When all is said, argued, debated and left out to hang and dry one central idea of Adi Da's teaching will stand out that will make his teaching completely unique. This idea is not that there is Only God, or He is The God-Man, the one idea that makes his teaching unique the 'self-contraction'.

If you look into and study the literature of psychological, religious and spiritual traditions you will not find anything comparable. You will find some references in todays discussions as in the teachings of Integral Spirituality and Ken Wilber's teachings* but you will find no in-depth use of the term. The concept of the self-contraction has been completely absent from any teaching in psychological, religious and spiritual tradition which makes Adi Da's teaching unique.

*Many people believe Wilber copied the term from Adi Da

So what makes this concept so unique and worth discussing? I believe the use of the term is central to the teaching of Adi Da and in fact at the core of his teaching. As he says:

"The foundation of my Teaching Argument is this: You are, as a matter of habit, and in every part, conformed to the activity and the results of self-contraction".

THE DREADED GOM-BOO, CHAPTER 4, The Cult of Narcissus and the Culture of Participation.

What Does Adi Da Mean by the term 'self-contraction'?

Most study of Adi Da's teaching is weak (difficult) and there is limited understanding of just what Adi Da means by the term self-contraction. For many who believe they understand Adi Da teaching word, the term is used to describe something in the mind that can be described as a kind of tension. Ken Wilber in his Meditation Notes describes it as:

"you will notice that the separate-self (or ego) simply arises in consciousness like everything else. You can actually feel the self-contraction, just as you can feel your legs, or feel a table, or feel a rock, or feel your feet. The self-contraction is a feeling of interior tension, often localized behind the eyes, and anchored in a slight muscle tension throughout the body mind. It is an effort and a sensation of contracting in the face of the world. It is a subtle whole-body tension".

In EnlightenNext Magazine (Freedom in the Face of Fear) - Andrew Cohen & Ken Wilber discuss the self-contraction in connection to a higher spiritual perspective and connect it with humanity's survival.

Andrew Cohen: I’ve thought quite a lot about this matter, and I have made some interesting observations about myself and other people. I’ve noticed that what happens when human beings become frightened is a profound contraction in the self. When our way of life and our sense of freedom are being threatened, there is not only an emotional contraction but an intellectual, philosophical, and spiritual contraction—a contraction of our capacity to think in big ways.

Ken Wilber: That’s exactly right. Times of crisis tend to aggravate the self-contraction. And this issue is really crucial right now, given the nature of our times.

So the essential point in times of crisis is, as you have been saying, not to let the circumstances aggravate the self-contraction and cause a regression from being needs to deficiency needs. Don’t let that whole dimension of motivation for self-transcendence, and even self-evolution, be lost and driven back down into self-esteem or belongingness or even safety needs. - EnlightenNext Magazine

It is clear from the two references the term has both personal and collective uses. In the person sense it has individual and psychological consequences and in the collective sense it has 'global' consequences. Both of these understanding are correct and in alignment with Adi Da, but they are limited.

In the personal sense at the level of the body and of the mind the term refers to a tightness or a cramp, like the clenching of your jaw or the tightening of your stomach. Ken Wilbur describes it:

"We should note here that the Existential Level . . . is very much a cramp or perturbation, the cramp or perturbation, lying at the root of man's "self"-identity. Further, it is this cramp, which Benoit calls a spasm and [Adi Da] calls a contraction, that is the fundamental motor of all man's activities. - p. 145, Ken Wilber - The Spectrum of Consciousness

The concept and idea of the self-contraction is much more than merely at the physical, mental or emotional level. It is more of an 'all-encompassing' concept.

The Three Contractions - "There are three egos or modes of the “self-contraction"

The concept or idea of the self contraction is not just on the physical or brain level of existence. In the teachings of Adi Da there are three basic levels to the self-contraction and the mistake of many any of those who try to comprehend the concept of the self-contraction view it only on one level.

When Adi Da talks about the self-contraction he is referring to a 'root' self-contraction which is then magnified 'out' into the psyche, mind and body of the individual. According to Adi Da we don't have one self-contraction we ARE three and all three are expressions of one fundamental contraction which is attention itself.

