The Three Elements of
Conventional Religious Thinking

Introduction Part Three
By Megan Anderson, Jonathan Condit, PhD,
and Carolyn Lee, PhD

The "I"-thought (or the presumed-to-be-independent ego-self), and the world, and the "God"-idea are the three fundamental categories of Reality-as-reflection. As such, "ego-’I’", "world-out-there", and "God-everywhere" are the essential categories of egoic bondage — the tripartite package of world-mummery.

— Avatar Adi Da Samraj

Avatar Adi Da has given a beautifully simple summary of the core paradigm underlying all conventional religious thinking.

This paradigm presumes that the basic "quantities" of existence are three in number — "self", "world", and "God". And this three-part paradigm accounts for the fundamental thought-structure (and also the basic modes of practice) of all religious and Spiritual traditions — both exoteric and esoteric.

Indeed, the presumed "split" between "self" and "other" (including both "world" and "God") is the "problem" to be resolved in all human philosophy and religion.

That "split" — between "me" and "everything else" (including "God"), or between "inside" and "outside" — seems to be so obvious a feature of conditional existence that we usually do not question it at all.

In fact, "belief" in that "split" is the cornerstone of our daily-life "philosophy"!

However, Avatar Adi Da has made a supremely "radical" Revelation about the nature of the "self" — which we presume to be, and which we presume is inherently "different" from "everything else". The separate "self" (or ego-"I") is, He says, not something we are being.

Rather, the separate "self" (or ego-"I") is something we are doing. Or, as Adi Da has said countless times, "The ego is not an entity, but an activity."

The root-activity of the ego, Adi Da Reveals, is self-contraction. Presuming to be a separate (and, therefore, inherently threatened) "someone", every human being contracts (physically, emotionally, mentally, and with the breath) in the face of the apparent threat of everything "other".

However, that activity of self-contraction is not inherent to the being. That activity of self-contraction is something each human being is doing in reaction to his or her (real or presumed) experience.

The Way of Adidam, which Avatar Adi Da has Revealed and Given, is the Way of the "radical" (or "at-the-root") transcending of the self-contraction. Only when such "radical" ego-transcendence is the case is it possible to truly "Know" Reality Itself.

Thus, the "radical" transcending of egoity is an absolutely essential aspect of the Ultimate Reality-Realizing process Offered to all by Adi Da Samraj.

Next: Grow Beyond Religion