Adi Da Up Close
Audio/Video Library

The trailer for Conscious Light, an award-winning documentary on the life of Adi Da Samraj.

In every time and place, human beings have sought to grasp the ultimate mysteries of life and death. From time to time, great spiritual realizers have appeared in the world to reveal and transmit the secrets of reality and truth to all. Avatar Adi Da Samraj (1939-2008) is one of the rarest of such beings. His entire life was devoted to the discovery, demonstration, and spiritual revelation of the highest truth.

Conscious Light offers a penetrating glimpse into the remarkable life and enlightened teachings of Avatar Adi Da and His work to create an enduring legacy of potential spiritual realization for everyone.

Drawing on an extensive archival collection of film, photography, and audio recordings, as well as interviews with students who lived with Adi Da and practice His teachings, this intimate documentary takes the viewer on a journey of spiritual awakening in the company of one of the great spiritual masters of all time.

For more information, screening locations and ticket purchase go to the Conscious Light film website.

[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.]

W tym fragmencie nigdy wcześniej nieopublikowanego dyskursu Adi Da mówi o konieczności rozczarowania się życiem śmiertelnika w pozytywnym sensie. Pozytywne rozczarowanie pojawia się, kiedy zaczynasz rozumieć i rezygnujesz ze stresujących i ostatecznie daremnych poszukiwań osobistego przetrwania, ziemskiego szczęścia i ostatecznego spełnienia w życiu. Tylko wtedy może pojawić się ponowne „poznawanie” i ekstatyczny udział w Rzeczywistości, i w relacjach z Prawdziwym Urzeczywistnionym.

In "Pozytywne rozczarowanie" ("Positive Disillusionment"), a video excerpt from an Avataric Discourse, Adi Da speaks about the necessity to become disillusioned with mortal life in a positive sense. Positive disillusionment is emerging when one begins to understand and relinquish the stressful and ultimately futile search for personal survival, worldly happiness, and ultimate life fulfillment. Only then can one be drawn into recognizing, learning about, and ecstatically participating in Reality Itself, in relationship to a True Realizer.

Tags: Avataric Discourse  

This 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 DVD and on CD, and as an online transcript.

ADI DA: Life is foolishness. This is no time, in any case, to be tolerant of foolishness. The world is mad, and these are dreadful times. Things are not going to be easier in the years ahead. The spiritual process has always been lived in difficult times. Therefore, the spiritual process tolerates no fool. The spiritual process itself will spit you out. It is not an easy attainment, but a profoundly difficult affair. Even what you have listened to today has been heard by only a fraction of the human race in all of history. The opportunity to practice is extremely rare, and the fulfillment of practice is practically unknown.

In some sense you could say this life is hell. . . The nature of this hell is that we are self-possessed. We are born in un-Happiness and we do not transcend it readily. We constantly pursue Happiness through all kinds of incredibly complex means, and we never attain It. . .

If Spiritual Realizers did not turn about and Teach, this would truly be a hell instead of being like a hell. It would truly be a hell if there were no possibility of Enlightenment, if there were no Teaching, no Spiritual Masters, no sacred Way, no sacred community, no capacity for understanding or self-transcendence.

Tags: CD   DVD  

In this excerpt from a never-before-published discourse, Adi Da speaks about the necessity to become disillusioned with mortal life in a positive sense. Positive disillusionment is emerging when one begins to understand and relinquish the stressful and ultimately futile search for personal survival, worldly happiness, and ultimate life fulfillment. Only then can one be drawn into recognizing, learning about, and ecstatically participating in Reality Itself, in relationship to a True Realizer.

Tags: Avataric Discourse  

This audio excerpt is "Da Om, Om Da" — track 5 on the CD, Da Hridayam.

Da Hridayam is a collection of devotional chants from longtime devotee, JoAnne Sunshine. These new chants invoke the Divine via the Names and Declarations of Divine Realizer Avatar Adi Da Samraj. The CD beautifully explores a vast array of cultural styles and instruments. It is uplifting, absorbing, and inventive — a sublime celebration.

"True Water—cool, clear, and surprising."
—Ray Lynch, composer and 3-time Billboard Award winner

JoAnne Sunshine has devoted many years to studying and practicing the art of sacred devotional singing in the company of Avatar Adi Da Samraj. JoAnne has written compositions for Broadway star Laura Theodore, opera singers Crane Kirkbride, Mel McMurrin, and Elizabeth deBrine. Crane Kirkbride commissioned the song “I Am Who You Are”, which was first produced by Ray Lynch and subsequently by John Mackay. She recorded and sang “I Am With You Now” with Ray Lynch, a devotional song familiar to many devotees.

Tags: music  

[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.]

In this video clip from the 1988 talk, "What Is Your Intention?", Adi Da criticizes the "do-it-yourself" approach to spirituality that is popular in the world today, and speaks about why a teacher is necessary.

