FAQs about Adi Da & Adidam > Adi Da's Teaching Over Time > Words in Context

Dimension 5:
Temporary (or Partial) Viewpoint vs.
Conclusive "Summary Statement"


Whether Adi Da's communication represented a particular temporary phase (or "stance" or "partial viewpoint" in a larger consideration) or a conclusive "summary statement"


This is Part 10 of Chris Tong's fourteen-part article, A Framework for Exegesis: Understanding Adi Da's Word in Context.

A lot of Adi Da's talks were given in the context of a longterm (even decades-long) consideration by Adi Da about the exact form some aspect of the practice should take. This is especially the case in the practical areas of money, food, and sex, where we can read talks that represent or put forward specific viewpoints or practices in these areas, which were adopted for a limited period of time, experimentation, and consideration, but then were sometimes dropped (or more carefully qualified), in the long run. For this reason, Adi Da has stressed that readers should be directed to the Source Texts that contained His summary of, and final conclusions about, such longterm experiments, rather than getting confused by talks that He gave in the midst of such considerations, which might only communicate a partial or temporary viewpoint.

As I wrote earlier, everything Adi Da did at all points in His decades-long work with His devotees held sacred import, and is worthy of our respect and our recording for posterity. So even though the summaries of these long periods of experimentation are the "crown jewels", the particular experiments along the way — what was of value, and what wasn't — have a value in themselves. . . . not least of which is: "Thinking of trying this? Adi Da already did try it with His devotees, and here's why it didn't work out the way you might think or hope it would."


And that is one of the main values of this Community. It represents in living terms, since you have passed through all this stuff yourselves, that real argument in the world against the whole search for experience, even spiritual experience. Because of your own certainty, you represent an argument for the sufficiency of the perfect, absolute Divine Siddhi, that is not itself experiential or yogic in nature. It is not even mystical in nature. But it is perfect nonetheless, and more than sufficient. It is real, absolute. Those who engage in such sadhana do not require the experiential dimension to be communicated in yogic or mystical-visionary ways.

Avatar Adi Da Samraj
Chapter 14, Garbage and the Goddess

Language as a puja article: Adi Da's special use of language to magnify emotional investment during considerations. One of the things devotees who have engaged in many considerations with Adi Da over the years discover is that He likes to use superlatives in the "heat" of a consideration of a particular topic. So if the consideration is about celibacy (for example), He might give a talk about celibacy being the secret of spiritual growth. Or if, conversely, the consideration is about intimacy in human relationships, He might give a talk about how being "in love" is the greatest of all samadhis short of the great Spiritual and Transcendental Samadhis of the advanced stages of the Way of Adidam. The use of such heightened language was one of the ways Adi Da took the consideration beyond the merely intellectual, becoming the completely invested Pujarist (or "Priest") of the consideration, using language as a "puja article" to heighten the emotional investment (His own, and that of all participants) in the topic under consideration. He would also use actual experience, not just words, asking devotees to actually engage in an alternative lifestyle being considered and report their findings to everyone. (For example, He wouldn't just talk with devotees about a new diet; they would experiment with that new diet themselves.) And He would sometimes use greater-than-material Forces in synchrony with the consideration. For instance, when I was on Naitauba during a period when He was engaging all of us there in an emotional-sexual consideration, it was the common experience of all of us there that there was "something in the air" which was greatly magnifying our emotional rawness and our sexual desire. For example, I would have to hold myself back from approaching one female devotee I found attractive, so great was the urge to have sex with her. (There's a little of that sometimes in ordinary life, of course, but what I'm describing was extreme! [1]) The net effect of the Divinely charged language and the Divinely charged "atmosphere" was a very real and full consideration.

