Unfinished Business Manifests the Dreams We Have at Night. If we look at our dreams at night, we can see that many of them are devoted to resolving issues of the day that touched one psychically, but were not fully resolved (or not resolved at all) during the day: that argument one had with someone at the workplace; that thing one’s intimate partner said that unconsciously stirred a deep anxiety; that worrisome story in the news about potential financial troubles in the economy; that chemistry one felt with a person one briefly encountered; on and on!

Our psyche is set up to process all such unhandled business, and it will keep working at it until it finds a resolution or it gives up. Sometimes the resolution it finds in dreams is pleasant, perhaps taking the form of wish fulfillment[1]; one might have a sexual dream at night involving that person one felt chemistry with earlier in the day; or one might have a dream (triggered by that worrisome news story on the economy) that one finds a million dollars in one's bank account. Just as often (or even more often), the resolution (or attempt at resolution) is unpleasant: a shouting match or physical fight with the person one had an unresolved argument with; a dream (triggered by that worrisome news story on the economy) about trying to withdraw money from an ATM only to discover one has no money left; etc.

And sometimes one has recurring dreams, that reflect lifelong psychic baggage from childhood (or past lives) traumas that have never been resolved, either in waking life or in dreams; and the psyche keeps trying to process the trauma over and over again (unsuccessfully).

Unfinished Business Manifests What Happens After Death. The exact same thing happens when we die — because, after death, we take with us the same psyche that dreams at night. Whatever business was left unfinished during our lifetime, the psyche attempts to resolve after our death. And so just as we dream at night, when the day is over, we dream after death, when our lifetime is over.

Shakespeare had it right when he wrote:

In this material realm, the physical body diminishes the intensity of our feelings (which originate in the psychic dimension), while awake and while dreaming. And, while alive, we always have the option of waking up from our nightmares to the waking state of the physical body. The astral realm in which the dreams after death take place is a purely psychic realm, and feelings are far more intense there, because the buffer provided by the physical body is gone: the positive feelings are far more positive, and the negative ones are far more negative. Also, it can take what feels like a very long time to run through all the unhandled business and clear out the mind. That combination of increased emotional intensity and apparently long periods of time[12] is reflected in notions like "heaven" and "hell".[5]

Unfinished Business Manifests Events in Life for Healing and Growth. We not only dream at night and after death; we also dream during the day! The psyche tries to resolve unfinished business through psychophysical means during our waking life. Our “waking life” is far more like a dream than we are generally aware! And the more we acknowledge this and consciously participate in our lives as a psychophysical play, the more obvious this will become to us.

With the help of the psychophysical universe (which can involve other beings, human and non-human — some, helpers arranging the events, and others, participants in the events with us), the psyche creates events in one’s life whose purpose is to resolve unhandled business. The story in this chapter documents just that kind of magical, psychophysical process in my waking life.

Unfinished Business Manifests Continued Reincarnation. That “unfinished business” ultimately includes even the “karmic seeds” (to use a Buddhist term), the egoic patterns that perpetuate our identification with a limited body-mind, and cause us to reincarnate. And that suggests a corollary to the principle, "Handle all unfinished business": "Don't create any new unfinished business, unless it's necessary.” Otherwise you just help to keep the whole cycle of birth and death going.

"A" students vs. "F" Students in the Psychophysical Earth School. If we cooperate with the psychophysical growth processes that occur during our waking life, they can often lead to easy, simple resolutions for the unhandled business generating those psychophysical growth processes. Such processes are also often like a school. If we get the “elementary school” lesson, the process may move on to later give us a “high school” or “college” level lesson on the same subject. My story illustrates this, like a play in three acts. The first act sets the stage, with me creating the problem needing resolution — the unfinished business. The second act shows me consciously cooperating with the process, and shows healing and growth occurring in a very benign way, as a result. Then the third act is where I learn further, deeper lessons on the same subject.

