A. H. Almaas - Indestructible Innocence

ABOUT THE BOOK

We live in a world of mystery, wonder, and beauty. But most of us seldom participate in this real world, being focused rather on the parts that are mostly strife, suffering, or meaninglessness. The situation is basically due to our not realizing and living our full human potential. This potential can be actualized by the realization and development of human essence. The human essence is the part of us that is innate and real, and which can participate in the real world.

The Diamond Heart series of books comprises transcriptions of talks given by A. H. Almaas to inner work groups in Colorado and California.

A. H. ALMAAS is the pen name of Hameed Ali, the Kuwaiti-born originator of the Diamond Approach, who has been guiding individuals and groups in Colorado, California, and Europe since 1976. He is the author of Spacecruiser Inquiry, The Pearl Beyond Price, Facets of Unity, and other books.

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DIAMOND HEART

Book Four

Indestructible Innocence

A. H. Almaas

Shambhala

Boston & London

2013

Shambhala Publications, Inc.

Horticultural Hall

300 Massachusetts Avenue

Boston, Massachusetts 02115

www.shambhala.com

1997 by A-Hameed Ali

Published by arrangement with Diamond Books

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

For permission to reprint excerpts, the author is grateful to: Dharma Publishing for Knowledge of Freedom, Time to Change, Chapter 28 Limits on Meaning, pp. 287300, Tarthang Tulku, 1984.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Almaas, A. H.

Indestructible innocence / A.H. Almaas1st Shambhala ed.

p. cm.(Diamond heart; bk.4)

Originally published: Berkeley, CA: Diamond Books, 1997.

eISBN 978-0-8348-2383-9

ISBN 978-0-936713-11-3 (alk. paper)

1. Self-realization. 2. Self 3. Awareness I. Title

BJ1470 .A465 2000

We live in a world of mystery, wonder, and beauty. But most of us seldom participate in this real world, being aware rather of a world that is mostly strife, suffering, or meaninglessness. This situation is basically due to our not realizing and living our full human potential. This potential can be actualized by the realization and development of the human Essence. The human Essence is the part of us that is innate and real, and can participate in the real world.

This series of books, Diamond Heart, is a transcription of talks I have given to inner work groups in both California and Colorado, for several years, as part of the work of these groups. The purpose of the talks is to guide and orient individuals who are intensely engaged in doing the difficult work of essential realization.

The talks are organized in a manner that shows the various states and stages of realization in the order that occurs for the typical student, at least in our teaching method: the Diamond Approach. They begin with the states, knowledge, and questions most needed for starting the work on oneself, proceeding to stages of increasing depth and subtlety, and culminating in detailed understanding of the most mature states and conditions of realization.

Each talk elucidates a certain state of Essence or Being. The relevant psychological issues and barriers are discussed precisely and specifically, using modern psychological understanding in relation to the state of Being, and in relation to ones mind, life, and process of inner unfoldment.

Hence, this series is not only a detailed and specific guidance for the student, but also an expression and manifestation of the unfoldment of the human Essence as it reveals the mystery, wonder, exquisiteness, and richness of the real world, our true inheritance. Each talk is actually the expression of a certain aspect or dimension of Being as it descends into the consciousness of the teacher in response to the present needs of the students. The teacher acts both as an embodiment of such reality and as a channel for the living knowledge that is part of this embodiment.

It is my wish that more of my fellow human beings participate in our real world, and taste the incredible beauty and integrity of being a human being, a full manifestation of the love of the truth.

Richmond, California 1986

to Book Four

This fourth in the Diamond Heart series of books, containing talks by A. H. Almaas to groups of his students, has three main themes. The first, conveyed in Chapters One through Eleven, is the realization and development of the Personal Essence on the level of unitythe understanding and embodiment of the person as part of a larger whole, part of the unity of Being. In these talks Almaas conveys the need for the balanced human being to integrate the understanding of oneness in order to develop a level of maturity beyond self-centered living.

This teaching is invaluable to the student on a spiritual path who seeks to actualize the full potential of inner and outer life. Almaas explores the various issues that confront the student working through egoic delusion toward a living understanding of oneness, and describes the qualities and characteristics required for integration of spiritual truth into human life.

Realization of Being is not simply realization of the true self, but also realization of realityof primordial true nature, more fundamental than the realms of form and mind. The second theme in Indestructible Innocence is the movement to and exploration of this nonconceptual realm. This is the dimension of Being beyond form, in which there is pure awareness with no conceptual content. This dimension is a radical departure from the perspective of egoic reality, and even from the view of manifest Being as fundamental ground, which arises as various essential qualities. Almaas conveys vividly the quality of awareness that Krishnamurti called freedom from the knownawareness unfiltered by concepts. It is this empty awareness that is most often associated with Buddhism, particularly Zen. This part of Indestructible Innocence clarifies the similarity between the Diamond Approach and other spiritual traditions in relation to the basic dimensions of reality that are experienced on this path.

When we encounter and appreciate the significance of fresh, nonconceptual awareness as our true nature and the nature of everything, we know our nature as intrinsically free from the beliefs and identities that bring us so much suffering and frustration. We see too how all the work supporting maturation and clarification of the soul, the development of objectivity, and the understanding of the oneness of realitythe work Almaas teaches in the first part of this bookcontribute to this freedom. We see clearly as delusion the notion that seekers in all paths entertain at some pointthe idea that freedom is freedom of the self from mundane or constructed reality. We come to know, instead, that the more the human soul is oriented toward truth and living in accord with that truth, the less need there is to defend the false structures and attachments that keep us imprisoned in egoic identity.

Almaass talks on the nonconceptual dimension can be difficult for some to comprehend intellectually, but our hope is that the reader might taste some flavor of the freedom of awareness beyond personal mind. And for those engaged in meditation or other spiritual practices that penetrate the nonconceptual dimensions, these talks may offer useful understanding. In particular, Almaas discriminates two types of barriers to realization of the nonconceptual. One type of barrier is epistemological, involving issues related to ones conceptual construction of self- and world-views, a construction determined by ones personal history, ones cultural context, and also by ones relation to the physical world. Chapter Twelve conveys this process of the construction of the world of concepts in the developing childs mind. This constructed world becomes not only the world that we live in, but actually the world that