Adi Da Samraj:

 

"Have you all heard about the Dreaded Gom-Boo? Or the impossible Three-Day Thumb-and-Finger Problem? Ah ha! You see?

Nobody tells you about these things except me.

 

"A myth has been circulating for many centuries now that mankind is diseased, that all beings are suffering from what I call the Dreaded Gom-Boo, also called sin, maya, ego, suffering, separated individuality, illusion, delusion, confusion, and indifference. We are all supposed to accept this diagnosis, realize how diseased we are, and submit ourselves to the local religious hospital, where a father or mother doctor will confirm our disease and require us to submit for the rest of our lives to various regimes for our own healing and ultimate cure. This is the basic proposition of traditional religion, and it begins with the diagnosis

of the dreaded disease.

​

Tradition has it that we are all, by birth, by virtue of our very existence, even now diseased, sinful, separated from the Great One. What a horror! Yes! What an obscenity has been laid upon us through the traditions of society, which, merely because of the impulse to survive as the body-mind, have for centuries required human beings to invest themselves with the belief in this disease and to suppress their own life-motion, which comes only from the Great One, in order to fulfill the presumed needs of our chaotic society.

 

"I come to tell you, as I stand in the midst of the priests of this horror, that not even one of you is suffering from this disease. It is an imaginary disease, a terrible disease, but altogether imaginary. No one has ever actually had this disease. Not one single being has ever had the Dreaded Gom-Boo, or the impossible Three-Day Thumb-and-Finger Problem. It has never happened! It does not exist!

 

"What is the Truth? We are Happy. We live in God. The Great One is our very Being. We inhere in the Blissful, Forceful Being of the Starry God, the Wonder, the Mystery, the Person of Love. This is our Situation and our Destiny. I am only one among many voices, but this is my Message to you: There is no disease. There is nothing to cure. We are not patients and we are not parented. We are not children. No dreadful destiny lies before us. There is nothing whatsoever to cure.

 

"However, in spite of these truths, you all act like patients or diseased persons and seem to deny or doubt the very condition of your existence. Therefore, I must remind you. I must call you to observe yourselves and to see how the conception of this disease arises. Where does it come from? How do you contract this imaginary disease and become involved in seeking its imaginary cure? I call you to observe yourself, and you will see, well, you're grabbing your ass! You're pinching your belly. You're ripping your hairs out. You're biting your tongue, you're pulling out your teeth, you're sticking your fingers in your eyes, you're causing yourself great pain because of your motive to be independent.

 

"You will never be independent. There is not even a molecule of wood in this wall that is independent. Nothing and no one is independent. All of us inhere in the Great One, the Wonderful Lord, the Marvelous Starry Person, the Delight of Being. All of us live in That. That is our situation now. This moment is the moment of Happiness, as is every future moment, every moment after death, beyond this world and other worlds, lower worlds, higher worlds, after worlds, no worlds. It is all the moment of infinite Delight, unless we become self-conscious and withdraw from our relations and contract upon our Happiness and forget It.

 

"This is my Message to you, then: There is no disease except the one you fabricate and reinforce through all the propagandas of this horrible world of egos. Understand it and instantly be free of your disease in every moment. Be free of this imaginary concoction of suffering. There isn't any such thing! The Great One has magnified Itself in the form of sexual beings, human beings, sexless beings, earth world, form and fruit and wood and wall and space and star and sky and cloud and tree and life and death. The same Great One takes all these forms, completely Indifferent, completely Free, completely Happy in all these excesses. This is all the Great One. The Great One creates nothing. The Great One is everything. What a Paradox! What a Mystery! What a Wonderful God!

 

"This is my Message to you. How wonderful is this obscene, absurd, ridiculous paradoxical Being that we are. This is what I tell you, and it relieves you of the conceit of your suffering and disease, the belief in your un-Happiness. It relieves you of your willingness to submit yourself to being a patient for the rest of your days. None of us are patients, none of us require a cure, none of us have parents anymore except perhaps as our friends. All of us stand free in the Great One, the Living One, the Living God, the One Who has inspired all the poor fools like me for centuries, the same delicious, glorious Divine One who is our own form, our own process, even our own body.

