CHAPTER 2
Tell Me True - Have You Got the Gom-Boo?
August 30, 1982
Part IADI DA:
If you want to "get religious" in our time, you must first decide that you have the Dreaded Gom-Boo. Then you go to a Doctor Pope, Doctor Church, Doctor Jesus, Doctor Mahatma, Doctor Mahatmaboo, Doctor Gombooananda, Doctor Gomananda-Booharaj. As soon as you get the feeling that you have the disease, you start looking for religious answers. Ask most of the people around here how they got involved with this Way of life, and they will describe some symptom or other of the Dreaded Gom-Boo. The Dreaded Gom-Boo led you all here because you were looking to be cured of the heebie-jeebies, the hopeless Three-Day Thumb-and-Finger Problem, the terrible jiggly meatedness! (Laughter.)
Are you telling me that you think God and Truth are supposed to be interested in curing you of the Dreaded Gom-Boo? Is that it? It is about time you realized that there is no cure for the Dreaded Gom-Boo! The Gom is terrible! The Boo is terminal! And this is why everyone dreads it, the terrible, terminal incurableness. That is what youve got, right? I thought so! I could see the symptoms as soon as you came in here. Have you got the Boo? The Dreaded? The terrible Gom? Have you? That's what I thought! Tell me true-have you got the Gom-Boo?
Yesterday a few of us watched a short series of medical research films on human physiology. One of them examined the cellular life of the body and showed close-ups of the activities within the cells. Of course the body and the brain are basically made up of cells. You call this cellular colony "I," but if you have occasion to observe the body's activities, you can see that there is no justification whatsoever for calling it "I."
In fact the body-mind is composed of many different, independent, separate entities spontaneously going about their business, relating to one another, breaking down, overcoming one another, moving about, spontaneously making shapes and organs. There is no singleness to any part of the process, much less one entity that is all of that.
The body is a pool of organisms, a pool of single-celled or relatively simple entities living cooperatively with one another, and not always living very well. Yet mysteriously you presume an association with this colony and declare it to be "me" or "I," an entity. This apparent entity to which you refer has no singleness. It is a cooperative colony of very simple organisms, and there is no suggestion of an overriding entity that dictates to the individuals what they should do. Rather, the organisms are doing what they should be doing, doing what they are doing, spontaneously, mechanically, in response to mysterious, mechanical, chemical signals inherent in their own structure.
All these separate organisms, these cell bodies, live as a kind of colony, a kind of cooperative community. They have a kind of structural alignment to one another, therefore, a relationship to one another. There is a central nervous system, a brain-complex that can communicate changes to the cells through the medium of the structure they all have in common, the tree on which they are built. But the nervous system, the central system, can be examined just as well as the independent cell masses. It is itself composed of similar materials. It is just another one among them, but senior because its limbs or branches extend into all the cell masses and can therefore have an effect on them. Thus, we can identify with the body as a whole, but it is mechanical. And we can identify with the core structure of the body, the administrative system, but it is likewise mechanical, both affected and effective, arising through the same mechanical causation that also produces the more peripheral cellular activities.
Very often the people who examine these physiological facts about human beings and Nature say that there is no God and that we need not presume therefore that a super-natural entity is in control. They say we can account for everything on the basis of the observable mechanics of Nature. A similar kind of thinking can be brought to bear on our own ego or self-reference. Yet even though everybody observes the mechanics of manifest existence to some degree, it is not on the basis of that analysis that we refer to ourselves. Our reference to ourselves does involve presumptions we make on the basis of observation, but our reference to ourselves, our sense of our own existence, precedes any observations of Nature. Even so, we can become so confounded by Nature that, like most scientists, we deny our own existence!
On the other hand, we do have a sense of our own existence, and we do not get it by analyzing the body. It is a spontaneous presumption, like the presumption of the relatively independent cells of their functional distinction from other cells. Likewise, the intuitive presumption of the Divine is also spontaneous and justified on the basis of direct Realization, rather than on the basis of the analysis of what is happening in Nature, even though we are associated with what is happening in Nature. If we would examine our bodies thoroughly, we would have to say that "I" does not exist, just as the scientists who examine Nature thoroughly would have to say that "God" does not exist. But the presumption of existence is not based on such observations. Rather, the presumption of existence is qualified by such observations to such an extent that we can even make such absurd judgments as "I" does not exist, or God does not exist.
If you examine your own body and observe its sheerly mechanical nature, without any apparent reference to an overriding conscious entity or force, then you would have to make the judgment about yourself that you do not exist. Yet it is absurd to suggest that you do not exist. To paraphrase Descartes, "I am, therefore I am." The force of mere existence is self-authenticating. What is observed apart from the reference to or presumption of "I" at most only qualifies or to one or another degree limits the force of the presumption of existence.
In fact, we do limit the presumption of existence with all our experiencing and knowing and thinking. We qualify our native presumption of Being, which is a priori or most fundamental to existence. Then, having mysteriously come into association with mechanical processes, we begin to think about the presumption of Being, doubt It, wonder about It. Through more and more observation, experiencing, analysis, we more and more profoundly qualify this presumption of Being, which is free and not based on any observations whatsoever. The "I"-reference becomes associated and identified with conditional states and forms. The presumption of Being becomes this body-mind and all its desires and relations. Such is the qualified version of the presumption of Being that is inherent and original to our existence. On the same basis we make presumptions such as "I'm going to die" and "When you're dead, you're dead." Such presumptions are the symptoms of the Dreaded Gom-Boo for which everyone is seeking a cure-or despairing of ever finding one.