So one’s best bet while attending this “Earth school” — what the "A" students do — is to pay attention when such healing and growth processes are occurring and cooperate fully with them. If, on the other hand, we fail to cooperate with (or even be conscious of) such psychophysical processes, we are like “F” students. We do not “graduate” from the current grade and receive more sophisticated lessons. Instead, the universe tends to keep giving us the same “elementary school” lesson over and over again — but bringing the lesson home to us with increasingly greater force, if we keep failing to get it! Adi Da once described how this aspect of the psychophysical universe works: “Some people have to be beaten half to death to stop chewing their fingernails”. He used to describe how His Uncle Gene was someone who fit this description, who just never learned from life the easy way.

Divine Enlightenment Is Realized Only When All Business Is Handled. A running theme in all I've been writing is that unfinished psychic business binds the psyche. The psyche only stands completely free when all psychic business is handled. Adi Da summarizes this:

And now the story.

When I was ten years old, I had a wonderful friend named Denise. She also was ten. We both lived on a dead end street that bordered a beautiful little lake. We somehow found each other, and became best friends. Every day, we'd go for a walk together in the woods around that lake, talking about the most wonderful things we could think of, with all the freedom and imagination of children. We created a magical space together, apart from the ordinary world, and we both looked forward to our time together every day. We were only ten, but we loved and trusted each other deeply.

Our magical little lake
(click image to enlarge)

And yet somehow I managed to destroy that friendship! Adi Da has often said that egoity is destructive, and that the primary expression of egoity is the feeling and communication of "You don't love me." This moment in my life was the perfect illustration of that terrible truth and its consequences.

An insecurity crept into our paradise, like the snake worming his way into the Garden of Eden. Perhaps it was from one of my past lives. It hardly matters where these egoic patterns originate. . . what always matters is our present-time action:

• Do we understand and master the pattern, and choose a better course of action? Or. . .
• Do we somehow use our pattern and transform it by redirecting it to accomplish a positive outcome (Adi Da calls this “playing the pattern”)? Or. . .
• Do we let the pattern master and possess us?

I was only ten years old and had very little self-understanding. I was not conscious of the pattern, and had no space on it. I was completely identified with it. It simply was me. So I let the pattern possess me.

I developed the feeling that maybe I wasn't good enough for Denise to love me. And that I had to do something more — something incredible — to ensure that she would keep loving me.

If I could travel back in time, and talk to my ten-year old self, I would have given my younger self a good shake and said: "Are you nuts? You have an absolutely wonderful friendship with Denise! She so obviously loves you and enjoys your company so much. You don't have to change a single thing for her to keep loving you!"

But unfortunately I can't go back in time and change what happened.

So one day, on one of our walks, I said to Denise, "I have a special ability I haven't told you about: I can disappear!" There was no planning, no forethought, it just came blurting out of my mouth. Her eyes widened, but so did her smile. She trusted me completely, and believed me absolutely.

"Close your eyes and count to five slowly!"

She willingly did that. And when she opened her eyes, I was gone.

But not by magic. I had silently crept away, until I was out of sight, hidden in the woods, but not far from her.

She let out a scream of delight, and I was in heaven.

I came out of the woods, behind her, and said, "Here I am!"

She turned, and her smile was the most wonderful thing. And we walked on together in the woods, sharing this new development in our friendship.

If I had thought about it ahead of time — if I had given it even a little bit of thought — I would have realized there was no possible way I could sustain this pretense. It could go wrong in any moment, in so many ways. But it had come out of my mouth without any thought, unplanned and driven by a powerful anxiety I was barely conscious of at the time.

And so a few days later, the inevitable occurred.

"Close your eyes and count to five slowly!"

She willingly did so again. But as I crept away, some branches snapped unexpectedly beneath my feet. Her eyes flew open, she caught me walking away, and realized instantly what was really going on.

Our eyes met.

It was the most horrible moment of my life. I read the feeling of betrayal in her eyes. She didn’t say anything. She didn’t need to say anything. I didn't say anything.

And that choice of silence created a lot of unhandled business for both of us.

We went for a couple more walks together, without talking, trying to move beyond what happened. But it didn’t work. The trust was gone. Then there came the day when she no longer came down the street to meet me and go for our walk.

I was utterly devastated. I had lost my best friend, suddenly and forever. And, at ten, I had no self-understanding whatsoever, no space from what had happened to see how and why I had brought this about, and no thought of what I could have done to heal our relationship. At ten, it didn't even occur to me that healing was possible.

