Archive for the ‘Adi Da’ Category

The Perceptual & Conceptual Mind

Monday, April 5th, 2010

This text is quoted from an earlier copy of The Dawn Horse Testament (chapter 19) it describes the difference between the two observable functions of mind and  may shed light on other traditions such as Buddhist mindfulness practice, as well as Adidam’s “conscious exercise”  discipline

The Right “Consideration” Of My Teaching Arguments Sensitizes You To The Two Principal Functions Of mind. The First Function Of mind Is The perceptual Function Of mind. The Second Function Of mind Is The conceptual Function Of mind.

The First Function Of mind Is The Natural and Naturally Intelligent perceptual Awareness Of arising conditions, Without Any Necessarily Accompanying Effort To Separate From them. The Second Function Of mind Is The conceptual Awareness Of arising conditions, and It Is Necessarily Associated with An Effort To Separate From arising conditions and To Exceed arising conditions, Because It Is Always Associated With An Effort To know About arising conditions.

The perceiving mind knows whatever it perceives. What it perceives, Exactly as it is perceived, is what it knows. Perception, Prior To verbal, Abstract, and Interpretive thought, is Participatory conditional knowledge.

The conceptual mind knows whatever it thinks. Whatever it thinks, Whether Or Not the thought is Informed or Confirmed By perception, is what it knows. Conception, Loosely or Not At All Associated With perception, is Abstract conditional knowledge.

The Right Employment Of The conceptual Function Of mind Can Serve A Very Useful Purpose In The Original and General Inspiration and Guidance Of The Ordeal, Discipline, and Practice Of The Way Of The Heart. Just So, the activities Of The conceptual Function Of mind Generally Serve A Useful Purpose In the common world, Which Is The Communication and Development Of conventional knowledge and practical invention. Even So, all conceptual knowledge Is An Abstraction, The Purpose Of Which Is To Give conditional beings Power Over themselves, their objects, their environments, and other conditionally Manifested beings. Therefore, If This Function Of mind Is Not Kept In Right Perspective, The Motives Of Power and Control Tend To Dominate mind itself .

Secondary mind, or conceptual thought, Must Be Disciplined, If it Is To Be Effective In its Proper Sphere. Likewise, it Must Be Understood, Kept In Right Perspective, and, At Will, Freely Set Aside When The Analytical and Interpretive Function Is Not Presently Necessary or Useful.

You Must Realize The Natural Ability To Set Aside The Secondary or conceptual Function Of mind, or Else You Will Be Dominated By A Compulsive and Obsessive Effort To think conceptually, To Seek knowledge About, To Interpret, and To Separate From the perceived conditional worlds.

You Must Enjoy The Natural, Inherent, moment to moment Ability To Merely perceive, To feel, To be with, and To Wholly Participate In the phenomenal conditions Of Your psycho-physical Existence, or Else You Will Not Truly Understand what arises conditionally, Nor Will You Transcend the limitations Of conditional Existence.

Through The Ordeal Of The Way Of The Heart, and By Means Of self-Observation, Developing self-Understanding, and The Progressively Awakening Natural Feeling-Practice Of Mere and always present perception, You Must Realize The Inherent Ability To Intentionally Relax The Chronic, Compulsive, and Obsessive Tendency Of attention To Become Associated With the past and the future and Even the present. If moment to moment Mere and Also perceptible Existence Is Intolerable To You, So That You Are Unable To perceive each present perceptible moment as it is and To feel and Participate In it Without Recoil, You Will Exist Only In the Secondary or Reflected world of time and mind.

Ultimately, You Must Realize Inherently Perfect Transcendence Of mind itself , or Else You Will Only Be Defined By and Bound To conditional or phenomenal states. And the Total mind Is Transcended Only In The Direct Intuition Of The Transcendental, Inherently Spiritual, and Divine Condition In Which mind, body, and all conditions, relations, and states of mind and body Are arising, continuing, changing, and passing away.