I once went to a gallery to see a display of very fancy specimen shells. The woman who showed them to me exclaimed how creative the simple snails are that they can make such beautiful objects. I told her the snail had no more to do with making his shell than she did with making the bones of her body. She did not particularly like the suggestion. She preferred the animistic, creative-entity version of the snail-ego, as she preferred a similar view of herself.
Where exactly is the Source of this presumption of Being? The source of the qualifications of the presumption of Being is obvious. It is the cellular, molecular mechanical entity, which arises in the realm of Nature through all kinds of causes and effects, through a kind of patterning that demonstrates not an absolute will but the effects of all kinds of secondary motions, intentions, accommodations-a kind of magnificent structure, but not altogether benign, since it is just as much interested in changing and destroying forms as it is in originating and fulfilling them for a time.
But underneath and prior to the cellular structure is the presumption of Being with which we are directly associated. In the profundity of our research into the presumption of our own existence, rather than its mechanical associations, we realize, intuitively, directly, the Being that is to be presumed and to be ultimately associated with all of Nature. The investigation of the mechanics of Nature may lead to the non-presumption of the Divine Being, and likewise our investigation of our own mechanical nature as an independent entity seems logically to lead to the non-presumption of our existence, but the presumption of Being is inherent and prior, and if we enter into It, we intuit the Being that is fundamental to all of Nature.
Whenever we become involved in the investigation of the mechanics of the apparent associations of Being, we qualify more and more the sense or presumption of Being Itself, even to the point of no longer being able to presume It, becoming, therefore, atheistic, desperate, suicidal. But as soon as we enter into the presumption of Being, that very presumption of Being purifies Itself of the limiting power of all Its relations. This is the secret of the spiritual process, then-not to manipulate the cause-and-effect domain of the mechanical associations of attention, but to enter into the force or presumption of Being itself and magnify That in the context of the same associations. Such is quite a different process than our ordinary experiencing. It is also quite a different process than the one engaged by science, the purpose of which is to explore the mechanics of appearances rather than to affirm Being.
The more oriented the common mind becomes to mere experiencing and to scientism, which is a specialized extension of mere experiencing, the less we affirm the spiritual disposition of our existence in general and the closer we come to a purely mechanical and mortalistic view of existence altogether. A culture that does not found itself on the prior or transcendental presumption of Being becomes more and more mechanical and desperate, and such is the situation of world civilization at the present time.
The spiritual process is not like other conventional activities. It is not a matter of merely experiencing and developing experience, raising our level of experience and analysis to the umptieth degree. The spiritual process is not about experiencing or complex association with phenomenal states. Rather, it is about entering into the prior presumption of Being, the most fundamental Condition, of which we are natively and intuitively aware, whether or not elaborate conditions, or any conditions, arise.
Conditions are not necessary to the presumption of Being-they are secondary to It. If the presumption of Being is entered into most profoundly, then, ultimately, mechanical manifestations become recognizable not as a limiting force, but as a non-binding modification of Being Itself. As mechanical entities, we tend toward experience and the elaboration of experience, and therefore toward limitation by experience and purely mechanical Nature. Paradoxically, the more we experience and the more we know, the more we tend to become mechanical, limited, desperate.
We start out naively seeking to know and to experience as a way of becoming expansive and happy and ultimately fulfilled. But our search does not become Happiness. The more we know and experience, the less happy we are as a general tendency, because we are qualifying the presumption of Being the more we experience, the more we know, the more we observe in the conventional sense, the more we analyze and see how we are functioning and how Nature works. Thus, people typically come to a point of weakness and despair, a feeling of bondage, as a result of the egoic elaboration of their possibilities, and they approach the Sources of Truth, communicated through religious and spiritual culture, as if seeking a cure for this dilemma, this Dreaded Gom-Boo, that is the basis of conventional religious culture.
Everyone is asking that this dreaded thing be taken away from them now that they have gotten themselves into it, naively at first and more and more volitionally. Now that they have found themselves to be trapped by virtue of their naive, egoic functioning, they look for an ultimate source of Help that in effect will function as a cure for their disease. The conventional interpretation of religion and spirituality, therefore, is that they are a kind of medicine, physician, process of cure, something to do until you are completely cured and Happy again.
In truth, the religious or spiritual process has nothing at all to do with the Dreaded Gom-Boo or its cure. It has nothing to do with the disease you want to make the premise of the spiritual process. The first thing you must do when you truly become involved in the process associated with Truth is to understand, and, immediately, directly, presently, to transcend the disease that you seek otherwise to cure. The pursuit of the cure of the disease is the same activity as the one whereby you first acquired the disease. It is a version of the disease, something you do because you are diseased. It is not another process than disease. At most it involves a different relationship to the disease. Whereas previously you unwittingly did everything that compounded the disease, now you want to do everything to get rid of it. The search for the cure is still another way of being diseased. It is not the Way of Truth. It is not the Way that I Teach. It is not true religion or true spirituality. True religion, true spirituality, is the process that takes place when you are already well, when you are in your Native position, when you are established in Truth, Happiness, or Reality.
