In reply:
I consider this an APPRECIATION of Jesus. However, it is not
contained in the bible. Does that make it false?
<<<THE FIRE GOSPEL
Chapter 2
A Birthday Message from Jesus and Me
(by Adi Da)
Part I
an essay by Da Free John
(1.1) The All-Pervading Life-Spirit, or the Self-Radiant Transcendental Spirit-Being, is Love, the Source of beings and worlds, the Great Power, All-Bliss, Reality Itself. To live and Be in Oneness with the Eternal Spirit is God-love, Salvation, Enlightenment, and literally eternal life.
(1.2) Those who love God totally (as self-transcending spirits, surrendered as the total body-mind, feeling as and in the Self-Radiant Energy or Spirit of Being) also inevitably love others, Communicate or Magnify God in the worlds, and always transcend themselves in all relations, under all conditions, and in every state. Therefore, be "born again"-be reborn or re-Lived now-by the discovery and affirmation that you and all beings and things are Spirit, or an eternal process of Energy (rather than unconscious and mortal matter). What is presumed to be mortal matter (in the form of body, mind, and world) is only a phenomenal state of Energy, or Energy in one moment of Its beginningless and endless sequence of transformations. Awaken and Be in the Spirit and then fulfill the double Law of the Spirit-which is to love God, or the Transcendental Spirit-Being, until you become Love, and so love all others.
(1.3) Be Happy and altogether healed or en-Livened by this conversion of "matter" into Energy. This conversion is repentance, or release of all non-Spiritual views, acts, and "karmas," or the habit-results of "sin"-which is simply the ego-based or self-contracting denial of Oneness with the Divine Spirit-Being. And this same conversion is also Salvation, or restoration of resonant Oneness with the Divine Spirit-Being.
(1.4) As a spirit (or a body-mind-self that is only or entirely living and conscious energy), Be surrendered into Oneness with the Transcendental Spirit-Being. Transcend yourself in Love-Bliss. Transcend the present world (and all materially or mortally conceived conditions and concepts). By all of this, enter into a totally new Destiny-in God, or Spiritual Being. That Destiny goes beyond self and, ultimately, beyond every plane of conditional Nature. It is the Destiny of Love-Bliss, or uninterrupted Existence in the Divine Condition, or the Divine Domain, wherein there is no trace or memory of conditional existence.
(1.5) Only this is true and useful religion. Religion is self-transcending Spirituality. It is to be restored to inherently Free Spirit-living, and not merely to submit to the myths and rituals of dogmatic beliefs and the lifeless or Spirit-less disciplines of the concerned social ego.
(1.6) Accept the Spirit-Blessing of the Adept Spiritual Master. Even the body-mind is only Energy. Realize the Spirit-Being is the Reality in which self and world are arising as spontaneous but unnecessary and non-binding modifications of Itself. Be the Spirit-Being only. See all things and beings in and as the Spirit. And always Magnify the Spirit-Force, which is Love, Blessing, Tolerance, Forgiveness, Help, Healing, Nurture, Delight, Joy, Bliss, Peace, and total Happiness.
November 3, 1982
Part II
(2.1) MASTER DA: I call this essay "A Birthday Message from Jesus and Me" for several reasons. Today is my birthday, first of all. The essay also speaks of being born again in the Spirit, so it is in some sense a message about everybody's "rebirthday" or spiritual birth. And it is "from Jesus and Me" because the essay also paraphrases the Teaching of Jesus.
(2.2) There is a likeness between my Teaching and all of the high and great and radical Teachings of the Great Tradition. In the book Nirvanasara I explore the likeness between this Teaching and the traditions of Advaita Vedanta and Buddhism. I suggest in that book that one of the descriptive names of this Teaching is Advaitayana Buddhism. This does not mean that the only precedents for this Teaching or its only likenesses are to be found in the traditions of Vedanta and Buddhism. I have also suggested other descriptive names for this Teaching and explored the likenesses between my Teaching and many traditions outside the Transcendentalist Teachings of Advaitism and Buddhism. But, I differentiate those aspects of the Great Tradition that represent great Teaching and those that represent conventions of the human mind, human life, false religion, pseudo-religion, lesser religion. I explore and examine all of the traditions critically, and therefore I criticize aspects of all traditions, but there is also a congenial likeness to be found between my own Teaching and the great or high Teachings of all the traditions.
(2.3) Christianity is historically the dominant religious tradition of the Western world for all kinds of reasons, most of which have nothing whatever to do with the Truth. Therefore, I criticize Christianity on a number of levels. But over the years I have also considered Christianity-actually not so much Christianity as the Teaching of Jesus-in terms of its likenesses to my own Teaching.
