cyee@bruce.cs.monash.edu.au (Chut Ngeow YEE) (05/22/91)
I have been following the recent discussions by johnw et. al. with great interest. But it is getting a little bit too wordly and intellectual for my lazy and lethargic brain. I do not have any great insight to add to the current discussions, but I feel that some of you might welcome a bit of humour and digression. Below is a talk by Da Avabhasa (Da Free John), whom IMHO I considered the most remarkable Adept living now. Not that I have read a lot or have a wide encounter, but he does has the power of blowing my mind away and cracking a smile in my heart. SRI DA AVABHASA: If you want to "get religious" in our time, you must first decide that you have the Dreaded Gom-Boo. Then you go to a Doctor Pope, Doctor Church, Doctor Jesus, Doctor Mahatma, Doctor Mahatmaboo, Doctor Gombooananda, Doctor Gomananda-Booharaj. As soon as you get the feeling that you have the disease, you start looking for religious answers... In truth, the religious or spiritual process has nothing at all to do with the disease you want to make the premise of the spiritual process. The first thing you must do when you truly become involved in the process associated with Truth is to understand, and, immediately, directly, presently, to transcend the disease that you seek otherwise to cure, The pursuit of the cure of the disease is the same activity as the one whereby you first acquired the disease. It is a version of the diesese, something you do because you are diseased. It is not another process than disease. At most it involves a different relationship to the disease. Whereas previously you unwittingly did everything that compounded the disease, now you want to do everything to get rid of it. The search for the cure is still another way of being diseased. It is not the Way of Truth. It is not the Way that I Teach. It is not true religion or true spirituality. True religion, true spirituality, is the process that takes place when you are already well, when you are in your Native position, when you are established in Truth, Happiness, or Reality... The spirutial process is to understand how you contracted this disease, understand the mechanics of your presuming it always in this present moment so that in every present moment you will be established in the Free Position, the Position of Happiness, Truth, or the presumption of Being. The spiritual process, then, becomes the magnification of non- disease, prior Happiness, the prior presumption. DA AVABHASA The Dreaded Gom-Boo, or the Imaginary Disease That Religion Seeks to Cure If there is any interest I will share with you some of my other favouriate pieces of his, or perhaps I might even venture to write something about the life and work of Da Avabhasa with my very imperfect understanding. Yee