In the Way that I Teach, I do not casually indulge patients who are suffering from the Dreaded Gom-Boo. The Way that I Teach is a confrontation, a great fire of consideration. It is not a matter of entering into a hospital where you are consoled and possibly made comfortable until someday, perhaps after death, somewhere along the line, you will suddenly have a magnificent experience that will be God or Heaven or Enlightenment. When you conceive of the Truth in such terms, then the Truth becomes experience, a version of the same thing from which you are suffering, in other words. Experience in general is the non-presumption of Being, the abandonment of the position of Being so that you may explore the mechanical associations of Being. Experience weakens the presumption of Being until it becomes so weak that you regard yourself to be ill, un-Happy, un-Enlightened.
The spiritual process is to understand how you contracted this disease, understand the mechanics of your presuming it always in this present moment so that in every present moment you will be established in the Free Position, the Position of Happiness, Truth, or the presumption of Being. The spiritual process, then, becomes the magnification of non-disease, prior Happiness, the prior presumption.
As that presumption once again becomes effective and magnifies itself, changes occur in the apparent personality and its relations, including forms of purification, balancing, restoration of equanimity, freeing of energy and attention, Awakening most fully without qualification to the Condition of Being, Realizing fully Its states, recognizing the ultimate Status or Source of the conditions associated with Being, and passing through the changes we call Transfiguration, Transformation, and Translation. In the context of the Way of Truth these changes are not steps on the way to all ultimate cure. Rather, they are the inevitable changes that occur in the already cured condition, the condition of well-being or spiritual Happiness.
The Way cannot begin, therefore, until there is true hearing and seeing. It cannot begin until you can practice on the basis of the presumption of Being, rather than on the basis of the presumption of your disease, the Dreaded Gom-Boo, the egoic dilemma, the psychology of Narcissus. The Way begins only when you have thoroughly understood the disease not as a symptom external to you, but as a process with which you are thoroughly involved in this moment and which you are capable of observing, understanding, and transcending in every moment by entering most fully into the prior presumption of Being. Then you have the capacity to practice this Way, and not until then.
Many people come into association with me, confronting my Argument, my consideration, my Presence and Agencies, and they begin to engage in activities that they consider to be religious or spiritual, but that are religious and spiritual only in a conventional sense. Such people are involved in activities the import of which is the search for cure from a presumed disease. They take on the various disciplines as a kind of remedial effort, a struggle with oneself and ones limitations, and they are seeking some ultimate change or experience that will occur as a result of their effort.
Beginning students in The Laughing Man Institute may typically be described in these terms. They are beginning to make certain changes in their lives while listening to the Teaching and responding to my Influence, but until that process of granting attention, that alliance, becomes true hearing and seeing, they are not practicing the Way itself.
People are always seeking justification of the Way in the mechanics of their existent. They must rather understand that very mechanics, their very interest, their very strategy. You, for example, are looking for some reason to be established simply and directly without any doubt, in the presumption of Being. But the more you examine the relations of Being, the more you become associated with forces that qualify that presumption and reinforce your doubt.
Student: Master, you have said so many times that we become what we meditate on. As long as we are looking at the body-mind, we just keep becoming it.
ADI DA:
Yes. Whatever you look at, whatever you turn attention to, you are tending to take on that form, tending to be qualified by it. This is a law of the psyche, a law of manifest individuality, as absolute as the laws of mechanical Nature. Adepts and saints and devotees throughout history have therefore recommended that since you become what you meditate on, meditate on That which is Absolute, That which is Happiness, That which is Truth, That which is the Source and Condition of the ego and the individual self and all its relations, even all of Nature. Meditate on That. Give yourself up to That. Presume That. Enter into the disposition of faith, or inherence in That. And allow the presumption of That to magnify itself to the point that you become perfectly identical with It.
The same proposition, however, has been made part of a culture of cure. People think that they can take up the Way mechanically, just by thinking of a Divine Name or creating with the mind some sort of belief in the Divine, without yet truly, fully, absolutely intuiting and accepting the existence of the Divine, the prior Force of the Divine, and Being Itself. Thus, people seek by a little remedy to eventually Realize what is Great. They pursue what is Great through their own changes and mediocre gesture, whereas the Way begins only on the basis of the absolute presumption or faith that inheres, doubt-free, in That which is most Obvious.
The only process whereby that most profound presumption or Enlightenment can be established from the beginning and provide the basis for the Way itself is the consideration of the Argument of the Adept, which is not merely to accept propositions and ideas you must believe because they are given to you by an authority, but rather to observe yourself most profoundly and directly, and to truly see how the disease you suffer is arising, truly see the mechanical nature of your own presuming, your own effort, your own strategy of life. Having come to the point of understanding your mechanical nature, then you may live moment to moment on a basis that transcends the disease, then you may live on the basis of the presumption of Transcendental Being, free Happiness, prior Happiness, Consciousness prior to limitation. This unique Principle underlies true practice of the Way that I Teach and distinguishes it from conventional forms of practice.