 

"We must align ourselves, resonate ourselves, tune ourselves with That and be totally free of self-consciousness and the pain of self-contraction. This belief in ourselves and our independence is our disease. We must invest ourselves with understanding and become priests of love, of Happiness, of freedom. Even our bodies must be submitted into this freedom, this glorious Happiness, so that our human relations become possible, so that our organic life, our human cellular form, this absurdity, this limited life, such as it is, lives in the Great One and is animated by the Great One. Its only consciousness is the consciousness that is the Great One. There is no limitation. The Great One Laughs and is Free of birth and death, Free of life, Free to live, Free to die, Free to be Happy all the time. This is always the moment of that one Principle, and there is no disease.

 

"Therefore, in every moment, what is the practice? To understand our belief in the disease, the impossible Three-Day Thumb-and-Finger Problem that is projected day after day into more and more days of hopeful hopelessness. All our plans, all our asceticism, all our self-indulgence, all our strategies, all the foolishness we engage in our un-Happiness must be purified by our Happiness, by our Awakening, by our understanding, by our freedom from self. This is the fundamental import of my Teaching, and it makes you free to be human, free to be related to one another, free to love one another."

 

​

This radical approach to life, spiritual practice and my understanding of everything to this day for me is addressed in this wonderful talk.

 

THE DREADED GOM-BOO

 

Part II: Renunciation

 

The Taboo against Owning and Knowing Too Much

 

Spoken: February 14, 1983

 

MASTER DA: Part of the purpose of spiritual practice is to participate in a very natural process of psychic elimination. Obviously, spiritual practice is for the sake of Transcendental Realization, but at another level, it is just a very natural eliminative process. Everybody should be meditating, if only for the purpose of psychic elimination, just as everybody should engage a rational approach to diet that enables the body to maintain a high level of elimination. Perhaps the most basic capacity of the body, which you must serve through a rational approach to living, is elimination.

 

Since it is so that for psychic and physical health you must be able to eliminate from the body, just think of the great harm done to people in a society like ours where taboos exist against elimination, excrement, emotional expression, sexual experience, sexual expression, and on and on. What is the effect of all those taboos? What kinds of neurotic people do such taboos create?

 

To be a truly human being you must heighten your capacity to eliminate. You must be an intentional eliminator. Strangely enough, grotesquely enough, and disgustingly enough, that is what you have to be, intentionally, efficiently, with great energy, great power, great interest! Isn't this amazing? Isn't this disgusting!

 

DEVOTEE: That is what we are built for!

 

MASTER DA: (Laughing) Yes! That is what the physical body, or the "food body," is. This eliminative capacity is a major aspect of the necessary function of not only the food body but all the bodies, even the subtler ones. And you must not retard it. You must get into it. Otherwise, you will become ill, not just physically but in all kinds of ways.

 

Trained as you are to be neurotics in our society, you tend not to be efficient at this primary function. You tend to retain things, to hide things in yourself. You hide toxins, feelings, thoughts, and psychic debris, and you poison yourself with your own neurosis. Unfortunately, our society forces people to acquire the neurosis of retention. Perhaps neurosis could be described most basically as the chronic inability to eliminate efficiently, in all kinds of ways, not just physically.

 

Neurosis is a retardation of the eliminative exercise, which is fundamental to well-being. Neurosis is the self-contraction itself, retention, the inability to release, to let go, to be continuous with the present moment of existence. The self-contraction is the self-toxifying motive. It backs up all the forces of life, and you become deluded, possessed not only by toxins in the body that distort your bodily self-awareness, but possessed by distorted psychological imagery and illusions about Reality.

 

So much of what we call religion is the occupation of people who cannot release themselves psychically. They need the support of the illusion of conventional religion because they are so self-toxified, so self-bound. They have backed up so much of the Force of Being through their neurotic habit that they cannot release these neurotic contents, they cannot enjoy a sense of well-being and be continuous with That which is Real. Thus, they need to support themselves with illusions.

