Crazy Wisdom > The Call To Be Love > Part 1: Introduction

1. Introduction


This is Part 1 of Michael Costabile's seven-part article, The Call To Be Love (And To Live As Love In All Relations).

In a world of escalating global tensions and universal fears, Adi Da Samraj is a living source of transcendental spiritual wisdom and Divine Enlightenment. His primary communication to all is the silent Transmission of His own Realization of Reality and Truth.

Through a unique process of Teaching, which He calls His “Self-Submission Work”, Adi Da has also given the world a corpus of Transcendental Spiritual Instruction, recorded in well over seventy volumes and acclaimed as unsurpassed amidst the world’s sacred, religious, and spiritual traditions. In His writings, Adi Da elaborates the entire process of human development as it has been traditionally proposed — from birth to human maturity to Spiritual Awakening. He also describes the radical process of Divine Enlightenment that He uniquely Reveals.

In the course of making this Revelation, Adi Da often made use of unconventional methods of Teaching, including an open examination of the emotional-sexual interests and patterns of His devotees. It was clear to Him that such an approach was necessary in order that He might:

  • reveal and reflect the personal (and universal) patterns of egoity suffered by all who came to Him for spiritual instruction;
  • provide a foundation of self-understanding and human responsibility sufficient to prepare His devotees for the process of transcendental spiritual awakening in His Company;
  • and present to the world a comprehensive wisdom-address to the universal dilemma of human life, including its emotional and sexual dimensions.

The entire landscape of emotion and sexuality is a minefield of passions, subliminal forces, and contradictions that are immensely powerful in their influence over virtually every aspect of human life. Adi Da notes that this is so from the very moment of conception onward. His work with sexuality has always been rooted in the acknowledgement that human beings are confused, obsessed, and conflicted about the psycho-physical, social, and intimate patterns of their lives, including their sexual inclinations and practices. Moreover, this confusion extends to every area of ordinary life.

Therefore, a depth of feeling, insight, understanding, and personal responsibility is required if human beings are to harmonize and transcend their emotional-sexual conflicts and thereby “live as love and self-giving in relationship to all others”. Such responsibility is also essential to establish the equanimity necessary for real spiritual practice.

While all of this was clear to Adi Da, the “methods” He employed to consider the patterns of emotion and sexuality with devotees have prompted challenges to His work — and even to His integrity as a Realized Spiritual Master. This essay is especially addressed to those who are newly acquainting themselves with Adi Da Samraj and wish to understand the history, nature, and purpose of His intimate work with devotees. It also responds to those who have sought to discredit Him by misrepresenting or otherwise misinterpreting the free and unconventional manner of His Teaching-Work — its larger purpose in the lives of His devotees and its wisdom-relevance for humankind as a whole.

This is not a response to any particular assertion made about Adi Da, nor does it address any specific (or alleged) incident in the course of His Teaching-association with devotees. It simply examines the nature of this association and the purposes served thereby, while posing a counter challenge to those seeking to discredit Him. I write not in the spirit of contention, but to shed light on the heroic and groundbreaking nature of Adi Da’s Work in the complex, emotionally charged domain of human emotion and sexuality.

I should add that there is no way to divorce what is said here from my personal relationship to Adi Da Samraj and my intimate experience of His Life and Work. I have been His formal devotee for more than three decades, and it is my clearest conviction that no other Spiritual Teacher has so freely examined the range of human experience and so thoroughly illuminated its relationship to the laws and processes of Transcendental Spiritual Realization.

Adi Da’s “unrestricted consideration” of emotion and sexuality surpasses even the psychological contributions of Freud, Jung, and Adler, especially with regard to the link between emotion, sexuality, and the foundation stages of human life previous to spiritual awakening.

Indeed, no one has articulated a clearer, more comprehensive exposition of all of the first six (or developmental) stages of life and their relationship to the “esoteric anatomy” of the human body-mind. There is simply no authoritative source — secular or religious, ancient or modern — where such can be found.

Nor has any other Spiritual Teacher revealed and clarified the unique realization of the seventh, or egoless and ultimate stage of human life, which stands in contrast to the entire course of human development and spiritual realization as these have been traditionally understood and pursued.

Adi Da’s Work has never been merely a matter of talking and writing, but always a living consideration and spontaneous demonstration of the truth of His unique revelation as it manifests in His own life and in relationship to His devotees. Perhaps this will only become evident in the course of time. But to those who can appreciate the extraordinary nature of such an undertaking (including its dangers and perils) in this time and place, Adi Da’s unparalleled genius, courage, and compassion in service to those approaching Him for human and spiritual guidance are self-evident.

Lastly, by way of introduction, there was a guiding purpose underlying the considerations and experimentation done in Adi Da’s Company — not just relative to our ordinary human possibilities (which He has summarized generically as “money, food, and sex”), but even relative to our higher “spiritual” possibilities, including subtle visions and phenomena, blissful samadhis, and other exalted states: all of what occurred in any consideration with Adi Da was not the “Way” Itself, nor was it done for its own sake. It was simply the radical means Adi Da freely used to convey a fundamental lesson to human beings about the method of seeking itself and the search for Happiness in all its forms.

And what is that lesson? It is that no experience, whether high or low in the scale of human possibilities, is Happiness, Truth, or Freedom Itself. Every experience passes. That which is Truth Itself, or Real Happiness, is always already the case, prior to (and never dependent on) any experience or condition whatsoever. Real God is the Acausal Reality or Divine Self-Condition in (and as) which all apparent conditions and beings are arising. All that was done during Adi Da’s Teaching years has been for the sake of communicating and demonstrating the quintessential truth of this understanding to human beings.


Part 2: The Context of “Consideration”
Between Adi Da and His Devotees



Quotations from and/or photographs of Avatar Adi Da Samraj used by permission of the copyright owner:
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