Knee of Daism Two: DA AS NARCISSUS (original) (raw)

FROM Elias:

Natasha,

I sympathize with you big time (I too was involved with DFJ for a time).

Here's what I've come to now, sixteen years later. On re-reading, some of the following sounds a bit portentous, but that's how it came out, so here goes----

Have you ever noticed that existence is generally lived in terms of friendships, intimacy with lovers, private relations, and the solitude of individuals? Your personal situation is where you find real love and real love is where the oh-so-quiet presence of God is found -- not in crowds. Crowds and collectivities of people always project power into a leader and behave politically and lovelessly toward anyone who does not join in. Always. Crowds always hype you into a communal mind and debase and demean the individual, creating a state of mental conflict, self-doubt, a feeling of unworthiness, confusion, and a loss of happiness. (And, as you have noticed, they drain your energy-money.) The only time people are happy in crowds is when they seem to be winning the approval of the "leader" of the crowd. (And who made him leader of anything? Each person in the crowd lost her/his individuality to the leader.)

A room full of people is loss of soul. Just look at the pictures of the followers of Frank (Adi Da) in his new book "See My Brightness Face to Face" (especially the back cover). Every devotee is in a goofy state of projecting his/her own Spiritual Truth outside himself/herself. Every one is in a state of identification with the guru, and has lost the sense of personal spiritual worth that is so important for real spiritual awakening.

The old cliché is that home is where the heart is. That's the plain truth. It is in the microcosm of family life, the quiet life of small numbers of sharing hearts that the macrocosm is found. There is no outside to it, only an inner wholeness. Where three are gathered there are mother, father, and child...the Divine Trinity. Add more children, add a few close friends...and you have Heaven. You don't need anything else to complete the Work.

That's living religion...that's what's most precious and sacred...not a room full of worshippers around a flesh and blood idol.

You must value your own intimacy, for that is the alembic of the Awakening Self. Great and profound meaning is found in your relations with your lover and your children and your close friends. The "religious" cults will spend great energy trying to convince you that your private life is "Narcissus" or sin or self-limiting unrelatedness... The great taboo of Adidam is that anyone should have their "own" spiritual experience or understanding or enlightenment. And this taboo cuts out the heart of what enlightenment is really about.

Who is Narcissus? Narcissus doesn't practice intimacy, or the mutual surrender of real love. He practices posing as the image of God. Narcissus has completely devalued the divine in others, and become obsessed with himself from the outside, a man in a thousand photographs, a man posing for the adulation of crowds...

Sound like anybody you know?

Narcissus is uncomfortable in situations of mutuality, i.e., real love. That's why your "guru" makes it so difficult to meet him. He is afraid of you, unless you are dominated by his image. And don't even think about having a face to face conversation, alone in a room with him. Narcissus loves the protection of crowds and the politics of crowds, where he can compete for status and attention.

But Christ dies alone, marked as a criminal. Buddha sits alone, hidden from the mad eyes of the world. Krishna is hidden in intimate embrace with his consort. And Ramana Maharshi, in the end, is simply an obscure and puzzling old man, drifting off to the Unknown, and only he knows what he knows...

Only you know what you know. You must understand that all the macrocosm is found where your "I" is most aware of your "I am" -- in the continuum of the Self. It is your own life, the life you are given, that is your doorway to the Divine. You weren't born to play an extra in Frank's movie. You were born to reveal God in the microcosm of your private life, in your intimacies.

It is you who stir the water of your own awareness. It is you who will one day find yourself in the conscious position of seeing that your whole life was a series of ripples created in the water by your own hand. You will withdraw your hand and the water will become still. The ripples were interesting, involving for awhile...but they only last as long as YOU stir the water.

Who will remember you and know of your passing? Who will accompany you into the mystery of the Heart? The Heart Itself will be your mystery, and it won't wear a mask or ask you to worship it for eternity.

Sacrifice all the idols. (They certainly are determined to sacrifice you!) Dare to be alone and with your lover and your children. Disown, disrespect and feel distaste for the God who demands to be worshiped in bodily form. No such God ever appeared, nor will such a God ever appear. That figure is a sign of the adversary of the Spirit of Truth. It seduces even the real saints to a realm of religious fantasy, in which the Self is just sucked out of them, until they experience Self-dissociation, and Realization becomes an unattainable goal hidden behind the Oz-mask of the "guru".

