For the clueless Trinity. http://beezone.com/AdiDa/7Stages/7_stages_of_life.html
The Seven Stages of Life The teachings of Adi Da Samraj as it relates to the development of the human individual It is the Truth upon which the Way of Radical Understanding or Divine Ignorance, as Taught by Master Da Free John, is founded. Therefore, Enlightenment cannot he a matter of progressive attainment. It is, as the Adept affirms, always already the case. But this is to be Realized, which is a matter of free attention and energy. The purpose of spiritual practice is to gradually release our attention and energy from their contracted habit patterns of fixation upon seemingly finite objects and goals. In this way we become more and more open to the possibility of the radical intuition of the Happiness, or Truth, that Outshines all phenomenal states of body and mind. This occurs as an autonomous process, guided by the Transcendental Attraction of the Adept, of increasing magnification of the tacit intuition of our prior Condition. No ego based, strategic method of self-improvement is involved. As Master Da Free John has discovered and elaborated, however, the spiritual process unfolds in clearly discernible stages, what he calls the Seven Stages of Life. The model of the seven stages of readaptation to the God-Realized Disposition is unique to the Way of Radical Understanding. It furnishes a structure that allows us to fully examine and rightly evaluate our spiritual and human growth as well as the mass of spiritual teaching and experience that informs our psyche. In other words, the framework developed by the Adept Da Free John permits us to go beyond the taboos and presumptions of conventional religious and secular culture in our consideration of human existence and our personal growth. It is thus a most direct instrument for augmenting self-observation and self-understanding, both being necessary tools of a self- transcending approach to life. >From another point of view, the seven stages can be viewed as a school >offering seven lessons about self transcendence the essence of true spirituality. Most people have failed to learn the lesson of even the first stage of life, and so the spiritual practitioner, generally speaking, begins by readapting to what might appear to be very ordinary human functions and responsibilities. It is only after he (or she) has assumed full responsibility in a more ordinary level that higher spiritual processes can occur. STAGE 1 (Birth to Age 7) The first stage of life, occupying the years from conception and birth to age seven, is the stage of the individual's vital-physical adaptation to the world. He learns "simple' skills like focusing with the eyes, grasping and manipulating objects, walking, talking, assimilating and convening food and breath into energy, controlling bladder and bowels, and so forth. This is the stage that basically occupies us from conception to seven years of age (or the beginning of true socialization and complex relatedness). It is the period in which we must adapt to our physical individuality and basic physical capacity. Thus, it is not only a period of physical adaptation, but of physical individuation. That is, we must gradually adapt to fully functional physical existence, but we must achieve physical individuation, or physical (and thus mental, emotional, psychic, and psychological) independence from the mother and all others. When this stage is complete, we will not exist in isolation but in a state of conscious relatedness to all others and the world of Nature. Thus, the fulfillment of the first stage of life is marked by the beginnings of the movement toward more complex socialization, cooperation with others, and sensitivity to the total world of Nature. Sunlight on the Water Chapter 1 March 1, 1983 - MASTER DA FREE JOHN: "Education, or My Way of Schooling in the Seven Stages of Life." Each of the seven stages represents a unique period of adaptation and transcendence, and each subsequent stage is built upon fulfillment of the process of adaptation and transcendence in all previous stages. Therefore, we must clearly understand what special education or schooling must be engaged in each stage. The first stage of life is basically the period of physical adaptation to our functional existence, though other forms of adaptation begin to occur as physical adaptation matures. In addition to the obvious process of physical adaptation, what must also occur at this stage is physical individuation. This means that the child in the first stage of life must realize that he or she is an independent physical personality. In other words, he or she must break the dependency connection to the mother. This is a kind of unconscious connection to another being in which nurturing occurs. The individual must achieve physical independence and therefore mental and emotional independence from the mother. It is only on the basis of individuation from this one-on-one bond, or more to the point, this "two-who-are-one" bond that the individual can move out socially, into the whole field of relationships. The first stage is complete when we can see the beginnings of a movement toward a more complex socialization with adults and peers, and toward cooperation with others and sensitivity to the total world of Nature. I should also indicate that the stages of life overlap one another. There are seven stages of life, but there is a period of time at the end of each of the first six stages wherein some characteristics and capabilities of the next stage begin to appear. Thus, toward the end of the first stage of life we should expect to see the signs of individuation, socialization, cooperation, sensitivity to Nature, and so forth. When these signs show themselves stably and significantly, then the schooling of the second stage of life becomes appropriate and inevitable. STAGE 2 (Years 7-14) The second stage of life is the stage of the development, integration, and coordination of the emotional-sexual or feeling dimension of the being with the gross physical. Just as in the first stage the individual learns about and is expected to become responsible for the assimilation and elimination of elemental food, in the second stage he must learn about, adapt to, and engage a new dimension of sustenance or food: He must become sensitive to the Life-Current or Energy that pervades the body and all of life, and learn to align body, emotion, feeling, and breathing in a basic disposition of love or relational sacrifice. In this way, the young personality learns to transcend reactive emotion, tendencies toward neurotic inversion, and habits of self-destruction and other-directed aggression. Sunlight on the Water Chapter 1 March 1, 1983 - MASTER DA FREE JOHN: "Education, or My Way of Schooling in the Seven Stages of Life." STAGE 3 (Years 15-21) The third stage of life relates to the development of mind and will, as well as the integration of the vital-physical, emotional-sexual, and mental-intentional functions. This stage marks the