(2.4) Jesus preached a Way of life that involved stepping outside the bondage to tradition and institutionalized religiosity. His was a radical Spirit-Teaching that communicated the religion of conversion to the Spiritual Reality, to the Divine as Living Spirit, rather than to the Divine as the remembered and honored "God of our fathers," the God of the book, and so on. Jesus preached that people should be altogether converted from their false views and sinfulness, that they should be transformed by the Realization of the Spirit, and that they should make their religion a way of life in immediate and constant Communion with the Divine Spirit.
(2.5) The New Testament declares that there is only one unpardonable sin. Among all of the enumerated sins only one is unpardonable: the denial of the Holy Spirit or the Spirit of God. If that is the one unforgivable sin, then something about that sin must epitomize sin itself. All the forgivable sins must somehow be the lesser versions of this primary sin. Therefore, sin itself has to do with our tendency to deny or dissociate from the Spiritual Divine.
(2.6) All that we might do that could be called sin in the Semitic and Christian traditions is a version of our tendency to dissociate from the Spiritual Divine. What is unforgivable about the unforgivable sin is not that it is merely an immediate form of behavior that temporarily dissociates us from the Spiritual Divine, but that it is sin raised to its absolute degree. It is perpetual sin. It is not unforgivable because God does not forgive or because God is not forgiving. It is unforgivable because the act itself will not accept forgiveness. To accept forgiveness is to become involved with the Divine. Therefore, to deny the Divine is to be in a perpetual state of dissociation from the Divine and, therefore, dissociation from forgiveness. Only once we have ceased to deny the Divine is forgiveness possible.
(2.7) Therefore, sin is simply the denial of the Holy Spirit or denial of the Spiritual Divine, and it becomes most critical when it becomes an absolute act of absolute denial. Forgiveness is liberation from the effects of all denials of God. It is restoration to God or repentance, which is on this side of forgiveness. Repentance in the Christian tradition, and in the Semitic tradition in general, is the act of giving up sin or returning to God.
(2.8) From the point of view of Jesus, the process whereby we become free of sin and are restored to Oneness with God or Communion with God is not a matter of ritual or acts in the temple. It is not a matter of conventions of belief. It is not the ritualistic act of repenting and accepting to some degree, psychologically and emotionally, that we have returned to God's good graces and God will now bless us. From Jesus' point of view, the whole process of repentance, forgiveness, and restoration to God is a matter of spiritual conversion, or the realization that God is the Living Spiritual Reality, always Present, All-Pervading, the Source and Substance of Existence. From Jesus' point of view religion is the conversion from self-possession or withdrawal from the Spiritual Divine or denial of the Spirit to Communion with the Spirit and acceptance of the fact that all existence is Spiritual, made by the Spirit, made of Spirit, arising in the Spirit, pervaded by the Spirit.
(2.9) In one of the key passages in the New Testament, Jesus meets a man named Nicodemus, who was a major figure in the temple. Nicodemus came to see Jesus at night, because he did not want anybody to know that he was going to see this renegade who was preaching a free form of religion outside temple life. He had learned of Jesus from others who had heard Jesus preach, and he wanted to know precisely, beyond hearsay, what this man was Teaching.
(2.10) Jesus told him, "You must be born again. You must be born in the Spirit even as now you are born in the flesh. You must be Baptized in the Spirit, you must receive the Spirit, you must enter into Communion with the Spirit. God is Spirit, Man is Spirit, every individual is a spirit, and all of the spirits, including the entire world, are arising in God, in intimate, eternal Communion with the Spirit, God. Religion is to repent or be converted from an unspiritual point of view, the whole life of self-possession and the mortal mind, and to enter fully into Communion with the Divine as the Living Spirit. Only on the basis of such conversion can the law of Israel be fulfilled."
(2.11) Jesus was asked on one occasion, as reported in the New Testament, "What is your summary of the Law?" And Jesus repeated the summary that is already found in the Old Testament: "Love God completely, with every aspect of your being, and love all others. Treat all others as you would be treated. Treat them as your very self and as you would have yourself treated." From Jesus' point of view that Law could not be fulfilled except through spiritual rebirth or conversion from the mortal, self-possessed point of view to Communion with the Divine as the All-Pervading Spirit. The Law could therefore be summarized completely from Jesus' point of view in just this brief statement. There was no need for the complicated sub-laws and rituals and mechanical aspects of religiosity, all of which are built upon the ordinary mind. If just this one simple process of conversion could be realized, then the Law would inevitably be fulfilled. However, if this conversion were not realized, to fulfill the Law would be impossible, even if one practiced the ritual fulfillment of the Law down to the last detail.
