Adi Da Up Close
Audio/Video Library

Author and longtime devotee James Steinberg gave a talk and video presentation at the Westside Tower Salon on August 24, 2019, on his personally close relationship to Adi Da Samraj and on reactions from people raised in Western civilization to the Guru-devotee relationship. James also described how, later in His life, Adi Da became a prolific, internationally recognized contemporary artist.

Westside Tower Salon is something of an intimate think tank — a social gathering networking venue, modeled in the spirit of the artistic and literary salons of the 17th and 18th centuries. Artist Frederick Abrams started the salon in Abrams' Tower, his new multimedia arts building in West Los Angeles.

The Sun of the Heart is a chanting CD made by devotee Simon Pritchard, with musical partners Rosa Guilfoyle and James Edward Clarke, and the assistance of several additional devotee musicians and singers. The eight chants on this CD were recorded, engineered and mastered by James Edward Clarke at Ty Cerdd Wales Millennium Centre – Cardiff – Wales in 2014 and 2015. The CD comes with a sixteen-page booklet of artworks and sacred text. It is available as a CD from the Dawn Horse Press.

This audio excerpt is track 6, "Da Bhagavan".

The CD is inspired by and dedicated to Ruchira Avatar Adi Da Samraj. The lyrics are all Sacred Names and Mantras given by Avatar Adi Da Samraj to His devotees for the sake of their invocation of His Divine Spiritual Presence and State.

"The Sun of the Heart is just wonderful. . . . full of the Spirit of the Happiness of God in Everyone." —Angelo Druda

"This sound is not only highly professional but also Angelic! Like too beautiful to be true. . ." —Jovana Ugolkov

Tags: music  

Bhagavan Adi Da performs a decoration puja on the Spirit-Tree of Light in Is-Da-Happen, on Adi Da Samrajashram, on November 18, 2007, as part of the celebration of Danavira Mela.

Tags: Danavira Mela  

A simple, direct confession from Adi Da about the fact that His State of Perfect, Eternal Happiness is our own True Condition and State. Accompanied by pictures of Adi Da.

ADI DA: I am your Real State — Real Condition — speaking to you, being present with you through a form like your own. I'm not merely suggesting all this is so, logically so, communicating this as a metaphor. I am this. This is My Realization. This is My State. I am telling this to you because it is also your State. I am here in this form to make this communication to you and this Transmission to you so that you will realize that State.

[Contains Italian 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.]

Come spiega Adi Da, la pratica spirituale diventa possibile quando la dipendenza e le limitazioni relative alla vita ordinaria sono del tutto chiare e comprese.

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: Italian   CD   DVD  

[Contains Polish 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 video clip, "Guru jest stabilną stałą w życiowych wzlotach i upadkach" ("The Relationship To The Guru Is The Constant In Life") is an excerpt from the DVD, The Relationship To The Guru Is The Constant In Life.

By tendency, people are bound to the natural cycle of ups and downs. Neither bodily pleasures nor spiritual pursuits result in True Freedom from this constant phasing. One path merely accentuates the descending (or bodily) experiences and the other, the ascending (or subtle) experiences.

In this Discourse, Avatar Adi Da reveals with absolute clarity how the relationship with the Guru gives freedom from this trap—because the Guru is the Manifestation of the Condition that is Prior to this mechanical cycling, not part of it.

Watching this DVD will transport viewers to a special moment in Adidam history. July 29, 1973, was the day Avatar Adi Da left Los Angeles for a Yajna (sacred journey) through India and Nepal. He returned as “Bubba Free John”, His first spontaneously revealed Teaching-Name. Thus, this was the last Discourse He gave as “Franklin Jones” (Avatar Adi Da’s birth name).

Tags: Polish   DVD  

[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.]

In this clip, "Nähere Dich Mir Von Deinem Herzen" ("Approach Me From Your Heart"), Adi Da speaks to devotees in the Manner Of Flowers (at the Mountain Of Attention), during the "Love of the God-Man" Celebration on March 8, 1984. Adi Da talks about praise speech, ecstasy, and Satsang.

The full talk can can be found on the DVD, Approach Me From the Heart.

Some of the questions Adi Da addresses in the full talk are: What is a Divine experience? Who is God that God could be identified over against anything whatsoever? Who is a Spiritual Master if He can find Himself apart from God, such that He could say: “This piece is Me and this piece is God”? How could such distinctions continue in the consciousness of one who has Realized the Divine?

Tags: German   DVD  

From a presentation about the Silver Hall at Adi Da Samrajashram. Edited by Alan Corne.

Adi Da recites His "Five Reality-Teachings", as we watch scenes from Adi Da Samrajashram, followed by Darshan of Avatar Adi Da.

