Renouncing
the Search for the Edible Deity
PART
1
excerpt
from
The
Eating Gorilla Comes In Peace
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Love
or not. That is all there is
to it. If you can come again to the position of loving,
of being sustained and being a sustainer in the natural
flow of things, then you will continue to grow, and the
very structural dimensions toward which you are experientially
disposed will show themselves in the form of experience.
You must be responsible for the effects of those things.
You must be responsible in every moment, so that, no matter
what arises, the contraction of feeling-attention is not
your destiny, not your disposition in the moment. You
must be able to cut through that contraction, whatever
the experience, high or low.
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AVATAR
ADI DA SAMRAJ: We
chronically consider our individuation, our birth, our mere bodily
existence, to be a form of separation. We use events such as coming
out of the womb and the conflicts of childhood to elaborate this
fundamental philosophical point of view. The inherent vulnerability
of our apparently independent existence is a shock, and we reflect
on all experience, even the most primitive movements in the womb,
as a kind of rejection. When we look out into the universe we
feel insulted, rejected, unloved. And so we make philosophy out
of our apparent independence.
Thus,
the primal event of suffering is not some circumstance that happens
to us. It is not an event within our objective experience. It
is not some thing that we conceive to exist in relation to us,
or over against us. The primal event of suffering is us. Our suffering
is not recognized as separation from something else in particular.
It is our own appearance, our own independent existence, and we
interpret this present event as separation on that basis. That
interpretation is our first philosophical gesture, the first time
we say or feel "you don't love me."
Fundamentally,
it is not our experiences in particular relationships that tell
us we are not loved. Some people do not love us, surely, but nevertheless
we are simply, always, and already philosophically disposed to
believe that we are not loved. It is our interpretation of existence,
not on the basis of any relational experience we have had with
other human beings, but on the basis of our apparent independence
itself. Our sense of independent bodily existence means separation
to us, whereas, you see, it is really only the sense of independent
bodily existence. When you become strong —
if
you ever can become truly strong —
autonomous,
able to take a deep breath, then you stop interpreting the universe
as a form of rejection, as a great parent from whose company you
have been expelled, under whose domination you live, who has rejected
you and does not love you. Everyone is simply born into the conventional
condition of independence and everyone interprets that condition
as rejection, as "you don't love me."
There
is a fundamental disposition in us to be contracted in our feeling.
It is not really the result of our experience, whatever our experience.
It may be reinforced in all kinds of social and other chronic
ways, but it is not the result of experience. It is our philosophy,
our point of view, our disposition. It is the presumption we make
in the instant we recognize our functional independence. Thus,
"I/me-apart" is felt as "you don't love me"
and therefore lives as unlove, as "I don't love you."
Such unlove remains our disposition until we become awakened from
that sleep, from vital shock, from the shock of birth, not the
birth trauma in the pure physiological sense, but the recognition
of independence, in which we each steadily and increasingly observe
that we are vulnerable, that we are subject to circumstances,
that our very existence can apparently depend on circumstances.
The more you observe existence in that disposition of vital shock,
the more justified you feel in presuming under all conditions
that "you don't love me."
What
is of interest and significance about diet and health is implicit
in this consideration, this metaphysical supposition by which
everyone presently lives and also by which he interprets his past.
Birth, or the recognition of one's independent existence, is interpreted
by us to be separation. It is interpreted by us as an instant,
prolonged through time, in which we are essentially unloved. And
all of that interpretation is based on the feeling that we are
not sustained. In other words, independent existence itself is
felt as separation from the ultimate food source.
We
are mad then, you see. We are not like the eating gorilla. The
eating gorilla finds a cabbage in the jungle, sits down like a
slob and munches away at the cabbage, and is completely benign,
completely peaceful. There is nothing threatening about this gorilla,
nothing dangerous about him. He is not eating anything killed
that has an independent consciousness in the ordinary sense. He
is just eating cabbages, vegetables. If some other gorilla or
another being comes near, he still has his food. He is connected
to the food source. He is not disturbed as long as that creature
will show that he also is eating. The eating gorilla is peaceful.
Therefore,
the eating gorilla is the image of the true man, the true woman.