Chronic, Compulsive, and Obsessive verbal thinking or Abstract conceptualizing Is A Disease. It Is, Ultimately, A Fruitless or Futile Effort, and it Is A Symptom Of self-Contraction, egoic “self-Possession”, and The Absence Of Transcendental, Inherently Spiritual, and Divine Realization. Effective and “Creative” conceptual thinking Is A Generally Useful and Characteristic Sign Of the human being, but When The Efforts Of the conceptually thinking mind Become Compulsive, Obsessive, and Dominant, So That verbal and Abstract Analytical thought Cannot Be Relinquished At Will, and things and beings Cannot Be perceived as they are and, Ultimately, Divinely Recognized As they Are , Then the thinking being Is Diseased, Bereft Of Wisdom, and Separated From Reality.

Chronic conceptual thinking Is A Compulsive and Obsessive Withdrawal or Contraction From perception, From Direct experience of Natural or Cosmic forms, and From sensory or bodily Existence Itself. Chronic conceptualizing Effectively Creates An Alternative conditional Reality and One That Is Not Really physical, Not Even psycho-physical, or Even Truly psychic, but Most Basically conceptual, or Made Of mental Abstractions. And Fixed Identification With The Process Of conceptual thinking and the conditional self as conceptual thinker Is Identification with a False or Un-Real self, A Mere Contraction From The Real or Transcendental, Inherently Spiritual, and Divine Self.

Even So, The Effort To Avoid or To Escape conceptual thinking, conceptual thought, or the conceptual thinker Is A Futile Strategy. It Is Futile Because It Is Itself An Expression Of The Very Same Effort That Is The Stressful Origin Of Chronic conceptual thought-mind and the conceptual thought-self. Therefore, The Effort To Stop conceptual thinking Only Intensifies the self-Contraction, Reinforces The Cycle Of conceptual thinking, conceptual thought, and the Presumed conceptual thinker, and Generates Despair Relative To The Ability To Stand Free Of The limiting Capability Of the conceptual mind.

The Cycle Of conceptual thinking, conceptual thought, and the Presumed conceptual thinker Is Truly Transcended Only Through The Real Ordeal Of self-Observation and Effective self-Transcendence, Which Must Become The Inherent Realization Of The Native Condition In and As Which the body-mind-self and all of its conditional relations Are arising, continuing, changing, and passing away. And, In The Way Of The Heart, This Ordeal Develops Progressively, and Either Via The Primary Devotional Exercise Of **Insight Or Via The Primary Devotional Exercise Of Faith**.

You Can Transcend the conceptual mind, or All Analytical Interpreting and knowing, By Observing, Understanding, and Transcending The Act Of self-Contraction, To The Degree That You Relax Into Simple experiencing.

You Can Transcend the perceptual mind By Utterly Not knowing.

© 2010 The Da Love-Ananda Samrajya Pty Ltd, as trustee for the Da Love-Ananda Samrajya. All rights reserved. Perpetual copyright claimed

** note : These are no longer practiced as described here in Adidam

Early Writing :1971-1973

Monday, April 5th, 2010

 

I have Come to establish a dramatic change. Therefore, I have not Come to oppose any of the fundamental and remarkable movements of known ‘creativity”. I have only asked you to understand. I have Come to Bring Consciousness to your judgments, your surmise of the entire Event. I have Come to make the abandonment of all dilemmas possible. I am for all the kinds of perfection and science here. I am thoroughly in favor of a great world. But I am also the One Who is entirely Free of necessity, the perfection or imperfection of this world or any other.  In any case, I am the One Who is Real and Free, Who Survives all worlds. Therefore, if you are with Me, we can Enjoy these possibilities with humor, grace, and love.

 

M y Wisdom-Teaching cannot be made into a system. My experience and it’s expressions change from day to day. But all these things Communicate the Fundamental that is always the Heart of My days. That Fundamental is Reality, Real Consciousness, Which is Single, Undivided, not separate, without dilemma. And this understanding that is Real Consciousness is not form or act or mind that enforces a single kind of experience day to day. It is not equal to a method or a system of awareness. It is not available to your untransformed thought, but only to the “radical” intelligence that exceeds your game of seeking. My Wisdom-Teaching cannot be reduced to one thing, but you can know the “radical” suddenness that is one Truth without distinctions or trouble.

