Adi Da Causal

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

There are a whole series of YouTube Videos similar to this here

Part 2

With the forthcoming The Aletheon people will have the opportunity to review Adi Da’s final work which is relatively unknown compared to earlier writing. On this point a friend asked me this question, he has been a longtime student of Adi Da but never a formal devotee. It’s an ongoing discussion and perhaps will be much thrashed out over time with increasing clarity. I think it is an interesting consideration and perhaps on the mind of many

Q : (B.M) With the passing of Adi Da, would not his whole life as Avatar, Realizer, Guru, Teacher become the source of study by Adidam now, rather than the last years wherein the Master is sort of polarized or frozen in time as that exclusive form and teaching emphasis. I realize that this may be seen as a sort of heresy in Adidam, if it does not have the capacity to inspect its own dogmatism

A:(my answer) Adi Da is unique in the manner that He clearly wanted this period, even closer than this, perhaps the last 2 years of His life to be his legacy to All. His Enlightened Leela only came to Real Fullness or Completion- post 2000 after the Ruchira Dham Event. He made the point that only after this Event, His Teaching & The Reality Way of Adidam fully came into being.

Q: Yes I understand this, but surely if you inspect the life of anyone after they have left the body, their whole life, not just how they were at the end of their life becomes the Event, in other words Franklin Jones, Bubba Free John, Da Free John, Da Kalki, Da Avabhasa, Adi Da etc all represent distinct periods of wisdom study, all unique all with a specific emphasis, if you only emphasize the last few years, the greatness of each period is lost. I can go to YouTube and enjoy ( for instance) The humorous play of the Adept as Da Free John as a distinct and marvellous period of instruction and Leela and read books from the era with great joy.

A : No one in Adidam would deny you any of this and many may do the same thing, there is obviously no taboo against reading and listening and watching and enjoying any of the great media available from the past, however the ego being what it is, we may not see the earlier work as one in transition and a compromise, or submission to the approach of devotees and what they represented, at that time and place. In other words all of it can be an enjoyment and a study, but from what I can understand of Bhagavan Adi Da’s final instruction and that given to His Renunciate devotee’s whom He definitely personally instructed was that He clearly wanted His word and emphasis to be as it was at the end of His physical Incarnation. Again this was without a doubt Adi Da’s Blessing Intention, so Adidam is correct in trying to manifest the Masters Instruction. Others will naturally take whatever position they will on His lifetime, but Adidam will always represent what the Master Himself conveyed as His Demand.

Stories of devotee’s bringing the Master into life, communicating Him directly to others seem more prevalent in the 1970’s to early 1980’s, I can’t account for this, it is fundamentally mysterious, as are many things connected with the Adept’s Work, I don’t think it is either possible or necessary to try an explain this If you do want to speculate about it, here is my own addition, the 60-70’s were a completely energetically and psychically different time–weird stuff happened a lot more often

Some examples:

A man was standing in the Darshan line waiting to see UG Krishnamurti, a man in front of him turned and either spoke to him or others and said (paraphrasing) “If you want to see God, go to the Ashram Bookstore in L.A (at the time Adi Da was using this facility) He is there”. The man listening later became a devotee.

I met a devotee on Naitauba in November 2008, he had been so since 1974, both formal and informal, in that year he met a man named Bill C., who told him that Franklin Jones, a man in California was the “Living Siddha Master, without a shadow of doubt, the Real Thing”. Merely on the say so, of Bill, he went to California and became a devotee.

In the mid-late 70’s I went into a bookstore and found this incredible stack of books right down the back of the store in Melbourne, Australia (which was a conventional bookstore) It was truly mind blowing, they seemed to have tangible almost glowing, energetic quality, as if I had suddenly been thrust into another realm, the titles included : “Garbage And The Goddess” and “No Remedy” by someone called Bubba Free John, and some other books about Ramana Maharshi The humorous thing was I had previously read “The Knee of Listening” and did not know the author was the same, I bought a copy of “Garbage and Goddess” Talking to the sales assistant he seemed to be perplexed by the mysterious books as well, almost whispering about them. Later I learned that a very close devotee of Bubba Free John, had come to Town and distributed the books directly to that store.