(2.12) In his Teaching, Jesus criticized the tendencies of religiosity in his time, saying basically that no real religion existed then. There was a great deal of religiosity, a great deal of temple life and ritual, many laws and legalisms, many beliefs and myths, but none of that had anything to do with religion. Such pseudo-religion was about God in the book, the God who created everything and is now to be viewed as untouchable, holy, elsewhere. The religious life of most people had been reduced to the popular form of religiosity, just as it has been in our time-or as it is in any time.
(2.13) Jesus preached a radically simplified form of religion. He preached what I call basic religion. Only one affair is religion: the conversion from self, and all the views based on self-possession and mortal self-consciousness, to Communion with the Living Spirit-Being or Radiant Transcendental Being, the recognition that all of Nature is made of that One, that every being is a spirit and one with the Transcendental Spirit. That which is born of the Spirit, he said, is Spirit, is of the same nature, and, therefore, can Realize a state of perfect Identification with that Great Spirit or Transcendental Being, and by that perfect Divinity be drawn into the Domain of unqualified spiritual existence.
(2.14) My own Teaching to you is fundamentally the same. During the last few days I have told you that ultimately the Way transcends the conventional point of view of religion and spirituality. The Way that I Teach is the Way of radical self-transcendence and Perfect Realization of a state of Identification with the Radiant Transcendental or Divine Being and Condition. Nevertheless, the Way begins with true and basic religion, and basic true religion is spirituality, life in the Spirit, life as the Spirit. Such religion is not transcended in the Way-it is the essence of the Way.
(2.15) The process of our submission to the Spiritual Condition is realized in stages that correspond to the seven stages of life. There are therefore lesser stages of maturity in the process of Transcendental Communion and ultimate Enlightenment, lesser stages, higher stages, and the ultimate stage. But they are all aspects of true religion, or spiritual existence. You cannot enter into the process of this Way unless you are born again in the same terms that Jesus preached. You cannot enter into the process of the Way until you Awaken into the acknowledgment of the Living Spiritual Reality, not merely the God to be believed, but the Spiritual Reality that is tangibly Present and with Which we are inherently intimate. We need only acknowledge It and submit ourselves to Its Living Current and enter into Its Ultimate Condition. This submission is a natural and free process, always available to human beings if they will repent or convert from their self-possession and their denial of the Spiritual Reality.
(2.16) I have told you that without such conversion, it makes no difference how many of my books you read or how many of the specific disciplines you apply. The disciplines will not be fruitful, they are not even true in your case, unless you first become religious in the spiritual sense. You must first be converted. We suffer many conditions of existence because we do not presume the Spiritual Reality of existence. When we cannot be intimate with God, we start to think, and when we cannot be intimate with other people, we start becoming physically self-indulgent. All the behaviors that are called sin in the traditions are simply the variations on these two possibilities, indulgence in the self-mind and its mortal views, and physically based self-indulgence.
(2.17) The reason we enter into the conditions of existence that are self-contracted, ego-based, and self-possessed is that we become incapable of intimacy with Reality. The first form of that dis-ease, that imaginary disease, the "dreaded Gom-boo," is the denial of the Holy Spirit, the denial of the Spiritual Reality, the denial of the fact that all beings are spirits or spiritual entities, not merely spirits somewhere inside and behind the body and the mind, but spirits as the body-mind.
(2.18) This world that we perceive is the spiritual world in a certain form. It arises in the Spiritual Divine, the Transcendental Spirit-Being, the Transcendental Condition of existence. When you lose sympathy with that Reality, when you cannot be intimate with It, cannot submit to It, even bodily, emotionally, with the whole mind-as Jesus said, you must love the Spiritual Divine with your mind, heart, soul, all your strength-when you cannot be intimate with the Living Spirit-God, you as a spirit, with every aspect of your being and personality, then you are self-contracted and self-possessed. You fall in upon yourself, and are no longer capable of intimacy with the Spiritual Divine or with any of the conditions of existence.