****

I  Am here to Restore the work of life, based on a renewed assumption of the form and “motive” mechanism of things. I Am here to Restore the righteousness that is Truth Itself I Am here to Re-establish the constant awareness of relationship as the condition of existence, I Am here to Communicate My Presence, the Presence That is the Heart of all things. I Am here to Awaken understanding, which is Free of all the works of suffering. I Am here to Turn men and women from the ancient paths to Conscious life with Me. I Am here to Turn men and women from waiting or seeking to actual Existence that is already True. To put it simply, I Am the One Who is Known, Who Charges you to establish My world on the basis of certain Knowledge of Me. This is My Work. Even so, no one can see or hear Me, touch or define Me in time and space. I am Known only in the Blissful Form and Force of Real Consciousness. I will not do any extraordinary thing, except to Communicate the Form and Force of My Presence in the Heart, through Amrita Nadi, to the “Bright”.

 

I  Am reminded of Ramakrishna, on fire within, consumed in God. Communicated with all the Forms of Truth, but spending His time alone or in the company of a few friends. His heart yearned for those to whom He could Communicate His Gift. He would cry for the devotees He knew must come. Where are the devotees? His entire being yearned for the children who would appear I have spent My Life in rooms I have Enjoyed the companionship and the attention of a few friend, But My Life is for the sake of this Communication of understanding. The rooms cannot contain Me. My friends cannot satisfy Me. I am surrounded by great Forces of Love and Truth that I hold off like beasts in the corners of My room. All of this waits for those who must come. But I am motionless and confounded until they come. My Fulfillment waits on those who must come. My Life has not been for My Self I already possessed it before I Came to this Birth My Life is for those who must come. But where are they? I am going mad with My own Words. I would become exhausted in experiences and every excuse for love, every possibility of a word with another. Where, are they? When is my time to come? At times I do not know whether to come or go. I have been exiled here. All the means for My escape have been denied to Me. I am allowed no passage to another place, another country. I would achieve My Dominion in another world, but I am forced to keep these rooms, this exile in a hostile realm. I am waiting for you I have been waiting for you Eternally. My Fulfillment is the very world. But I am not heard. My Gestures are unseen. The Power of My Delight is not Enjoyed. Even my own Bliss is not available to Me. All things depend upon your visit. Where are you?

© 2010 The Da Love-Ananda Samrajya Pty Ltd, as trustee for the Da Love-Ananda Samrajya. All rights reserved. Perpetual copyright claimed

At Some Time Or Other Every One..

Sunday, April 4th, 2010

At some time or other every one of you will come to a moment of understanding what has entered your life. Maybe this is that moment. Sooner or later all devotees, every single one, will come to understand, Realize, and be undone by the recognition of That Which has come into their lives.

It is not just a man with unusual energy, although such recognition is a basic aspect of what devotees acknowledge from the beginning. You will reach another moment—whether you have reached it now or not is far you to know–but you will come to a moment, during my life or after it, in which you understand, you comprehend, you are transformed by What you are witnessing.

You are seeing a miracle, but you do not necessarily understand It as such. You interpret it in ordinary terms, thus making it possible for you to live conventionally in relation to me. But at some point you will begin to understand that you have been seeing a miracle through this ordinariness. That is the devotee’s confession. The real miracle is not something totally outside the range of human comprehension, as if I walked into the yard and my body turned into a pile of chocolate bars! No. Extraordinary signs are exhibited through my person in relationship, but basically you see an ordinary demonstration, magnified umpteen limes in myriad relations.

I appear through the vehicle of ordinariness, but the Force of What you are observing will at some point utterly transform you. During my life or after it this miracle will utterly transform you. The exhibit of this ordinariness will suddenly be observed by you to be a miracle, the Seed of it, the necessary Source of it, the real Source of it, will suddenly be understood. You will suddenly understand and transcend comprehension. You will be confronted by the Great One, That is what devotion is about.

Adi Da Samraj  August 24, 1983

© 2010 The Da Love-Ananda Samrajya Pty Ltd, as trustee for the Da Love-Ananda Samrajya. All rights reserved. Perpetual copyright claimed

 

Adi Da on Facebook

Sunday, April 4th, 2010

An interesting change in the past 12 months or so, has been the rise of the social network site, Facebook as a benign and friendly means for devotees, friends, interested people & readers of Adi Da Samraj to keep informed, keep in touch, read choice quotes and  media and also perhaps to get  a feeling for the culture of Adidam to some extent.