I had told Denise I could disappear — and I had indeed disappeared from her life, forever. And she had disappeared from my life, and I had no ability to make her re-appear.

The ending of our relationship and the way it had ended left a very deep psychic wound.

It was now 1980, 13 years later. I was 23, and a Ph.D. student at Stanford University in Northern California. I was also now committed to personal growth. So I made use of some of the opportunities that were springing up in California at the time. I participated in an EST-like organization called Lifespring, whose "encounter group" experiences helped move me beyond the limitations of ordinary psychology into a larger view of reality, including the possibility of Enlightenment.

The "encounter group” exercises were also good at revealing hidden aspects of oneself in a very direct way that was powerfully experiential, in contrast with the often merely conceptual approach of talk therapy. I had been in one intimate relationship since my time with Denise thirteen years earlier, and had come to understand myself much better through it. But that psychic wound was still buried there in me. This would be the moment that would begin its healing.

In one of the encounter group exercises, we were told we would be sitting across from a partner, in two chairs facing each other, only a couple of feet apart. We would take turns saying whatever came into our minds as we looked at each other. We were admonished to be absolutely honest, and to not withhold anything we were thinking or feeling. Interestingly, this would be the norm when I would later become a devotee of Adi Da (in 1989) and lived in community with other devotees. That unscrupulous honesty with each other was an essential part of our human and spiritual growth process, and we all were comfortable with that, because it was our norm. But this encounter group exercise in 1980 was the first time many of its participants would experience this degree of honesty and openness, and it was both exciting and a little terrifying for most of us!

I sat down in my chair, and then looked up to see who my partner was.

I was stunned.

It was Denise!

Or rather. . . it was a young woman who looked very much like Denise, just like I imagined she would look if I had met her now in 1980, and she was thirteen years older. She was very beautiful, and my heart melted.

Her name was Ann. As we looked into each others’ eyes, I was flooded with intense feelings. It was clear to me that this moment was no accident. It was a synchronicity — it was as though I were being given a second chance to be with Denise again. It was a moment created by the psychophysical universe, and its purpose was my healing. Everything in me wanted to hold Ann in my arms, embrace her, and kiss her passionately. Of course the feelings of passion were not something I had for Denise back when I was ten. But in this new moment, it was as though my psyche were acting out where our relationship might have gone, had we never parted.

Ann said she could see that something intense was going on with me. And so I told her everything. Her eyes widened when I described the overwhelming feelings of wanting to hold her in my arms and passionately kiss her. As it all came pouring out, I had no idea how Ann would receive it. But she had the sweetest smile on her face, and she told me it was so wonderful to hear a man express such attraction for her so openly, directly, and passionately. That had never happened before for her — and she loved it! I told Ann about Denise, and how much Ann resembled her, and what had happened between Denise and me — the wonderful and the terrible. And Ann told me of a similarly traumatic incident she had in her own childhood. Whatever insecurity I had felt with Denise was completely gone in this new moment with Ann.

When the time for the exercise was up, we embraced, and we made a date to go out to dinner a few nights later.

I was so moved by what had happened between us! It had been brief but very powerful. It had initiated the process of conscious healing of that psychic scar that had been created when my relationship with Denise came to its abrupt, devastating end.

As part of this healing process, I wrote a song about it that included both Denise and Ann.[3] I called it Heart Song, and the lyrics painted a picture of the difference in my own human maturity between then (when I was 10) and now (when I was 23), and the second chance this new moment represented. Here are some of the lyrics:

The song expresses the irony that, even though I couldn't make myself disappear, I had succeeded in making both my relationship with Denise and my childhood innocence disappear. What a magnificently horrible magician I was!

But the song goes on. Through an act of magic brought about with the help of powers larger than myself, "Denise" had re-appeared in my life, in the guise of Ann. And my "inner child" had re-appeared as well. As I sing in the song lyrics: "The child in me has re-appeared. He sings this for you (Ann/Denise)."

Here is the complete song:

(Complete lyrics here.)