In the Aletheon Adi Da writes:

"The three modes of egoity are the lower “self”, the higher “self”, and the “root-self” - gross, subtle and causal"

The three modes of egoity or the self-contraction are of body (VISHVA), mind TAIJASA), and causal (PRAJNA). The three phases of the individual ego corresponding to the three planes of existence of the universal spirit which traditionally is identified as AUM.

These three modes of egoity or modes of the self contraction must be understood or else the individual will fall prey to what I call the 'root delusion'.

Adi Da says:

"The root of the causal being, the contraction in the causal being that we call "me' or the soul, the self, the person, the individual, the karmic entity-that must be undone. Its essential nature must be comprehended. It must be sacrificed in its own nature. The consciousness must be restored to itself, not to higher modifications of itself as in the traditional paths, but to its very Self, its very Nature".

Soul Realization vs. God Realization, Adi Da Samraj, March 27, 1976

EARLY TEACHINGS

In the early teachings of Adi Da covering the period of 1972 through 1976 Adi Da talked of the self contraction in more physical and bodily terms to his listeners. One example of this:

"I was considering this cramp in the solar plexus with you the other evening. We were having a conversation about the yoga of the frontal line. Perhaps the most common experience people have of contraction in this frontal line is a cramp over the solar plexus, the "knot in the stomach"

(see practice note below for a fuller segment of this talk)

This 'cramp' has an emotional quality of fear associated with it and is probably the most universal feeling people can relate to. This feeling is mostly unconscious though and only 'comes out' when threatened or some tragic event occurs. "It feels like I've been kicked in the gut" is a common expression identifying the self-contraction.

This physical example of the self contraction also extends into the emotional areas of peoples lives. People describe tension in the genital, heart, throat and head areas which are all areas of the one primary self contraction.

The self contraction also exhibits itself in the mind and even in thoughts. Doubt is one example of how the self-contraction manifests. Adi Da describes this in a 1986 talk:

"What we call doubt is a rather a mental and emotional way of noticing the self-contraction. And it's just that, self-contraction. It's not doubt of something. It's just self-contraction".

So, we can see that the concept of the 'self-contraction' or the origin of the ego, is a universal and all encompassing activity of the individual, and in ALL individuals!

Consequences: The Reflection of the self-contraction

It is right to say people are not generally aware of this tension which is the result of the self-contraction. It is in fact generally ignored as a central underlying phenomenon. But there are other signs people are aware of at the personal and conscious level which are generally accepted and these are identified by the general term "stress" or general anxiety and tension.

These terms are generally accepted as part of life and something that, at some level or intensity, need to be dealt with. It is usually when the level of anxiety or stress become 'disturbing' to the regular functioning of a person that medical attention is required. Otherwise it's just a low grade disturbance and regularly accepted as a part of life.

In fact many people actually use this 'stress' or tension as a means of motivation which people use as beneficial and positive aspect. In disciplines of exercise and physical activities such as sports it is central to the success or development of the individual participant. There is a kind of 'internal pressure', a fire that when used creates energy to be used.

The consequences of this activity is determined for it uses the forces of life in a reversed direction:

"this knot over the solar plexus is occurring a little more than halfway down the frontal line of the body. The Current of Life is not descending below that point. The knot over the solar plexus is a little bit like nausea, the urge to vomit, weeping, and anger. This contraction is a revulsion, a reversal of the Current in the frontal line of the body, and in effect it prevents this line of force from going to its lower terminal in the bodily base". - Adi Da Samraj

Another mistake in the understanding of the self-contraction is the self-contraction is only a concept or an idea in the mind. In the teaching of Adi Da the self-contraction is not only an idea but fundamentally it is an activity in an individuals consciousness which has enormous repercussions.

A common misunderstanding of the self-contraction is to see it as a 'part of life'. This error then generates a psychological attitude which then has a philosophical and psychological theory attached to it. It's called the 'fight or flight response'. It is part of the Darwinian stuggle for survival 'life view' which is dominate in the thinking of many today.

With this understanding or I should say misunderstanding people develop a 'world view' of existence and operate on this (mis)understanding. This is most unfortunate since it disregards the truth of the matter as the world is not operating in this manner, you are. On a collective scale societies, scientists, individuals view and actually find 'evidence' to support their perceptions and they fall into a self fulfilling prophecy. Which requires them defend their position; they either fight - because they feel threatened or take flight, because they are afraid.