Adi Da reminds us that, historically, all the world's spiritual traditions have taught that Spiritual Realization requires the help of a Spiritual Realizer. This is actually built into the laws of how Spiritual Realization works, and can't be changed just because times and cultures change, just because we don't happen to like the way the laws work or what they require of us, etc. For this reason, Adi Da makes the point that, nowadays, our resistence to authority, and addiction to "do it yourself" approaches, represent unfortunate hindrances to our own Spiritual growth: if we simply go with the flow and let these culturally instilled programs dominate our life choices, they will keep us from Realizing our greatest destiny.

The full talk is available on the DVD, The Commitment To Real-God-Realization.

For more on this subject, read our article, Why Great Spiritual Realization Requires a Spiritual Transmission Master.

Tags: DVD   Italian  

[Contains Finnish 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 video clip from the 1988 talk, "What Is Your Intention?", Adi Da criticizes the "do-it-yourself" approach to spirituality that is popular in the world today, and speaks about why a teacher is necessary.

Adi Da reminds us that, historically, all the world's spiritual traditions have taught that Spiritual Realization requires the help of a Spiritual Realizer. This is actually built into the laws of how Spiritual Realization works, and can't be changed just because times and cultures change, just because we don't happen to like the way the laws work or what they require of us, etc. For this reason, Adi Da makes the point that, nowadays, our resistence to authority, and addiction to "do it yourself" approaches, represent unfortunate hindrances to our own Spiritual growth: if we simply go with the flow and let these culturally instilled programs dominate our life choices, they will keep us from Realizing our greatest destiny.

The full talk is available on the DVD, The Commitment To Real-God-Realization.

For more on this subject, read our article, Why Great Spiritual Realization Requires a Spiritual Transmission Master.

Tags: DVD   Finnish  

Adi Da communicates esoteric secrets about the nature of His Divine Incarnation, at The Mountain Of Attention Sanctuary in 1988.

A "human being" is comprised of a gross personality (a physical body) and a deeper personality (a subtle body), both arising in the Divine Consciousness.

In most human beings, when the physical body dies, the deeper personality reincarnates, associating itself with a new physical body.

In the extraordinarily rare case of a Divine Incarnation, the physical body of a great Spiritual Realizer dies, and the deeper personality is so profoundly submitted to the Divine that the Divine is able to incarnate through that deeper personality. Such an extraordinary vehicle was provided to Adi Da through Swami Vivekananda and Sri Ramakrishna, upon the death of Swami Vivekananda in 1902.

While all beings arise in the Divine, most people live completely unconscious of their Source, and even great Spiritual Realizers are aware of (and are lived by and as) the Divine only to a certain degree. In the rare case of a Divine Incarnation, the Divine is consciously animating the gross and deeper personalities of the human being, and progressively conforms the gross and deeper personalities to Itself completely, over the lifetime of these vehicles.

In the course of fully preparing His human Incarnation for its Divine Purpose of Awakening all beings, Adi Da needed to completely conform the "gross personality" (the physical vehicle) and completely transcend all remaining limitations in the deeper personality, to the point where "there's nothing left of the gross or the deeper personality but the ash".

Adi Da talks about how being in the Company of a Spiritual Realizer is the best possible use of one's life, but it doesn't guarantee Realizing the Master's State, because Realization depends on the practitioner as well.

[Note: The video ends a bit abruptly, in the middle of a sentence.]

Tags: Avataric Discourse  

On November 25, 2004, at Adi Da Samrajashram, one of Adi Da's devotees asks Him: "Is there any way to know . . . what is the relationship of ancient Realizers to the traditions that they were associated with?"

Avatar Adi Da responds by illustrating the process of myth-making around Realizers, both in ancient and modern times. He explains that, regardless of what is historically true of any Realizer, any tradition can be understood in terms of the underlying structure of the human being. Throughout the Discourse, Adi Da makes use of examples from numerous traditions including Buddhism, Hinduism, Judaism, and Christianity.

Adi Da: "Traditions do not really depend on there having been an historical individual, whether or not there was one. They can nonetheless still be understood in terms of the structure of the psycho-physical anatomy. And the psycho-physical anatomy, not mythology extending from it, but the psycho-physical anatomy itself — and this is My Instruction to you, to all — that structure itself determines what is regarded to be religious truth, or esoteric truth. Underneath it is a structure, not merely Truth. That structure must be transcended, or there is not Truth Realized."

In this excerpt, Adi Da specifically talks about the Christian tradition, and the importance of distinguishing a "faith" (or system of beliefs) from factual observations of phenomena throughout recorded history.

The full Discourse is now available on the 2-CD set, Myths, Realizers, and Divine Revelation.

Tags: avataric discourse   CD