Not-Two Is Peace: A Vision for Humanity poster: jaspervanlaar length: 09:29 date added: March 31, 2013 language: English views: 4278; views this month: 42; views this week: 18 The Florence Dance Company prepares and performs at the Pergola Theatre, Florence, in the March 2013 performances of Not-Two Is Peace. Accompanied by interviews with some of the dancers and members of the public responding to the performance.
I’ve sung Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas to Beloved Adi Da many times over the years — at the Manner of Flowers, at Adi Da Samrajashram, at First People / Great Food Dish, etc. (as one of a small group of singers, and usually also as the keyboardist) — and I’m singing it to Him again (and all of you!) here. It is one of my favorite songs at this time of year.
For me (starting with Judy Garland's original film version), it has always been an emotion-filled song, by turns joyful, playful, nostalgic, and wistful — so that is how I sing it here.
This song as a bridge to God. In Beloved Adi Da’s Company, everything (from Mickey Mouse to cookie-making) becomes “a bridge to God”.
ADI DA: “You must Awaken and discover the Divine World wherein everything is a bridge to the Infinite, One Being.”
And so for me, the words of this song have always taken on a significance beyond the usual secular understanding of the song. They lead me through a consideration that I’ll share with you here.
Have yourself a merry little Christmas Let your heart be light From now on our troubles will be out of sight
Have yourself a merry little Christmas Make the Yuletide gay From now on our troubles will be miles away.
Here we are as in olden days Happy golden days of yore Faithful friends who are dear to us Gather near to us once more
Through the years we all will be together If the fates allow Hang a shining star upon the highest bough And have yourself a merry little Christmas now.
That wistfulness: Raymond’s problem. On the surface, the words of Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas are purely joyful — "faithful friends" coming together each year in a joyous Christmas celebration. And yet, one of the emotions I feel when I sing this song is wistfulness. So where is the wistfulness coming from? It's that big "IF" in the song: "if the fates allow". In fact, as every one of us knows (more and more, with each passing year), fate (conditional existence) only allows such reunions for a limited number of years. As I sing, I have a vision of a photograph of a gathering of friends, from a Christmas or Danavira Mela many years ago, and, in this vision, each face in the photograph — one by one over the years — turns "ghostly", either through our circumstances (high school, college, living near each other) no longer being shared, or life paths that have moved in different directions, or the passing on of that person. My awareness of that inevitable reality is the source of the wistfulness and nostalgia. The inevitable disappearance of the (mortal) loved one is “Raymond’s problem”, a phrase Adi Da uses, based on the central character of The Mummery Book.
Danavira Mela: A Divine Celebration in the midst of a conditional universe. The joy and playfulness of the song comes from the celebration we can still have together, even in the midst of an ever-changing, conditional universe. One of my (and many other devotees’) favorite quotes of Beloved Adi Da has always been this extraordinary prayer, from “Death is a Perfect Insult” in The Enlightenment of the Whole Body:
“Let us surrender into Infinity with all our friends and hold on to no thing or condition that ever appears. Let us forget all things in present Happiness, and so forgive the universe for all its playful changes. Let us always love one another, and so forgive one another for appearing, for changing, and for passing out of present sight. So be it.”
When I sing this song, I hear it giving further guidance for just how to do this.
Our multimedia library currently contains 1206
YouTube video clips and audio clips about (or related to) Adi Da and Adidam.[1]
Enjoy! indicates
a video, and
an audio. Special categories of interest include:
Thanks to the many videographers who took the footage, to the many editors who
created these videos and audios, and to the 132
people and organizations who posted these videos and audios on YouTube and other places on the
Web. Special thanks to Lynne
Thompson, who did a lot of the data entry for our audio/video database.