This is our present dilemma. Our ancient fences, walls and divisions are based on a primal fear:

"Fear is the primal psycho-physical evidence of the “self”-contraction of the brain-and-body-complex of perceptual “point-of-view”-awareness.
Fear is the “root-cause” of the idea and the “religious” life-search for the Divine.
The verbal mind, “rooted” in the “self”-contraction is the essential “cause” of fear.
The verbal mind must be transcended" - Aletheon, Adi Da Samraj

The Unique Nature of Adi Da and His Teaching

What makes Adi Da teaching unique is not only his teaching argument about the self-contraction and it's consequences but what one does (or doesn't) do about it.

Those who do investigate the phenomena of the self-contraction generally sense that is it best to 'relax' the tension of the self-contraction and find some relief from tension it causes. The common approach is to search for cure.

"Our reaction to pain, our desire to avoid it, causes us to react and to contract. The contraction itself generates at least a subtle pain in the manifest being, and therefore the being constantly seeks, through addictive strategies, to relieve pain through all the means of pleasuring." - Adi Da Samraj

This search to find relief from the tension of the self-contraction creates a endless cycle in peoples lives.

"...all your seeking is search for union with this that or the other thing founded on stressful desiring or stressful activity that you are seeking all the time in many directions.

It’s always the pursuit of union of one thing or another and it’s always stressful. It’s always agonizing. It’s always basically disturbing in some fundamental sense, even pleasurable desiring when you examine it is full of stress. You must come to this realization of this level of understanding of what you are seeking".

Prior Unity

The Argument and the Demand

This unique teaching is what is most appropriate for our time. It is unique and appropriate because it has never been brought to the world before by anyone and it is exactly what needs to be comprehended and understood. Without this understanding we sit in our defensive positions, separated out from one another where we side with only those who agree with us.

We are all convicted of the self-contraction and it is final. This conviction is crucial, the conviction is exactly what must occur. YOU are creating the divisions and YOU must understand yourself.

...one who understands and enquires sees that all suffering, every moment of seeking, and the knot that results is not something happening to him but something he is doing"

There is Only One World showing itself in the multiplicity of Many Worlds. Until this understanding is in and at the level of your heart the self-contraction (you) will only look in the mirror, enamored and defensive; frightened, divided and ultimately alone in its (your) death defying position of me!

"...Narcissus appears in the form of self-involvement, ego, or individuation. But in fact he is self-doubt. This is his origin, as it appears to understanding. To himself, Narcissus appears as aggressive self-enforcement and survival by stealth. He is his own disease. He dies as a function of his own drama and nature"

In this late time, we do not have time nor is it even possible to 'figure it out', as Adi Da says in The Knee of Listening:

"There is no simple origin to the entire process. It is not a specific origination understandable by recourse to the viewpoint of time and space. It is simply in the nature of Reality to formalize and witness its own possibility without creating divisions in itself"

It's time to Wake Up and understand. You must, because the Truth of Life is staring you in the face. The message is clear. There is One Divine Living Truth.

"The Way is to yield the self, the self-contraction, in all of its faculties, to the degree of Samadhi, and then to be drawn in that Samadhi to My Perfect Position, Prior to the body-mind, and enter into That Most Profoundly until you Realize there is only Me. And in that Realization it will be the same as to say that there is only You."

What is Adi Da saying that is different from what has been said before?

DEVOTEE: Sri Gurudev, when You were speaking before about the uniqueness of Your Manifestation as the Divine, I had a sense of what You meant when You said that You are Prior to the Cosmic Mandala. I felt that everything in the Great Tradition has arisen within the Cosmic Mandala. But You have arisen Prior to the Cosmic Mandala.

SRI DA AVABHASA: That is the difference. The searches and the Realizations of mankind heretofore:

(1) Have been generated from the position not only of egoity but of conditionality within the conditional Cosmic Mandala.

(2) They are approaches to the Divine.

(3) In My Case, it is the Divine That is Approaching.

(4) That is the difference for all of you in how the Way of the Heart works in My Company.

(5) The process in My Company is all about the transcendence of egoity and the transcendence of the point of view of conditionality and of the Cosmic Mandala.

(6) All of religion and Spirituality heretofore has taken place within that context of egoity, conditionality, the Cosmic Mandala. It has all been a search within it. It has gone to the limit of all extremes, at the periphery and in depth (the end-time).

