VLVL II: Scenes from a Californian Ashram (part 2)

[lorentzen-nicklaus]

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DEVOTEE: Heart-Master Da, I remember when I received the telephone call from my
brother notifying me that my father had died in London. He was fairly young, about
sixty-two, when he died of throat cancer. I had not had any relationship with him
for fifteen years except for one meeting, because I was a member of a monastery of
Yogis whose dicipline included seperating from, or abondoning, karmic influences.

SRI DA AVABHASA: Transcend nothing, leave everything --- was that it?

DEVOTEE: Yes. But I remember being very surprised by the fact that for about an
hour I passed through quite an emotional catharsis about his death. I saw that I
had never made a connection of mutual understanding with him during his
lifetime. He had never understood why I went to the monastery, and I had never
really understood him, perhaps. I remember feeling, 'If only we had one last 
conversation and really straightened out our relationsship.'

SRI DA AVABHASA: The more dependent you are on some personality who is dead or
dying, the more fully you enter into the ritual and the more exaggerated you 
become in its expression. But it is really yourself that you are dealing with.
Your primary activity in relation to death of another is self-meditation, a 
'Narcisstic' ritual in which you feel confounded, frustrated, reactive, and 
basically disconnected. The feeling of disconnection is an essential part of 
your reaction. You are rehearsing a rather infantile condition, a gesture with
which you have been involved since birth and the acknowledgement of your 
independent existence. 

To hear of somebody's else's death is just an opportunity to rehearse the fearful
un-Happiness you feel in relation to your own death. When you hear of another's 
dying, you indulge in that pattern either slightly, but nonetheless really, or 
very dramatically. Yet it is really your own wound, your own disease, that you are
ritualizing. Very little that you do in relation to someone who has died has 
anything to do with him or her. Most of what you do has to do with yourself. It
is a ritualized expression of your own difficulty.

You are going to die. There is no doubt about that. And everybody you know is 
going to die. Thus, it is your business while alive to really deal with the great
fact of death and be free of egoic ritualization relative to it. Part of the 
essential matter associated with Spiritual life is to deal with that very disease,
that very ritual response to death, so that you are free to die and change 
altogether in every way, and also free to have others do the same thing in
your lifetime.

"Easy Death", pp. 288f.
     

There's certainly something to learn in Da's teaching. However, you shouldn't 
take it too serious. I mean, in the fall of 1999 Da had the - actually: 
not very original -  vision that the end of the year would bring the end of
the world as we know it. So his devotees, including a handful of people I know,
they invested thousands and thousands to prepare their houses for the Apokalypse ... 
Well, we know what happened during "Y2K". Or better: not happened --

And that's how it goes! KFL +

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