 

All neurotics support themselves with illusions and are deluded not only psychically but also physically. The eating habits of neurotics tend to be associated with taking false food, food that really does not sustain the body or promote a sense of well-being but that becomes toxins or obstructions in the body. This is why there is so much junk food in our society. Junk food is the equivalent of false psychic, psychological, and philosophical views. It is fake food, plastic, an illusion of food, just as conventional religion is an illusion of Truth.

 

Perhaps we could say that our primary problem, the illusory problem, the "Dreaded Gom-Boo," is a distortion of the eliminative capacity of the total being, and is therefore associated with illusion, delusion, falsity, imitation Reality, fake food. What we need to do, then, is to break out of this contraction and restore the eliminative capacity or the capacity for release, and release the self-contraction, not just as a psychological event, however, but as a total event in every area of the being. Therefore, you must submit yourself as a physical being to becoming an eliminative character.

 

This conclusion is not compatible with the conventional, social self-idea promoted in our society. We are not supposed to think of ourselves as eliminative characters. We are supposed to think of ourselves as acquisitive characters, people who acquire things, the consumer always stuffing itself, filling itself, consoling itself. Conventional religion is just another consumer product for neurotics who cannot release and let go of things, and who, being in a self-toxified state physically, psychically, and altogether, need to console themselves with illusions. Conventional religion is a McDonald's hamburger for the mind. It is not real food. It is not Truth. It is just a support for a being that cannot be free, that cannot release itself.

 

Our entire society is based on the consumer psychology, not the eliminative psychology of free being. Thus, you feel guilt and shame relative to the bodily function of elimination, and the same relative to sex, which on one level has an eliminative function. You do practice sex as elimination, but you eliminate Life through your obsession with the convention of orgasm, whereas in the sex function you should be releasing not precious vitality but negative feelings and physical self-consciousness. You should conduct Life, not let It go.

 

Neurotics as we are, trained as we have been in our conventional society, we eliminate Life, we eliminate what is precious, and we hold on to what is false. In order to Be Free, therefore, you must, among other things, somehow come to terms with the fact that you as a bodily being are an eliminative character, and you must begin to live as such. Get amused with it. Get strong with it. Somebody who does not shit is full of shit. (Laughter.) Somehow you must feel right with the idea that you are a shitter, an eliminator. You must feel it as an expression of your strength, your freedom, your purity. Only neurotics hold on to all this garbage, not just physically but in every way, and they are unwell and need illusions to support their diseased state.

 

You must become a person who does not need illusions to live. And if you are going to be a person who does not need illusions to live, you must become capable of eliminating or releasing the self-contraction and all accumulations. You must become a renunciate, not an ascetic but a releaser, a true renunciate. Renunciation in the Way that I Teach is the capacity for self-release, the constant exercise of the release of accumulations. It is to cease to be an accumulator or an owner and instead to be a released being in the Real Condition.

 

As an expression of the Free Position of Spiritual Realization, some highly evolved beings sit around on piles of shit. Why do they do this? What is the real meaning of it? It is an acknowledgment of the truth of the food body, that it is an eliminator, not an accumulator. These guys sit around naked on piles of shit and own nothing. They seem offensive to us because in our neurosis we do not find one another attractive as eliminators. We find one another attractive as accumulators or owners. This attitude has become the design of consciousness everywhere, and we have become consumers and owners, associated with attributes, clinging to forms, substances, states, imageries. We release nothing, and we are not free.

 

There seems to be no shit around in our society, at least nothing people would generally acknowledge to be shit. Yet there is nothing else but shit around, but it appears in the form of some consumer product, something ownable, something attractive. Everybody tries to look attractive, yet people are not eliminators. They turn all their shit into gold, into TV sets and automobiles and beautiful clothing and jewelry. They renounce nothing. There is no freedom in them.

 

Somebody who is free and who is an eliminator begins to be offensive. To break the chain of one's impulse toward ownership is to perform an act with which people in the world, in general, do not feel comfortable. They feel that the renunciate is violating some great principle, whereas the body itself is designed to be a renunciate, an eliminator, a releaser. The body wants to simply stand free in a state of equanimity. It cannot accumulate and stand free at the same time, however. As soon as the body starts accumulating, it becomes out of balance, toxic, and diseased, and its diseased state is manifested in every dimension of the being, psychological, psychic, and spiritual.