The Knot of Self Contraction

Stay in the Position of the Self-Knot

Understanding the Self Contraction and the Pursuit of Union

Three Hearts - Origin of Attention

Origin of Attention and Spirit Current - Right Side of Heart

Root of Body-Mind is in the Heart - Enlightenment of the Whole Body

You Must Hear the Teaching Argument

Excerpts on self-Contraction from Adi Da's talks 2004-2007

The Ego Is the Recoil from God

The usual man or woman recoils from the Mystery of the Infinite by absorption in the reaction of mortal fear. Thus, fear produces self-possession and loss of Communion with the Divine. Such recoil produces psycho-physical adaptation of a reactive kind, and every function, every relationship, every condition of experience, high or low in the structure of the body-mind, becomes a reflection of the primal recoil toward self, away from all relations, and away from Communion with the Living Mystery that is Divine. The self-possessed individual is wound up in self-recoil, and every part demonstrates the reactive drama of relational avoidance, subjective bondage, and bodily dis-ease.

There must be Awakening from this reactive bind of self. That Awakening comes through sudden "hearing" and "seeing" of Truth. The Spiritual Master is Awake, and he, with all devotees in Truth, serves that same Awakening in others. But that Awakening is not only sudden and present. It is the seed of the ongoing Process of Life.

The Enlightenment of the Whole Body, p. 268

Self-Contraction Is the "Original Sin"

Sin is the self-contraction, the presumption of a concretely independent, separate, and separative self. It is the act in which the Transcendental Spiritual Divine is simultaneously denied and forgotten. It is the act in which the world, or the total Realm of Nature, is conceived as a concretely independent, self-contained phenomenal process, without any obvious association with the pervasive Spiritual Being that alone grants Reality and Happiness to beings and things.

Because we actively contract upon self, we actively separate from, deny, and forget the Divine Being. The action of self-contraction is chronic, complex, and not generally observed or understood. Therefore, the act of separation, denial, and forgetting relative to the Divine is not commonly observed or understood. (We are simply left with the feeling of un-Happiness, dilemma, the sense of emptiness, or the absence of Profundity, and we are chronically possessed by the urge toward release, or even annihilation.) Such separation, denial, and forgetting are the consequences of self-bondage or sin, but they are not themselves consciously or strategically pursued.

Sin is terrible in itself. Its apparent consequences are merely a reading of what it contains in its very nature. Sin is an act, but it is primarily or instantly shown as a kind of consciousness. As an act, it eventually produces profoundly negative experiential effects, but the act itself immediately coincides with a consciousness, or a state of presumption, that "designs" the very world un-Reality, so that even what is perceived is no longer recognizable in Truth, as the Divine, Radiant with Bliss. Sin is, therefore, its own "punishment." Ultimately, it is not the effects of sin that we must transcend, but sin itself.

Sin is not properly associated with any mythological or collective past, but with the functional individual in the present moment. We are presently performing and suffering this action. We are in a state of present forgetfulness relative to our own Identity and Condition. And we continue to live and act in all relations on the basis of this forgetfulness, which is a consequence of self-contraction.

But our separation from the Divine and our denial of the Divine are not so much acts (in the strategic sense) as they are a state of consciousness that reflects the self-contraction. We are suffering sin, and in that sense we are "guilty" of sin. But if we will observe and understand sin itself, we will spontaneously "Remember" or Realize the Divine, and we will no longer live on the basis of or according to the results of sin (or self-contraction).

On the basis of certain traditional religious and social conventions, the idea of sin as the violation of certain behavioral norms or legalisms is developed in the common mind. Therefore, exoteric religious ideas of sin tend to be centered around social and behavioral conceptions of guilt, law, justice, punishment, penance, purification, restitution, moral redress, repentance, forgiveness, salvation from the consequences of wrongdoing, and so forth. Such conceptions are the common psychological basis for traditional social order as well as exoteric religious culture. But sin must ultimately be addressed by Wisdom. Sin is not ultimately a matter of conventional moral transgressions but of Spiritual un-Happiness and the non-Realization of Truth. We can go on forever "improving" our behaviors and being punished or forgiven for our presumed wrongdoing, but we will not transcend or go beyond real sin and its ultimate consequences until we observe, understand, and transcend the self-contraction, and so Realize the Spiritual Divine, directly, in Truth, free of the act or the effects of sin.

