Religion and Reality

Part 6

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The Parental Deity and
the One to Be Realized

Excerpt, part 2, from the Essay
by Avatar Adi Da Samraj

page 27-30

"Out of this kind of "Parent-God"-ism come all the other traditions associated with the notions of "sin", or the valuation of events not merely factually but in terms of the Parental Deity."

In other words, if something negative happens to you, it is generally regarded as a Divinely given punishment or a result of what you have done in terms of your social personality and your conventional moral activity. If good things happen to you, they are presumed to be gifts or rewards from the same Source.

Examine the "point of view" of conventional "downtown" (or popular) religion. You will see that it corresponds to this structure of notions, and is (therefore) primarily a development of a child’s state of awareness.

It is a development of the original parent-bond of your childhood, and it is complicated by the dissociative individuation that develops in adolescence, and that tends to characterize your adulthood as well.

The only-by-Me Revealed and Given Way of Adidam is not a form of this childish (or conventional) religion. When I Speak of Real (Acausal) God (and I also use other terms than "Real Acausal God", but that is one of the forms of reference I use), I am not speaking of a Parental Deity.

I have frequently had occasion to Criticize this childish mode of relating to "God" and to the entire process of religion and Spiritual life.

I could compare the true "Point of View" that I "Consider" with you to the conventional or childish religious "point of view" by saying that true religion is not founded in the primitive feeling that, even when you are alone, there is always "Someone Else" present.

Rather, I Describe the basis of true religion as a mysterious experience or intuition that — no matter how many others are present, no matter how many people are present, including yourself, no matter what is arising — there is only One Reality, One Self-Condition, One Source-Condition. That One is not "Other".

That One is not your parent. And, in phenomenal and experiential terms, That One is not merely devoted to rewarding and punishing you, supporting you and protecting you.

Rather, That One is the Acausal Divine Self-Condition (and Source-Condition) of all phenomenal conditions — including all opposites, even all contradictions. Thus, you cannot account for That One in childish terms.

— Avatar Adi Da Samraj

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