RamaDharma

Third Dharma:

Living in the Real World

The real world is the natural world, with people living in it in a natural way. It’s a staggering challenge to create such a lifestyle, given the utterly unnatural, artificial modality of life in the Matrix. Our plan is to return to nature in stages, bringing all the genuine advances of mind and Spirit with us, and even some of the tech.

Living communally on an organic farm would certainly be a major step, enabling people to regain an intimate daily relationship with the earth and to recover many skills that have been lost in the Matrix ~ including the art of entertaining themselves and each other without electronic media. A further series of steps involves regaining the spiritual strength and physical stamina needed just to carry out the duties of what was considered a normal life until about half a century ago. The ability to make lifetime commitments and form bonded relationships, to serve those you love in a spirit of selfless sacrifice, and to do all this without the crutch of addictive substances ~ such things seem superhuman by today’s standards, but it’s only because the people have been thoroughly uprooted from their own humanity.

A still bigger step will be to cultivate the most basic human qualities of all: those of the primal tribes who flourished in the dawn of time and sustained a serious presence through most of the modern age. These folk had a whole dimension of being which civilized people lack ~ their functional attunement with nature gave them powers which are now considered psychic, and perhaps downright miraculous.

If this seems like a far cry into the past, consider the possibility that primal conditions may return by the force of events in the near future. The most insightful people know that civilization is teetering on the brink of a massive breakdown. The main question is whether it will come with a bang in fulfillment of certain religious prophecies, or with a long, drawn-out whimper like the fall of Rome. Either way, primal life is due for a dramatic resurrection, and only those who prepare will survive.

Our aim, however, is not mere physical survival as brutes or barbarians. By melding the highest gifts of Spirit with the hardcore realities of primal nature, we can morph ourselves into a collective entity which has never existed before, a seed-culture for a future that will be more than human.

Images: The Farm in Summertown, Tennessee. Founded under the leadership of spiritual teacher Stephen Gaskin in 1971; the longest-lived hippie commune (it’s still there). Of course some people may be (ahem) prejudiced against hippies, perhaps with good reason; but I think the photos clearly show that their experiment has some redeeming features. A white alternative community on this scale would go a long way toward fulfilling the 14 Words.

Dharma 4: Eros (Dharmalove)