Understanding this amazing "puja" that Adi Da performed when engaging in considerations with devotees leads one to be cautious about mis-interpreting the "superlatives" His speech might contain during a consideration, by taking them out of context. So for example, if I were a newcomer to Adi Da's Teaching who ran across a talk entitled "Celibacy is the Great Secret" (that came out of the middle of a celibacy consideration), I might incorrectly infer that Adi Da was recommending that everyone become celibate. Just so, as such a newcomer, if I ran across a talk (from a consideration about human intimacy) about how being "in love" was a great samadhi and Realization, I might incorrectly conclude that Adi Da was recommending that everyone be in an intimate relationship. Both of these were partial viewpoints — perfectly appropriate as "puja articles" for their respective considerations, but not appropriate as summary statements of Adi Da's Teaching. Instead, Adi Da has always emphasized — as His actual summary Teaching (that consequently appears in His Source Texts) — that to be focused on the "sex question" (whether to be in an intimacy or to be a celibate) was to be missing the point.

So a key point in understanding Adi Da's words in context is to be aware that He uses superlatives as "puja articles" during considerations, to interpret them accordingly, and to only treat communications made in His Source Texts as His final, conclusive Word on any given subject. [2]

 

 

[1]
   It could clearly have been awakened by Adi Da's Spiritual Force, as He describes here: "When a practitioner is Spiritually Awakened, accompanying the initial demonstration of the movement of bodily energy and the Spirit-Energy in the lower chakras of the body-mind there is typically experienced intense sexual stimulation — an unbearable stimulation, not merely the casual sexual stimulation that results when one is not sexually active but the unbearable stimulation that results from the Awakening of the pranic Force." (Avatar Adi Da Samraj, "The Practice of Solitary Shaktichalana Mudra in the Way of the Heart".)
   
[2]
   This makes discrimination especially important in areas where there is no Summary Statement from Adi Da in any Source Text — for example, a Summary Statement on how to create a successful Adidam Mission. What there is instead is hundreds of sets of His Notes about the Mission over the years. As someone who has served the Adidam Mission for decades (and someone who has been in charge of it several times), I have read, received, and carefully considered Adi Da's Notes on the Mission, and, they include many examples of His "use of heightened language", where He singles out some particular facet of the Mission as the key to success with the Mission. The factors that, in one or another consideration He has cited as the key to Mission success have included:
  • the authentification of the culture — More devotees need to grow in their practice in order to be effective missionaries for the Way of Adidam.
  • mission organization — Adi Da: "You have the great Gift and Truth and you can't even organize yourselves! That's what is wrong! If you had a systematic approach . . . you'd get thousands more involved this next year, guaranteed."
  • Making pictures/videos of Adi Da available — When Adi Da looked at a book devotees had created, called Darshan, and filled with sublime pictures of Him, He said, "This is the mission."
  • size of the culture — Adi Da: "The Mission has to fully become global and successful. The gathering has got to achieve size, and all the strength that comes from that, and all the effectiveness that that proves. These are imperatives."
  • accessible literature — Adi Da: "Even 20 years ago, My indication to you all was that the literature was the primary missionary tool. . . It's not enough to broadly publish and distribute the Source Literature because I'm not doing public work Myself. The Source Literature is the foundation of this Way, the most profound Word. But you have to have lots of other literature based on that Word, that starts from what people are interested in and systematically sells this Way. And they are not going to be sold on it by reading The Dawn Horse Testament, unless they are some unique individual. They are going to go through The Dawn Horse Testament like it is 20,000 Old Testaments, you know what I mean? They're not going to get it. So the literature you all need to be producing must be in those bookstores."
These are just a few of the many issues Adi Da has, at one time or another, singled out, using heightened language. If a devotee serving the Mission were to just read the Notes where Adi Da is using heightened language relative to "authentification of the culture", he or she might very well (mistakenly) conclude that that one issue was the only important issue for the Mission's success. But when one reads the entirety of Adi Da's communications on the Mission, one sees that He cites many issues as the issue, at different times. Obviously the right understanding is that all of these key issues are important. And because Adi Da provides no Summary Statement Himself about how to weigh these issues against each other, we must bring great discrimination to how we actually serve the Mission (based on reading the entirety of Adi Da's Communications about the Mission), paying special attention to avoiding the pitfall of emphasizing one important issue at the expense of another important issue.

I used the Adidam Mission as an example of an area where Adi Da gave extensive Notes over the years, but never created a Summary Statement. The same need for great discrimination applies to any other area where Adi Da has given extensive Notes, but no final Summary Statement.
 

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