Your suffering is not happening to you. It is a form of your own activity. To enter into this Enlightened disposition, therefore, does not necessarily or immediately result in remarkable changes at the experiential level of your existence. Even in the midst of that Divine Presumption, you are apparently associated with the mechanical body-mind and its field of relations, its habits, its karmas, the accumulation of the effects of activity and reaction. Thus, the apparent state of the body-mind may remain more or less unchanged. The body-mind may continue to pass through various changes, some of which are pleasurable and some of which are not, even in the midst of an Awakened life. The process of magnifying that Awakening will also demonstrate itself over time as changes that in summary may be regarded to be benign. The psycho-physical personality will be purified over time, but the process of purification is not cure. The Truth does not come any closer as a result of purification. Any changes are just a demonstration of how the living individual manifests itself when it is consciously founded in its own ultimate Principle.
Part II
Student: Master, a few years ago we had a discussion about the spermatic being. It is an interesting way to consider the presumption of Being.
ADI DA: In what way?
Student: Perhaps there is a way of looking at a process of the body and seeing the presumption of Being as a form of esoteric anatomy.
ADI DA:
It is interesting to consider how the psycho-physical entity comes into existence, to consider the father as the bearer of life in the form of the sperm, which has the appearance already of a living entity, something like a tadpole. It has a head and a tail, it moves, it is associated with energy, it looks like a miniaturized version of the central nervous system without all the extensions of nerve-force that move into the body-mass. This tadpole, this living being, enters into the body of the female and comes into contact with the egg-mass, which is potent with biochemical potential but which, in comparison with the living entity or the sperm, is relatively inert.
The sperm enters this form of body, this egg-mass, and in association with it begins a process of cellular multiplication and the development of a complex life-form that eventually looks quite different from the original "tadpole." However, the actual process of the mating of the sperm and the egg is more complex than the sperms sort of lying on the back of the egg and being the spine forever. Sperm and egg join with one another very profoundly. The union between them is perfect, so that they are no longer separate from one another.
In any case, the fundamental Being, the real Being, is not inserted inside the body or lying across your back with its mouth stuck into your brain. The Transcendental Being is That in which both sperm and egg are always arising. The Transcendental Being is always the Condition of any phenomenal appearance in Nature. Therefore, when we enter directly into our own Condition, directly into the presumption of Being, the Feeling of Being, the primal Force of Consciousness, we are not merely entering into a portion of our anatomy. We are not merely identifying with the spine or the brain or some nerve in the heart. These structures are associated with the various processes and events that develop on the basis of our spiritual understanding, but That with which we come into unity on the basis of the presumption of Being transcends the mechanics and the structures of the body-mind. We cannot say that the Being is one part of the anatomy, and the rest of it is Prakriti or separate Energy. In fact, we do not exist in time and space!
The Radiant Transcendental Being is not inserted in the body-mind, but It is Transcendental, That within which the body-mind is arising and also That within which all of Nature is presently arising. It is utterly Transcendental. We cannot stand in our Real Position and say It is Infinitely far out there, nor can we say It is deep inside here. It has nothing to do with spatial or temporal conceptions. It is not locatable in terms of structure merely. We can use the structures of the body-mind as an aid to the meditative location of That with which we must Identify, but What is ultimately located through the spiritual process is utterly Transcendental and therefore did not come into existence with the sperm or at a certain moment in the history of the development of the fetus. The changes of the body-mind from birth to death have to do with structural or phenomenal appearances, the development of egoic personality or self-consciousness in the frame of Nature.
That which is ultimately to be Realized is prior to the frame of Nature, and prior to the development of the organism of egoity. To examine the sperm and the egg and the play that seems to be associated with their union is interesting, illuminating something about the quality of our individuated development. But beyond providing an analogy of the two primary dimensions of our experiential life, that is, consciousness and its relations, the process of the sperm and the egg suggest to us the Great Idea or the Great Condition That is to be Realized.
The dichotomy of the sperm and the egg is the source of dualistic thinking. It is a better analogy for philosophies like Samkhya and other philosophies that presume existence to be made of two eternal and independent principles, one of them being Consciousness, and the other being the Energy that takes on form, or Nature. That dichotomy is evident in our ordinary or conventional experiencing of self and Nature, but it is not an expression of That which we Realize ultimately in Enlightenment, or Transcendental understanding.
In Enlightenment, there is one Principle, not two. That which is to be Realized, therefore, ultimately involves Translation into a state of absolute Identification with That which is eternally Single. It is Radiant Being, not merely consciousness separate from form. It is Self-Radiant. In the setting of conditional manifestation and conditional consciousness, that Being is self-conscious. It views Its own Radiance in the form of objects or modifications of Itself, which it does not recognize to be modifications of Itself, but rather, in the convention of experiencing, views to be other than Itself.
The Upanishads say that wherever there is an other, fear arises. Wherever this structural dichotomy appears, wherever the convention of experiencing appears apart from Transcendental understanding, we become founded in fear, disease, the struggle for release. We become confused. Many ways are therefore communicated to mankind that involve a forceful identification with consciousness to the exclusion of phenomena, either the exclusion of grosser phenomena in the embrace of subtle ones, or the exclusion of all phenomena, gross or subtle, high or low. All such exclusive presumptions are ego-based and reflections of un-Enlightenment.