I recently spoke to a lady H. who told me of seeing a friend called Terry (circa 1981-2) who had been practicing as a Tibetan Buddhist Monk, on his return to the West, he spoke of an amazing being called Da Free John and a book called “Garbage And The Goddess”, these 2 impresssions stayed in her mind.

Some time later in a 2nd hand bookshop, she saw GG and bought it, H. was a very poor english reader, being a native of Poland and expected to struggle with reading it, on the contrary the book came alive to her, she understood it completely, she told me of her profound experience merely by reading this book and feeling her connection to Adi Da via the photos’s inside, which stays with her to the present (2009)

There are dozens of true accounts recorded and unrecorded, just like these, another good example has recently been added to adidaupclose.org here, apart from being very well written it also clearly demonstrates the necessary influence of Adi Da’s devotees in making the Way available to others.

What seems missing from modern life or any life is that which is Great, Wonderful, Ecstatic. Even these possibilities are denied to exist at all, by modern cultural attitudes. If you did find what is Truly Great you would want to Incarnate it, correct ? (the word ‘incarnate’ as used here & as used by Adi Da means to bring down into life, make manifest) so this has been the work of  devotees and continues to be.

The truth is we have despaired of  Spiritual Greatness, and with good reason, our faith in such ideas has been shown over and over to be misplaced, so the only solution is first find what is  Truly Great and  then Incarnate it down into life. Let it first Brighten the mind, then Irradiate the emotion, Invigorate our life force and change the world– since the world is plastic, psycho-physical , capable of change by superior force

What is Truly Great is the Divine Adept, The True Master, The Great One, The Heaven Born, The Siddha. He (or She) can always be remembered, enjoyed, incarnated, brought into the life vehicle. Without that incarnation into the life vehicle He remains “unknown” to the world, only available potentially. The Master’s devotees bring Him into the world, into the life vehicle they make the Way “real” and available to others.

Contemplation of what is Truly Great, is the meditative practice of Adidam, the devotee having discovered that very thing in the form of his or her Guru–the intuition of the Glorious Divine Nature–then merely and naturally and with great enthusiasm just enjoys that contemplation. That contemplation sometimes feels like a process of expansion and purification and even a sense of The Guru descending into his or her life vehicle. This intuition of Guru as the Divine Being and Nature, rather than a man or “other” is natural and imperative to practice, what Adi Da calls Recognition Response, nothing to do with worshipping the form of a man or separate other. 

Listen to this early talk “Meditation on The Guru”

There is almost enough space now to look back at the Event of the Life of Adi Da Samraj, His life certainly was a magic object given to devotees, lovers and friends and any one in fact who could or will appreciate it, intuit something about it or let it Brighten their own lifetime even for a short time or an intuitive moment by the mere contemplation or recollection of the Leela (Divine sport or play) in some form or other.

Intuitively taking His whole lifetime into account, rather than only the end time, because it seems to me the God-man in death reacquires, purifies and aligns all his forms in His Mahasamadhi (this could be utter nonsense, so use your own intuition about this) I feel that the true legacy that is given for all who may respond to this lifetime could be called in a feeling sense “A Universally Available All Liberating Brightness” again that’s just my interpretation, others should see for themselves

But when that preparation is sufficient — and this is not knowable to devotees — it is then that this appearance is vanished, like a magic object given to you in a devotional afternoon. The disappearance of the God-man is therefore sudden — whenever it occurs it is sudden. Its significance is that the aura of his or her communication moves through his or her lovers, only through them. And the entire process depends entirely, then, without a center, on the process of the community, on the process of the gathering of devotees, who no longer have a center in the case of the death of the God-man, but who have a burden of Light, who suffer or enjoy a speed in them that they could not recollect or engage while that one lived.

From The Death and the Birth of The God-man 1976- Adi Da Samraj