 

DEVOTEE: Master, you once told me, "If you ever begin to own too much or know too much, you will get yourself in trouble."

 

MASTER DA: Yes. There are two basic taboos in traditional societies, communities, and tribes: the taboo against owning too much and the taboo against knowing too much.

 

The taboo against knowing too much is associated with the idea that knowledge is power. The knower has a unique, almost magical power over the known. Knowledge is the power to control, manipulate, or even enslave the known. Therefore, traditionally, there have been taboos against too much accumulation of private, secret, or unshared knowledge. This is the root of popular ambivalence toward sorcery, magic, occultism, priestcraft, and even authority.

 

Whatever knowledge is gained by Man should be shared by mankind. Otherwise, the few "owners" of knowledge will tend to develop a hierarchical league of power, to suppress, limit, control, and exploit others. This view corresponds to our American ideal of free speech, a free press, and so on. But ultimately it means that Wisdom, not merely information and conventional knowing, must be made accessible to the people. The Adept is the Champion of such access since he shares his own Secret with all beings.

 

If you own too much, if you become too rich, if you look like a "super-owner," you also look like a dominator, and there are taboos against domination. Certain systems have therefore developed in traditional societies to enable people who begin to accumulate too much to share their excess with others and redistribute it. This practice actually corresponds to the mechanism used by the Adept. The Adept receives peoples gifts, but he redistributes them, makes them part of the substance of the community, rather than accumulating a great pile, and he is constantly acting as the instrument for equalizing the content of existence within the community. This same design has been used in traditional societies since ancient days.

 

Are you familiar with the ritual of the potluck supper in Christian churches? It is a carry-over from the "potlatch" of the tribal societies of the American Indians. Periodically somebody who has been very successful and accumulated a great deal of goods prepares a great feast for everyone in the tribe, using up his wealth in feeding everybody and giving extravagant gifts to everyone. In this way, the individual redistributes his goods and therefore no longer owns so much as a result. But he achieves great honor. The potlatch is a very honorable event, and therefore he achieves great prominence in his community while no longer being a super-owner. This is the traditional way whereby people become honorable.

 

In our society, we have no such system. The ideal of our society is to accumulate as much as possible. People do not necessarily like you if you are rich, but to be rich is still an ideal of which they feel envious because everybody else wants to be rich too. Unfortunately, the democratic systems, as well as all other systems for that matter, tend to be based on the ideal of the millionaire plumber, every man in his castle, everybody super-wealthy, rather than everybody free, released of the bondage of ownership and living in a common domain where much is enjoyable and where everyone has an opportunity to participate.

 

This is the principle of community. It is part of what community life and family life are all about. We should not live as little white-castle families fulfilling the ideal of accumulation. We should live in communities where we share all the goods and energies of life. Everyone should live as well as possible, but the concepts of sharing and cooperation are basic to equalizing the trends toward egoic accumulation and releasing people from relational bondage.

 

The principle of community is an extension of our right attitude toward embodied existence. Our fundamental activity is not to accumulate but to eliminate, to release, to stand free. Nothing with which we are associated should represent bondage to us, but should rather be part of our free regard. We should not own our relations. Having a castle and a dozen cars in the garage and gold piled high in the attic is the same as having a body full of fat and toxins, and being diseased and deluded and consoled by things that are not real or that do not last.

 

The principle of elimination or release is fundamental. We should all understand it and we should make use of it in the personal terms of our psychophysical existence altogether, as I have just indicated. But clearly, we should make use of this principle in our social life, which should be eliminative and not merely accumulative. Obviously what we do produces results that we may accumulate, but we should equalize the process by living cooperatively in community, not by living as individual super-accumulators. If things are accumulated, they should be accumulated for everyone.

 

This ideal can be developed rather abstractly, as in the super-States of communism, but it does not really work out on such a large scale. It is a principle that must be worked out in intimate terms, in the body-mind and in the scale of truly human existence. We do not need a great State to equalize us all. Such a State breeds a kind of domination that everyone suffers. Instead, and even in order to avoid the possibility of such domination, we should live in community. We should be self-releasers constantly in our daily living. We should live cooperatively with others, equalize the goods of life in some basic terms, and grant everyone a basic capacity for sustenance by participating in cooperative life. Then everyone should have all kinds of wonderful things to enjoy in common.

