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Wisdom > The Call To Be Love > Part 1: Introduction 1.
Introduction This
is Part 1 of Michael Costabile's seven-part article, The
Call To Be Love (And To Live As Love In All Relations).
In
a world of escalating global tensions and universal fears, Adi Da Samraj is a
living source of transcendental spiritual wisdom and Divine Enlightenment. His
primary communication to all is the silent Transmission of His own Realization
of Reality and Truth. Through a unique process of Teaching, which He calls
His “Self-Submission
Work”, Adi Da has also given the world a corpus of Transcendental Spiritual
Instruction, recorded in well over seventy volumes and acclaimed
as unsurpassed amidst the world’s sacred, religious, and spiritual traditions.
In His writings, Adi Da elaborates the entire process of human development as
it has been traditionally proposed — from birth to human maturity to Spiritual
Awakening. He also describes the radical
process of Divine Enlightenment that He uniquely Reveals. In the course
of making this Revelation, Adi Da often made use of unconventional methods of
Teaching, including an open examination of the emotional-sexual interests and
patterns of His devotees. It was clear to Him that such an approach was necessary
in order that He might: - reveal and reflect the personal (and universal)
patterns of egoity
suffered by all who came to Him for spiritual instruction;
- provide a foundation
of self-understanding and human responsibility sufficient to prepare His devotees
for the process of transcendental spiritual awakening in His Company;
- and
present to the world a comprehensive wisdom-address to the universal dilemma of
human life, including its emotional and sexual dimensions.
The entire
landscape of emotion and sexuality is a minefield of passions, subliminal forces,
and contradictions that are immensely powerful in their influence over virtually
every aspect of human life. Adi Da notes that this is so from the very moment
of conception
onward. His work with sexuality has always been rooted in the acknowledgement
that human beings are confused, obsessed, and conflicted about the psycho-physical,
social, and intimate patterns of their lives, including their sexual inclinations
and practices. Moreover, this confusion extends to every area of ordinary life. Therefore,
a depth of feeling, insight, understanding, and personal responsibility is required
if human beings are to harmonize and transcend their emotional-sexual conflicts
and thereby “live as love and self-giving in relationship to all others”. Such
responsibility is also essential to establish the equanimity necessary for real
spiritual practice. While all of this was clear to Adi Da, the “methods”
He employed to consider the patterns of emotion and sexuality with devotees have
prompted challenges to His work — and even to His integrity as a Realized Spiritual
Master. This essay is especially addressed to those who are newly acquainting
themselves with Adi Da Samraj and wish to understand the history, nature, and
purpose of His intimate work with devotees. It also responds to those who have
sought to discredit Him by misrepresenting or otherwise misinterpreting the free
and unconventional manner of His Teaching-Work — its larger purpose in the lives
of His devotees and its wisdom-relevance for humankind as a whole. This
is not a response to any particular assertion made about Adi Da, nor does it address
any specific (or alleged) incident in the course of His Teaching-association with
devotees. It simply examines the nature of this association and the purposes served
thereby, while posing a counter challenge to those seeking to discredit Him. I
write not in the spirit of contention, but to shed light on the heroic and groundbreaking
nature of Adi Da’s Work in the complex, emotionally charged domain of human emotion
and sexuality. I should add that there is no way to divorce what is said
here from my personal relationship to Adi Da Samraj and my intimate experience
of His Life and Work. I have been His formal devotee for more than three decades,
and it is my clearest conviction that no other Spiritual Teacher has so freely
examined the range of human experience and so thoroughly illuminated its relationship
to the laws and processes of Transcendental Spiritual Realization. Adi Da’s
“unrestricted consideration”
of emotion and sexuality surpasses even the psychological contributions of Freud,
Jung, and Adler, especially with regard to the link between emotion, sexuality,
and the foundation stages of human life previous to spiritual awakening. Indeed,
no one has articulated a clearer, more comprehensive exposition of all of the
first six (or developmental) stages
of life and their relationship to the “esoteric anatomy” of the human body-mind.
There is simply no authoritative source — secular or religious, ancient or modern
— where such can be found. Nor has any other Spiritual Teacher revealed
and clarified the unique realization of the seventh, or egoless and ultimate stage
of human life, which stands in contrast to the entire course of human development
and spiritual realization as these have been traditionally understood and pursued. Adi
Da’s Work has never been merely a matter of talking and writing, but always a
living consideration and spontaneous demonstration of the truth of His unique
revelation as it manifests in His own life and in relationship to His devotees.
Perhaps this will only become evident in the course of time. But to those who
can appreciate the extraordinary nature of such an undertaking (including its
dangers and perils) in this time and place, Adi Da’s unparalleled genius, courage,
and compassion in service to those approaching Him for human and spiritual guidance
are self-evident. Lastly, by way of introduction, there was a guiding purpose
underlying the considerations and experimentation done in Adi Da’s Company — not
just relative to our ordinary human possibilities (which He has summarized generically
as “money, food, and sex”), but even relative to our higher “spiritual” possibilities,
including subtle visions and phenomena, blissful samadhis,
and other exalted states: all of what occurred in any consideration with
Adi Da was not the “Way” Itself, nor was it done for its own sake. It was simply
the radical means Adi Da freely used to convey a fundamental lesson to human beings
about the method of seeking itself and the search for Happiness
in all its forms. And what is that lesson? It is that no experience,
whether high or low in the scale of human possibilities, is Happiness, Truth,
or Freedom Itself. Every experience passes. That which is Truth Itself, or Real
Happiness, is always already the case, prior to (and never
dependent on) any experience or condition whatsoever. Real
God is the Acausal Reality or Divine Self-Condition in (and as) which all
apparent conditions and beings are arising. All that was done during Adi Da’s
Teaching years has been for the sake of communicating and demonstrating the quintessential
truth of this understanding to human beings. Part
2: The Context of “Consideration” Between Adi Da and His Devotees
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