Ann and I met for our date. After our dinner together, we went out to my car, and I sang my song for her. It touched her deeply. She looked at me, and her eyes were on fire. “Now do with me what you told me you wanted to do: hold me tight and kiss me passionately!” And so that’s how we spent the rest of the evening.

We had a few more dates. They were very enjoyable! But our lives didn’t have enough in common to form a longterm relationship. So we simply enjoyed our time together, and then amicably went our separate ways.

Sometimes the psychophysical reason people are brought together is very specific and only requires a short period of time. That was the case for Ann and me. The higher purposes of our meeting — for me, healing and wisdom; for her, that open, passionate communication of attraction and love that I gave her (that served to help heal a childhood wound of her own) — were accomplished in a very brief time, and we didn't need to be together further, once those purposes were fulfilled.

It was now 1993, another 13 years later.

A woman came over to me and said, “This morning, I saw you disappear in the meditation hall! Wanna go out?”

It was the strangest pickup line I had ever heard!

And perhaps I was the only person for whom the words, "I saw you disappear", coming from an attractive woman — who then asked me out! — could have such a profound impact.

I'll now explain how that moment came about.

* * *

In the community of Adidam, many of us live in “community households”. These are houses in which devotees live together and share our love of Adi Da, and our joys, responsibilities, expenses, and life altogether. It is an extremely useful circumstance for supporting our practice of the Way of Adidam. For example, in the particular household I was living in at the time, we’d awaken each morning around 4:45 AM to the sound of a gentle bell that was being rung by a devotee who was walking throughout the house.[10] That gave us fifteen minutes to wake up sufficiently to get dressed and head for the communion hall, a special room that was set apart exclusively for sacred purposes, including meditation and puja. We would start our day at 5am with an hour and a half of meditation, followed by a half an hour of a sacred puja.

In the communion hall, there is a large picture of Adi Da in front, lit by soft overhead lights, visible throughout the hall. When we entered the hall (usually carrying a cushion and a blanket), we would choose a spot to sit down (generally on a meditation cushion, or on a chair, for those who needed one), and wrap a blanket around ourselves, facing the picture of Adi Da. We’d then settle into a comfortable position and begin the meditation. The lights in the hall, which were already low, would be dimmed as much as possible, to help keep us from entering into a fully awakened state (we had been fast asleep just minutes before), instead allowing us to benefit from the virtues of meditating in a semi-sleep state.

The practice in meditation is Divine Communion. Sighting Adi Da’s "Murti" (a picture of Him that He had specifically chosen for this purpose) enables us to recognize Him as the Divine, and locate His Divine State. Our practice is then to immerse ourselves whole bodily in that State of Pure Happiness, releasing and forgetting ourselves for the remainder of the meditation period. Meditating collectively (as we did in that household, each morning and evening) can sometimes make this practice easier. For example, one person reaches the point of immersing themselves profoundly, and that magnifies the Transmission of Adi Da’s Divine State in the meditation hall, making it easier for everyone else to reach that depth.

Adi Da has always emphasized that the ego — the sense of being a separate self — is not a thing or structure, but an activity that we are unconsciously doing which He called the “self-contraction”. When our whole bodily immersion in Adi Da’s Divine State is profound enough, that ego activity spontaneously relaxes, and we disappear in a very real sense. Our conscious awareness continues without break, but we are no longer experiencing our “self” as a limited separate entity — our feeling-awareness is continuous with the Infinite Divine Being.

Adi Da describes this disappearance of the ego in Divine Communion with Him:

It was 1993. Rachel was a new devotee who had recently joined our household. (I'm calling her "Rachel" to protect her privacy.) On the morning in question, she sat in the very back of the hall, where she could see everyone else from behind. What made that perspective of particular interest was that Rachel had an interesting psychic ability: she could see people’s psychic forms, as well as their physical forms. So as Rachel sat back there, she was looking at everyone from behind, and seeing their physical and their psychic forms.

Suddenly, to Rachel’s astonishment, one of those psychic forms disappeared! It was me.

After the meditation completed, and the subsequent puja as well, Rachel walked over to me as we were leaving the hall.

“This morning, I saw you disappear in the meditation hall! Wanna go out?”