"I" Is the Body of life, pp. 4-5

The Illusion of Subjectivity

There is no inner self independent of "the body." Subjectivity, the reflexive orientation toward the self inside the body, is founded on a lie. It is a way of living in illusions. It is the way of Narcissus. It is an argument, a method, an experiment in destiny. It is meditation on death, future, dilemma, fear, and sorrow. It is the way each of us appears to choose. But no choice was ever truly made. The "choice" is not a subjective matter. Awakening to the born condition, the apparently independent body-being, is itself the logic of this habit to death. The body itself names this self. The self is not independent of the body. The self is the body. The self is only independent as the body. Prior to the whole body, or birth in any realm, there is no separate self or consciousness or mind. The whole body, or the self, is simply the sense of separation or independent existence.

The whole body is a psycho-physical event. The lie is that its psychic aspect represents an independent being-that is, an elusive, subtle person or specific soul that is separable from the complex whole body or born body-being, just as the elemental body, or physical aspect, appears separable from all other bodies and things. Traditional religion and spirituality generally argue for the seniority and reparability of within, and modern "materialistic" science seems to argue for the irreducibility of the flesh, and thus the mortality of the psycho physical "soul." In truth, both arguments are false, since neither is founded in realization of the Truth or Condition of the whole body. But the so-called "materialistic" view is at least more correct in its analysis of the singleness of the whole body-being.

The inner, emotional, mental, psychic, mystical, egoic process is not radically reducible to itself and separable from the elemental body, its relations, and its destiny. "I" is the body. "Within" is the body talking. The whole body arises spontaneously, each of its aspects simultaneously, and prior to our knowledge. All that we know or seek to know is acquired after the fact of the complex body-being itself.

The whole body, or the body-being, the apparent psycho-physical entity, is itself the "soul." The soul is not within. The being, the sense of separability and independence itself (not only subjective but even physical), is the dilemma. The apparent independence of existence in the case of the individual in the born-condition is suffering.

The inherent suffering that is ours by birth is ours by birth. It is not simply acquired over time in the form of sophisticated inwardness or subjectivity. We are not born innocent and then come to "sin" only through an inner error. Subjectivity, or the exclusive orientation to inwardness or psycho-physical self-possession, is itself the dramatization of our suffering. It is reactive dramatization of the limitation or incident that is birth itself. It is the proof and fact of suffering, not the instrument of release. The awakening of the Way of Truth is not itself an awakening to inwardness, but an awakening from inwardness, from recoil, contraction, and all hiding behind the flesh. Awakening into Truth is a process of incarnation, or release of the reflex of inwardness, or selfness, under all conditions (physical, emotional, mental, psychic, mystical, intuitional, and egoic).

The Paradox of Instruction, pp. 37-39

Even from the point of view of conventional awareness, our subjectivity is not mysteriously distinguishable from everything else. It is completely dependent on all of it. Of course, we can have experiences, we can manipulate our experience through subjective effort, as a "self." But that self is fundamentally of the same nature as a shoe, as a cloud, as any thought. It is simply arising. It imposes itself in the moment. It does not impose itself upon something or someone other and identifiable or knowable at all. It just imposes itself. It just arises, as everything arises.

Yet, as a convention of our experiencing, we differentiate the witnessing of things arising from the things themselves. We make a meaning out of that process-that this witness is a witness, a someone, either a personality or a soul or the Self-in other words, some independent, absolute, even infinite subjectivity that can be separated out from objects. But there is no subjectivity that stands radically apart from objectivity. There is no subject-object distinction that is ultimately literal and true. That distinction is, first, merely an apparent convention of action, then a convention of thought, and then a belief that persists as long as we fail to realize the true Condition of all arising.

We tend to believe that our inwardness, our subjectivity, is somehow mysteriously identical to something that is absolute and unchanging, and that if we can get to it, we will be immortal. But actually our subjectivity, the "I," is no more absolute than the foot. There is no "I" that can be lived in absolute independence from other "I's" or from things arising. We are already immortal in the sense that we go on and on and on and on in or as the physics of things. We are immortal not by virtue of being different from this arising, but because we are it exactly. Thus, the physics by which the body and all things appear, visible and invisible, is the same by which "I" appears, and disappears, and reappears. "I" is all of that.

