment they may be called "soft" (mridu), "middling" (madhya), "extraordinary" (adhimatra), or "very extraordinary" (adhimatratama). The text goes on to characterize each category. Thus the "soft practitioner," who is only fit for Mantra Yoga, or the Yoga of recitation, is described as having the following (doubtful) qualities: lack of enthusiasm, foolishness, fickleness, timidity, illness, dependence, rudeness, lack of manners, and little energy. By contrast, the "middling practitioner," who is capable of practicing Laya Yoga (Yoga of meditative absorption), would have these qualities: even-mindedness, patience, a desire for virtue, kind speech, and the tendency to take the middle path in all undertakings. The "extraordinary practitioner," who qualifies for the practice of Hatha Yoga (the forceful Yoga of postures, and breath control, etc.), is expected to demonstrate the following virtues: firm understanding, an aptitude for meditative absorption (laya), self-reliance, energy, liberal-mindedness, generosity, patience, truthfulness, bravery, vigor, faithfulness, the willingness to worship the teacher's lotus feet, and delight in the practice of Yoga. For the "very extraordinary practitioner," who may practice all forms of Yoga, the Shiva-Samhita lists no fewer than thirty-one excellences: great energy, enthusiasm, charm, heroism, scriptural knowledge, the inclination to practice, freedom from delusion, orderliness, prime of youth, moderate eating habits, control over the senses, fearlessness, purity, skillfulness, liberality, the ability to be a refuge for all people, capability, stability, thoughtfulness, the willingness to do whatever is desired (by the guru), patience, good manners, observance of the law (dharma), the ability to keep his struggle to himself, kind speech, faith in the scriptures, the willingness to worship God and guru (as the embodiment of the Divine), knowledge of the vow pertaining to the "extraordinary practitioner," and, lastly, the practice of all types of Yoga. The Hathayoga-Pradipika (1:15-16), again, itemizes various qualities which either hinder or facilitate spiritual practice: Overeating, overexertion, chatter, adoption of (wrong) disciplines, social intercourse, fickleness-by these six Yoga fails. Through enthusiasm, determination, steadfastness, true knowledge, certainty and the abstention from social intercourse-by these six Yoga succeeds. In the Bhagavad-Gita (ch. 2) Krishna reprimanded Prince Arjuna for his weakness, unmanliness, and mean faint-heartedness. He exhorted him not to grieve or be deluded, butt to endure the "opposites" (dvandva), that is, to bear with the changeable, paradoxical conditions of life and nature, such as love and hatred, heat and cold, etc. He challenged him to arise and fight; and this demand is symbolic of the central message of all teachers to their disciples. Spiritual life is action, and action requires commitment, and commitment calls for faith, strength, and courage. In the eighteenth chapter of the Bhagavad Gita (vss. 51-53) the person who is fit to become transmuted into the Absolute is described. According to this passage, he should be endowed with a pure mind (buddhi) and firm self-control to have abandoned the sense objects and be indifferent to passion and aversion, to live in an isolated place, eat sparsely, control his speech, body, and mind, and to practice constantly the Yoga of meditation; he should also be tranquil and cultivate dispassion, and be free from egotism (ahamkara), lust for power, arrogance, desire, anger, grasping, and the notion of "mine." In the Vedanta-Sara (section 5), a sixteenth century manual of Vedanta metaphysics, similar stipulations are found. Thus the qualifying aspirant must have regularly studied the Vedas and auxiliary Vedas (e.g. phonetics, grammar, etymology, meter, ritual, astronomy). He must also be able to distinguish between things eternal and things ephemeral, he must be able to practice dispassion towards all forms of experience, high or low, and he must have acquired the means of quiescence, self-restraint, abstinence, endurance, concentration, and faith. Last but not least, he must actually desire liberation-and not as one might desire a new suit, automobile, or wife, but as a drowning man would desire air. It would be easy enough to multiply such scriptural statements a hundred fold. Many Indian scriptures-ancient and modern, Hindu, Buddhist, and Jaina-contain pertinent comments about the signs of a duly qualified aspirant; but the above examples will suffice to convey an idea about the traditional expectations. It should have become clear by now that these expectations were of the highest order. Thus, "Come to me when you are already happy," says Master Da, and with this simple demand puts in a' nutshell all the catalogs of qualifications given in the traditional literature. The God-realized teacher is not merely an instructor. Strictly speaking, he has nothing to teach. Therefore, so long as a person approaches the sad-guru in the mood of seeking, he is bound to be disappointed and