 

Such is what our institution and our community are supposed to be about. As a renunciate, I do not own anything. Things are accumulated by our institution, but they are everybodys. Thus, we make Sanctuaries and we have beautiful places where we can all go on retreat and gather together. All the great things that we accumulate are ours in common, and we should meet and enjoy these things together.

 

This principle is simply the extension of our rational understanding of what we are as manifest beings. We are not in principle accumulators. We are more fundamentally releasers or eliminators. Only as releasers are we free. Therefore, obviously, the principle of life is renunciation, not self-bound accumulation.

 

To be able to participate in the self-transcending Way of life, we must overcome our egoity. The ego is the principle of accumulation, the self-bound knot, the castle in the air, the superior self-protected adversary of all other beings. We must understand ourselves spiritually and in real human terms begin to practice a personal discipline that characterizes true renunciation, or commitment to Happiness rather than emptiness, and on that basis, then, become capable of a different way of living with other people whereby many great and wonderful things can be created and enjoyed by everyone.

 

This is why it is good to live in community and develop cooperative systems, to get out of the ego-mold, or the mold of the accumulator, the successful capitalist, or communist, the successful ego that accumulates, stuffs himself or herself with everything from worldly goods to food to beliefs and phony ideals of all kinds.

 

Such a cooperative way of life is based on recognizing the fact that the body shits. The body is a food bag, a food sheath, a big balloon, a vessel. It needs to communicate substances to itself to regenerate its cellular existence, but it must not accumulate or it will go out of balance. It must eliminate, most basically. The primary part of the breath, for example, is the exhaled breath. If you cannot release, then all your reception will be a kind of negative accumulation. All the inhaled breaths will be an attempt to accumulate independently, a diseased motivation.

 

You must first be able to exhale, release, or surrender. In the released disposition, you can receive-not accumulate but conduct what you receive and be sustained by it. Then you can release what is not needed and share what is not necessary for existence. This principle, then, is magnified into the whole domain of spiritual understanding and into the whole domain of social existence. Those who live in community should be renunciates, not ascetics but people who live according to this principle, understanding themselves functionally, spiritually, and socially.

 

The State is not here to command us, like a parent. As soon as the State must command us to socialize ourselves, we are in a different position. Unfortunately, such is the position of most States and the political position of most people, because people do not have access to Wisdom. They do not understand the Way of Life. They need to be controlled by State mechanisms, therefore, all of which, whether they are called capitalist, communist, free, or totalitarian, are artifices, called into being to command the existence of people who do not understand themselves. The State in a true society, a society of people who understand the Law and who live humanly and cooperatively, should basically be an extension of their free cooperation with one another and their agreement to accomplish something on a larger scale for the general benefit.

 

I do not recommend that we become revolutionaries, aggravated with the State. Particularly in a free society, such conflict should not be necessary. We should be free to engage in truly radical politics, however, which is not an effort against the State, but which is the devotion of human beings to human politics, to living with others according to the principle of renunciation, self-release, cooperation. Our existence in the realm of the State should be cooperative, not submissive to arbitrary limits on our freedom. We must struggle with limits in any society, but we must be free to cooperate positively with the ultimate or right purposes of any State. And particularly in a free society, we should be able to do so.

 

The purposes of our State should be to represent and organize the cooperative will of free people, and not to superimpose limits on anyone, not to command religion, belief, what we do privately, what we do in the small scale of our lives. Such is not the business of the State. Such is an intrusion. It occurs even in a so-called free State, and especially it occurs in terrible form in totalitarian States or formalized systems that exist only to command and make order and that have no notion whatsoever of the necessary and inherent freedom of living beings.

 

Cooperation and self-transcendence are the essence of human life, and they fulfill the Law commonly known through the Christian and Hebrew religious traditions: Love God absolutely, and love your neighbor. Live a self-transcending life in relation to others. What is the Law then? Self-transcendence and cooperation. The Law is twofold, simple to understand. Where you are, where you stand in the Existence Place, you must be a self-transcender, and in relations, you must be a cooperator.