He demonstrates the principle of true politics, of real human
existence, in which we are always presently connected to the Food
Source in Truth, and are always presuming connection, relationship,
"I love you." But the gorilla in the desert, or the
conventional man, is cut off from his food source through the
presumptive recognition of his separate existence, of his mortality.
He feels unloved. He is a dangerous beast. He is in conflict with
himself, struggling, looking for a way to be permanently sustained.
All
of our conventional efforts in life are searches to be permanently,
absolutely, unqualifiedly sustained, to be fed perfectly and eternally
and to be simply happy, kept alive by whatever put us into existence
to begin with. But until we make our connection with food or with
sustenance, we are mad. Since sustenance is scarce, we threaten
one another. We live like beasts! If we get a little bit that
sustains us, we become anxious about sustenance, we cannot get
enough. We overeat, or we overseek. We are always believing the
logic that we are not sustained, that we are cut off from the
source, that we are not loved, that what essentially and permanently
and absolutely can sustain us is something from which we are separated.
We may get a meal, but where are we going to get the next one?
Or even if we can get the next one, how can we live forever?
Thus,
we must ultimately deal with this metaphysics, this philosophy
that "I am not loved," that "I am separate from
what sustains me." The whole drama,of human existence is
about that feeling of separation, and that is all that it is about.
The
Eating Gorilla Comes in Peace is
really a meditation on this consideration. It is about sustenance,
about love, not really about conventional matters of diet and
health, just as Conscious
Exercise and the Transcendental Sun is
not really about exercise. It is about exercise in some secondary
way, but exercise is just a way of meditating on love, on the
responsibility for love and the process wherein we are love. Eating
is also a way of meditating on love. When you sit down to eat,
you are obliged to meditate on sustenance. If you consciously
approach the whole matter of eating, you must become aware of
unlove, of separation, of fear, sorrow, guilt, anger, doubt, anxiety
—
terrible
things. In that condition, there is no way to finish a meal! In
your chronic subjectivity, your Narcissistic
and
unloving self-consciousness, you think these negative feelings
are true of you. You think they are real and justified by experience.
That is why you are not sustained by all your eating and all your
relations. But you have adapted socially in such a way that you
are willing to accept a vision of mortality and make the best
of it. You know that you can eat and continue for a while; you
know that you can create circumstances that allow you to continue
to live; so you can eat with relative ease, even though you are
fundamentally in mortal fear.
Now
there are many ways to approach this whole affair. First of all,
in our recognition of ourselves, our self-consciousness, our realization
of our independence through functional manifestation, in the first
instant and in every moment of that recognition, is it true that
we are actually separated from sustenance? It is very important
to find this out, because everyone simply and mechanically presumes
that it is true. The vulnerabilities of childhood reinforce that
presumption. All the social habitual learning that comes out of
childhood and adolescence and into your later life supports this
essential metaphysical view that we are unloved, that we are separated
from what sustains us in the absolute sense, that we are mortal.
The more we meditate on being unloved, the less we live as love.
If we allow ourselves to feel our Condition, to feel as our Condition,
to feel completely our Condition in this moment, can we discover
any separation from anything whatsoever? Are we anything that
can be separated, that is separate, that is an anything when viewed
as a totality? Obviously this is the essential consideration that
I entertain with you through My Teaching. If you could simply
feel your Condition, feel as your Condition in this moment without
obstruction, without making an interpretation, then you would
not any longer be what you already are being. In that case, you
would not be in the condition of obstructed feeling-attention,
defining yourself, feeling vulnerable, separate, a being. You
would directly and intuitively discover the nature of your Condition,
which in no sense is separated out, which is pure, absolute energy
without qualification, which is sustained absolutely, which was
never separated from anything, which does not exist in an inherently
separated state.
Thus,
reconnecting to your sustenance is a matter of unobstructed
feeling-attention, through
all your functions, as the whole bodily being, in all your relations,
under all conditions. That is all it is. In that native spiritual
action you are love. You are an expression of the Nature of all
things. When you are not obstructed as what you are, you are love.