The Paradox of Instruction, pp. 52-53

The Ego Is an Activity

Ego, soul, inner self, or separate, defined consciousness is not an entity, an actor. It is simply another version of the same universal activity in which every form and function in manifestation, or manifest experience, high or low, participates. It is the single activity of contraction, which shows itself as the complex of objective definition, differentiation, independent form, separation, opposition, subjectivity, and contradiction or dilemma. The illusory ego is not even a unique or more primitive form of this activity. It is simply that, from the point of view of any apparent, functioning, conscious individual, it is the root action (not the root of action, not an actor, not different from action), because of its intimate and foundation relationship to his subjectivity. Experience appears to imply the inner, independent witness-self and actor, but it is only an idea-and it falsely objectifies the Mystery in Ignorance. When the fundamental activity of which the ego is a species is undermined in the tacit intuition of the Condition in which all conditions arise, then not only the force of the ego-illusion, but the force (or implication of necessity) of every convention-all experiencing, every world, and even the extraordinary assumption and objectifying knowledge of God apart from or over against the ego and the world-the force of all that arises is dissolved and dislocated in the prior Condition or Truth. Such is Liberation, Happiness, and true God-Realization.

All action in all worlds, all action that is any process, and all action that seems to be performed by any entity or person is necessarily a form of this contraction. All action, then, realizes or is conventionally tending toward the realization of the sense and condition of inherent contradiction or dilemma. And all action as such is, therefore, necessarily separative in its realization, even if relational in intention. For this reason, all action, when presumed in itself (directed toward its ordinary goal rather than realized as Divine Communion, or sacrifice into the prior Divine Condition), is binding, limiting, an expression and an agent of suffering. Manifest or conditional existence then, under any conditions-gross (elemental and etheric), subtle (mental and super-mental), or causal (egoic)-is, in and as itself, suffering.

This realization is profoundly disorienting and disturbing, since it convicts the living being of irreducible dis-ease and hopelessness, which cannot be dissolved by any consolation or change of state, and it is also profoundly liberating, since it brings an end to the distraction by any kind of action and experience and allows the effort of being to come to rest in the intuition of its true, real, or prior Condition.

The possibility of true spiritual life, or participation in the Graceful process of liberation in the prior Divine Reality, begins only when there is tacit conviction in the functions of life and intelligence of the inherent suffering of the conventional realization or destiny of

manifest existence (its essential dilemma or self-contradictory condition) and the fruitlessness of all manifest destiny (high or low) and action to produce Liberation or true Happiness (since all action is inherently separative, self-defining or actor-defining, and a realization of limitation). This conviction is served by all of the ordinary and extraordinary results of life and by the stream of Teaching and Grace Radiated through Realized beings in and prior to the various times and places of the worlds. When life and the Teaching coincide in their lesson, then the individual has come to a point of availability, in the subjective and objective dimensions of his or her life, to the Awakening function or Grace of the Divine Reality. When the conviction of suffering and hopelessness matures to the point of profound psychic, psychological, or psycho-physical disorientation from the conventional theatre of experience, ordinary or extraordinary, so that there is heightened sensitivity to the intuition of the Condition that is the Divine Reality, then the individual becomes circumstantially related to the stream of true Teaching and, at last, to the direct influence Communicated through a true Spiritual Master.

The "whole body" identifies itself in numerous particular ways. There is my body, my life, my feelings, my thoughts, my mind, my consciousness, my self. And wherever the whole body identifies itself particularly and separately, everything other than that specific identity becomes an object to it. In that case, even the other forms of its own self-identification seem to be other than itself. For instance, when "I" (the whole body) identifies itself as "my consciousness," "my body" seems other than it-and vice versa. But there is only the whole body, which is identifying itself in many ways.

The whole body is itself the very act or reflex of self-identification. All forms of self-identification are themselves one action, which is contraction, separation, the illusion of necessary independent being. Separation, or contraction, or self is the whole body. The whole body is, in itself, illusion, a lie. The whole body is itself an act, a recoil.

There must be liberation from the lie, from suffering. This liberation is not only from the gross physical body but from every aspect of the whole body, which is separation into illusion. Body, mind, and soul are all a torment, a single drama.

