Adi Da Up Close
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[Contains German subtitles. If the CC icon ("Subtitles/closed captions") has a red line under it, the subtitles should appear. If you don't see them, just press the CC icon to turn them on.]

This is a video excerpt from Adi Da's classic talk, "The Bodily Location of Happiness" (German: "Der körperliche Sitz des Glücklichseins"), which He gave on November 28, 1981. This talk was originally published in the book, The Bodily Location Of Happiness. The full talk is available on CD.

The talk communicates several core insights:

1. Everybody is intuitively familiar with happiness. You don't have to be a devotee of Adi Da! This was part of the reason Adi Da chose "happiness" as the focus of this Teaching period: because the subject was so accessible. Everyone knows what it's like to be happy (at least a little). It's just that most people are not aware that Perfect, Eternal Happiness is possible and Realizable. (And it certainly isn't, through ordinary human means.) Adi Da: "All beings are always already Happy. You always know, at this very moment you know exactly, what it would be to look and feel and be and act completely Happy." The esoteric reason everyone is familiar with happiness is because everyone is always, already happy. And the esoteric reason everyone yearns for complete happiness is because complete happiness is realizable — and everyone's heart knows that.

2. Adi Da's "Lesson of Life":"You can't become happy; you can only be (already) happy." People are always seeking for happiness. The "pursuit of happiness" (not happiness itself!) is even enshrined as an "unalienable right" (alongside life and liberty) in the preamble of the United States Declaration of Independence. Its author, Thomas Jefferson, knew better than to think a government could guarantee happiness itself — hence only the guarantee of "the pursuit of happiness". Only a Divine Incarnation can guarantee Happiness Itself.

Adi Da reveals that happiness is the native state of beings. It is already the case. Every attempt to seek for it (mis-identifying the source of happiness as some object or other) in fact serves to dissociate one from it. Adi Da: "You think that you can seek Happiness and find it. Your search for Happiness is itself a confession of un-Happiness. You cannot realize Happiness by persisting in un-Happiness, persisting in the method of un-Happiness. All seeking is an expression of un-Happiness, all seeking is the method of un-Happiness, the practice of un-Happiness. This must be understood. It is not merely true — it must be understood."

Self-understanding allows one to get this point. Based on self-understanding, one can devote oneself to Happiness rather than to seeking for It and settling for the little bit of Infinite Happiness that "bleeds through" the clench of ego into conditions. This ultimately enables the Eternal Realization of Infinite, Perfect Happiness. Adi Da: "Understand your un-Happiness. Then you will be capable of locating Happiness, and, having located Happiness, you will be capable of practicing the Way of Adidam, which is nothing but the devotion of life to Happiness."

3. The Transmission of the Divine Guru is How One Locates Happiness. The subtitle of the book, The Bodily Location Of Happiness, is: "On the Incarnation of the Divine Person and the Transmission of Love-Bliss". In other words, you can't apply "The Lesson of Life" by somehow "locating" happiness directly, by yourself (or in yourself). Happiness is our native state, but that doesn't mean it can be located by an egoic, "do it yourself" process. We locate happiness directly as a Grace-given Gift, through devotion to the Transcendental Spiritual Transmission of Adi Da. Adi Da: "Happiness is presently the case. In this moment you are already Happy. Sitting with Me, locate this Happiness." We locate our "Native State" by recognizing and submitting to our "Native Person" — our Very Self appearing here in bodily (human) form.

4. It is a Process of Whole Bodily Location. "The bodily location of Happiness" is not primarily a reference to some place where Happiness resides in the body (although Adi Da teases His listeners with this idea: "Look for it in your toes, in your fingers, in your shirt, in your head"). It refers to a process ("the bodily location of Happiness" = "the locating of Happiness with the whole body-mind") that involves the surrender and transformation of every aspect of the body-mind, immersed in the Perfectly Happy State of the Divine Guru, through recognition of Him as the Divine in every moment. Then the secondary and supportive practices of the Way of Adidam become means for staying immersed in that Divine State in every moment: "Having located Happiness [having recognized Adi Da as the Divine], you will be capable of practicing the Way of Adidam, which is nothing but the devotion of life to Happiness [Adi Da, recognized as the Divine]. The practices of this Way are not methods for attaining Happiness, but they are the expressions of Happiness. The disciplines of money, food, and sex are not a way to become Happy. Discipline is difficult enough — why should we also burden it with the obligation to make us Happy!"

Tags: happiness   CD   German  

In this talk excerpt, Adi Da discusses how His devotees — practitioners of the Way of Adidam — go beyond the limits of both conventional religion and conventional science. He makes the point that both true religion and true science are associated with Realization. Realization is the focus of true religion. And Realization is the basis for true science.

This excerpt is track 7 of the CD, Science and the Myth of Materialism, a collection of talks from throughout the 30 years of Avatar Adi Da's formal Teaching-Work that brings together samples from His vast Divine Instruction relative to the psycho-physical nature of the world, the limits of scientific materialism, and the Inherent Unity of Existence.