I heard her words, and was overcome by a flood of feelings. “I saw you disappear” instantly reconnected me in feeling with my entire experience with Denise 26 years earlier. I remembered how my insecurity led me to pretend I could disappear, even though I could not. And that betrayal of trust led to the end of our relationship.

But now the very thing that I had fantasized with Denise when I was 10 was actually occurring in real life (when I was 36), through Adi Da's Grace! Apparently my practice of Divine Communion had reached the point where I was indeed losing myself in the Divine — I was disappearing — and Rachel (because of her psychic ability) was the rare person who was able to observe and confirm that.[7]

So, amazingly, my life had come full circle from my time with Denise. Now I really could disappear! Not physically, but psychically — which had a much more profound significance to both Rachel and me, as spiritual practitioners. And now the thing that I had wished for with Denise — that “my ability to disappear” would attract her to me — appeared to be exactly what was happening now with Rachel! It was the same kind of “wish fulfillment” that occurs in dreams at night — but this wish fulfillment was manifesting psychophysically in my waking life! And, unlike wish fulfillment in dreams at night, the result of the wish fulfillment would get tested in the waking world (where you must "be careful what you wish for").

The synchronicity was extraordinary. I had thought I already had learned everything I needed to learn about my time with Denise. But now, because of this "in your face" synchronicity, I had the strong suspicion that the universe was about to teach me further lessons regarding the heart matter that had begun back with Denise.

So I talked with Rachel a bit, to make sure I had correctly understood what she meant when she had said "I saw you disappear”, and she told me about her psychic ability.

And then I considered her invitation, “Wanna go out?” I was single at the time, she was a devotee of Adi Da, she was living in the same household, and she was an attractive, intriguing woman. And the universe seemed to be signalling that she was going to be a vehicle through which I would learn further life lessons that would grow me. So I said, “Sure, let’s go out!”

Over the next several months, we came to love each other. Our love for each other grew, and at last we became intimate partners.

Rachel and I at our intimate partner ceremony
(click image to enlarge)

It was a very happy time for both of us!

A couple of months later, I went on retreat to be with Adi Da on Naitauba again. After I had been on retreat for about a week, I received word that Rachel wanted to end our relationship. I was deeply disturbed by this, because there had been no warning, no indication that she had any such intention. But I was unable to enter into any kind of conversation with her about it because I was on retreat, on the other side of the planet from her (in Fiji). Adi Da was also deeply disturbed by Rachel’s actions, saying that she was interrupting and interfering with the spiritual work He was doing with me as part of the retreat. He instructed Rachel, as His devotee, to stop all communication with me for the rest of the retreat. At a gathering of devotees with Him one evening soon after, I sat talking to Him. I asked Him to Bless Rachel. He replied, "I Bless all my devotees. I relate to each as an individual, not as a couple." And then He instructed me to put all my attention on Him for the rest of the retreat. "I will take care of your heart", He assured me.

And He did! The heart pain I had been feeling disappeared, along with all sense of dilemma. I was completely enveloped by His Love-Bliss for the remainder of the retreat (which was a couple more weeks).

When I returned home, Rachel was gone. I went through a profound grieving process. But through Adi Da’s Grace, I was able to move on after a couple of days of deep sorrow.

I spoke to other people who had known Rachel for several years, and I began to piece together a much clearer picture of what had happened, from people who had watched Rachel move from one relationship to another before she met me.

Rachel was a lovely woman — that was what attracted me to her. But she also was a spiritual thrill seeker! — that was what attracted her to me. She was drawn to me because she witnessed me demonstrating a spiritual ability she had never seen before. And she also did genuinely love me, and had no intention of hurting me. But her love didn’t run very deep. She didn’t have the human or spiritual maturity for that yet. It appears that it had never run very deep in past relationships either, and it was never too long before whatever had originally fascinated her would lose its fascination. The restlessness of the “spiritual seeker” in her would eventually grow stronger than her love for her partner, and would move her onward, sooner or later, to seek a new adventure. And my being away from her on retreat in Fiji just made that step of “moving on to the next adventure” that much easier for her — she could just leave, without have to face me.

