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.' "
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.' "
poster: FIAT LUX length: 02:30 date added: March 1, 2017 event date: April 28, 2017 language: English
[Note: We reposted this video from Vimeo. Not everyone will be able to play this video on this web page, but you can always watch it on Vimeo.]
In this video, longtime devotee and Adidam educator, Carolyn Lee, introduces "The Zero Point", a retreat taking place at the European Danda, April 28 - 30, 2017.
Read or watch the daily news these days and you will find it filled with identity politics and the fear and anxiety that such politics engenders. Identity politics is a major threat to the world. In this retreat, we explore the root of identity politics: the presumption of difference and separateness. We also study and consider Adi Da's Wisdom on understanding, un-learning, and transcending the illusion of separateness and the act of separation, and Realizing Prior Unity, Non-Separateness, and unlimited relatedness to everything and everyone.
The "Zero Point" is the place where we can drop all the limited and superficial points of view, and find the profound depth of Reality Itself. This has the potential for initiating a Reality-informed and Reality-transformed personal process and a collective activism in the contemporary world.
For more information about the retreat, write info@adidam.org.
In 2016, on a summer night in the beautiful city of Florence, the Florence Dance Company performed the multimedia dance event, Quattro Maggiore ("Four Seasons") — set to the music of Vivaldi (his most well-known work, "Quattro Maggiore", performed live) and the art of Adi Da Samraj as the backdrop. Vivaldi's masterpiece has four parts, corresponding to the four seasons. In this newly expanded performance, musical preludes have been added before each season, featuring the musical composition and performance of hang drummer extraordinaire Paolo Borghi of Rome. In this excerpt, we hear Borghi's "Prelude" to Vivaldi's "Winter".
The performance took place on the Ponte Vecchio, a medieval multi-arch bridge over the Arno River in Florence, Italy. The Ponte Vecchio is one of the most historic bridges in the world, and the earliest bridge at this spot is believed to have been built in Roman times.
This performance is in preparation for a planned, fuller performance in 2017.
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).
This is an excerpt from Adi Da's talk, "Death Is Not The End Of Anything", on January 14, 1995 at Adi Da Samrasjashram. This talk appears as a chapter in Adi Da's book, Easy Death.
Adi Da: "You cannot get in touch with Reality Itself (or Truth Itself) without dying — in the sense of relinquishing the egoic self. Most people think they will do that at the end of the physical lifetime. They do not deal with Reality (or Truth) in life, yet they imagine they will deal with It at death. They will not — if they have not dealt with It while alive. They will not want Reality (or Truth) in death any more than they wanted it while they lived. To Realize Reality Itself, 'you', the ego, must die — because 'you' is a knot, a gesture, an act of separating from Reality. What is called 'you' is an action of dissociation from Reality. I call it 'the ego', 'the self-contraction'. It avoids Reality."
On his new downloadable album, At the Feet of the Spiritual Master, devotee Gerald Sheinfeld tells leelas — true stories of his life of over 45 years with Avatar Adi Da Samraj. These stories begin before the first ashram opened in 1972. They provide details of how Avatar Adi Da awakened ordinary people into devotees of Real God. These stories are based on the awakened recognition of the prior Unity of Divine Reality. They are full of lessons of self-understanding and brightening heart-joy in finding the truth about God, the truth about life and death. The truth of prior Happiness which is the true Condition of all, prior to the ego-I act of separation.
Gerald has been a devotee of Adi Da since the beginning of Adi Da's work with devotees. He accompanied Adi Da on His 1973 trip to India, and has participated in countless sacred occasions and events in the company of Adi Da in the intervening years — so he has many stories to tell!
Some of those stories are on this downloadable album. This audio excerpt is track 8, "The Vision Of Love", on Gerald's downloadable album.
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 CD and on a new DVD, The Location Of Happiness.
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 "pursuing 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 (or mis-identify 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!"
On July 6th, 2015, a team of professional art handlers, Da Plastique staff, and volunteers delivered and installed twelve of Adi Da’s monumental-scale art fabrications at the Bargello National Museum in Florence, Italy, in preparation for the July 9 opening of the exhibition of Adi Da Samraj's art, "The Ascent of Orpheus", at the Bargello Museum.
poster: AdidamRevelationMagazine length: 05:35 date added: January 30, 2014 event date: June 20, 1972 language: English
"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.
In this excerpt from the CD, The Ultimate Outshining of Death, Adi Da communicates, with great passion and compassion, the only way to be truly Free of the sorrow from the loss of a loved one.
Adi Da: "Loss, or separation — apparent separation through death or any other life-happening — is not only possible, it is inevitable. And there is nothing amusing about it. It is so. It is not possible to be consoled about it. But it is possible to be Free, utterly Free — only by Realizing That Which Is Inherently Free."
A few scenes from the preparation at the Teatro della Pergola in Florence on March 14, 2013. Some views of the famous old theatre itself. The use of back projection for the video produces very crisp images of Adi Da's art, without the projection being interrrupted by the dancers (who would stand between the projector and the lower part of the screen in a traditional forward projection system). For more on the performance, click here.
World-Friend Adi Da: "The old moral, social, and political order of humankind is now dead. A new and true and right order of humankind is, now, and forever hereafter, necessary. This Free Declaration is the Seed-Utterance of that new and necessary true and right (and truly globally, totally, and universally cooperative) order."
INVOCATION offered by Ruchiradama Nadikanta
Dearly Beloved Bhagavan, Adi Da Samraj, we surrender at Your Blessed Feet in deepest devotion to You, the Divine Avatar of Conscious Light.
We pray to fulfill Your Urgent Calling to fully serve the establishment of Your Divine Avataric Work in this world, so that all may feel Your Touch of Divine Love and receive Your Perfect Wisdom and Divine Grace
May we collectively incarnate (and, thereby, inspire all to heed) Your Great Admonition, Cooperation + Tolerance = Peace.
May we embrace all beings everywhere, always making available to everyone the Gift of Divine Compassion and all-Embracing Love You have Brought to here.
We bow at Your Holy Feet in love and deepest gratitude, now and forever.
poster: AdiDaVideos length: 07:42 date added: November 4, 2012 event date: August 30, 2004 language: English
A video excerpt from part 6 ("The Glasses of Consciousness") of the DVD, You Are The Question You Ask, which was drawn from Adi Da's Avataric Discourse of August 30, 2004.
Adi Da talks about how human beings presume that they are just a body and a mind, and this creates the mistaken sense of separation from others and the Divine.
poster: TheBeezone length: 02:47 date added: September 21, 2012 event date: January 6, 2006 language: English
Part of an Avataric Revelation Discourse given at the Mountain of Attention Sanctuary, later published in Reality Is All The God There Is.
Adi Da offers His unique renderings of the Dharma of the great sages of Advaita Vedanta and Buddhism, including Gotama Sakyamuni, Nagarjuna, Shankara, and Ribhu. Rather than simply translate their teachings from available source texts, Avatar Adi Da respeaks them as one who has personally realized their truth. He reveals that the Buddhist “Nirvana” and the Advaitic “Brahman” point to the same Transcendental Condition. Avatar Adi Da’s rendering restores to these texts the profundity intended by the Spiritual Masters who created them.
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