Enlightenment is not merely to identify with Consciousness to the exclusion of some or all phenomena. The Enlightened disposition is established in the Transcendental presumption of Being and tacitly recognizes whatever arises. To recognize whatever arises in the Self-Radiant Condition of Being is to be Free. To not recognize whatever arises is to be self-bound, bound to a separate principle and a dualistic sense of existence, and therefore to be motivated through strategies of seeking toward release or superior experience. Enlightenment is to be established fully in the Transcendental Truth of Being and to simply recognize whatever arises, to Abide in That without distinctions.
The more profoundly this Self-Abiding recognition magnifies itself, the more the modifications of the Radiance of Being become still, Outshined by the force of Transcendental Being Itself, so that ultimately, after the Free Radiance has completed its cycle of making various changes, the Self-Radiant Condition Itself is established as a Principle, without distinctions, not based in any effort to separate from conditions, but based simply in a native recognition of conditions.
Our Way, therefore, is not associated with the conventional ascetical orientation, the basis of which is dualistic philosophizing, the search for the cure for the Dreaded Gom-Boo, the ego-based or Narcissistic effort associated with traditional spirituality and religion and ordinary life without religion or spirituality. A native economy is associated with our practice that is not based on this dualistic or ascetical principle.
The ultimate maturity of this unique form of practice is not the conventional strategic asceticism but the Force of Self-Radiant Being presently active as tacit recognition of whatever arises, and that Self-Radiant Being simply Outshines the phenomenal associations and conditions of ordinary existence. In that case, the life of the apparent individual may begin to look relatively ascetical, but it is not based on any ego-based, dualistic illusion. It is simply a matter of enstatic immersion or Abiding in and as That which is Perfect Happiness, Perfect Radiance. Until the power of Radiant Being thus begins to Outshine phenomenal conditions, the individual, even in the Enlightened disposition, will continue to manifest as a play of phenomenal possibilities, which will begin to become more uncommon over time, extraordinary perhaps, in this life and after this life, but the individual will continue to manifest itself in the form of the play of apparent Nature until the Self-Radiant disposition simply Outshines rather than separates from conditional phenomenal states.
So-what is this disease, this Dreaded Gom-Boo, that everyone is seeking to cure? Most fundamentally and essentially it is the doubt of Being. If you examine yourself, you will observe that you are chronically suffering from just this doubt, the limitation on the ability to affirm Being Itself without qualification, on the ability to have Faith in That Being-not merely the believers faith, but the faith that is native to the Realization of Being. You are simply so associated by convention and habit with conditional states that the effect or limiting force of those conditional states has begun to overwhelm the possibility to affirm your very Condition. Thus, you are in a state of doubt. You are complicated, self-conscious, afraid, and your doubt motivates the strategies of the usual life, even when it takes the form of religious or spiritual effort of a traditional or conventional kind.
This Way that I Teach is founded first of all in the restoration of the capacity to affirm or presume or be established in the Transcendental Condition of Being, prior Happiness, Consciousness Itself. When that presumption, that Radiant affirmation, is strengthened, then the ultimate spiritual process is naturally displayed, the process that begins after the stage of "listening" and the stage of original conventional discipline have become true understanding, true hearing, true seeing.
They are only listeners, or beginners, who have not passed through the crisis of hearing and seeing, who have not entered into the capacity for the inherent affirmation of Being, Consciousness, Self-Radiant Happiness, Love-Bliss, Freedom, expressed as moment to moment understanding, self-transcendence, surrender beyond self. Until this affirmation develops, all meditation is essentially a fretful concern with the states of the body-mind. Therefore, even though beginners may meditate, eventually they must come to this understanding, even of their meditation. And this understanding makes possible real meditation, the "conscious process" that transcends the limiting force of experience.
Part III
ADI DA:
You think, in the conventions of your moment to moment existence, that you simply are the body-mind, so in deciding to move your arm or have a thought or say a word you do not acknowledge any separation in time or space between your decision and the act. As a matter of convention you simply continue to presume that you are the body-mind. But actually you have a telepathic relationship to this body-mind. You are not communicating with it or being effective upon it from some other place in space, but you are communicating with it from the Transcendental Position, prior to time and space.
You always already exist in that Transcendental Position or Condition, prior to time and space, and that is "Where," we could say, your Consciousness is, even at this very moment. Consciousness is projected through the medium of Its own Radiance, a will based on identification with this body-mind. It broadcasts this will upon the body-mind so that you seem to have an effect on the actions and tendencies and thoughts and experiences of this body-mind. But in fact the body-mind is a completely mechanical entity that is arising and going on and dying completely on its own. Your effect upon it is simply an illusory, or, rather, metaphysical drama wherein you are bound by the limitations of this structure. You are bound to it to the degree you do not Realize your actual Condition and do not recognize the body-mind as a modification of that real Condition.
To the degree that this Realization and recognition are not presently true in your case, you are simply being commanded by a colony of insects piled upon one another in the shape of a physical body, organizing their relations with one another the way ants organize themselves through minute underground tunnels. You seem to be it, you seem to be in charge of it, but you are fooling yourself to the degree that you do not Realize Who you are really, What you are really, what your Condition is truly, and on that basis simultaneously recognize the actual ultimate Condition of this mound of ants.
