"Radical" Devotion
Excerpt from The Ancient Walk-About Way

Who is disenchanted enough with that madness to want to find a Spiritual Master?

For whom is this world so much of a dead-end that it cannot be accepted on its own terms, or for its own sake?

Where is someone for whom there must be a greater Reality—someone who will be utterly devoted to finding It?

Where are such people?

In general, people are obsessed with the world, obsessed with per- petuating the patterning that is already controlling their lives. The non- humans also show the signs of patterning—but, in their case, the patterning is a natural genetic structure. Genetic patterning is present in human beings as well—but, in addition, human beings exhibit mental patterning (or an elaborate internal pattern of words and perceptual memories). Thus, human beings are not patterned by natural, genetically based factors only. Human beings are also patterned by mind—which has its own kind of existence, but not a substantial one. Mind has a virtual existence only. Therefore, human beings are participating in a language-world—and, in that sense, they are patterned not only by natural (genetic) structures but also by mind-forms.

If you are merely involved in patterned behavior, you are driven to continue that patterning. You have not yet "come to the end of your rope"—such that you are actually moved beyond that patterning, and all that it creates as your destiny.

Since the moment of My Birth, I have not had five minutes of inclination to be satisfied with the possibilities in this world. To Me, it has always been perfectly self-evident that this world is not satisfactory, and that I could not possibly choose this world, in and of itself. To Me, there is no argument for choosing this world. Choose what? Just to play this absurd game—and then drop dead? And why play, if the dropping dead could happen in any moment? Simply because you have the inclination to play the game does not necessarily mean that you will get to do so—even for one more moment.

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