The following excerpt is taken from a prefatory piece that appears in all of Avatar Adi Da’s “Source-Texts”, entitled “Do Not Misunderstand Me”.

. . . there is a potential liability inherent in all human associations. And the root and nature of that potential liability is the ego (or the active human presumption of separateness, and the ego-act of human separativeness). Therefore, in order that the liabilities of egoity are understood (and voluntarily and responsibly disciplined) by those who approach Me, I require demonstrated right devotion (based on really effective self-understanding and truly heart-felt devotional recognition-response to Me) as the basis for any one’s right to enter into My physical Company. And, in this manner, not only the egoic tendency, but also the tendency toward religious “cultism”, is constantly undermined in the only-by-Me Revealed and Given Way of Adidam.

Because people appear within this human condition, this simultaneously attractive and frightening “dream” world, they tend to live—and to interpret both the conditional (or cosmic and psycho-physical) reality and the Unconditional (or Divine) Reality—from the “point of view” of this apparent (and bewildering) mortal human condition. And, because of this universal human bewilderment (and the ongoing human reaction to the threatening force of mortal life-events), there is an even ancient ritual that all human beings rather unconsciously (or automatically, and without discriminative understanding) desire and tend to repeatedly (and under all conditions) enact. Therefore, wherever you see an association of human beings gathered for any purpose (or around any idea, or symbol, or person, or subject of any kind), the same human bewilderment-ritual is tending to be enacted by one and all.

Human beings always tend to encircle (and, thereby, to contain—and, ultimately, to entrap and abuse, or even to blithely ignore) the presumed “center” of their lives—a book, a person, a symbol, an idea, or whatever. They tend to encircle the “center” (or the “middle”), and they tend to seek toexclusively acquire all “things” (or all power of control) for the circle (or toward the “middle”) of themselves. In this manner, the group becomes an ego (“inward”-directed, or separate and separative)—just as the individual body-mind becomes, by self-referring self-contraction, the separate and separative ego-“I” (“inward”-directed, or ego-centric—and exclusively acquiring all “things”, or all power of control, for itself). Thus, by self-contraction upon the presumed “center” of their lives—human beings, in their collective ego-centricity, make “cults” (or bewildered and frightened “centers” of power, and control, and exclusion) in every area of life.

Anciently, the “cult”-making process was done, most especially, in the political and social sphere—and religion was, as even now, mostly an exoteric (or political and social) exercise that was always used to legitimize (or, otherwise, to “de-throne”) political and social “authority-figures”. Anciently, the cyclically (or even annually) culminating product of this exoteric religio-political “cult” was the ritual “de-throning” (or ritual deposition) of the one in the “middle” (just as, even in these times, political leaders are periodically “deposed”—by elections, by rules of term and succession, by scandal, by slander, by force, and so on).

Everywhere throughout the ancient world, traditional societies made and performed this annual (or otherwise periodic) religio-political “cult” ritual. The ritual of “en-throning” and “de-throning” was a reflection of the human observation of the annual cycle of the seasons of the natural world—and the same ritual was a reflection of the human concern and effort to control the signs potential in the cycle of the natural world, in order to ensure human survival (through control of weather, harvests and every kind of “fate”, or even every fraction of existence upon which human beings depend for both survival and pleasure, or psycho-physical well-being). Indeed, the motive behind the ancient agrarian (and, later, urbanized, or universalized) ritual of the one in the “middle” was, essentially, the same motive that, in the modern era, takes the form of the culture of scientific materialism (and even all of the modern culture of materialistic “realism”): It is the motive to gain (and to maintain) control, and the effort to control even everything and everyone (via both knowledge and gross power). Thus, the ritualized, or bewildered yes/no (or desire/fear), life of mankind in the modern era is, essentially, the same as that of mankind in the ancient days.