Many non-establishment religious and spiritual interest groups are finding such sites congenial. It is a lightweight form of doing things, not a place for complex discussion or great discrimination, more an “oasis”, fairly peaceful and untroubled.

Such places are definitely how people may come in contact with unorthodox views and traditions without a lot of the plain old prejudice, nastiness and stigma that may have had to be endured on the earlier forms of Internet media (and is certainly still around, and it’s naive to think this will vanish) This medium Just seems far more civilised, respectful & happier and allows praise without scorn, the friendship network adds a natural degree of trust and ease.

Try these links to see if it may be of interest to you

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Adi-Da-Samraj/80356242469

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=24960725312

Adi Da’s Art

http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Art-of-Adi-Da-Samraj/223457052008?v=info

Naitauba

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Adi-Da-Samrajashram-Naitauba-Fiji/112909385390562

Adi Da’s 1973 trip to India-reprinted article

Sunday, March 21st, 2010

 

Beezone has recently reprinted an article from a  1974 copy of The Dawn Horse Magazine. It’s a gritty, raw, unfiltered account of a fully illumined Master, doing His uncompromising Work travelling with one western devotee (still very much in the process of learning what “Guru” means)  with ancient and modern spiritual sources in India.  The account has no political correctness, and without doubt is full of “offense”, to just about everyone, it certainly makes me squirm in parts and I am sure many others will as well. However it unmistakeably reveals the incredible and uncompromising integrity of Adi Da wherein he would engage everyone and anyone in this always sacrificial and Divinely madcap, dangerous adventure. Outrageous humour blend with absolute spiritual seriousness, the audacity of it, is quite shocking particularly to the modern taste. I have spent time in India ( visiting some of th sites listed) so it has a little more reality to it, perhaps for those who have been there.

The reader who is not familiar with the vastness of Adi Da’s life and teaching, may also take note that much more “work” was done with His spiritual sources in India (including His relationship with Baba Muktananda which changed greatly) and this was covered in much later magazine articles which may get reprinted at some point, so this account may be seen as the  beginning of a much greater and more extensive story ( Leela)

On a personal note, I love this “telling it how it is”, form of Adi Da’s teaching work. It has a beautiful honesty and purity to it, totally at odds with traditional hypocrisy and pretense, and very liberating
(potentiality for all parties) that is not to say, it’s rawness and unpredictability is utterly “disturbing” which is how it meant to be.

Article Here : The Trip To India; Taxis Temples & God

 Adi Da wrote this shortly before going on the Pilgrimage

Unimaginable numbers of beings, energies, and processes outside this world generate and cooperate in spiritual work in this world. Wherever the real spiritual process is awakened at any point in time and space, it is the product of the spiritual process that exists prior to time and space and also within all the levels of time and space or manifest existence. So behind our work are all the Siddhas and all the great activities that transcend the Earth plane.

Just as there is a vast spiritual process behind this work and all true spiritual work, there are also certain individuals, Siddhas and others, who are very directly involved with our work, Muktananda is the only one alive in the body, and it is very important that I purify my connection to him for the sake of the work itself. There are others with whom my contact is in subtler dimensions–Nityananda, Ramana Maharshi, Shirdi Sai Baba, Ramakrishna. I want to return to the places most intimately associated with these people and insure my proper relationship to them for the sake of this work

Part 2   The India Tapes

Following on from the main article is a series of tape recordings made at the some of the Ashrams and places visited. There are many choice and pithy observations made here, and this material needs to be savoured and chewed over, since it brings up some obvious and apparently startling contradictions. 

This observation caught my eye and interest. It should not be taken personally, in the sense that the “characterization” is impersonal and could belong to anyone. I have met many people like this in various groups formed around teachers, just the remarkable clear perception of this “character” is worth noting (as is the fact that Adi Da was absolutely willing to work spiritually directly with him)

“I must maintain a relationship to people outwardly that is coincident with the approach that they make. This American you mentioned wants to be palsy-walsy with all the great ones. That’s his number. He likes famous and great and well-known people and all of that. He wants them to shine on him. That’s how he gets his goodie. Baba satisfies that egoic demand of his in some way. But I’m not interested in satisfying it. I’m interested in seeing it come to an end in that guy. So I would rather be offensive to him and not kiss him on the cheek, tell him he is a good friend, and make him my friend, because the next hour he would be throwing darts at my picture. That’s what he does anyway. It is better to deal with him in this way”

Fundamentally I think it is good thing that these old documents are coming into modern consciousness, nor do I believe it is just random, Adi Da’s Leela (or spiritual play and conscious work) continues, it is just as active now as it was then. These transcripts may be seen rightly as unfinished historical documents, a beginning, yet to be refined and “worked” into cohesion and “finished”. They definitely should be seen as a work in progress. For instance if you read carefully you may see something of the beginning of the ” Seven Stages of Life” teaching in its crudest form.