Reality is not a consensus mind, nor an object of belief. It is never found in crowds. It is only found where you are.

your bud,

Elias

FROM Sri Bob:

Sri Bob Stands Up for Adi Da!

Adi Da is my brother. I come not to bury him, but to praise him. His transcendentally silly follies have been excoriated on this forum by many--not excluding myself. But like Ken Wilber & Col & Ted & Elias & Peter & Tina & Deep Thinker & JCB & Conrad & Roger et al, Adi Da is my brother. No matter how unloving his behavior may appear, he cannot be any less God than you, me, my family, my cats. Thus, I come to praise.

Of course, an amusing quirk of my acolyte (yes, I deny not I am Frank's failed causal plane master) is that he professes to be more God than anyone else. Yada yada yada. He has pathologically conflated his transpersonal and personal selves. What of it? I come to praise, not bury.

Remember, he IS God in the Frank Jones form--as we are all God manifesting in our own peculiar forms--and in these terms Adi Da's claims to uniqueness are as valid as any. His grandiose pronouncements and sociopathic personality traits do not change this one iota. None of us are better than him. If only he could Grok that none of us are less God than him . . . and perhaps he does but is afraid to let it out lest his bitchin tropical paradise scam be pulled from beneath his gouty feet. Can you imagine this pampered cherub working at a real job? Yet my praise is boundless.

Let's put the complaints in perspective:

As money-grubbing crooks go, Franklin Jones is small potatoes. A few million scammed. Big deal. He wouldn't have amounted to a line item on Bugsy Seigel's housekeeping budget. I come to praise, you see.

As alcoholic pill-poppers go, Frank has em all beat hands down--he always has a designated driver and, it is said, fellator.

Besides, as sex perverts go, he again seems no worse than most. From what I hear it's pretty much consenting adults stuff, no matter how unsavory--and no matter that some of the 'adults' involved have the emotional development of dependent children. We're focusing on praise here, my children.

As charismatic sociopaths go, he'll never be in Hitler's league, or Pol Pot's, or even Jim Jones' league. Speaking of sociopaths, Jimmy Swaggart will be lovingly remembered long after Adi Da is lost in dusty, roachy archives.

And as spiritual researchers go--listen to this--Adi Da has, by my guestimate, but a few thousand peers on this planet. Indeed, more praise for my brother.

As to secrecy and paranoia--almost all cults suffer similarly, so don't blame Frankie Da. Most cults ultimately flounder on the abusive shoals of drugs & alcohol, power & money, sex. It goes with the territory. Just so.

Okay, yes, Franklin Jones or Adi Da (or both) are deluded, but who isn't? Read the political or society page, I'll show you something about delusion. Remember, I come to praise my brother, not to bury him.

My point, then, is for all to take Joy in the play of light, of Lila, of my brother (and yours) Adi Da. Frankie Da and Ken Wilber represent wonderful extremes of spiritual hedonism--one admittedly requiring enormously more ass-kissing than the other, but both with egos like locomotives. Both draw strong minds to their spectacular books, and occasionally these minds chafe at the mildly disguised contempt and arrogance coloring their work. That some of these strong minds find their way to the Wilber Forum is a matter of great joy--even when venting. Just so.

So as we take potshots at each other, remember that no one is all right or all wrong (excepting 8th going on 9th stage Adepts, natch). We can learn a lot from Adi Da's mistakes--he probably represents, after all, the magnificent, dramatic, dying gasps of the old guru system. So temper your criticisms with love. It'd be a damn shame not to have Adi Da (or Ken Wilber, for that matter) to kick around anymore.

So be kind. Praise Adi Da as I do! Maybe even praise Ken Wilber. We've as much to learn from their follies as their focused genius.

Namaste, Sri Bob

FROM Elias:

Some thoughts on the Narcissus myth, as it is used by Frank:

NARCISSUS, CROWDS, and SOLITUDE

Have you ever, in your whole life, seen anybody sitting by a pond looking at his/her own reflection? (I've seen children do that...I saw an Indian do it in a movie, and saw a dog do that once.)

