Adi Da Up Close
Audio/Video Library

The Mystical Positivist is a weekly, two-hour radio show on KOWS 107.3 FM, Occidental, CA. The program is dedicated to the application of reason in the pursuit of spiritual practice and development. The show is hosted by Stuart Resnick and Dr. Robert Schmidt. Stuart has been a Tayu Meditation Teacher since 1993. He received apprentice and master-level training in the alchemical transformation of human consciousness from Tayu Meditation Center. Dr. Robert Schmidt is the director of the Tayu Meditation Center, and a co-founder of the Many Rivers Bookstore in Sebastopol, California. He is also currently a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Archaeological Research Facility at U.C. Berkeley.

This audio clip is part 1 of The Mystical Positivist's interview with devotee, Leroy Stilwell. Leroy has been a formal devotee of Adi Da since 1977. Since 1986, he regularly lived in Hermitage on Naitauba, Fiji, for extended periods during which he participated in cycles of consideration with Adi Da, and served as editor, photographer, videographer, communications manager, ashram manager, and personal assistant to the Ruchira Sannyasin Order. He is the author of Love’s Sacrifice: Witnessing the Self-Revelation of the Divine Person - 30 Years with my Spiritual Master, Adi Da (2014) and For Those Who Call For Light - Learning How to Think about Religion (2013). Leroy is also a co-founder and managing editor of the Adi Da Up Close site.

Note: The actual show does not begin until 08:17.

Tags: radio   interview   presentation  

"The Avon Lady" is a classic talk given by Avatar Adi Da in the early years of His Teaching-Work. In this humorous and penetrating discourse, Avatar Adi Da offers basic instruction regarding the nature of seeking and the Awakening Function of the True Guru.

In this audio excerpt entitled “There Is Already No Dilemma”, Avatar Adi Da describes the human egoic drama of separation, suffering, and seeking. All pleasures, distractions, and experiences reinforce that same drama of the apparently separate self. But the True Guru does not support the search, does not promise any fulfillment of that search. That is the uniqueness and the invaluable quality of the True Guru. Adi Da compares the True Guru to an unusual elevator – where one steps in, expecting to go up (toward Spiritual attainment or some other fulfillment), but instead the bottom drops out. This is why the search begins to fall apart once there is recognition of the True Guru. Then the real Spiritual process can begin.

Tags: CD  

A devotee reads an excerpt from Adi Da's essay, "Searchless, Lawful Management of the Body", from the book, Green Gorilla.

In this essay, Adi Da addresses "lawfulness" in relation to diet, in contrast to the fascinated preoccupation with food that characterizes people in the modern world. This preoccupation is based in the egoic search for fun and pleasure, and inevitably results in suffering and pain. The lawful diet is not an end in itself, but a simple, ordinary practice that establishes "the 'position' of well-being of the body" and is part of a larger practice of what Adi Da calls "right life".

For more on this topic (as well as the text of the complete essay, "Searchless, Lawful Management of the Body"), read the Adidam Revelation Magazine's article, Searchless, Lawful Management of the Body. Further excerpts from Green Goriila can be found here.

Tags: Green Gorilla   diet  

In this discourse, Adi Da proposes that all human lifetimes are a “quest for the historical self”. He describes how this search is based on the activity of “self”-contraction — the erroneous presumption of an actual, defined, knowable “self”.

The full DVD, The Quest for the Historical Self, can be purchased at the Dawn Horse Press.

Tags: Avataric Discourse   DVD  

Adi Da talks about fear, and the response to existence and the search that is the response to it.

An excerpt from "The Avon Lady", a humorous and penetrating Discourse from the very earliest years of Avatar Adi Da’s Teaching-Work. Adi Da explains how there is no search and no dilemma when one is in Satsang (the company of the Guru).

The full talk, "The Avon Lady", is available on the double CD, The Avon Lady / Walking the Dog. The text is available in the book, My "Bright" Word. A course, My "Bright" Word, is also available from The Laughing Man Institute.

For another audio excerpt from "The Avon Lady", press "part 1" above.

For a special article from the Adidam Revelation Magazine on "The Avon Lady", click here.

Tags: CD  

Toni Vidor talks about her mission to India to find (at Adi Da's request) the elusive "mercury bead", said to possess rejuvenative qualities and provide healing. How she Gracefully fulfilled Adi Da's seemingly impossible request.

For much more about Toni's relationship with her Spiritual Master, Adi Da, read her book, Beyond The Illusion.

Tags: Toni Vidor   Ogee   Antonia Vidor   devotee book  

This recording of Above the Clouds was made in November 2010, during a three day, 24-hour-a-day vigil of meditation and puja on the veranda of Aham Da Asmi Sthan, Adi Da's home on the island of Naitauba. Devotee John Wubbenhorst speaks of the sacred occasion of being dropped out into the space of being 'not really there' while the Guru plays the musical instrument (and the instrument that is one's body-mind).

"Above the clouds, There Is Always The Sun — Forever Free Of Earthly Weather. By Tendency, You Are Always Looking At the local weather, and Not At The Sun Itself. That Is What egoity Is About — Always Suffering The Changes Of The local Patterning That Is the body-mind In its egoic Bondage. Instead, You Must (In every moment) Turn To Me . . . "

Avatar Adi Da Samraj, The Dawn Horse Testament Of The Ruchira Avatar

For more stories about "Music as a Sacred Art and Growing in the Relationship To Adi Da", click here.

Tags: Above the Clouds   John Wubbenhorst   bansuri   Fiji  

This excerpt is from one the Adidam Revelation Discourse of November 6, 2004. Adi Da proposes that all human lifetimes are a “quest for the historical self”. He describes how this search is based on the activity of “self”-contraction — the erroneous presumption of an actual, defined, knowable “self”. His Discourse exposes that neither experience nor memory nor the sensations of the physical body actually define a separate entity. The “I” is a fiction, a lie—and Reality Itself is Self-Evident only when the activity of the “self”-contraction is transcended.

This excerpt is part of the longer DVD, The Quest for the Historical Self. A CD version is also available.

A version of this excerpt with German subtitles can be watched here.

Tags: avataric discourse   CD   DVD