The Transmission of Doubt

Foreward

by Fred Alan Wolf, Ph.D.

No doubt about it, we are living in a time of transition. Today, we are beginning to realize that human and therefore inevitably all consciousness is itself capable of undergoing a radical evolution.  And thus it is quite timely that The Transmission of Doubt appears. The originator of this volume is uniquely qualified to say and write what he does at this time. He has managed to tunnel through (a quantum-physical tunneling-through, not a classical-physical hurdling-over) a barrier that has been erected and strengthened, albeit for the "right" reasons, by the Western-Industrial-Academic-Scientific establishment to "make our lives better." The barrier that Adi Da points to, from the vantage point of one who has "quantum-physically" tunneled through and erected a signpost on the other side for all to see and understand, is the human ego.

According to the "dogma" of traditional science the universe is dead. Life arises through the setting in motion of all that has occurred, is occurring, and will occur from some central "point" in space-time, back in time to the "Big Bang." Evolution is mechanics arising from and out of that impossibly-difficult-to-imagine earlier aeon. Thus, all life is fundamentally dead. When we die, that's it. Science as a tradition studies the physical domain of the universe and claims that all that is is physical and therefore dead.

Yes, psychologists exist. But they too are victims of the establishmentarian viewpoint. So, too, the psyche is physical and dead.

Adi Da asks us to consider the universe as a psycho-physical whole. It is simultaneously mechanical and living. From my view of modern science or the "new physics" called quantum mechanics, Adi Da's Teaching rings remarkably true. According to this view, the living observer is not passive and dead but active and participatory and always disturbing, in a non-causal manner, the mechanisms of purely physical phenomena. In other words, purely physical phenomena do not exist separate from the observer.

Thus, the ego or the artificial barrier that separates that "internal sense of I-ness" from all the rest of the processes going on in the whole, total, impossibly vast, all-time-pervading, light-like expansive YOU-NIVERSE is, in spite of its overwhelming power of submission, an illusion, which traditional science has managed to maintain erect through its adherence to the falsifiable lie that the universe is rationally dead and mechanical.

Adi Da puts down hard traditional science. Yet, this criticism is not to be taken as scientific phobia. It is more a "wake-up call" to those who are on the "edge of our time," able to realize that a transition to God-Realization as the (yours and mine) only true Condition existing both beyond and within the barriers of space-time is occurring NOW. The simple recognition of this fact of existence alters radically the human condition and allows the mechanics of self-contraction through fear (which is the ego) to be witnessed in each and every one of us by each and every one of us.

Thus, the "wake-up" call is loudest for the rationally trained minds amongst us. The Adept's argument is radical, logical, pervasive, coherent, and certainly consistent with my view of the new physics. It even offers the chance of further scientific enquiry—a new physics of the Spirit is within our grasp now.

Of course, doubt is likely to arise in the rationally inclined reader. It certainly arose in me when I first became acquainted with Adi Da's Teaching. Doubt is a universal process which arises naturally through the quantum processes of the Principle of Indeterminism (as first put forward by physicist Werner Heisenberg in 1927), or as it is sometimes called, the Uncertainty Principle. Read on anyway. This is no usual religious espousal. As intellectual as you are you will find Adi Da's arguments compelling.

The Adept Adi Da invites us to be as intelligent as we are capable of being. He calls this "supreme intelligence." He points out that the ego and the scientific mind also want to serve humanity by conforming to reality. But the reality that ego and science conform to is a false reality. This illusion of reality is conceived through "self-abstraction and the objectification of existence," which arises from the desire of non-participation (let Johnny do it, I'm too tired) or self-contraction (which makes us all too tired because it takes up so much of our energy and time to maintain our egoic masks).

In chapter 9, "Philosophy Is a Stress-Based Activity," Adi Da speaks about control and our lack, or illusion of abundance, of it. This "control" (which arises from the concept of "counter-roll" or stopping the rolling motion of an object by one's devisal means) appears to us as "real." We talk about self-control, will power, body dexterity, etc., and dream of machines that are our willing slaves "under our control." According to quantum physics such control is clearly impossible at the most fundamental level of atomic and subatomic existence. Thus it is that the desire for more and more control must end in unhappiness and further feelings of defeat, fear, and narcissism.

Even the simple realization that we are truly incapable of controlling anything will help us to realize that that desire for control is a trap. This in itself may not awaken us to our true Condition, but it will at least appear to the sleeplike dream we all walk in as a clarion call. The universe demands egos. We have responded to that demand by worshipping them, elevating them to impossible heights of illusion supported by traditional Western thinking and rational thought all over both hemispheres.

Adi Da is not on an "ego-trip." Careful consideration will reveal that the ego that may be felt to arise while reading his writings is none other than the reader's. Adi Da is inviting us to enter the disposition of God-Realization in the "seventh stage of life," the highest Realization of humankind according to the Way of Radical Understanding as taught by him. It is then, as he puts it, that his "real Work in life begins." For, Enlightenment or God-Realization is only the beginning of the whole spiritual adventure.

I invite you to consider this profound man's wisdom, to awaken with me to his clarion call, to revitalize the enquiry into science which will once and for all end the "transmission of doubt."