This liberation may not be attained. No aspect of the born-being is its very agent or method. Only Ignorance itself is Divine. It is the Principle in which all arising does appear. Whatever arises, whatever is experienced, whatever is known, "I" do not know what it is. This can never change. It is always Truth. The gross body, the mind, the self are the same act, the same separation, the same lie. The whole body arises in Ignorance. "I" do not know what it is in any case. This confounding is dissolution in Real God, the Very Divine, the Perfect or Radiant Domain.

Ego is not an entity but an activity. It is contraction of the field of Radiance. That contraction is "read" as realms, worlds, or environments, bodies (particularly one, which is one's present face, form, and life), desires, emotions, thoughts, perceptions, all knowledge, and all

known phenomena, high and low. But the contraction is single, universal, present, and utterly deluding, through the binding force of implication. The native Condition in the midst of conditions is unqualified heart-felt Radiance, or undefined whole-body Radiation, which is Love.

Ego, and all suffering and delusion, is simply contraction of Feeling. Liberation is Realized via return to the Condition of Feeling Radiance (unqualified Relationship) in the midst of conditions, high or low.

The Paradox of Instruction, pp. 98-103

The Ego Is an Imaginary Disease

t is an imaginary disease, a terrible disease, but altogether imaginary. No one has actually ever had this disease. Not one single being has ever had the Dreaded Gom-Boo,¹ or the impossible Three-Day Thumb-and-Finger Problem. It has never happened! It does not exist! What is the Truth? We are Happy. We live in God. The Great One is our very Being. We inhere in the Blissful, Forceful Being of the Starry God, the Wonder, the Mystery, the Person of Love. This is our Situation and our Destiny. I am only one among many voices, but this is my Message to you: There is no disease. There is nothing to cure. We are not patients and we are not parented. We are not children. No dreadful destiny lies before us. There is nothing whatsoever to cure. However, in spite of these truths, you all act like patients or diseased persons and seem to deny or doubt the very Condition of your existence. Therefore, I must remind you. I must call you to observe yourselves and to see how the conception of this disease arises. Where does it come from? How do you contract this imaginary disease and become involved in seeking its imaginary cure? I call you to observe yourself, and you will see, well, you're grabbing your ass! You're pinching your belly. You're ripping your hairs out. You're biting your tongue, you're pulling out your teeth, you're sticking your fingers in your eyes, you're causing yourself great pain because of your motive to be independent.

You will never be independent. There is not even a molecule of wood in this wall that is independent. Nothing and no one is independent. All of us inhere in the Great One, the Wonderful Lord, the Marvelous Starry Person, the Delight of Being. All of us live in That. That is our situation now. This moment is the moment of Happiness, as is every future moment, every moment after death, beyond this world and other worlds, lower worlds, higher worlds, after worlds, no worlds. It is all the moment of infinite Delight, unless we become self-conscious and withdraw from our relations and contract upon our Happiness and forget It.

I. "The Dreaded Gom-Boo" is Master Da's term for our presumed separation from the Divine Reality, which traditional religion treats as a form of disease to be cured by conventional means such as prayer, fasting, meditation, and all kinds of beliefs. See Master Da Free John's The Dreaded Gom-Boo, or the Imaginary Disease That Religion Seeks to Cure.

The Dreaded Gom-Boo, or the Imaginary Disease That Religion Seeks to Cure, p. 32

Understanding the Ego Is Transcending the Ego

Consider the "I" and understand.

"I" is Narcissus, the self-contraction, or the avoidance of relationship.

"I" does not know what anything is. "I" is not an observer that is utterly separate from anything. "I" is, therefore, incapable of ultimate knowledge. "I" is the body. "I" is the context of ordinary association with phenomena. "I" is itself part of the total world of phenomena.

"I" is the activity of contraction, separation, and independence. "I" is the effort to be different from and immune to the limitations of phenomenal existence. "I" seeks independent self-satisfaction via forms of knowledge and experience.

"I" cannot be satisfied, fulfilled, or released. "I" is itself and inherently a problem. "I" is an inappropriate and futile action in relation to the conditions of phenomenal existence.

There is no ultimate option except to understand the "I." Such understanding, made operative in the context of every moment of phenomenal existence, is free of the dilemma or inherent problem of Narcissus, or the futile effort of "I" to achieve independence, immunity, ultimate satisfaction, perfect fulfillment, complete knowledge, total experience, or permanent release.

