Exalting oneself like Adi Da is a nihilistic pursuit
Posted by Broken
Yogi on Jul-23-03 3:37pm
Jeff, I admire your attempt to obfuscate a simple question of behavior and
morality by going to the most cosmological extremes of abstraction, but it
doesn’t fool anyone. Your point is???
You seem to be implying that because one can abstract life out of existence by a
purely materialistic analysis, that this means there is no genuine standard for
moral behavior, and that Adepts at the very least can simply do whatever they
like, create and destroy at their whim, because there is no real structure to
life and form that is worth adhering to, no real laws to life that we are all
bound by. You might as well argue with gravity or Maxwell’s equations. You are
simply not getting anywhere, and not making any point about either life or
consciousness that need be respected outside the purely philological
perspective.
Let’s just consider your notion that life does not exist, simply because there
is no “thing” that we can whittle down to a pure essence called “life”. The two
do not follow. Whether you take the Buddhist approach of anatta, which observes
that there is no “thingness” to anything, or the modern physics approach that
everything is a form of energy-light-matter, with no discrete or fixed location
or “thingness”, or even the Daist approach that there is no ego but only
activity - in all such cases life, consciousness, being, form, energy and
individuality exist in their most obvious manner. This is of course not a
problem to anyone who is alive, unless they abstract life in a “thing”, and then
despair that no such “thing” can be found.
It’s a self-defeating argument, designed to fail to find life. It is both
narcissistic and nihilistic. It denies life to all that we experience and know,
and posits instead a “whole” which we are somehow only a part of and yet totally
separate from. How, exactly, can any part of a living whole not be alive? The
aliveness of the whole is the central quality of every fragment of it. No matter
who much you divide the whole, each division is still alive. We are alive. We
are conscious. What have we proven even by questioning this except that we are
alive, and thus have already answered the question?
The fact that all things change does not mean they are dead, not alive. To the
contrary, change proves that they are alive. Only “dead” things never change.
All that lives changes. Even the Whole changes. Even Adi Da acknowledges this.
Why you don’t is beyond me.
The point about the Nazis is not irrelevant in this philosophical sense.
Nihilism is a real disease of modern times. Your argument that the “superior
man”, such as Adi Da, is not bound by any laws of moral behavior because the
universe itself has no inherent structure or reality is very much akin to the
nihilistic philosophies of the Nazis, or the Japanese Zen Masters who during
WWII advocated “artful” slaughter of civilians by the “no sword” philosophy of
“emptiness”, and likewise elevated the Emperor to a position above all moral
accountability. Daism has not gone that far, to be sure, but in theory it could,
especially by your theory, which compares the Adept to a black hole swallowing
galaxies in order to justify Adi Da’s wanton abuse of his devotees and selfish
behavior.
You say you do not want to discuss the aberrated behavior of human beings, but
that is exactly what this discussion is about: the aberrated behavior of Adi Da.
Bringing up quantum mechanics is not going to distract from that topic, as much
as you wish it could. The challenge is for you to find some way of explaining
the aberrated behavior of Adi Da as somehow being “Divine” in nature. Thus far
you have simply invoked a nihilistic view of the universe to do that, but it
isn’t washing.
You also say that our egos have a problem with our lack of an exalted position
in the big picture. Exactly. That being the case, what do you make of Adi Da’s
infinitely exalted view of himself in the big picture? Does it not seem to be
the epitome of egoic delusions? Does not his insistence that because he is the
Biggest Enchilada of all Enchiladas he is not accountable in the slightest for
anything he does sound like a huge delusionary excuse for indulging himself
however he sees fit? Human beings throughout time have tried to solve the
problem of their own seeming insignificance by exalting themselves to universal
proportions. Exhibit A: the Pharonic pyramids. Exhibit B: Jesus Christ
Superstar. Exhibit C: the Thousand-Year-Reich. Exhibit D: The First, Last, and
Only Seventh Stage Avatar, Adi Da Samraj. There are plenty of other examples of
such hubris writ large. There are good and bad individuals in this camp, but no
claims we really need to take seriously once we understand the motivation to
overcome our insignificance in the scheme of the universes. And genuine
spirituality isn’t about that anyway. The Buddha’s Way, for example, had nothing
to do with becoming exalted. Enlightenment in his view was nirvana, the great
quenching, the end of that desire to exalt oneself. Is that not a superior
approach to Adi Da’s?
In the end, it becomes obvious that this desire to exalt oneself, to stand
outside the law, to be unaccountable because one is greater than and superior to
all others, is simply the essence of nihilism itself. It negates the life and
consciousness we all live by and as.