The Hidden Structure of the Body-Mind

by Carolyn Lee, PhD

The effort to console, or "save", or transform, or even dissolve the apparent "I" — which we all presume to be — is a major preoccupation of religion. In fact, as Adi Da Samraj argues, this search, in all its variant forms, is basically the entirety of religion.

And He goes further, bringing the extraordinary insight that the kind of religion (or even rejection of religion) that one settles for depends on what dimension of the "I" one is focused in.

In the ancient oriental view, the "I" is more than the body, and more than merely "body and soul". Rather, the human being is a complex psycho-physical structure composed of a hierarchy of layers or sheaths.

In the simplest understanding, this esoteric anatomy is composed of three fundamental dimensions — which Adi Da Samraj defines as "gross, subtle, and causal", or "outer, inner, and root".

The gross (or outer) dimension corresponds to the physical level of experience and the waking state.

The subtle (or inner) dimension includes everything to do with mind, emotion, and energy — including the domain of dreaming and psychic experience, as well as the range of supernormal experience that is commonly called "mystical".

The causal (or root) dimension refers to the depth where the "I"-"other" sense originates, thereby "causing", or generating, the worlds of subtle and gross experience that extend from that root presumption of separate "identity".

As Adi Da Samraj makes clear in Religion and Reality, popular, or exoteric, religion is strictly an outer, waking-state affair, motivated by the concerns of physical existence.

Whatever its particular characteristics of doctrine and practice in any time and place, exoteric religion is a search for consolation and salvation through belief in some kind of "Creator-God " or patron-deity, and an adherence to a moral code of behavior that promotes social order.

The esoteric traditions, accounting for a small minority of humanity's religious endeavors, conduct a more refined and inward form of seeking. They aspire to transcend the common myths and Awaken directly to What is Ultimate.

They all speak, in one way or another, of Realizing an Ultimate Source-Condition of the impermanent, arising world.

But this intention has various meanings and implications, depending on the orientation of the particular tradition. In summary, there is not only a fundamental difference between the exoteric religions and the esoteric traditions, but real differences between the esoteric schools themselves.

Throughout His writings, Avatar Adi Da's revelation is that these differences correspond with the esoteric anatomy just described (with its gross, subtle, and causal dimensions).

Esoteric practitioners are focused either in the subtle dimension, which is the realm of the various mystical and Yogic traditions, or in the causal dimension, which is the domain of the Sages, the Realizers who are exclusively invested in knowing the Transcendental Reality.

Thus, the esoteric traditions of humankind have been polarized around these two different orientations — the orientation to subtle energy and light as the means and nature of Realization, on the one hand, and the urge to Realize Consciousness, independent of objects, on the other.

The Seven Stages of Life

Of Avatar Adi Da's communications about Reality, one dimension that is of greatest use to our global human culture is what He has described as "the seven stages of life".

These stages constitute a fully-developed "map" of the progressive developmental potential of the human being, based on its total structure — gross, subtle, and causal.

The various stages of life are illustrated not only in the individual case, but also in the cultural evidence of history.

Adi Da Samraj refers to the vast and varied process of humanity's wisdom-search as the "Great Tradition", and explains how it can be understood in terms of six stages of life — with the potential for the Realization of the seventh (or most ultimate) stage of life.

His paradigm of the progressive stages of life represents an esoteric science that is highly detailed and extremely precise.

In a conversation with His devotees, Adi Da Samraj speaks here of the great shift that must occur before the ordinary human being — still struggling to adapt in the foundation stages of psycho-physical development (the first three stages of life) — can take the leap into the fourth stage of life, characterized by a life of devotional communion with the Divine Spirit (however the Divine is conceived or experienced).

The first three stages of life are associated with the most basic physical, emotional, mental, and sexual functions to which you have adapted. The transition to the fourth stage of life requires a realistic confrontation with your limitations in the first three stages of life.

You must go through the inevitable and natural crisis of this transition, and that is a profound matter.

If it were not profound, most difficult, and something that people in general are not prepared for, human beings all over the world would have entered the fourth stage of life by now.

This crisis of transition is the most profound and unwelcome change that confronts humanity. That change has been unwelcome for thousands of years.

— October 4, 1985

In terms of the underlying structure of the gross, subtle, and causal dimensions, the transition to the fourth stage of life is, as Adi Da Samraj indicates, the most critical transition, because it represents the first entry into the domain of that which is beyond the physical.

The fourth stage of life is a bridge between the gross and the subtle. It involves an opening of the body-mind to the dimension of Spiritual Energy, which transforms the beliefs and observances of merely exoteric religion into a real heart-practice and potential mystical experience.

In the fifth stage of life the fundamental "point of view" is no longer that of the waking state, but, rather, a persistent concentration in the subtle-energy centers in and above the head, in order to enter into states of ascended bliss — possibly including the experience of subtle lights, visions, sounds, and tastes.

The sixth stage of life goes to the causal root. The effort of sixth stage practitioners is to abide as the Formless Reality (or Consciousness) that is intuited in the depth of meditative contemplation, and to discount (or turn away from) all experience (gross and subtle), in order to find and stay in touch with that Root-Reality.

Next: The Final Esoteric Secret