Walking the Dog

ADI DA SAMRAJ: I am continually impressed, newly impressed from hour to hour, with the insanity of human beings! Animals, plants, inert things have much more intelligence! They are simpler, more pure. While driving a car or walking down a street, I have often seen people walking their dogs. And the dogs almost invariably appear more intelligent than the people who are walking them. The guy walking his dog seems insane. He is obsessed with his idiotic program of existence. But the dog is just breathing, walking, pissing on the grass. No sign of disturbance at all. The dog sits down at the corner, and I see his clear eyes! But the guy is everywhere else, costumed, crowded into time, bent, driven, mysterious to himself!

The only release from the burden of the insanity of this world is True Humor. There are two forms of humor. There is ordinary, or mortal, humor, and there is True, or Divine, Humor. Ordinarily the best people do is ordinary, mortal humor. Thus, you tend to laugh about this image of the man and the dog. But the only True Humor is Truth Itself. The ordinary comic humor of your mortal appreciation of things is only laughter. It does not change the conditions or even truly understand them. Mortal laughter does not change the condition of human beings, apart from the generation of temporary amusement. But Divine Humor, Truth, delights people and also utterly transforms their lives.

Until this Divine Humor, this Truth, Awakens in people, they are intimidated by “animals”, or the vital forces of life. Without a little of Truth, they are not even manly enough (man or woman) to be the master of a dog. A good dog is too straight for most people. And I have met very few people who could appreciate a cat! Just so, people are intimidated by their own desires, their own moving life, their own vital nature. Animals and other vital beings are just extensions of a human being’s own vitality. Every man or woman is endlessly “walking a dog”. The animal hangs below your chest, and you walk it night and day. You are intimidated by it, completely obsessed by it, absolutely distracted by it, incapable of being the master of it, unwilling to go through the period of mastery, of training, of responsibility. And so, the “dog” takes over.

When people come to visit their friends, they all sit around and talk about the dog! Have you noticed that whenever somebody has a pet, people who visit tend continually to talk about the animal, and to the animal? And when conversation drifts away from the animal pets, people talk about the same thing in themselves. They talk about sex, conflict, desire—their obsessions! People are always talking about the dog. Therefore, people are ordinarily humorless. They have no True Humor. They only learn how to “create” the ridiculous to entertain one another. The usual entertainments are forms of mortal, or comic, humor. And the means to make others laugh is to take on the form, or “costume”, of the dog. Put on a dog costume and go to visit a friend. Your friend will not be able to believe it. Fantastic! Your friend will laugh. Your friend will go out of his or her mind.

There are many forms of the dog, many varieties of the “dog costume”. The dog costume is all your adventures, your acquisitions, your knowledge, your every thing, “you”. This contraction of which I speak is the dog costume. It is this avoidance of relationship, this falsity, this thinking separation. But True Humor is not to appear in the dog costume among one’s friends. I must restore your True Humor by showing you the nature of the costume of your mortality, your un-Happiness, all the forms of this contraction, this avoidance of relationship.

Ordinary humor is a revulsion, like vomiting. It is heaving the force, the vital force, upwards, throwing it away, casting it out. All the ordinary obsessions, including the entertainments of comic laughter, are forms of revulsion, like vomiting. In that case, the force of life falls down the spine and is thrown out the front. But when a person understands the nature of the entire activity that is his or her obsession, then all of the activities of revulsion tend to subside, and the Current of life-force and Spiritual Energy returns to its natural course, descending and ascending. Thus, the natural conductivity of the life-force is down the front and up the back. But in the usual man or woman it is the reverse of this.

In the ordinary person, the “dog” is always hanging out. The ordinary person always appears as the ridiculous imitation of the dog—laughing, grinning, being stupid, insane, confused, self-indulgent—all the things of which animals themselves are actually free. But when a person understands, the “dog” is overcome, is mastered.

Therefore, Spiritual life is True Humor. It is Divine Life, the Life of Truth. It is a person’s “straightness”.

A talk by Adi Da Samraj, 1973

[Source: My “Bright” Word, by Avatar Adi Da Samraj. This talk is also available on the double CD entitled The Avon Lady / Walking The Dog, Dawn Horse Press.]

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