(2.19) You are not capable of intimacy with other beings, therefore. You cannot love God or others, you cannot be love in the world, you are not free, you are not Happy, you become un-Happy. Then you try to become Happy through the exercise of mind and physical possibility, but when mind and physical possibility are generated on the basis of the loss of intimacy, the inability to be submitted to love, to surrender, to enter into Communion with the Living Being directly and in the form of all beings, then all the forms of mind and body become self-indulgent, self-possessed, sinful, disoriented from the Divine. They "miss the mark." To sin is to "miss the mark," as in the Greek word "hamartia," for example, which means a miss of the mark.
(2.20) Thus, human beings are suffering from this imagined disease, this self-created or self-imposed disease. Its root is an emotional problem, the incapacity for intimacy with the Real or the Transcendental Reality and all of the modifications of the Transcendental Reality that appear in the form of living beings and conditions of existence in this world and in all other worlds. The Way, therefore, begins when we can repent or be converted from this self-possessed disposition and all of the acts and habit patterns, thought patterns, points of view, the whole affair of the disease of egoity. We must be converted from self. We must Awaken from self-possession to the acknowledgment of the inherent Spiritual Reality of existence. We must be restored to intimacy or Communion with That One.
(2.21) When intimacy is restored, the body-mind is restored to a state of equanimity on the basis of its resonant Communion with the Living Current of the Spiritual Being. This restoration of intimacy with the Living Divine is likewise a restoration of intimacy with all other conditions of existence and all other beings. When love of God returns, then love of others also returns. Life is simplified. Life becomes capable of a harmonious disposition and of magnifying the characteristics of Spiritual Being. We cannot first love others. We must first be restored to God. We must first be converted spiritually.
(2.22) The primary principle is God-Love, God-Communion, self-transcending submission to the Living Current and Transcendental Being. When that conversion is established, then we become capable of fulfilling the second part of the great Law. When we love God to the point of becoming love, when we Commune with the Spirit to the point of becoming spiritual, then we love or magnify the characteristics of the Spirit in all relations, under all conditions, in all states, in all possible worlds.
(2.23) The essence of the Way is the spirituality of self-transcending Communion with the Living Divine. It is spirituality, you see. It is life in the Spirit. It is not merely a matter of developing the programs of the social ego. It is not merely a matter of being fitfully committed to creating the politics of social peace. Such is the great program toward which all of Nature and all of humanity are striving, and yet peace is not about to be instantly created! Even so, we should not be disheartened or become dispirited because the conditions of life are frustrating and do not show the signs of the universal invasion of the world by the Divine Spirit. The world is not likely to become converted to the Spiritual Divine in all of its billions, to become converted to the true process of religion in our lifetime. Perhaps it will never be converted.
(2.24) It is possible that anyone who hears and sees the Spirit-Born Adept will be converted to the Living Spiritual Reality and enter into the process of spiritual realization in community with others who have been likewise converted. Such individuals magnify their disposition in the world and are of use in the world to help the world in the direction of Ultimate Transformation, but without distress. Still, the fundamental process of their existence is spiritual, or a matter of moment to moment God-Communion. That Communion is their Happiness. By submission to that Condition, through the spiritual process inherent in God-Communion, they are transformed in this world and ultimately Translated beyond all conditional worlds, or all worlds in which dissociation from the Spirit, or self-possession, is possible. Those who fulfill the Way perfectly are Translated into the Divine Domain or the Transcendental Condition.
(2.25) This conversion to spiritual Communion is the essence and fundamental necessity upon which this Way depends. Thus, it must constantly be emphasized. Without such conversion, without true "hearing" and "seeing," without spiritual rebirth, the Way cannot be practiced. It can be imitated, but it cannot be practiced. None of the disciplines are fruitful apart from such conversion. Those who are simply listening to the Teaching, who have not entered into this conversion in the Company of the Spiritual Master, may as part of the natural discipline of listening assume the various practical conditions associated with the practice of this Way, but even so they are not yet practicing the Way. They are listening or giving their attention to the possibility of practice. When there is full conversion, or "hearing" and "seeing" to the point of real practice, then real preparation for the ultimate form of the Way begins-and not until then.
(2.26) Spiritual conversion is the most fundamental matter to be considered by beginners and the most fundamental event for listeners. When it occurs, it changes the entire quality of your existence. You become Happiness Itself, and you can never become un-Happy or bound again. You may seem to become bound again, perhaps, if you commit the ultimate sin, if you deny the Spirit, become self-possessed in your mind, emotion, and body again. Bondage is always possible short of perfect Enlightenment. But once you are established in the Principle of God-Communion, nothing in that Principle can bind you again or cause you to become un-Happy. Once you discover It, if you will simply abide in It, the process of the Way is assured.
Part III
(continued next post) |
