Freedom & Adidam
I am often impressed with the personal and philosophical freedom shown by some formal student practitioners of Adidam (Adidam can mean both the Way or Practice of Adidam and the Institution/ Collective/ Community of Adidam)
I am someone who loves personal freedom, it is so important to me, I have tended to live my life based on that tenet more than anything else, it is the root of joy for me, all my experiments in life have this love at the core
So the question must arise, why would a freedom loving individual take up an extremely limiting or confining practice and way of life? A life of devotion, discipline, apparently binding on personal motion–great self discipline required.
Yet it is not the monks life, great creativity is completely possible within this self imposed confinement For instance I live in a rather desirable location, nice house, sea views, self employed, relatively free of external stress, good health and free of physically crippling addictions. Many Adidam people are exceptionally creative, in arts, music, culture, business, this is common rather than unusual.
To answer this question : This is its paradox of formality ( keeping to a set of prescribed disciplines)…it increases freedom both at the level of action and philosophically or in the sense of “feeling free” or as a complex term within Adidam it is sometimes called “free energy and attention”. The exact opposite of how freedom is generally viewed — being able to do what you want, when you want, where you want, in other words the disciplined life actually increases true demonstrable and tacit freedom.
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The Attitude of Retreat : Dropping Below Survival Stress Patterns into Perfect Ease
Setting aside sacred time, meditation time, spirit time, practice time, as opposed to conventional stress and survival time is part of Adidam practice. Most people have no real time other than the conventional round of life, as it is given. The level of survival stress and all its associations never really “drops”; at best some relief is found in sleep, recreation, creative and holiday time, this is “normal” relief and release.
The asana (attitude or stance) of retreat is deeper than this, in Adidam, the set-apart sacred time of spiritual practice, is outside of all the concerns of money, food, sex, survival & society So it immediately allows a depth of falling below, or beyond bodily based, daily stress patterns.
This equanimity is where practice time begins. If this state of natural ease or equilibrium is noticed an immediate joy and deep refreshment of being is felt. There is nothing otherworldly about it, it is native everyone.
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How Radical Understanding became Radical Devotion
My first contact with Adi Da Samraj came through an early edition of “The Knee Of Listening” (KOL), after reading this book many, many times over many years, its distilled wisdom essence was essentially located for me in the sections titled ” The meditation of understanding ” and even more so in ” The wisdom of understanding ” ( neither of these are in the most recent 2004 edition )
I distilled this wisdom to a few quotes committed to memory and also to even one liners repeated internally, the first one most essentially – (1) “I am always already Free ” The pristine logic here being if I ( or we ) are always already free, even now, then why do any practice at all ? Clearly according to this liberating foundation argument, this knowledge is simply enough! Absolutely nothing else is required now or ever, devastating in its liberating simplicity.
Now taking this essential point from KOL, how then is Adidam (meaning both the Way and Practices, and the Institution ) relevant or necessary in the light of this prior Liberation ?
First, what I found and I assume many others who come from this particular philosophical school of thought, or one of the modern equivalents, find or will find, is that “no practice” , though liberating in its philosophical vision, does not work in reality.
I have no interest in criticizing those who promote or champion such “pathless paths” or what Adi Da calls “talking school”, I remain utterly philosophically sympathetic with the logic that motivates all who find liberated mind in these considerations My difference comes from the observation in concrete experience over time in my own life, that even the most liberating philosophical attitude, does not actually free the essential being.
I should make the point here that Adi Da Samraj states emphatically – -dozens if not hundreds of times in all the literature, talks & media of Adidam — the this Way has no techniques, no methods, is searchless –without seeking– not based in any dilemma, problem, or solution to problem and is in complete harmony with the fundamental KOL doctrine. It could also be described as a ” pathless path ” from the most radical viewpoint, in fact he has recently written essays titled ” The End of the Path is the Way from the Beginning ” and ” The Seventh Stage Reality Way of No Stages at All ” It is paradoxically an intensively practicing Way.
The second and equally important point gleaned from KOL was (2) “observe the patterns of your life ” In other words develop the freedom to inspect yourself most essentially, what motivates you at the very core. Apply the discriminative faculty to yourself and your motives, your choices, your actions . You could sum this up as ” its all about you ” your consciousness, not anyone or anything else at all – self understanding, self knowledge. As far as my investigations into other religious, spiritual and therapeutic methods have gone I have never heard or seen this radical self inspection expressed or even understood in this exact manner.
How then does this intense discrimination then make the jump to radical devotion, the two seem extremely incompatible, in the traditions Bhakta and Gnani keep a critical and sometimes contemptuous distance
The first point is, devotion in Adidam is not the raw bhakti of the traditions, it is not mere devotionalism or emotionalism ( not implying that bhakti in the traditions is always only this either ) It is not rote ritualism, it is never fake, forced or contrived, though in the midst of human scale reality it will tend to be this way . If it is expressed this way, it is not Adidam as detailed precisely by Heart Master Adi Da.
So how does radical self understanding , the faculty of intense discrimination join forces with radical devotion and why ? Going back to KOL 1992 edition p 287 – The then seeker Franklin Jones made a remarkable poetically clothed observation when in the company of his Guru, Baba Muktananada
” Guru-bhakti is superior to all mere methods. Put aside all dharma, all means, and think only of Him. That itself is realization and the way itself…if I seek to recognize myself in the heart and enquire as to my own nature I find myself drawn apart from all things separated even from that recognition by my own exclusive search. But even in that same ignorance, if I think of Shee Guru, or look upon him in the company of devotees, I am drawn into the heart of all reality, and by the easy deepest heart I lose the body of all distinctions While I loved him thus, I gained my true heart and never tried and sought “
What this means to me is that the mere devotional sighting and heart felt response to ones Guru achieves exactly the same result as the most intense radical inquiry. It is not averse to discrimination and is in fact essential to it. This practice is exactly the only one that Adi Da suggests his student devotees apply, after it was “drawn out of him” by the many years of teaching demonstration.
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