 

The Law of Jesus and the Old Testament can be reduced to this notion: Transcend yourself, and cooperate with others. In your place, transcend yourself. In relations, cooperate, since cooperation is also a form of self-transcendence. Live as a renunciate, live in God-Communion through self-transcendence, and live cooperatively with others, transcending your own self-possessed, accumulative habit in relationship.

 

If you abandon this Law, if you do not transcend yourself and do not cooperate, you become a neurotic, an aberrated being. Since neurotic people will not cooperate, will not live rationally, will not be responsible for themselves, since they will only be afraid, they create political systems that presume only one purpose, which is to bring order and control the people. Neurotic people bring totalitarian states and terrible political systems into being by not living according to Wisdom, by not living Free. When people will not be human, will not submit themselves to the Law of human existence, they require that Parent States come into existence to control them, to bring order.

 

If there is political trouble in this world, therefore, ultimately it is the fault of the people themselves. Of course, they must have access to Wisdom in order to become responsible and to call a different kind of State into being. Thus, it is my Work, as well as the Work of some others perhaps, to introduce people to Wisdom, to give them access to Wisdom, so that the people will change. If the people will change, then the State will change.

 

But I am not here to change the State, to be a political figure or a public figure. I am here to change the people by giving them access to the Way of Life, to the Truth. If you will enter into the Way, you will change. Everyone will change ultimately, to the degree he or she can become attuned with this consideration. If all the people did it, then the State would change and world politics would change necessarily. It is not very likely that such change is imminent at this moment in history, but at least those who are interested in this consideration can change themselves, and in the small scale of their natural human life they can fulfill the Law.

 

Whatever limits superimpose themselves on us in our time, you can live a Happy life in human terms. And certainly, there is no limit on your capacity to live a Happy life in spiritual terms, no matter what the times. Given access to Wisdom, there is no limit on your spiritual capacity. You can be perfectly Happy where you are, in the Existence Place, living the self-transcending Way, and you can certainly be Happy in your expression in relation to all others. Whatever the times, that enterprise in relationship with others can be more or less Happy, depending on the limits introduced historically during your lifetime.

 

To receive the Divine Gift you must have made a gift. You must have presented yourself ready. In other words, you must have released something first. Come to me when you are Happy, already Happy when you have heard the Teaching. Come for the Spirit-Blessing, come to receive the Gift, when you have understood yourself, when you have released your self-bondage, when you are prepared physically, psychically, emotionally, mentally, spiritually, altogether, and receive the Gift in that disposition.

 

The exhalation or the release precedes the reception, then. The Spirit-Force is not accumulated. We submit ourselves to It. It surrounds us. It is All-Pervading. It transcends our self-contraction, our limitation, our isolated individuality. We are not accumulating the Spirit-Force through our practice of this Way, through conductivity, or any of our spiritual Work. We are rather releasing ourselves into It. And thus releasing ourselves into It, we are also capable of conducting It. It does move through us, It does sustain us, but we do not hold It in ourselves nor are we Its independent center. This understanding pervades the Teaching of this Way and every aspect of our discipline.

 

Likewise, in your intimate life, you must not be accumulators, you must not be owners, you must not be self-possessed, you must not be motivated by reactive emotions, you must not be jealous, you must not be angry, you must not be independent. You must go beyond yourself. You must grant freedom to your relations, and all your relations should grant you freedom. We should not depend on our relations. We should be freely related to those we love. If we depend on our relations, then we step outside the Well of Happiness and begin to imagine that our Happiness depends on our relationships, and then we become involved in all the aggravated egoic forms and patternings of egoic relatedness.

 

We should relate to others on the basis of the primary Law of self-transcendence, self-release, freedom, so that we are in the position to magnify into the plane of relations the Happiness Inherent in the Well of Being. We should be freely related in intimacy and friendships and society. In daily life, all our relatedness should be utterly free, founded on prior self-transcendence or immersion in the Well of Inherent Happiness in the Existence Place, in the Self-Position. Only then are we capable of right human relatedness.