Notice this:

1. You are not the one who wakes, or dreams, or sleeps.

2. You Are the actionless and formless Mere Witness of the three common states — of waking, dreaming and sleeping — and of all the apparent contents and “experiences” associated with the three common states, of waking, and of dreaming, and of sleeping.

3. You are not the body, or the doer of action, or the doer of even any of the body’s actions or functions.

4. You are not the mind, or the thinker, or the doer of even any of the actions or functions of mind or of body-mind.

5. No matter what arises — whether as or in the state of waking, or of dreaming, or of sleeping — you Are the actionless, and formless, and thought-free Mere Witness of attention itself, and of every apparent “object” of attention, and of any and every state of “experience”, and of the entirety of whatever and all that arises.

Always intensively “consider” these Five Reality-Teachings.

Always intensively observe and notice every moment of your “experience” — whether waking, dreaming, or sleeping — and, thus and thereby, “consider” and test and directly prove these Five Reality-Teachings in the moment-to-moment of your every kind and state of “experience”.

Avatar Adi Da Samraj, pp. 559-561, The Gnosticon

Tags: Darshan  

In this talk from 1975, Adi Da talks about the physical, subtle, and transcendental levels of Spiritual Realization.

In July 1988, during several talks at the Mountain Of Attention Sanctuary in northern California, Avatar Adi Da Samraj described the first six stages of life (based upon His own seven-stage schema), and the unique and Graceful process of real Spiritual Transmission. This audio excerpt is from one such occasion.

Tags: CD   DVD  

This is a video excerpt from Adi Da's classic talk, "The Bodily Location of Happiness", which He gave on November 28, 1981.

This excerpt is track 2 of the CD, The Impulse to God-Realization, a collection of talks focusing on Adi Da's clarifying Wisdom on the Impulse to Realize God that is inherent in all beings, and His Divine Offering and Instruction on the Ultimate Means to cultivate this heart-Impulse, thereby allowing it to become the guiding force of one's entire life.

Tags: CD   DVD  

[Contains Polish 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.]

Klasyczny dyskurs Awatara Adi Da z 1981 r. Adi Da rozważa naturę prawdziwego szczęścia i tego, jak nie szukając szczęścia można je realizować w każdej chwili.

"Gdzie umiejscowione jest szczęście?" ("Where is happiness located?") is a video excerpt from Adi Da's classic talk, "The Bodily Location of Happiness", 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   Polish  

[Contains Polish 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.]

Awatar Adi Da mówi o konieczności "sadhany", czyli praktyki duchowej, w związku z Urzeczywistnionym Mistrzem Duchowym.

On July 2, 1988, in Land Bridge Pavilion at The Mountain Of Attention, Adi Da gives the talk, "Contemplation, Satsang, Sadhana", which would appear in the May/June 1988 issue of Crazy Wisdom Magazine.

In this excerpt, "Poświęć swoje życie Urzeczywistnieniu Boga" ("Devote Your Life To God-Realization"), Adi Da speaks about the necessity for "sadhana", or spiritual practice, in relationship to the God-Realized Spiritual Master.

"All there is is a mechanism to be dealt with. You're not uniquely born. It's the same mechanism as in all other cases. And, in all cases it requires a tremendous ordeal."

Beginning at 17:30 (and continuing to the end of this video), a formal Darshan occasion is shown.

Tags: Darshan   Polish  

This talk about cultism was given on December 16, 1979, three weeks after the Jonestown Massacre. Adi Da mentions how He has always criticized all forms of cultism, including "the cult of the spiritual master", which devotees have created around Him repeatedly. In the "cult of the spiritual master", members of the cult make Him the center of a club in which everyone feels good because they're members of the club and they've "found it", unlike the rest of the world. But devotees who turn Adidam into a cult fail to actually practice and Realize anything; they get sidetracked from actual practice by the "feel good" energy they create in each other's company. Adi Da is here not to be the center of a cult, but for us to Realize Him.

This video clip is an excerpt from the DVD, The Relationship To The Guru Is The Constant In Life.

By tendency, people are bound to the natural cycle of ups and downs. Neither bodily pleasures nor spiritual pursuits result in True Freedom from this constant phasing. One path merely accentuates the descending (or bodily) experiences and the other, the ascending (or subtle) experiences.

In this Discourse, Avatar Adi Da reveals with absolute clarity how the relationship with the Guru gives freedom from this trap—because the Guru is the Manifestation of the Condition that is Prior to this mechanical cycling, not part of it.

Watching this DVD will transport viewers to a special moment in Adidam history. July 29, 1973, was the day Avatar Adi Da left Los Angeles for a Yajna (sacred journey) through India and Nepal. He returned as “Bubba Free John”, His first spontaneously revealed Teaching-Name. Thus, this was the last Discourse He gave as “Franklin Jones” (Avatar Adi Da’s birth name).