frustrated. In The Method of the Siddhas Master Da spells this out very clearly: A man should not approach his Guru in order to carry on his search. He should approach his Guru with devotion, as one who has found, and put his search down at his Guru's feet. The true disciple is a devotee who simply lives with his Guru.8 To have come to this point of relative fulfillment, of having found rather than neurotically seeking, a person "must have passed through a critical consideration of the total human situation as well as his or. her own habits of action, feeling, reaction, and thinking."9 He must have traversed the "crisis of discipline" by which the neurosis of the usual person is dissolved, and a certain measure of equanimity and even a degree of ease and happiness must have been attained so that the realized Presence of the sad-guru may make itself felt in his life. Master Da is more explicit: I am interested in finding men and women who are free of every kind of seeking, who are attendant only to understanding, and who will devote themselves to the intentional creation of human life in the form and logic of Reality, rather than the form and logic of Narcissus. Such men are the unexploitable Presence of Reality.10 In comparison with the traditional qualifications of the foremost type of aspirant, Master Da's expectations are certainly as high but more realistic and also more appropriate for modern conditions. A person need not be anxiously preoccupied with all manner of strenuous physical or mental disciplines, paranoid self-watching or self-improvement, or the neurotic suppression of negative desires and unwholesome habits. States the Tripura-Rahasya (20:79), a text valued by both Master Da and the late Ramana Maharshi: What is the use of a thousand good efforts when there is no full intentness? Therefore, devotion (tatparya) alone is the principal instrument for emancipation. This "intentness" or "devotion" implies a radical re-orientation, a conversion, of one's whole being. It implies the actualization of loveattention as taught by Master Da. In The Paradox of Instruction he says: The discipline of the true devotee, active on the basis of "hearing" in Truth, is constantly, intentionally, and with great feeling to bring the whole body-being into loving, compassionate, pleasurable service and creative cooperation with living beings and whole body (not merely subjective) conditions. Service or love is pure action. This is the discipline: in every moment, instead of automatically aligning to the fixed disposition of reactive emotion, and allowing it to control or undermine the natural relational force of the body-being, turn into the present relational condition with great attention, intuition, energy, and feeling.11 Elsewhere in the same book (p. 69), he speaks of responsibility and service as the "foundation discipline." What is required of the serious, mature student or disciple is constant self-transcendence through radical understanding. He discourages the past-oriented, guilt ridden, self-indulgent approach. No one is perfect. What matters is that one should again and again re-align oneself to the primal state of one's eternal Perfection. Gradually, all the dross will fall away. This is no easy undertaking, but a lifetime's sacrificial self-offering. It requires great responsibility, great intensity, great energy, and great discipline of your karmic tendencies and your cultic life. All those things are demanded of you, and you are expected to fulfill them with absolute humor and love and attention.12 So long as such virtues as truthfulness, rectitude, courage, or self-reliance, etc., are practiced as egoic strategies, they remain unstable "possessions" which need constant, self-possessed attention. They may turn into regular triggers for neurotic obsession and fascination. They can grow into trees which will obscure the forest. Genuine spiritual life begins with the dropping of this teeth-clenching struggle for moral purity, or the self-conscious drive for self-perfection. Spirituality does not call for mortification. Nothing needs to be "mortified" or as is the literal meaning of this word-be deadened or killed off. World-negation and life-denial are not necessary preconditions of spiritual life. Rather, they must be recognized as partial strategies which pertain to a particular cultural context and structure of consciousness. They may have been appropriate and adequate within that specific context, but today a non-exclusive approach is not only possible but desirable. Patanjali's Yoga-Sutra (2:33), the source book of the so-called "Classical Yoga," contains an aphorism which gives out a method for counteracting unwholesome thoughts or sentiments. Patanjali recommends that when such feelings or intentions arise, one should repel them by cultivating their exact opposite. For instance, when one feels tempted to lash out at someone, one should remind oneself of the principle of non-harming (ahimsa), or when one feels tempted to lie, to remind oneself of the virtue of truth (satya), and so on. Curiously