On the other hand, have you ever seen narcissists flashing on each other at parties, or competing for attention in schoolrooms, or working as performers and actors, rock musicians, fashion models and politicians?

How many narcissists enjoy labeling cans in grocery stores, or working as garbage collectors, electricians, nurses, gardeners, carpenters, house painters, etc. etc.?

The natural setting for a narcissist, it seems fairly obvious, is a situation where the attention of other people is focused on him or her. The moment by the pond, the moment in front of the mirror, is just the setup for the moment in the spotlight.

In fact, narcissists, in general, HATE solitude, and feel lonely and uncomfortable by themselves.

They are identified with their own image, for sure, but the proof and justification of their self-love is not in solitude, but in seeking the notice and attention of others.

The myth of Narcissus, by the way, was created before the invention of the CAMERA, that mirror that multiplies itself for the eyes of the world... Thanks to the camera Narcissus can be the focus of attention everywhere, and he can even, theoretically, become the center of all attention. At any one moment, 98% of the world can know of his existence and be looking at his face in a movie theater or on television or in a magazine...

On solitude: It takes a strong heart to live in solitude. You either get lucid or you start talking to yourself and go crazy. A narcissistic personality needs people around him, paying homage to his self-image. Narcissus doesn't isolate himself...just the opposite. Narcissus is afraid of being alone with his nothingness, with the void of his own ego. A narcissist does not do well in a monastic cell.

To be a "nobody", to live a simple obscure life with family and friends, is not the first choice of a narcissist. (In fact, the family and intimate lives of narcissists tend to be unhappy, full of conflict, jealousy, abuse, etc.)

Narcissus greatest fear is that he does not exist, or that he might not be remembered. So Narcissus builds monuments to himself, temples, even whole religions.

Narcissus wants to be a Star, and he wants to be remembered as the Great One.

In traditional religion, all the ceremonies and temples and monuments came after the original act of heroism of the Teacher. In fact, traditionally the spiritual hero expresses humility, and tries to deflect attention away from himself to his message, which is that God is found not outside yourself, but in your own heart.

Or take a simple shining example from secular society--

Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves. Did Abraham Lincoln ask people to build a memorial to him, to honor his act of restoring dignity to the black race?

No, after he was gone, after he was assassinated, people remembered him with such awe and love, that they were moved to erect memorials to his memory.

So with Jesus. A simple meal the night before he died is now a complex religious ceremony enacted in great gothic cathedrals all over the world. (One surmises that Jesus would not condone all the pomp and circumstance that has grown up around his memory. He would still prefer to hang out with the poor rather than spend time with the priests.)

But I have noticed (as have others) that Frank does the whole show himself. He builds the statues, erects the religion around himself, accumulates and spends the wealth, and proclaims himself the Liberator...when in fact, no enlightened being has stepped forward to acknowledge that he was the instrument of their enlightenment.

He is the Enlightener of All Beings, and yet we don't find any enlightened people around him -- NONE.

We do find people worshipping him according to his rules, and bowing to photographs he ordered taken. Virtually all his "recognition" is self-generated. He owns the printing press and he prints the books. He micro manages the magazines, he chooses the photographs, and he controls the lives of the community of devotees from morning to night. (I remember, as an employee of Dawn Horse Press, hearing him screaming on the telephone to my supervisor about the most minor details.)

By the standards of traditional society, Frank is like the man in the madhouse claiming to be Napoleon who has convinced a few of the other patients that he is the Boss. But the people walking around outside the walls of his Loka with-bars-on-the-windows say "Yes, you think you are Napoleon, but we don't think so. You claim to be the Most Enlightened Being Ever Was and Ever Will Be, but we don't think so. It just doesn't add up. By traditional religious standards, you are quite insane, totally nuts, absolutely bonkers, a real freakazoid nutcase..."

One man against the world...and about a thousand people have bought his one-way rap. So Pilgrim and his companions are entranced and mind-gone to the Loka where the Mad King rules with the hand of jealousy and contempt for human beings (whom he calls "pigs") and where his baroque and bizarre religious fantasies replace all things merely human...

Hasta la vista, Pilgrim.

;-) Elias