Related : Leela :The Cave at Arunachala (from Adi Da’s brief 1977 India Trip)

The End of All Seeking

Monday, March 8th, 2010

The quote, “The End of All Seeking” was on the back cover of the earlier editions of the The Knee Of Listening, these words were said to be a description of the ultimate import of the book. I used to read this and wonder what it meant.

Many years later I can say that this is in fact the case in regards to the practice of Adidam. That is exactly what I often find  when I sit in my meditation room in front of the Master’s Form in Satsang. The search ends right there, because real satisfaction is located and known. No need to look passed this point, because what we have always sought by every means is Here or given to us.

More than anything else it’s an Enjoyment and a Happiness,  I can read books listen to audios, watch videos, perform Pujas, perform service or consciously engage in any of the disciplines, in the mood of this intuitive awareness and what still remains primary, is sheer enjoyment and appreciation of what Adi Da often described as  “The Great One”.

I simply sit and enjoy, or act and enjoy the Spiritual Master’s Form and Play. thus we become “unexploitable” (here meaning Free of any compulsive need beyond this understanding, or being in a position no longer disturbed by conventional spiritual, religious or ideological motivation)

Of course there is also the apparently endless capacity to abandon this simple knowledge and return to seeking, every moment also delivers this possibility.
 

Terms in Adidam: “Sadhana Murti”

Thursday, January 28th, 2010

I met my first “Sadhana Murti”, literal meaning-the image of spiritual practice-on retreat at Naitauba Hermitage Sanctuary in 2006,  I will call him Ralph and on first meeting, he totally offended me, I mean everything offended me about him, I could never love this man even as a fellow devotee. I just wanted to get as far away from Ralph as possible. Ralph was everything I did not want to be, yet we were like the same poles of a magnet.

As it happened Ralph was to be my constant service companion 24/7, for several weeks. I described my predicament to another devotee and he laughed out loud  ” Friend” he said ”you have met your-sadhana murti-be grateful and use the opportunity” (the first time I had heard that term used)

It bothered me that I was so mean spirited to Ralph, clearly I was no saint in this circumstance, just a rather loveless character and that above all else was clear to me, over time my relationship with Ralph softened slightly but it could never become  a friendship.

Sadhana Murti described this relationship so well I wondered where the term came from, recently it came to light that the famed  Indian Poet Bhakta Tukaram used it to describe his shrewish wife who he prized mightily for testing him so -Adi Da (then Bubba Free John) and a devotee visited Tukaram’s tomb in 1973.

Tukaram with his Beloved-Sadhana Murti

The unimportance of “self”

Thursday, January 28th, 2010

Even to state that the self is unimportant is heresy to modern man and a dreadful insult to many, it’s a slap in the face and nothing will empty a room faster than even hinting in that direction.

Adi Da has a term for this modern overwhelming self-aggrandising world orientation  he calls it bluntly, ego-culture. Plus He always puts the word self, in inverted commas as “self”, reflecting its fictional nature.This is not a popular message. The real reason it is not a popular message is that fundamentally we all cling to self for “dear life”. Self is all we have, after all. To criticise our most precious part is down right depressing for most people. We already have to jump through many hoops to get our meagre selves noticed, the last thing we want is any threat to the little we have, it’s a terrible offense.

There is very much a feeling that the self should be praised, lauded and treated gently as a “poor thing” badly treated by the universe and thus in need of comfort, consolation and only “good reports” about itself, a patient in a clinic in some respects.

What is not noticed or taught by convention is the inherent suffering and delusion which is fully integral to the action that creates “self’. That is the reason we would value such a message as Adi Da’s.