When I began this chapter, I mentioned how, if one cooperates with a psychophysical process of healing and growth, it can continue to give you further lessons on the same subject, in the manner of a school with further, higher grades of education. And so it was to be, in my case.[9] Having actively, willingly participated in the process during my time with Ann, I was given further lessons with Rachel. Here are two of them.

An Intimate Relationship Requires More Than Just Attraction. Everything I've told you about Rachel and my time with her revealed the primary, key lesson I had not gotten earlier — which I couldn’t have understood when I was ten with Denise, and which was more subtle than the lessons I was learning when I was with Ann. The lesson was: “An intimate relationship requires more than just attraction.” Looking back many decades later, the lesson seems obvious to me now. But it is not always so obvious in the actual living of it, and many relationships fall apart when the "honeymoon phase" is over for precisely this reason: attraction is not enough, and it can wear off (or phase).

When I was ten, I had this simple but naive thought that having some quality or talent that people might find attractive would be sufficient to hold a relationship together. At ten, I was fantasizing a magical ability (the ability to disappear). But a few years later in high school, it might just as well have been a more common fantasy: me wishing to be the star of the football team (or have a male body like the star of the football team!), or be the leader of the high school marching band, the class valedictorian, or what not. The problem is that, while all of those talents or accolades are potentially intriguing, attractive, and stimulating for a partner, (a) they don’t and can’t substitute for the relational capabilities and other aspects of human maturity necessary to sustain and nourish an intimate relationship; and (b) they tend to attract “thrill seekers”, people who enjoy and are stimulated by the special talent or capability (whatever it might be) for a while, but who, when the thrill is gone, move on, often because they themselves don’t have the human maturity to sustain a longterm intimate relationship.

So that was a further lesson I needed to get, to reach full closure on the heart matter I had opened up with Denise all those years ago. Yes, the capability I fantasized for ensuring our relationship — my ability to disappear — wasn't actually true of me. But it also was the case that the logic behind the fantasy was flawed; being able to disappear did not in any way provide for what is really needed to sustain and nourish a relationship.

Another way of putting it: Adi Da has always described a full intimate relationship as having both love and desire as its elements.[6] It's not at all unusual for relationships to begin on the basis of attraction and desire, and that "chemistry" can include not only physical attraction but an attraction to any of the qualities of a person. But attraction and desire alone are not a sufficient basis for intimacy. Even attraction and desire combined with a measure of love — which was what Rachel and I had — was not enough. Love must fully develop as well, in both partners, for an intimate partnership to be both possible and sustainable.

The Mortal Beloved Inevitably Leaves; Always Deepen Your Connection to the Eternal Beloved. The other "further lesson" I received was about the inevitable ups and downs of life, like the loss of my friendship with Denise, or the loss of my relationship with Rachel. Yes, if I had had a bit more human wisdom, I would have known better than to do something that would destroy my friendship with Denise. But no amount of wisdom can eliminate what Adi Da calls “Raymond’s problem”:[4] the loved one always inevitably leaves, sooner or later. . . by death — "till death do us part" — if by nothing sooner. No amazing capabilities (like being able to disappear) can even touch Raymond’s problem. Not even profound love for each other can prevent it from occurring. And Raymond's problem is part of an even larger problem: conditional existence — Adi Da's very apt name for the universe — is conditional. Everything is temporary, nothing can be held onto forever:

The best thing one can do in every moment, in the midst of this inevitable round of changes in conditional existence, is to not waste time and energy reacting to the changes, but instead simply rest in the Unconditional Happiness of Divine Communion, not adding self-contraction to the inevitable round.

And indeed, that was exactly what Adi Da helped me to do when I was on retreat with Him and learned that Rachel had left me. He had me focus entirely on Him in Divine Communion. "I will take care of your heart", He had assured me. And my Heart-Master did exactly that then, and He continues to do exactly that now.[8]

So if you are interested in learning how to disappear, the best way to disappear is not the "superpower" of mere, physical disappearance that I fantasized about when I was ten. The best way to disappear is to not hold on to anything and allow the self to disappear in the ecstasy of Divine Communion! The ability to disappear in Divine Communion was what attracted Rachel to me. But that ability (and the Divine Person in Whom I disappeared) was what also saved me when Rachel herself disappeared.