An excerpt from a Talk in which Avatar Adi Da Samraj explains why it is necessary for human beings to establish and maintain a sacred domain at the core of their lives.

Religion is about the disposition to transcend, or exceed, the confinement of mortality. Human beings inherently want to become enlarged beyond the confinement, or fault, of mortality. That fundamental human impulse is the domain of sacred culture.

In human societies, there is always a play (and even a competitive tension) between (on the one hand) the secular (or exoteric) necessity of bringing order to collective society and (on the other hand) the sacred (or esoteric) necessity of allowing for the profound religious and Spiritual enterprise that human beings have (spontaneously, and inherently) always wanted to be involved in. The sacred (or esoteric) domain should be the center of life—the Pleasure-Dome ¹ core of life—in relation to which everything secular is simply the "business outside the gates". However, in this "late time" (or "dark" epoch), human culture is developing in such a manner that the sacred domain is tending to be eliminated. When the sacred domain is suppressed, ignored, or forgotten, human culture produces nothing but a "stage-play" that goes on and on and on, even while all the "players" keep dying. In that case, human life has no purpose greater than mere reproduction, simply for the purpose of ensuring that the "play" can go on.

Such is merely a mortal drama—and it is not satisfactory enough for the human heart. Human beings are heart-urged to find What Is Greater than that, to find a connectedness to What Is Greater than that, to participate in the real transcending of mortality. Therefore, a culture of human beings that is balanced and sane—accommodating all the fundamental aspects of reality that need to be accommodated for the sake of rightly oriented human existence—must include both a sacred domain and a secular domain.

The urge to contemplate is apparent in all conditionally manifested forms. The urge to contemplate—not merely the urge to relax. In other words, the urge to be entered into, or to be combined with, or to discover and be in real association with, That Which Is Greater than your mortality, and Which Supports your existence in the form in which you are now appearing, while also Giving you an existence exceeding your mortal limits. (This fundamental urge can be—and, in the history of the Great Tradition ² of humankind, has been—described in many different ways. I am simply Giving a generalized description here.)

The urge to contemplate, to be associated with What Is Great, is an inherent aspect of the human being—and it is inevitably demonstrated by human beings, unless it is suppressed. Traditional cultures accommodated both aspects (sacred and secular) of the human requirement, but the world-culture of this "late-time" (or "dark" epoch) is largely impulsed to suppress the urge to profundity upon which the sacred domain is founded. Human beings must understand that the transcending of mortality is what they are purposed for, what they are living for. Human beings are not alive on Earth merely to be cogs in the machine of hoped-for progress toward utopia—merely to sing their "cricket song", make a baby or two, and then drop dead. No. There is also the impulse based on the knowledge that this human birth is a mortal condition. It is the urge to find What Is Greater, and to be included in That.

Every living being has the instinct of Infinite Life.

1. Avatar Adi Da Samraj Speaks of the Way of Adidam as a "Pleasure Dome", recalling the poem "Kubla Khan", by Samuel Taylor Coleridge ("In Xanadu did Kubla Khan/A stately pleasure-dome decree . . ."). Adi Da Samraj points out that in many religious traditions it is presumed that one must embrace suffering in order to earn future happiness and pleasure. However, by Calling His devotees to live the Way of Adidam as a Pleasure Dome, Avatar Adi Da Samraj Communicates His Teaching that the Way of heart-Communion with Him is always about present-time Happiness, not about any kind of search to attain Happiness in the future.

2. The "Great Tradition" is Avatar Adi Da's term for the total inheritance of human, cultural, religious, magical, mystical, Spiritual, Transcendental, and Divine paths, philosophies, and testimonies from all the eras and cultures of humanity, which inheritance has (in the present era of worldwide communication) become the common legacy of mankind.

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