transition to truly human autonomy wherein the first two stages of life are adapted to a practical and analytical intelligence and an informed will, and the individual gains responsibility for, and control over, his vital life. It is important to recognize that the maturation through and beyond the first three stages of life is not a matter of "growing older and wiser" in the conventional sense. Rather, the individual's entrance into the fourth stage of life begins with the awakening of the "psychic heart." In this stage, the Life-Force or Spirit-Presence is felt to exist independent of, or senior to, the body-mind. By cultivating a conscious relationship to this Presence, the spiritual practitioner begins to demonstrate and enjoy the spiritual qualities of faith, love, and surrender. Thus, devotional surrender to the Living Reality is the essential feature of the fourth stage of life. p. 34 Taking into consideration the level of sophistication of teenagers, a fairly detailed study of the Teaching" means a basic study of the Teaching and the disciplines. This would entail the study of our practice of diet, exercise, general health principles, service, social life, and those disciplines of meditation that are appropriate at this stage and age. In also includes the study of various other technicalities and the philosophical bases of the conception of the processes of conductivity (or how to be associated with the Life-Current) and real meditation,6 the structure of the world, and so from from a spiritual point of view. These subjects would be on the curriculum for formal, regular, and continuous study by third stagers, along with the conventional subject matters that must be part of everyone's schooling. Apart from this, the individual should develop sensitivity to the deeper psyche, or the spontaneous processes of mind that are deeper than ordinary thinking and the social personality. Thus, appropriate meditative exercises of a devotional type should develop in this stage, and the exercise of imagination should, even as earlier in life, be emphasized and rewarded. In addition, the individual should be taught to be sensitive to dreams, even to keep a regular diary that describes nightly dreams and experiences in meditation. And the contents of dreams and meditative experiences should be frequently discussed with adult counselors. In this manner, the individual will develop an 5. "Conductivity" is, in general, the capacity of the body-mind to conduct, or be surrendered into, the All-Pervading Life-Current. Such conductivity or surrender is realized through love, or radiant whole-body feeling to Infinity, and such love involves coordinated engagement of body, breath, and attention in alignment with the Universal Current of Life-Energy. 6. Real meditation, or what Master Os calls the "o Concious ness," is the senior practice and responsibility Elf practitioners in each stage of the Way. Founded upon true "heating" of the Teaching, or release of self into the Transcendental Condition of Divine Ignorance, it is the discipline of conscious surrender of attention in the Divine to Transcendental Being. awareness and a with all of its ex subtle or astral I experiences, ex phnomenon, and so Sunlight on the Water Chapter 1 March 1, 1983 - MASTER DA FREE JOHN: "Education, or My Way of Schooling in the Seven Stages of Life." STAGE 4 (Years 21 and beyond) The fourth stage of life marks the beginning of spiritual life and true humanness. In this stage the individual's psychic depth is awakened and adapted to profound intimacy with what Master Da Free John calls the Life-Current. Unlike the first three stages, which unfold in a semiautomatic fashion, the fourth stage of life and all the other higher stages have no fixed period of time. Rather, they depend entirely on the individual's qualities and application to the practice of self-transcendence. The realization of the physical, emotional, mental, and moral responsibilities of the first three stages of life provides the necessary foundation for the testing and transformation in the higher stages of life. Without that basis one may come to enjoy yogic or mystical experiences, for instance, but remain unable to exercise real intelligence, freedom, and love under the most ordinary of human circumstances. STAGE 5 The fifth stage is associated with the mystical aspect of spirituality. The individual's attention is withdrawn from the theatre of external activity and experience and inverted upon the inner world or 'subtle physiology" of the brain-mind. The mystical ascent of attention through the psychic centers of the body-mind is conditioned by the nervous system. Experience in this stage reaches its peak in the state of conditional "formless ecstasy" or nirvikalpa samadhi. This elevated state of consciousness is only conditional and temporary, because it still contains the seed of a differentiated self. STAGE 6 The sixth stage of life is the profound stage of "ego-death or the transcendence of the separative self-sense. It implies the transcendence of the mechanism of attention itself and thus of the sense of being a subject over against objects. It represents the individual's Awakening to Transcendental Consciousness, the "Witness" of all conditions. However, this Realization is exclusive of all objects, because it is founded on the inversion of attention. Thus, the individual intuits his essential Identity as the Transcendental Consciousness hut fails to include the objective world in his Realization. STAGE 7 In the seventh or ultimate stage of life the Liberated or Enlightened "individual recognizes everything as a modification of the Radiant Transcendental Being. Now the Transcendental Self is no longer pitted against the phenomenal world. Instead, the world is recognized as continuously arising in the Ultimate Being, which is co-essential with the absolute Self- Identity. This sacrificial act of moment-to- nli)ment recognition of the true nature of phenomenal existence continues into infinity. That is the Disposition of Sahaj Samadhi or native Ecstasy. In moments where no conditions happen to arise, the Liberated being is immersed in Transcendental Formless Ecstasy (or the Condition of nirvikalpa-samadhi that occurs against the background of Sahaj Samadhi). Master Da Free John also refers to this Disposition as Divine Translation. In Sahaj Samadhi, which is a permanent Condition. Sunlight on the Water Chapter 1 March 1, 1983 - MASTER DA FREE JOHN: ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> Join modern day disciples reach the disfigured and poor with hope and healing http://us.click.yahoo.com/lMct6A/Vp3LAA/i1hLAA/UlWolB/TM --------------------------------------------------------------------~-> To subscribe, send a message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Or go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FairfieldLife/ and click 'Join This Group!' Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FairfieldLife/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