The album is available through iTunes, Microsoft, and The Dawn Horse Press.

Note: This video may not be available or viewable in every country.

Tags: CD  

In this talk excerpt, Adi Da discusses the Big Bang, and how scientists now believe that space itself originated with the Big Bang. He then considers the philosophical implications.

This excerpt is track 6 of the CD, Science and the Myth of Materialism, a collection of talks from throughout the 30 years of Avatar Adi Da's formal Teaching-Work that brings together samples from His vast Divine Instruction relative to the psycho-physical nature of the world, the limits of scientific materialism, and the Inherent Unity of Existence.

The album is available through iTunes, Microsoft, and The Dawn Horse Press.

Note: This video may not be available or viewable in every country.

Tags: CD  

Adi Da recites "The Heart of Understanding", the Prologue to His autobiography, The Knee Of Listening. "The Heart of Understanding" also is the Prologue to His book, Easy Death.

The recitation is accompanied by photos of Adi Da.

"The Heart of Understanding" is extraordinarily good news: death itself can be transcended! The death of the body-mind is not a problem, and is utterly acceptable, if one realizes and stands as Consciousness Itself, in which all mortal forms and limited worlds are arising.

In the final words of "The Heart of Understanding", Adi Da reveals that He is That: Consciousness Itself. Because this is so, He transmits that Revelation to all beings, and provides (and is) the means whereby all of us finally can be free of mortality and the mortal vision.

This excerpt is track 1 of the CD, Death and the Purpose of Existence, a collection of talks and recitations that exemplify Avatar Adi Da’s essential Wisdom-Teaching on death and dying.

The album is available through iTunes, Microsoft, and The Dawn Horse Press.

Tags: death   poem   Knee Of Listening  

In this seminal discourse (at The Mountain Of Attention), from the early years of His Teaching Work, Adi Da speaks about the inevitable process of self-revelation and self-understanding that prepares the being for true Spiritual life.

The full talk is available on the CD, The Grace of Suffering, and on DVD as Volume 2 of the 25th Anniversary DVD Series.

Tags: CD   DVD  

Adi Da: "Sex is fundamental ego-identity, lived. And generally speaking, it is a problem for everyone. . . The social pattern of 'self' and 'other' is founded upon emotional-sexual patterning to a very great degree. . . So it certainly is an important dimension of bondage, and therefore an important aspect of sadhana. The Perfect Practice is not based on any reference to the body-mind, or any method of the body-mind."

In this Avataric Discourse (from January 21, 2005), Adi Da explains why the Perfect Practice (the most advanced development of the Way of Adidam) has nothing to do with sex (or the ego-"I" altogether), and is not a "method" of the body-mind or something to be applied to the body-mind. The Self-Condition prior to the body-mind is the domain of the Perfect Practice. The Self-Condition is not a separate "self", but the Nirvanic Condition that is always already the case, and that inherently transcends the body-mind.

This excerpt is from the DVD, Beyond Sex, Science, and self. Subtitles in English, Spanish, French, Italian, German, Dutch, Russian, Polish, Czech, and Hebrew.

A CD version is also available.

Tags: Avataric Discourse   Perfect Practice   DVD   CD  

An audio excerpt from Adi Da Samraj's early talk, "Renouncing the Search for the Edible Deity", accompanied by more recent photos of Adi Da.

Adi Da: "When we look out into the universe we feel insulted, rejected, unloved. And so we make philosophy out of our apparent independence. Fundamentally, it is not our experiences in particular relationships that tell us we are not loved. Some people do not love us, surely, but nevertheless we are simply, always, and already philosophically disposed to believe that we are not loved. It is our interpretation of existence, not on the basis of any relational experience we have had with other human beings, but on the basis of our apparent independence itself. Our sense of independent bodily existence means separation to us, whereas, you see, it is really only the sense of independent bodily existence. When you become strong — if you ever can become truly strong — autonomous, able to take a deep breath, then you stop interpreting the universe as a form of rejection, as a great parent from whose company you have been expelled, under whose domination you live, who has rejected you and does not love you. Everyone is simply born into the conventional condition of independence and everyone interprets that condition as rejection, as 'you don't love me.' "

"Renouncing the Search for the Edible Deity" is available as a CD here. A transcript is also available online and as a chapter in the book, The Yoga Of Right Diet.

An audio excerpt from Adi Da Samraj's early talk, "Renouncing the Search for the Edible Deity", accompanied by photos of Adi Da from a more recent Avataric Discourse.

We experience "independent" existence as a kind of madness, a seeming separation from food (both because of the cutting of the umbilical cord and as a feeling of separation from our ultimate source of sustenance, the Very Divine). We must instead be like the eating gorilla. . .

Adi Da: "The eating gorilla finds a cabbage in the jungle, sits down like a slob and munches away at the cabbage, and is completely benign, completely peaceful. . . . Therefore, the eating gorilla is the image of the true man, the true woman. He demonstrates the principle of true politics, of real human existence, in which we are always presently connected to the Food Source in Truth, and are always presuming connection, relationship, 'I love you.' "

"Renouncing the Search for the Edible Deity" is available as a CD here. A transcript is also available online and as a chapter in the book, The Yoga Of Right Diet.

