Comparisons with Other Traditions

Adi Da as First, Last, and only Seventh Stage Adept

Question: How can we make sense of Adi Da's statement that He is "the First, Last, and only Seventh Stage Adept?"

Brief answer: Shortly after His Re-Awakening in September, 1970, Adi Da began a decades-long consideration (concluded finally in 1993) about whether there had been any other seventh stage Realizers among all the great Spiritual Masters throughout history. In this article, we lay out Adi Da's search for a historical precedent. This consideration would first lead Him to a greatly clarified set of criteria for assessing whether the teaching and life story of a great Realizer or Master indicated that they were in the seventh stage of life. Ultimately, it led Him to conclude that He was in fact the first such Realizer; and further, that, for functional reasons, He was the first, last, and only seventh stage Adept — His appearance and work as seventh stage Adept has opened a "hole in the universe" that now makes possible endless numbers of seventh stage Realizers.

Having laid out (in this article) Adi Da's criteria for assessing whether a Realizer is a seventh Stage Realizer or whether a seventh stage Realizer is also a seventh stage Adept, any readers of this article who fully understand these criteria can duplicate Adi Da's consideration. They can go through the thousands of Spiritual Realizers in the Great Tradition, apply these criteria to the teaching and life story of each Realizer, and confirm Adi Da's conclusions for themselves.

Developing a Healthy Ego Before Transcending It

Question: A core part of Adi Da's Teaching is about the transcendence of egoity. A common "New Age" notion I have heard is that one must develop a "healthy ego" before one can transcend the ego. What does Adi Da say about this?"

Brief answer: Adi Da has explicitly criticized this view many times. In fact, the difference between this view and Adi Da's is largely a matter of semantics, not substance: what exactly is meant by the word, "ego". In conventional language, "ego" or "self" is used rather confusingly, with both negative and positive connotations ("self-obsessed", "self-centered", etc. vs. "self-esteem", "self-worth", "self-love", etc.) It is that semantic conflation that is largely the basis for the notion that one must develop a "healthy ego" (i.e., develop "self-esteem", "self-love") first before we can transcend the ego (and qualities like "self-centeredness", etc.)

Adi Da uses "ego" and "egoity" in a very specific, technically precise manner, based on His complete awareness of the nature of egoity and the process for transcending it. In Adi Da's view, egoity is not a "thing" or "structure" (that can be "healthy" or "unhealthy") but an act — an act of self-contraction, a separative act — that is superimpossed on the body-mind (and all its functioning) in every moment, creating a contracted, fearful body-mind rather than a free body-mind, happy and fearless in its felt connection to its Divine Source (because it is not separating from the Divine via egoity).

Adidam and Postmodernism

Question: How does Adidam compare with postmodernism? Doesn't postmodernism reject the view that there is an ultimate Reality? Isn't Adidam oriented around the view that there is an Ultimate Reality?

Brief answer: Adidam is a post-postmodern tradition. Like postmodernism, Adidam rejects all egoic viewpoints as limited. But this is because it identifies the ego as the source of all limited viewpoints (which postmodernism fails to do). The immediate (and profoundly consequential) implication is that there is a Viewpoint that is not limited: if one transcends the ego perfectly, then "limited viewpoint" is also transcended in the Prior Unity that is revealed. Thus, unlike postmodernism, Adidam claims that there is a Prior Unity, and an ego-transcending (non-separative) Viewpoint associated with the Consciousness that is that Prior Unity. Adidam also provides a means for Realizing that Consciousness (and Prior Unity) directly (not merely "knowing" it egoically, or forming limited viewpoints about it), and consequently, for transcending egoity altogether and all the limited points of view so greatly criticized by postmodernism.