The cells of the body are like simple organisms, amoebas, little creeps in a swamp, perhaps more highly organized but basically the same guys. Your body is just a pile of those guys, the same guys that have only learned through the vast eons of evolutionary time how to organize themselves in relation to one another and to specialize their tasks. They are not conscious. They are a mechanical breed, a potential within this particular kind of gross manifestation.
You are just a stack of these guys, a pile of poles, which are related to one another not as conscious entities but as mechanical entities, little computers, little robots, each one of which is nothing much more than a little bug, a little slimy character living in the medium of water, which is basically the bodys composition. They permit the Transcendental Being, the Living Consciousness, the Divine Personality, to have a vehicle of manifestation, but if that Divine Personality forgets Its own Condition and no longer recognizes this pile of poles, this mound of creeps, then the mound of creeps becomes "I," begins to command the Living God and cause the Living One to conceive of Itself as the ego, as the individuated personality necessarily limited and bound by the mounds of individuated slime out of which manifest existence is composed.
We are all at this moment, literally-not metaphorically, not figuratively, but literally-the same One, not someone else, not separated from one another, not individuated except in conception. If you enter into the Consciousness that is observing the act of attention and all Its relations, which are individual in the conventional case of each one of us, if you simply enter into the Consciousness in Which this is arising, that Consciousness is the same One in every case. There is not even the slightest difference. And that One is not extended in time and space. It is not that One here and a different One over there. It is simply the same One. It is prior to time and space. It is precisely and only the same One, and everything else arises in a Matrix of the forces of Its own Light, mysteriously fractioned and complicated.
As long as that Living Being is disposed to be controlled by phenomenal possibilities, It will consider Itself merely to be the entity with which It is apparently associated. It need not enter into every entity from outside. Every entity arises within the Transcendental Being. Therefore, every entity is already ensouled by God wherever it is arising, and the capacity for Consciousness in its Condition is made possible through biochemical apparatus. The One Transcendental Being becomes self-conscious according to the references presented by the individuated entity, but It is always the same One.
All of this that looks so solid to us by virtue of our brain-mind perception is actually an infinite fluid of refracted Energy or Light. It is just one Force. It is nothing but our own Face Shining, but we do not recognize Its forms. Thus, there is all of this complication and wondering about where we are and what is going on, and thinking matter-of-factly according to common sense that "I am this body-mind and body-minds die and I am going to die and thats it, so while I am living here I might as well get it on as best I possibly can." Our idea of "getting it on" is to pleasurably stimulate this body-mind as much as possible, and as much as possible to avoid any interference with the pleasurable states of this body-mind.
I recognize you as well as observe you, and I call you to begin a process of observation and ultimate recognition, instead of simply carrying on mechanically, just living according to desire and impulse and circumstance. I ask you to consider truly, directly observe the processes of your own existence. Do not merely believe in God and become emotional. Truly observe your Condition of existence. Understand the process whereby you generate any action, spiritual or ordinary. Observe your own life. Consider this argument in the context of your life. Do not just hear it as a mass of concepts you may or may not be disposed to accept.
I call you to consider the structures of your living, the forms of the processes of your own activity. In the mood of this discussion, examine this body-mind, not merely as you observe it in everyone sitting here in an envelope of individuated flesh. Really observe, even using what you know through the service of those who scientifically investigate the human individual. Observe this fleshy form, these legs, these organs in here. They are all made up of little cells, little mechanical, biological entities, little amoebas, little fish, and they link up with one another without losing their mechanical individuality, established in connection with one another through the lines of the movement of fluid and nerve force.
Examine this fleshy body. See how all these cells are doing their job. Observe in what sense you have anything to do with them. Where do you observe yourself doing anything to them? Where do you observe yourself growing these nails, making this hand or these hairs? You are not doing that in any sense whatsoever! Well, who is doing it? Who is in charge of this mechanical mass of cells? What does it have to do with you? Where do you enter into this body-mind?
Look at the cross-sections of the brain cells-they are just more masses of these gelatinous little buglike creatures with their little filaments extending and their little chemical specializations. There is no deciding entity, no separate conscious entity controlling them. Where are you represented in this body-mind? You are fully aware as yourself, as Consciousness, but where are you represented in the body-mind? Where can you see yourself, if you dissect the body and analyze the functions of mind commanded by brain and body commanded by cellular motions?
If you thoroughly examine this entire body and mind, you will not find a single place within it where you are represented or where you are active. You are simply observing it. You are not present as an actor. These cells, these ants, these insects, these amoebas, are the actors, commanding one another through their voluntary cooperation, their singular association with one another whereby billions of them are organized for a single purpose, that is, to be a kind of nation of individual cells in cooperation with one another. They cooperate with one another to create the apparition of singleness, but they are not single.
The "nation" of the body-mind is not the president or some administrative officer. The nation is all these individual entities. But nations and states tend also to become self-conscious through kings and emperors and presidents to create, as in the case of the ego, an illusion that a single commander, a single entity, is the meaning and enforcer and power of the state. Actually, however, there is no such person in the body-mind. The singleness that appears there is a reflection of the cooperation of billions. There is no single one.