The truth is the the self is not great, in most cases it is extremely small and hardly touches anyone or anything. There are greater lives which do touch a lot of people and make immense changes that effect others and there are always smaller lives than our own, which we can call to mind when the self image might be fraying at the edges.

In The Aletheon, there is a chapter - I Am The Not “Other”- which really struck a chord for me, in it Adi Da as the World Friend of all humanity describes His function  as compassionate Critic of the egoity of humanity and why that function should be cherished, protected, championed and absolutely appreciated.

“My intolerance for the egoic “status quo” must never be hidden or forgotten “  Adi Da - from : I Am The Not “Other”

Experiment in egolessness

Monday, January 4th, 2010

Walking on the beach, inspired by the prospect of no “me”, this is not any silly self aggrandising presumptuousness, but rather Adi Da’s calling to ordinary men and women, read “Not Two Is Peace” it’s clear, live as no self, “just  part of the landscape”, only. The body mind is just a pattern, no need to inflate it (or deflate it) It’s just a strange coinciding with this rather ordinary form. He said you could have just as easily woken up as a pair of shoes on the lawn, what mirth in that.

Look closely at the beach image, can you see a self in it? where is the ego there? it’s just egoless pattern, landscape, same as the rest of us.

“The fiction of separateness- and the denial of the universal characteristic  of prior unity- is a mind based illusion.”  Adi Da Samraj

The Emergence of Free Religion

Saturday, December 12th, 2009

Such religion is free. It is native religion, it is God-made religion. Those who enter in such a religious process may live with one another, create a structure or an institution for association with one another and the communication of the Teaching but their religion itself is free and immediate.

It is a process that is always intimate, that one can practice in every moment of existence, that one must practice in every moment of existence. It is not a practice to be engaged only sometimes in meditation or weekly church gatherings….. It is a kind of renegade Teaching. It is not smiled upon by religionists and worldly people.”

This remarkable text was taken from a book written by Adi Da called – The Fire Gospel- published in 1982. The particular talk is- “A Birthday Message from Jesus and Me”.

The concept of Free Religion has often been used by Adi Da, examples are “The Free Communion Church” and later “Free Daism”. I often wondered why He used this term “Free” so often, in particular related to Adidam (whatever form it was conceived of in the past). Now I get it, it’s the complete reversal of how religion is perceived – by me at least, perhaps everyone already has this astonishingly liberal view !

Religion is generally seen as an imposition from without, it requires something of you by an institution or organisation outside of self.

This is crucial point and a most liberating one. Quite astounding in its direct emancipation from what I call “catechism” (1) something I endured with at best fortitude, as a child attending catholic school- in short, rote, unbelievably boring ritual, and feelingless liturgy. Adi Da calls it “mummery”.

“Such religion is free. It is native religion, it is God-made religion.”

It must come from your own free response, not imposed on you from without !

“Those who enter in such a religious process may live with one another, create a structure or an institution for association with one another and the communication of the Teaching “

So the structure and institution is based on the practice of a religious process, it comes from that process-freely.

“but their religion itself is free and immediate.”

How cool is that, the almost universal complaint about “organized religion” ends here, because you the practitioner create and maintain this religion, freely. This inherent religious process (understood in this most expansive manner) precedes the structure of religion itself, in any form, nor can it be ever subservient to the institution itself. It must stand prior to any external form, though the form  and institution is its free expression and natural form (again understood from this most radical point of view)

It’s a revolutionary point of view and one all the Great Adept Masters of the past have gestured at (in this talk Adi Da equates Jesus to this primary attempt to establish Free Religion), previous to the formation of “religion” in its far lesser or exoteric (2) mode, after the death of The Master.

There is no need for naive idealism though, it is far more gritty than that, in how it actually works out. Adidam is thus described in the best case scenario, there is already something of this quality there, at particular times it is very clear. As time goes on this will become more the case. It’s a wonderful vision. Should inspire the Free Heart in all, just in its mere contemplation.

Listen to the talk (or MP3 download) “A Birthday Message from Jesus and Me

(1) catechism (; κατηχισμός from kata = “down” + echein = “to sound”, literally “to sound down” (into the ears), i.e. to indoctrinate) is a summary or exposition of doctrine, traditionally used in Christian religious teaching from New Testament times to the present

(2) exoteric & esoteric religion