 

The model of conventional marrying in the domain of intimate life, for instance, is not an appropriate model. It is an egoic model of life. It is about ownership and dependence. We should live freely with one another, in our chosen intimacies, magnifying the Inherent Happiness of our spiritual life in those relationships. True intimate relations should be cooperative relationships among free people, not relations based on ego-bondage and ownership and dependence.

 

It is not that we are to be independent. We are to be free, not owned and not owning, free of all conventional emotions associated with the accumulative egoic character. We should magnify that Happiness in our relationships and choose the relationships that permit us to live the self-transcending Yoga, live in relationships with others who likewise practice It. Such is the right rule for intimate life, friendships, society, community living, the relationship to the Spiritual Master. All relationships should be based on this Law, and we should live free, not as dependent self-possessed characters.

 

Part of our consideration during these past few months has been your intimate living, your sexual life. The play between us has been an effort to break the spell, the enchantment, of dependency. The essence and the root of dependency is self-possession, self-contraction, not merely possession by another or bondage to another. Bondage to another is created by self-bondage, which is its principle.

 

Therefore, to transform our relationships, we must first understand ourselves and be free of our own self-bondage. Then our objective obsessions, our dependency games, will likewise be released. We are not capable of relationship until we have fulfilled the Law in our own place. Thus, the ancient Law has two forms. The primary form is what you do in your own place: Love God. Transcend yourself in the Divine, in the Existence Place, and on that basis, then, enter into relationships freely, not as the ego does, bound to itself, accumulating, defending, dissociating, owning, being owned-not that at all. But live in the Free Disposition, magnifying the Grace Inherent in the Existence Place, and transform the patterning of existence altogether. Live differently, based on Realization and self-transcending Wisdom. Do this, and the patterning of your ordinary life and intimate relations, sexual life, friendships, intimate society, cooperative society-all of that will change.

 

You must be a renunciate in every sphere of life. Therefore, you must be a renunciate in your own place first, and then you will be a renunciate in the first sphere of relational life, which is the sphere of intimate relatedness, including sexual intimacy and household intimacy. The first picture of your bondage is in your intimate life. You must be a renunciate there, a free being there, not merely a conventional householder, a married person, owned and owning, dependent and depended upon, childishly dependent and adolescently independent.

 

During these past few months, I have tried to help you to understand yourself where you are and in your intimate society and your sexual life. This understanding is most fundamental. You must be free of this bondage. You see how much trouble is caused in your lives by your failure to transcend yourself in your own place, and then by your failure to transcend yourself in the most immediate sphere of your relational life, your intimate society, your sexual life.

 

What is to be redressed or changed is not your related life first, but your life in place. Change that first, and then live differently everywhere. Obviously, the first thing you will change, then, is your intimate society and therefore your sexual life. As a being related to others sexually, intimately, you must be free, not bound, not dependent. You must know your Happiness first, and not think that you are acquiring It in relationship. You are magnifying It in relationship if you are free, but if you think you are acquiring It there, you are just consumers, self-bound, self-toxified, deluded. The whole domain of sexuality, therefore, must be profoundly transformed by this Wisdom of the Self-Position. And then every other aspect of your relatedness must likewise be changed.

 

I hope after our consideration that you understand this Principle and will live differently in your related life, based on a primary involvement in the Spiritual Work in your own place, and that you will no longer create ego-bound sexual or social relations of dependency. Do not do that anymore! You will not if you understand me, and if you understand yourself and are committed to the practice.

 

You must not bind yourself to another. Where there is another, fear arises. Fear is the context of relations until we Stand Free in the Transcendental Reality. Therefore, do not make dependency relationships with others, sexually, intimately, in friendships, socially. Do not do that anymore. Be a renunciate. Be Free. Stand already Free. And magnify that Freedom through relations. Then your relationships will be not patterns of dependency, but patterns of free cooperation and mutually expressed Happiness, in which each individual in the context of every relationship is transcending himself or herself in his or her own place, sharing and granting, in potlatch fashion, the excess of Realization.

 

- The Dreaded Gom Boo: Adi Da Samraj