An outside observer sees the cells functioning so cooperatively with one another that they seem to be one, and that one is then given a name. It calls itself "I" or Ninth Mary or Bodha or Mulund, some name like this. Then that apparent entity, that illusory "one," seems to be the president, the emperor, the king. But the "I" holds merely a ceremonial position. "I" is not anywhere represented. "I" is the people, the entities, the amoebas, the cells in their fluid mechanical cooperation with one another. They are the body-mind. They are the state, not this fool propped behind his great desk, looking for something to do, who when interviewed says, "I am this, I am that, Ill do this, I think this." The ego is like the Wizard of Oz.
There is no one in charge who is single. The in-chargeness itself is an illusion. There is simply the cooperation of countless movements producing relatively discrete individual entities that are still only the expressions of the cooperation of many entities. Even those discrete individual entities, such as the individual body, exist in total dependence, not only on other bodies like themselves but also on the whole realm of natural entities and forces and cosmic processes. There is no ultimate individuation. There is only an infinite field of cooperation, and even that cooperation breaks down and produces destruction and change. There is no singleness.
Therefore, you cannot find yourself in the body, and you cannot find yourself in the brain. Yet even so, your most fundamental awareness is of Consciousness, Being, Which is Single but not anywhere represented in the body-mind or in any sense ultimately in charge of the body-mind. The body-mind is superimposed upon It.
So-instead of pretending to be the commander, the actor, the one in charge, or the one who is shown via the face of all these millions, instead of pretending to be the president, who thinks he is the people, let the people be the people! Let the body-mind be the state, and observe yourself, or enter into your own Condition directly. You are not a consciousness that in some conventional sense pervades the body and is in charge of it. Rather, the body-mind superimposes itself upon you who are Consciousness. You are never anything but Consciousness. With the advent of the sense of identification with the body-mind you start thinking of yourself as the emperor, the queen, the president, but that self-image is only an illusion, a ceremonial position. Like the emperors new clothes, you are a false show, and the body-mind is like the fools who bow to the king, "Oh, what a wonderful outfit, what a beautiful body-mind you have there." They do not give a damn! They are not trying to be emperor. They are content to be the entities in the hive without any ultimate individuality, just mechanical processes of cause and effect.
You most see that you are not anywhere, that you are not represented by the body-mind, that you represent only the agreement within the hive to function as this entity. You only reflect the agreement of this mass of individuated cells. It is just an illusion, just a habit of mind, a convention, to presume yourself to be the king or the queen, the male or female president, the chairman of the board of this pile of glup! (Laughter.) You are not there. You are not inside, and the body-mind, because it is a fool without self-consciousness, is perfectly willing to kiss your ass and tell you that you are the great one, for the time being at any rate.
You should therefore examine this body-mind and see that you as you are-not as "I," because when you say "I" you mean the body-mind-are not the king or the queen of the hive and not the hive itself. You are What you are . The hive superimposes itself on you. It is related to you within the context of conditional existence, but you are always simply the Consciousness, the primary sense of Being, the fundamental Bliss of Free Being or Free Radiance.
The first thing you should do is observe this. See how your presumption of the monarchy is a pretense, a self-contraction. It is a ridiculousness, Narcissus, the self-contraction, creating an illusory self-image. When you understand this, then, instead of doing all the things you do by virtue of the process of identification, you will simply Abide as That in which this sense of identification with the body-mind is arising. You will enter into That Itself, that Consciousness, that primary sense of Being. Enter fully into It. Relax all these efforts, reactions, impulses relative to the body-mind. The body-mind will become more easeful, and you will do nothing but become more and more free or indifferent relative to it, as you enter into the Ultimate Domain of your own Being.
And, entering into the Domain of your own Being, Locating That in which attention and the objects of attention are arising, you will enter into the recognition of your own apparently individual consciousness, and more and more profoundly, tacitly, directly, you will awaken to the Condition of that consciousness. It is Transcendental. It is prior to time and space, prior to individuation, prior to relatedness. When you have Awakened to your actual Condition, which is not an individuated Narcissistic state but the Divine or Transcendental Condition Itself, then the mechanical processes of attention and its relations will be spontaneously permitted again, but as they arise, they will be recognizable, directly, simply recognizable as they arise, as nothing but the perturbations or apparent modifications of Consciousness Itself, without binding power, without necessity, just That. They are nothing but dream-like impositions on Consciousness Itself and they are nothing but the figures of Its own Radiance.
In that Enlightened Condition, in which the ultimate Status of What you truly are is completely obvious, you recognize all the features of extended or conditional existence. And in that recognition, or Self-Abiding, the inherent Radiance out of Which everything is made is set free in the circumstance of body-mind and relations, and the phenomena of Transfiguration, Transformation, and ultimate Translation appear in the apparent plane. In Truth, however, there is always, only, profound Identification with Transcendental Consciousness, Being, Love-Bliss, Happiness, and that is Enlightenment.
Enlightenment, therefore, is the true position in the context of manifestation, not merely a condition we may realize after we escape manifestation. It is the Truth of our position, and it becomes obvious to the degree that we become capable of observing and understanding our actual circumstance and the process of manifest existence. If we do not engage in that process of understanding and self-transcendence, we will simply grant power to the mechanical processes of existence, which will command our future, our present, our sense of self, our destiny altogether. This is also possible.