enough, the Sanskrit word for this sort of "reminder" is bhavana, which is more often employed to denote meditation or contemplation. So, although the Yoga-Sutra is not too clear on this, it could well be that Patanjali had more in mind than a mere intellectual recall of those wholesome principles. It is quite possible that pratipaksha-bhavana stands for the meditative attitude of remembering and thus of cultivating the "opposite" to whatever undesirable intention may have occupied one's mind. This would be more in keeping with the whole approach favored and taught by Master Da, or at least an aspect of his approach that first attracted me to his teaching. In this path, meditation involves, among other things, the dual practice of relaxation or release of the body into the primal Disposition and transcendence of the objects of attention via the "conscious process," or the moment-to-moment surrender of attention to the Divine. And it is this act, performed from moment to moment, which helps one to transcend one's unwholesome, negative habits and dispositions effortlessly. In order to outgrow dysfunctional old habits one need not desperately resist or fight them, but simply observe their existence and present influence in one's life and then repeatedly and wholeheartedly turn one's entire being towards the Transcendental Reality. They will dissolve of their own accord. Master Da writes in his Breath and Name: In this discipline, all conditions are yielded to the Presence, and the Presence is depended upon for all changes. As a result, the true morality that only Divine Communion produces begins to appear in the devotee in the form of strength, intelligence, compassion, and loving service to all beings.13 The spiritual aspirant on this integral "path" does not narcissistically indulge in the usual construction of a "separate reality." He does not conjure' up and inhabit a larger-than life mental or psychic wonderland. Instead he continues to live in the bodily present of the here and now, fully accepting his normal life circumstances which offer him a permanent possibility of transcending himself by entering into heartfelt relationship with all beings and events and modifications of the Divine (which is also his own inmost nature). He will not search or strain for happiness. Rather, he will find or recognize his eternal Happiness in those moments when, amidst the ordinariness of his daily existence, he is in full intuitive alignment with the Ultimate. AFTERWORD Four months have elapsed since the writing of this article. In the meantime I have been fortunate enough to have had three formal and several informal darshanas ("sightings") of Master Da Free John, plus a good many more notes from him. All this served to quicken my practice, though not necessarily in the way that I had anticipated. For the Adept's function is truly to demonstrate to the disciple his perpetual failure to live up to the high expectations of spiritual life; to constantly remind him of his habitual self-contraction and unhappiness, and to confront him with his perpetual reluctance to face Reality. In other words, I have had a taste of the "stewing" or "heat" (tapas) that I have spoken about in the article. And this is how it should be. As one of the favorite chants of this spiritual community goes: "The Way is sacrifice of self." However, what is so remarkable about this teaching, even in those moments which seem most arduous, is that there is room in one for quiet joy, providing one is practicing duly. The transcendence of the ego is, after all, a truly humorous affair. For, who would have thought an illusion could be so persistent even after having been recognized as such!? 8. Da Free John, The Method of the Siddhas, p. 58. 9. Da Free John, Scientific Proof of the Existence of God Will Soon Be Announced by the White House! (Middletown, Calif.: The Dawn Horse Press, 1980), p. 105. 10. Ibid., p. 110. 11. Da Free John, The Paradox of Instruction, 2d ed., rev. and exp. (San Francisco: The Dawn Horse Press, 1977), p. 82. 12. Da Free John, Garbage and the Goddess, p. 201. 13. Da Free John, Breath and Name, pp. 48-49. SUGGESTED READINGS RELATED TO THE FOURTH STAGE OF LIFE Nikhilananda, Swami, trans. The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna. Recorded by "M." New York: Ramakrishna-Vivekananda Center, 1973. R. M. French, trans. The Way of a Pilgrim and The Pilgrim Continues His Way. New York: The Seabury Press, 1965. Poddar, Hanumanprasad. Gopis' Love for Sri Krishna. Clearlake, Calif.: The Dawn Horse Press, 1980. Habig, Marion, ed. St. Francis of Assisi: Writings and Early Biographies. English Omnibus of the Sources for the Life of St. Francis. Chicago: Franciscan Herald Press, 1973. Satchidananda, Swami. The Gospel of Swami Ramdas. Bombay: Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, 1979.  The Seven Stages of Eternal Life - Laughing Man Magazine Table of Contents

MENU | Home | Intro | Beezone Articles | Adi Da Articles | Tradition Articles | All Articles | email

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