In the ancient ritual of “en-throning” and “de-throning”, the person (or subject) in the “middle” was ritually mocked, abused, deposed, and banished—and a new person (or subject) was installed in the “center” of the religio-political “cult”. In the equivalent modern ritual of dramatized ambiguity relative to everything and everyone (and, perhaps especially, “authority-figures”), the person (or symbol, or idea) in the “middle” (or that which is given power by means of popular fascination) is first “cultified” (or made much of), and then (progressively) doubted, mocked, and abused—until, at last, all the negative emotions are (by culturally and socially ritualized dramatization) dissolved, the “middle” (having thus ceased to be fascinating) is abandoned, and a “new” person (or symbol, or idea) becomes the subject of popular fascination (only to be reduced, eventually, to the same “cultic” ritual, or cycle of “rise” and “fall”).

Just as in every other area of human life, the tendency of all those who (in the modern era) would become involved in religious or Spiritual life is also to make a “cult”, a circle that ever increases its separate and separative dimensions—beginning from the “center”, surrounding it, and (perhaps) even (ultimately) controlling it (such that it altogether ceases to be effective, or even interesting). Such “cultism” is ego-based, and ego-reinforcing—and, no matter how “esoteric” it presumes itself to be, it is (as in the ancient setting) entirely exoteric, or (at least) more and more limited to (and by) merely social (and gross physical) activities and conditions.

The form that every “cult” imitates is the pattern of egoity (or the pattern that is the ego-“I”) itself—the presumed “middle” of every ordinary individual life. It is the self-contraction (or the avoidance of relationship), which “creates” the fearful sense of separate mind, and all the endless habits and motives of egoic desire (or bewildered, and self-deluded, seeking). It is what is, ordinarily, called (or presumed to be) the real and necessary and only “life”.

From birth, the human being (by reaction to the blows and limits of psycho-physical existence) begins to presume separate existence to be his or her very nature—and, on that basis, the human individual spends his or her entire life generating and serving a circle of ownership (or self-protecting acquisition) all around the ego-“I”. The egoic motive encloses all the other beings it can acquire, all the “things” it can acquire, all the states and thoughts it can acquire—all the possible emblems, symbols, experiences, and sensations it can possibly acquire. Therefore, when any human being begins to involve himself or herself in some religious or Spiritual association (or, for that matter, any extension of his or her own subjectivity), he or she tends again to “create” that same circle about a “center”.

The “cult” (whether of religion, or of politics, or of science, or of popular culture) is a dramatization of egoity, of separativeness, even of the entrapment and betrayal of the “center” (or the “middle”), by one and all. Therefore, I have always Refused to assume the role and the position of the “man in the middle”—and I have always, from the beginning of My formal Teaching and Blessing Work, Criticized, Resisted, and Shouted About the “cultic” (or ego-based, and ego-reinforcing, and merely “talking” and “believing”, and not understanding and not really practicing) “school” (or tendency) of ordinary religious and Spiritual life. Indeed, true Satsang with Me (or the true devotional relationship to Me) is an always (and specifically, and intensively) anti-“cultic” (or truly non-“cultic”) Process.

The true devotional relationship to Me is not separative (or merely “inward”-directed), nor is It a matter of attachment to Me as a mere (and, necessarily, limited) human being (or a “man in the middle”)—for, if My devotee indulges in ego-bound (or self-referring and self-serving) attachment to Me as a mere human “other”, My Divine Nature (and, therefore, the Divine Nature of Reality Itself) is not (as the very Basis for religious and Spiritual practice in My Company) truly devotionally recognized and rightly devotionally acknowledged. And, if such non-recognition of Me is the case, there is no truly ego-transcending devotional response to My Avatarically Self-Revealed (and Self-Evidently Divine) Presence and Person—and, thus, such presumed-to-be “devotion” to Me is not devotional heart-Communion with Me, and such presumed-to-be “devotion” to Me is not Divinely Liberating. Therefore, because the true devotional (and, thus, truly devotionally Me-recognizing and truly devotionally to-Me-responding) relationship to Me is entirely a counter-egoic (and truly and only Divine) discipline, it does not tend to become a “cult” (or, otherwise, to support the “cultic” tendency of Man)