Apparently, in this time, in this eon, on this planet, most beings seem to opt for granting power to manifest existence as it appears. They grant power to that which superimposes itself on them, and they accept this marvelous, ridiculous, illusory position of monarch of the body-mind as compensation for the penalty of submitting to this illusion.
Student: Master Da, it would seem that when one enters into that disposition of identifying with Being Itself, the cells are also Transformed.
ADI DA: Yes. They are Enlightened, or Transfigured by the Self-Radiant Power of Transcendental Being.
Student: But do they still manifest as what they are, except that their cooperation with what is arising in that moment is different?
ADI DA:
You are also, by virtue of your identification with the body-mind, deluding the body-mind itself or communicating to all the entities out of which the body-mind is composed a false sense of their actual Condition. Through the self-contraction you restrict the force of Radiance in the context of the body-mind and grant to all these discrete structures the sense of their independence, mortality, and conditionality. But if you make the Enlightened disposition profoundly intimate to the body-mind, through your Awakening, then even all these cell forms, these masses of apparently individuated beings, become Enlightened by that Radiance. They submit to the Transcendental Being, but not as the false king submits to the people, to the entities, to the mechanism itself.
I have described Enlightenment as "whole bodily" Enlightenment for this reason. To Awaken in the context of the body-mind is to do the service of Awakening the body-mind to its Condition, not by making every cell individually self-conscious, as if it were an individuated being, although that metaphor is not altogether false, but by aligning conditional existence to its Ultimate Source, so that instead of just being cells, they are sublime masses of Light.
Thus, in the truly Enlightened Condition, the body-mind is also Radiated or Enlightened by the force of its intimacy with Transcendental Consciousness. That is why the changes of Transfiguration and Transformation take place and why true Enlightenment can be described as even a bodily condition.
Student: Master, the other night you were also speaking about the mind. We were talking about how the mind must first be transcended and then the body. The body is full of Light when the mind is transcended.
ADI DA:
The spiritual process is not a matter of trying somehow to dissociate from the body without first understanding your Condition. Rather, it is a matter of transcending the force of mind or presumption that causes you to feel diseased, in need of strategic or dissociative escape from phenomenal conditions. We must first transcend this subjective disorder and not try first to escape the bodily condition. The only reason we want to escape the bodily condition is that we are possessed of this un-Enlightened mind, this mass of presumptions, this mass of egoity, this subjective reasoning that makes us think, "Well, the only possibility of Happiness is some sort of dissociation, some sort of conventional escape."
Rather than attack the body, therefore, this blade of grass that everyone is always condemning, one must examine the self, examine the ego, the apparition of egoity, identification, differentiation, and desire, the act of self-contraction, the drama of Narcissus, the drama of non-transcendence. Understand this, observe it, understand it thoroughly, transcend it directly. Then the body-mind will be aligned to the Condition that is True, Ultimate, Transcendental.
Such is the case in the seventh or fully Awakened stage of life. In that case, there is no limiting mind. There is mind, but it is associated with Free Consciousness or Transcendental Being. Therefore, the mechanics of mind and body and the conditional states associated with mind will all be Irradiated, Transfigured, Transformed, and then ultimately Outshined, without the intervention of any strategy of dissociation.
What must first be overcome is not the body, not the condition of apparent manifest existence in limitation, but the fundamental subjective presumptions we have developed through association with the body, the whole affair of Narcissus or self-contraction or identifying with the body-mind and accepting the role of the naked emperor, thinking that we are fully clothed, whereas even these poor insects, these amoebic cells, know very well that we are fools. But they are very passive. They generally have no great aspirations to becoming emperors.
The body will permit us to be fools, just as it will permit us to be wise men or wise women. The body will allow us to be Enlightened, just as it will allow us to be un-Enlightened. The body has no inherent desire for un-Enlightenment. It is simply arising. And this Enlightenment must take place in the position of Consciousness, of fundamental Being. If it does not take place there, it will never take place.
Student: Master, you have described that when the body is full of Light, there is "mindless embodiment, Consciousness without inwardness."
ADI DA: When the mind is transcended, then the body is inherently full of Light. It is Radiant with Self-Radiance. I wish you would all get into this. (Laughter.) You must abdicate.
Student: Can you imagine a cells trying to take over?
Student: Maybe cancer is a revolution of the body, a protest of the cells.
ADI DA:
It is. It is just a mass of cells in a kind of disposition, not as a conscious entity but as a process, so that the rest of the cells of the body regard it to be an alien, like a poison taken into the body, and the body begins to treat its own vital resources as enemies. There is obviously no consciousness associated with this process, just as the body self-destructs at death without any self-consciousness. But because you are self-conscious, you think you are in pain and dying, somehow betrayed and afraid. Yet you are simply Consciousness, Which is inherently Blissful, Free, Transcendental, Perfect Being.
This body-mind is superimposed on Consciousness. Consciousness must recognize the body-mind and Realize that It is Itself. Merely as the body-mind, It is not Itself. It is a relation of the body-mind. Samsara must first be understood and recognized before samsara, including the body, can be Realized to be Nirvana or the Transcendental Being. Merely to say the body-mind is the Transcendental Being before Realization or prior recognition is to be a fool, to be a public prattler of traditional wisdom, to smile when there is no justification for smiling-except that It feels better.