During His Teaching Years, Avatar Adi Da undertook a vast, in-life “consideration” with His devotees, covering everything related to Spiritual life—from the most rudimentary matters to the most esoteric. One extremely important area of “consideration” as how to rightly relate to the most basic urges and activities of human life—what Avatar Adi Da describes as the realm of “money, food, and sex”. (By “money”, Avatar Adi Da means not only the earning and use of money itself, but the exercising of life-energy in general.)
In most religious traditions, an ascetical approach to these primal urges is recommended—in other words, desires related to “money, food, and sex” are to be minimized or denied. Avatar Adi Da took a different approach. When they are rightly engaged, ordinary human enjoyments are not a problem, not “sinful” or “anti-spiritual” in and of themselves. Indeed, the ascetical effort to “cut out” or (“cut down on”) such enjoyments is itself simply one of the possible variations on the ego’s impulse to manipulate the conditions of existence to its own benefit. Thus, the root-problem of human beings is not any particular activity or desire of the body-mind, but the ego itself—the governing presumption that one is a separate and independent entity attempting to counteract the inevitable suffering of embodied existence. Therefore, in living dialogue and experimentation with His devotees, Avatar Adi Da brought to light, in detail, exactly how the human functions of money (or life-energy), food, and sex can be rightly engaged, in a truly ego-transcending manner—an entirely life-positive and non-suppressive manner that is both pleasurable and supportive of the Spiritual process in His Company. MsSVig
In most religious traditions, an ascetical approach to these primal urges is recommended—in other words, desires related to “money, food, and sex” are to be minimized or denied. Avatar Adi Da took a different approach. When they are rightly engaged, ordinary human enjoyments are not a problem, not “sinful” or “anti-spiritual” in and of themselves. Indeed, the ascetical effort to “cut out” or (“cut down on”) such enjoyments is itself simply one of the possible variations on the ego’s impulse to manipulate the conditions of existence to its own benefit. Thus, the root-problem of human beings is not any particular activity or desire of the body-mind, but the ego itself—the governing presumption that one is a separate and independent entity attempting to counteract the inevitable suffering of embodied existence. Therefore, in living dialogue and experimentation with His devotees, Avatar Adi Da brought to light, in detail, exactly how the human functions of money (or life-energy), food, and sex can be rightly engaged, in a truly ego-transcending manner—an entirely life-positive and non-suppressive manner that is both pleasurable and supportive of the Spiritual process in His Company. MsSVig