The Necessity to Prepare
for the Ultimate Practice
(For a description of the seven stages of life, please see the Adidam Revelation Magazine article on The Perfect Tradition, part 3: Seven Stages of Life)
In preparing the renderings in this book, Adi Da Samraj chose to combine Himself only with texts of the sixth stage type. This is not because He regards the texts and practices of the fourth and fifth stages of life — or even a true culture of the first three stages of life — to be necessarily false. Not at all.
Rather, the point that He makes in all His commentaries on the Great Tradition is that the process of Realization, rightly understood, is developmental.
The various stages of life, and the life practice appropriate at each stage, are all a necessary and inevitable part of a progressive unfolding of the fullest course of human growth.
The seven stages of life is as literal a blueprint of the total human possibility at the esoteric, psycho physical level as the double helix of the DNA is at the purely physical level.
Thus, in the case of the "Reality Teachings" in this book — both the traditional texts, and those from Avatar Adi Da's Way of Adidam — one cannot merely start presuming the Ultimate Position that they describe, any more than an infant can suddenly decide to become an adult. This point is made in all the traditional texts in this book, and by Adi Da Samraj Himself: A preparatory process of growth must be embraced by those who aspire to practice the Ultimate Teaching.
One morning, while discussing with a devotee editor various scholarly issues relating to the traditional texts, Adi Da Samraj made this point:
The Work I have done in the book IS is an effort to make the traditions speak plain, completely apart from all other kinds of concerns, including scholarly conventions and purposes.
This book is about approaching these texts entirely on the presumption that Truth is the matter of importance — because that is the mode, or disposition, of the texts themselves. These texts have to do with the ultimate matter of Truth — which is, therefore, beyond action, beyond all purposiveness.
The texts I have selected in this book have no direct concern for social morality, and so forth. Nonetheless, they invariably mention that this is an Ultimate Teaching, only for those who have developed up to a point, and that there are preliminaries required.
It is presumed that one who was receiving these Teachings must have brought the body mind under control, have disciplined it, purified it. As such a practitioner, you are mature enough to receive the Ultimate Teaching, because you are free enough in your energy and attention to examine the Great Matter and realize it to be true.
You do not need any argument other than the Truth Itself. All of that has become unnecessary because of your state of preparedness.
The enterprises of social morality are largely in the domain of the common social order of the first three stages of life, the common world.
Conventional religion is largely a political and social institution that exists to bring about an idealization of human behavior, to bring people to function in a manner that is expected socially. It is not about Realization. It is about social morality.
Having sufficiently gone through that school, and the schools beyond that — the esoteric kind of training that purifies and balances and straightens — then there is the Ultimate Teaching. That is the context in which all of these Reality Teachings have appeared. It is always in a context beyond the active life.
These texts are not a general message to everybody: "Stop all of your activity and just contemplate." This Teaching is only uttered to uniquely prepared individuals. Otherwise, the message is as it is given in the temples.
That is the message that is upheld by these texts and traditions that are about Ultimate Realization. These were not presumed to be common messages for everybody.
Nowadays, it is presumed that everything must be a message for everybody. And, along with that, comes the presumption that it has to be adapted to everybody in some sense — in other words, you have to eliminate demands. This is part of what I have had to Work intensively to counter.
The Ultimate Teaching can be given to everyone, but there are requirements. The traditional position was that the Ultimate Teaching should not be given to everyone, because there are requirements.
— February 1, 2006
At this point, Adi Da Samraj laughed. And He concluded, "It is essentially the same position. It is just a different time and place."
The preparation for practicing Ultimate Teachings is necessarily a process of calming and bringing to order the otherwise casually wandering energies of body and mind. What was prized traditionally as a sign of true preparation was the virtue of Yogic equanimity, attained by purification and discipline.
Next: Shankara