The body itself is love then. And when you can become responsible
for the compulsive contraction of feeling-attention in yourself,
then you are naturally sustained and a natural sustainer of others.
Your humor is restored, and then you are taken out of the desert.
You cease to be a beast, a subhuman, maniacal creature, and you
become natural, peaceful, pleasant, loving, intimate, laughable,
humorous. Existence becomes a matter of inherent pleasurableness,
not the beastly struggle for the acquisition of experiential pleasure,
the temporary attainment of a sustained condition.
We
are obliged to be the heart in relations, to be responsible, as
radiant feeling-attention, for all the things above and below
the heart, to make mind and body, attention and action, heaven
and earth a felt sacrifice to Infinity. If we live this way we
can live a happy and loving and healthy life, an essentially vital
life. Although there may be limitations that come upon us through
the environmental and human factors around us, essentially we
can be the masters of our circumstances, at least in our private
lives.
Love
or not.
That is all there is to it. If you can come again to the position
of loving, of being sustained and being a sustainer in the natural
flow of things, then you will continue to grow, and the very structural
dimensions toward which you are experientially disposed will show
themselves in the form of experience. You must be responsible
for the effects of those things. You must be responsible in every
moment, so that, no matter what arises, the contraction of feeling-attention
is not your destiny, not your disposition in the moment. You must
be able to cut through that contraction, whatever the experience,
high or low.
Therefore,
the devotee in the Way of Adidam passes through stages of growth
and development, perhaps into higher psychic or mystical experience,
but he is not fulfilled by any of it. He is obliged to be responsible
in the midst of it, to cut through it, to cut through the limitation
on feeling-attention that even a cosmic vision represents. And
eventually it all becomes a mass of silliness. It has nothing
whatever to do with Truth. You throw everything away, then. In
this Divine Enjoyment you hold on to nothing, and even the body
itself begins to change into something undefinable.
Conscious
Exercise and the Transcendental Sun
—
by Avatar
Adi Da Samraj, is a principal practical text for devotees in the
Way of Adidam.
Narcissus
—
One of the key concepts in Avatar
Adi Da Samraj's
criticism of the usual life. In The
Knee of Listening, Avatar Adi Da Samraj describes Narcissus
as follows:
"He
is the ancient one visible in the Greek 'myth,' who was the universally
adored child of the gods, who rejected the loved-one and every
form of love and relationship, who was finally condemned to the
contemplation of his own image, until he suffered the fact of
eternal separation and died in infinite solitude.
"I
began to see that same logic operative in all men and every living
thing, even the very life of the cells and the energies that surround
every living entity or process. It was the logic or process of
separation itself, of enclosure and immunity. It manifested as
fear and identity, memory and experience. It informed every function
of being, every event. It created every mystery. It was the structure
of every imbecile link in the history of our suffering."
Narcissus
symbolizes the activity of suffering, self-limitation, and the
recoil of feeling and attention from Infinite Life-the avoidance
of relationship, the failure to love. He represents the contracted
condition of the soul until it Awakens in Ignorance and becomes
Radiant as Love. All men, Eastern and Western, spiritual and worldly,
enact the life of Narcissus until they "hear" the Teaching
of Truth and release feeling and attention into the infinite stream
of present relations, which is the Divine, All-Pervading Condition
of all that arises.
unobstructed
feeling attention —
An
essential responsibility of all devotees. "Unobstructed and
free feeling-attention" is a technical description of Love,
which is simultaneously the Divine Condition to which we are awakened
by Grace and a heartfelt gesture or action of self-sacrifice that
we must perform moment to moment. The
usual man does not feel; his heart is closed, and his only feelings
are conventional emotional reactions to life. Just so, the usual
man has no capacity for free attention; his mind is an obsessive
jumble of thoughts, impulses, images, and obsessions. Thus, feel
ing
and attention are obstructed, attenuated, constantly contracted,
and fixed upon the illusory sense of separate self or "me."
The devotee who continuously "hears" and "sees"
the Truth is constantly releasing attention through feeling to
Infinity, under all conditions, into and through all relations.
Responsibility for constant maintenance of such unobstructed feeling-attention
is the foundation moral discipline of service to others and to
God in the Way of Adidam.