Tags: searchless diet  

This audio excerpt is from "Tell Me True - Have You Got the Gom-Boo?", a talk given by Adi Da on August 30, 1982. The talk appears as Chapter 2 in Adi Da's book, The Dreaded Gom-Boo.

Adi Da: "The presumption of being [the presumption of one's own existence] is not made on the basis of [scientific observations of nature]. . . The force of being itself is self-authenticating.. . . The Consciousness that is single is not evident in the body. . . In the profundity of the research into that presumption of being (rather than the mechanical associations of it), we realize - intuitively, directly - the Being that is to be presumed to be ultimately associated with all of nature."

This excerpt is also track 4 of the CD, Science and the Myth of Materialism, a collection of talks from throughout the 30 years of Avatar Adi Da’s formal Teaching-Work that brings together samples from His vast Divine Instruction relative to the psycho-physical nature of the world, the limits of scientific materialism, and the Inherent Unity of Existence.

The album is available through iTunes, Microsoft, and The Dawn Horse Press.

Note: This video may not be available or viewable in every country.

Tags: CD  

In this beautiful and intimate Discourse given on December 30, 1983 at Adi Da Samrajashram, Avatar Adi Da speaks with a man who suffers from claustrophobia. Avatar Adi Da points to the self-generated cause of such terrifying experiences, describing them as symptoms of feeling-contraction from the Field of Divine Existence. He calls this man—and all who are sensitive to suffering and anxiety—to find the Bliss of Divine Existence in His Company, and to intensively practice feeling beyond all emotional limits on living in That Bliss.

This audio clip is an excerpt from the CD, Surrender Without Limitation. "Surrender Without Limitation" is also Chapter 16 in the book, My "Bright" Sight.

Tags: CD  

This video excerpt is an excerpt from Adi Da's talk, "The Bridge To God", from October 27, 1980. (The full talk, "The Bridge To God", is available as a CD and as an online transcript.)

On the previous day, a shaman from Mexico visited The Mountain Of Attention, Avatar Adi Da Samraj’s Northern California sanctuary. The following day, Avatar Adi Da considered with His devotees the inherently magical nature of the world and our psychic relationship to it.

Adi Da: "The world is a psychic phenomenon. In other words, we never experience the world except psychically. We never experience it except as knowledge and perception. We never experience it except as a condition that includes us. We are not separate from it. What we are at the level of the psyche and at the level of consciousness is just as much an inherent part of the world as the so-called material, objective forms. When we associate with the world on the basis of the totality of all the conditions of our existence, we participate in the world of forms as a psychic process. By participating psychically in the psychic phenomena of the world, we learn the laws whereby we can influence the phenomena of the waking state. We generate a process wherein we can become sensitive to the phenomena of the waking state so that we can observe unusual coincidences of form and psychic significances that our verbal mind tends to exclude from what we are observing."

Tags: CD  

Adi Da: "Science is not a human activity, because it is an activity in which what is specifically human is fundamentally suppressed, abstracted, separated out. We're supposed to be devoted to finding out about this external world. We're not supposed to be devoted to participation in a total world in which reality includes not only the objects of perception and conception, but the process of perception and conception, and the being or consciousness in which perception and conception are experienced or recognized."

This talk excerpt is track 2 of the CD, Science and the Myth of Materialism, a collection of talks from throughout the 30 years of Avatar Adi Da’s formal Teaching-Work that brings together samples from His vast Divine Instruction relative to the psycho-physical nature of the world, the limits of scientific materialism, and the Inherent Unity of Existence.

Tags: CD  

Gerald Sheinfeld, a devotee of Avatar Adi Da since the early 1970's, tells the story of the day he became Adi Da's devotee. It happened about eight months after he first met Adi Da. On that day, Gerald experienced (and was overwhelmed and heart-opened by) Adi Da's absolute vulnerability and complete lack of egoic armoring and received the Revelation of Adi Da's Divine State.

Tags: CD   DVD  

One of the tracks on Tamarind Free Jones' CD, Traditional Chants in Praise of Avatar Adi Da Samraj.

Tamarind Free Jones, one of Avatar Adi Da's daughters, offers devotional chants from the sacred traditions of India. These chants have been sung for hundreds of years in sacred places and forest hermitages all over the world. They not only serve to quiet the mind and relax the body, they also awaken the heart's devotion. Several of these chants are sung in the daily cycle of devotions practiced by devotees of Adi Da Samraj.

Tags: music   CD  

In this excerpt from an Avataric Discourse, Adi Da gives a Radical and profound description of the true nature of the Divine Reality, stating that the Divine is the substance of all that arises, not the "cause" of anything, Adi Da goes on to describe how it is our own separation from that which is the very Divine, that causes the assumption of separation (and all our suffering).

This talk excerpt is followed by a clip of Darshan of Adi Da (at 4:27).

Tags: Darshan   Avataric Discourse