THE EGO (AND RELATED MATTERS)
(Quotations in ITALICS are from Adi Da)
THE CONCEPTION OF "DIFFERENCE"
The very perception and conception of "difference" (or of "otherness", or of the Great Exclusive "Other") is the sign that the separate (and inherently separative) ego-"I" (or psycho-physical self-contraction), rather than Truth (Itself), is the presumed basis of apparent (or conditional) existence.
FROM: Eleutherios
MANIFEST EXISTENCE
Manifest existence is association with the force of conditionality. The inherent circumstance of manifest existence is change, temporariness, limitation, struggle with opposites, search for happiness, motivation toward release, and attachment to what is neither ultimate nor necessary.
FROM: Nirvanasara
THE FUNCTION OF THE EGO
The function of the ego, or the separate and separative self, is to prevent experience. The ego is a device. The ego is "Narcissus". The ego is contraction. By participating in this contraction, you separate yourself and make yourself immune to the field of events. The field of events exists in many dimensions, but by presuming this separate and separative self-which is not an entity but an action, or contraction-you dissociate yourself from the field in which the body-mind exists, from every level of that pattern, every dimension of it. You prevent experience. You confine yourself to merely existing. You immunize yourself against phenomena.
Now, this is the common state of people. This is the fundamental state that I have always Addressed in you all. This is your disposition. You are trying to feel good as this egoic self. You are trying to save this separate and separative self. You are trying to acquire for it a good future, but that egoic self, that thing to which you are constantly referring, must be interfered with if you are to Realize Divine Happiness and a "good future".
This egoic self is not just the apparent one you call "I". This egoic self is a contraction, something you are adding to existence. It is a machine, a kind of robot, an invention of your own existence that is interfering with your existence.
You must release this machine, this contraction. By doing so, you enter into vulnerable intimacy with every level of the total field of existence, physically, yes, in terms of all the relations physical life involves, but also psychically, in terms of every dimension in which you can participate consciously.
You are natively vulnerable. But "Narcissus" is trying to become invulnerable. The purpose of the egoic self is to be invulnerable. Yet by becoming invulnerable, you dissociate yourself from the whole pattern of existence. In effect, by defining your existence, by becoming an egoic self, you cease to exist. You retard yourself in fear, which is the basic mood of this self-contraction.
FROM A TALK: November 9, 1980
THE EGO AS CONTRACTION OF FEELING
Ego is not an entity but an activity. It is contraction of the field of Radiance. That contraction is "read" as realms, worlds, or environments, bodies (particularly one, which is one's present face, form, and life), desires, emotions, thoughts, perceptions, all knowledge, and all known phenomena, high and low. But the contraction is single, universal, present, and utterly deluding, through the binding force of implication. The native Condition in the midst of conditions is unqualified heart-felt Radiance, or undefined whole-body Radiation, which is Love.
Ego, and all suffering and delusion, is simply contraction of Feeling. Liberation is Realized via return to the Condition of Feeling-Radiance (unqualified Relationship) in the midst of conditions, high or low. Such is Sahaj Samadhi. On this basis, there is also Radical Intuition of the Real, prior to all objectification of subjects, objects, and relations, which is Bhava Samadhi.
FROM: Breath and Name
EGOITY AND TRUTH
The "inner self" is not the ego, or "I." The total body-mind or experiential self is the ego, the "I" of "me" and "mine," Narcissus. And all suffering is egoity, or self-possession, the reflexive drama of Narcissus. All unhappiness is bondage to the body-mind. "I" is the psycho-physical urge, the complex destiny of repetitions, the eternal sameness of needs and fears, desires and aversions, expansions and withdrawals, entrances and exits, births and deaths.
Truth is the Condition prior to the adventure of the ego, prior to self-possession, prior to obsessive association with the body-mind. The Way of Truth is Ecstasy, self-transcendence, or transcendence of the experiential body-mind. The practice of Ecstasy is a matter of the surrender of the total body-mind via radical insight, or intuitive transcendence of all forms of recoil toward self, all forms of the avoidance of relationship, all forms of psycho-physical contraction, all forms of experience or differentiated attention. It is a matter of self-abandonment and self-forgetting in the Universal Field of Radiant Life-Energy and Transcendental Consciousness. It is acceptance of death to the point of Ecstasy, Unqualified Life, the vanishing of all experiential necessities, all subjective implications, all subject-object urges. It is Liberation from all forms of psycho-physical existence. It is Dissolution of the "soul," who is both the inner and the outer Man. It is Translation into the Divine Condition. It is to Swoon in the Transition to the Transcendental Domain of objectless Radiance, beyond all the worlds of the body-mind, whether they are high or low in the scale of Cosmic experience. It is to be Outshined by the Divine Truth or Radiant Condition of all the universes and all the selves that play and feed upon one another in the total Machine of Nature. It is to be Rescued through perfect identification with God. It is Surrender of self-defense. Therefore, it is the Surrender of everything that we mean by a "lifetime." It is Infinite Love.
FROM: Scientific Proof of the existence of God will soon be announced by the White House.
Now Frederick, here's my "taste-test" for you:
WHERE DO YOU POSITION "GOOD AND EVIL"
WITHIN "TRUTH" OR "EGOITY"? OR SOMEWHERE ELSE?
Namaste!
Jim |
