This text is quoted from an earlier copy of The Dawn Horse Testament (chapter 19) it describes the difference between the two observable functions of mind and may shed light on other traditions such as Buddhist mindfulness practice, as well as Adidam’s “conscious exercise” discipline
The Right “Consideration” Of My Teaching Arguments Sensitizes You To The Two Principal Functions Of mind. The First Function Of mind Is The perceptual Function Of mind. The Second Function Of mind Is The conceptual Function Of mind.
The First Function Of mind Is The Natural and Naturally Intelligent perceptual Awareness Of arising conditions, Without Any Necessarily Accompanying Effort To Separate From them. The Second Function Of mind Is The conceptual Awareness Of arising conditions, and It Is Necessarily Associated with An Effort To Separate From arising conditions and To Exceed arising conditions, Because It Is Always Associated With An Effort To know About arising conditions.
The perceiving mind knows whatever it perceives. What it perceives, Exactly as it is perceived, is what it knows. Perception, Prior To verbal, Abstract, and Interpretive thought, is Participatory conditional knowledge.
The conceptual mind knows whatever it thinks. Whatever it thinks, Whether Or Not the thought is Informed or Confirmed By perception, is what it knows. Conception, Loosely or Not At All Associated With perception, is Abstract conditional knowledge.
The Right Employment Of The conceptual Function Of mind Can Serve A Very Useful Purpose In The Original and General Inspiration and Guidance Of The Ordeal, Discipline, and Practice Of The Way Of The Heart. Just So, the activities Of The conceptual Function Of mind Generally Serve A Useful Purpose In the common world, Which Is The Communication and Development Of conventional knowledge and practical invention. Even So, all conceptual knowledge Is An Abstraction, The Purpose Of Which Is To Give conditional beings Power Over themselves, their objects, their environments, and other conditionally Manifested beings. Therefore, If This Function Of mind Is Not Kept In Right Perspective, The Motives Of Power and Control Tend To Dominate mind itself .
Secondary mind, or conceptual thought, Must Be Disciplined, If it Is To Be Effective In its Proper Sphere. Likewise, it Must Be Understood, Kept In Right Perspective, and, At Will, Freely Set Aside When The Analytical and Interpretive Function Is Not Presently Necessary or Useful.
You Must Realize The Natural Ability To Set Aside The Secondary or conceptual Function Of mind, or Else You Will Be Dominated By A Compulsive and Obsessive Effort To think conceptually, To Seek knowledge About, To Interpret, and To Separate From the perceived conditional worlds.
You Must Enjoy The Natural, Inherent, moment to moment Ability To Merely perceive, To feel, To be with, and To Wholly Participate In the phenomenal conditions Of Your psycho-physical Existence, or Else You Will Not Truly Understand what arises conditionally, Nor Will You Transcend the limitations Of conditional Existence.
Through The Ordeal Of The Way Of The Heart, and By Means Of self-Observation, Developing self-Understanding, and The Progressively Awakening Natural Feeling-Practice Of Mere and always present perception, You Must Realize The Inherent Ability To Intentionally Relax The Chronic, Compulsive, and Obsessive Tendency Of attention To Become Associated With the past and the future and Even the present. If moment to moment Mere and Also perceptible Existence Is Intolerable To You, So That You Are Unable To perceive each present perceptible moment as it is and To feel and Participate In it Without Recoil, You Will Exist Only In the Secondary or Reflected world of time and mind.
Ultimately, You Must Realize Inherently Perfect Transcendence Of mind itself , or Else You Will Only Be Defined By and Bound To conditional or phenomenal states. And the Total mind Is Transcended Only In The Direct Intuition Of The Transcendental, Inherently Spiritual, and Divine Condition In Which mind, body, and all conditions, relations, and states of mind and body Are arising, continuing, changing, and passing away.
Chronic, Compulsive, and Obsessive verbal thinking or Abstract conceptualizing Is A Disease. It Is, Ultimately, A Fruitless or Futile Effort, and it Is A Symptom Of self-Contraction, egoic “self-Possession”, and The Absence Of Transcendental, Inherently Spiritual, and Divine Realization. Effective and “Creative” conceptual thinking Is A Generally Useful and Characteristic Sign Of the human being, but When The Efforts Of the conceptually thinking mind Become Compulsive, Obsessive, and Dominant, So That verbal and Abstract Analytical thought Cannot Be Relinquished At Will, and things and beings Cannot Be perceived as they are and, Ultimately, Divinely Recognized As they Are , Then the thinking being Is Diseased, Bereft Of Wisdom, and Separated From Reality.
Chronic conceptual thinking Is A Compulsive and Obsessive Withdrawal or Contraction From perception, From Direct experience of Natural or Cosmic forms, and From sensory or bodily Existence Itself. Chronic conceptualizing Effectively Creates An Alternative conditional Reality and One That Is Not Really physical, Not Even psycho-physical, or Even Truly psychic, but Most Basically conceptual, or Made Of mental Abstractions. And Fixed Identification With The Process Of conceptual thinking and the conditional self as conceptual thinker Is Identification with a False or Un-Real self, A Mere Contraction From The Real or Transcendental, Inherently Spiritual, and Divine Self.
Even So, The Effort To Avoid or To Escape conceptual thinking, conceptual thought, or the conceptual thinker Is A Futile Strategy. It Is Futile Because It Is Itself An Expression Of The Very Same Effort That Is The Stressful Origin Of Chronic conceptual thought-mind and the conceptual thought-self. Therefore, The Effort To Stop conceptual thinking Only Intensifies the self-Contraction, Reinforces The Cycle Of conceptual thinking, conceptual thought, and the Presumed conceptual thinker, and Generates Despair Relative To The Ability To Stand Free Of The limiting Capability Of the conceptual mind.
The Cycle Of conceptual thinking, conceptual thought, and the Presumed conceptual thinker Is Truly Transcended Only Through The Real Ordeal Of self-Observation and Effective self-Transcendence, Which Must Become The Inherent Realization Of The Native Condition In and As Which the body-mind-self and all of its conditional relations Are arising, continuing, changing, and passing away. And, In The Way Of The Heart, This Ordeal Develops Progressively, and Either Via The Primary Devotional Exercise Of **Insight Or Via The Primary Devotional Exercise Of Faith**.
You Can Transcend the conceptual mind, or All Analytical Interpreting and knowing, By Observing, Understanding, and Transcending The Act Of self-Contraction, To The Degree That You Relax Into Simple experiencing.
You Can Transcend the perceptual mind By Utterly Not knowing.
© 2010 The Da Love-Ananda Samrajya Pty Ltd, as trustee for the Da Love-Ananda Samrajya. All rights reserved. Perpetual copyright claimed
** note : These are no longer practiced as described here in Adidam



Beezone has recently reprinted an article from a 1974 copy of The Dawn Horse Magazine. It’s a gritty, raw, unfiltered account of a fully illumined Master, doing His uncompromising Work travelling with one western devotee (still very much in the process of learning what “Guru” means) with ancient and modern spiritual sources in India. The account has no political correctness, and without doubt is full of “offense”, to just about everyone, it certainly makes me squirm in parts and I am sure many others will as well. However it unmistakeably reveals the incredible and uncompromising integrity of Adi Da wherein he would engage everyone and anyone in this always sacrificial and Divinely madcap, dangerous adventure. Outrageous humour blend with absolute spiritual seriousness, the audacity of it, is quite shocking particularly to the modern taste. I have spent time in India ( visiting some of th sites listed) so it has a little more reality to it, perhaps for those who have been there.