"I" Is the Body of Life, pp. 21-22

The Self-Contraction Must Be Re-cognized

"I" is contraction-a separative (self-defining and other-defining) effort added to That which is always already the case. As an ordinary or foundation discipline (to maintain psycho-physical equanimity and release energy and attention from entrapment by the conditions of the body-mind), the "I" (or psycho-physical self) should be relaxed, surrendered, and expanded beyond its own knot or gesture of contraction. But mature practice develops only in the event of the stability of true equanimity-that state in which energy and attention are relatively free of the tendency to be distracted or bound by the psycho-physical symptoms of the self-contraction. That mature practice begins when self-observation has developed to the point of certainty that the "I" (or body-mind-self) is contraction, inherently, and in every form of its appearance. Therefore, the mature practice is one that transcends the motives of self-expansion (and the obsessive search to achieve pleasurably distracted psycho-physical states). Such mature practice is simply the re-cognition (or direct transcendence through always present understanding, or knowing again) of "I" (or all forms of the body-mind-self) as contraction.

When the self-contraction is utterly re-cognized, it becomes clear that it is only a transparent, or merely apparent, unnecessary, and non binding modification of Nirvanic,² Transcendental, or Divine Being, Consciousness, or Love-Bliss. Such is the radical intuition, or the ultimate basis of the Way that I Teach.

Nirvanasara, p. 241

2. "Nirvanic" is the adjectival form of the Sanskrit word "Nirvana" meaning literally °extinction"-the ultimate cessation of craving, of the ego-illusion.

Practice Note:

"I was considering this cramp in the solar plexus with you the other evening. We were having a conversation about the yoga of the frontal line. Perhaps the most common experience people have of contraction in this frontal line is a cramp over the solar plexus, the "knot in the stomach" that people refer to. If you become aware that you are suffering this knot and this anxiety over the solar plexus, your first resort, by tendency at any rate, will be to try to relax it. You will take deep breaths and so forth. That may work if the contraction is rather superficial and your attention is relatively free, but you may also discover that you cannot do it, that you cannot relax it. In that case, you will begin to think some more and work on your trouble, whereas the most direct way of dealing with it is to divert attention from this knot, rather than keep attention in the knot and try to undo it. I suggest to you, as a practical matter, that instead of keeping your attention in this knot over the solar plexus and trying to relax it, you should simply remember that attention goes wherever the knot is. Attention gravitates toward the contracted states and becomes fretful, suffers the pain of these contractions, gets stuck in these contractions and then tries to work its way out of them, you see. Well, this knot over the solar plexus is occurring a little more than halfway down the frontal line of the body. The Current of life is not descending below that point. The knot over the solar plexus is a little bit like nausea, the urge to vomit, weeping, and anger. This contraction is a revulsion, a reversal of the Current in the frontal line of the body, and in effect it prevents this line of force from going to its lower terminal in the bodily base.

One way of naturally relieving this contraction, in addition to the basic resort that is your devotional practice, is to place your attention lower down in the body, below the point where you feel that cramp. If you place your attention above the point of disturbance, the revulsion will continue. The most intelligent approach, therefore, is to place your attention below that point, where there already is no contraction, you see. Place your attention below the navel in the vital battery region, in the genital region, or at the perineum. Do nothing other than that. Simply place your attention there, and then practice the meditative disposition, the devotional disposition, the breathing and relaxing that are your daily practice You will very likely notice that in those moments when you otherwise would not be able to release such a contraction, it will naturally relax, and you will enjoy the capacity to breathe and feel and submit the total body-mind to this Fullness. Indeed, this is how conductivity must be practiced, by submitting yourself to the native disposition of the body rather than fastening your attention to some point in the circuit of the body-mind. The way, then, to submit whole bodily when the body-mind is in a contracted state is to place your attention lower down in the line of the frontal Current, place it in the lower abdomen, in the genital region, in the perineum. In these regions there is in general a residual sense of pleasure, because there is a portion of this Current always descending—it does leak through this knot, you see. Thus, if you place attention in this pleasurable expression of the Current, the knot, which is being reinforced by holding attention in this anxious place, will tend to relax. Then resort to the devotional disposition, and the practice of conductivity will be found to be fruitful".

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