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An Etymologist's Appreciation
of Adi Da's Word Choices

 

When I was fourteen, I began taking Latin in high school (55 years ago at the time of this writing), and was thrilled to learn the hidden meanings compacted in words through etymology. I even set out to "discover the roots of every word I spoke". Three years of Greek added to my two years of Latin, and while I failed French, and (living in the Netherlands) struggle with my daily Dutch (these four root-languages provide almost all of English words), I do know the overtones and roots of thousands and thousands of words. I still look up words every day to discern their origins and nuances. Whilst still an amateur etymologist, I'm a solid one, and I have always been amazed at Beloved Adi Da's word choices; it's as if He is a master etymologist as well! While He indeed took Greek, mastered English Literature, and always had a dictionary with etymologies available when writing, His mastery in yet another area is worthy of great praise. Below please find a few choice appreciations.

Hierarchy — Contrary to what it sounds like, hierarchy does NOT indicate "higher" and "lower" aspects. Rather, the "hiero" means sacred or holy, and is the same "hiero" as in "hieroglyphics" or sacred writing. "Arche" means "first". "Hierarchy" thus means to put the sacred first. Beloved Adi Da's Nine Great Laws first trumpet this greatest wisdom. By the way, "hiero" was translated from Greek into Germanic languages, thereby giving us — through "hierophant" — a person who brings others into the presence of the sacred: priests and priestesses.

Consideration — Before the advent of modernity, with its lighted cities and electric lights, it was most natural to enjoy the skies, the cycles of the moon and the patterns of the stars. If you look and examine the star patterns for a long, long time, you will find the natural calendar as represented by the constellations/astrological configurations. Being "with the stars" for a long time is "con-sidereal", or consideration. Beloved Adi Da uses "consideration" in a technical manner, much like the "samyama" of India's yoga philosophy. There the Lord of Death (Yama) held your attention in a prolonged concentration until the sameness or evenness was revealed. Samyama. Interestingly enough, "desire" is also of the stars (as in those "star-crossed" lovers, Romeo and Juliet). "It was a meeting, a chance meeting" we all have romantically said, as if the hand of God was at play in the orchestration of our desires. Such is the mummery we project.

Mummery — "Mummer" is from the Old French "momeur", one with a mask. It is conjectured that "mummery" is also a fusion from the Middle English "mommen", "to mutter, be silent", which is the source of "mum". In ancient Rome, actors projected their voices through large masks, the famous Comedy and Tragedy faces. The sound ("sona") came through ("per") the masks: per-sona. These masks (like many cultured sophistications) came from the Hellenes, but the Athenians called their actors on the stage "hypokrites".

Originally, the masking was known, the role understood. But when the role or mask is unseen, there is no self-understanding and character or ethos is compromised. We call someone hiding behind a psychological mask a hypocrite, without deep ethics and lacking self-understanding, only playing the mummery. Are all persons hypocrites or only those without character mumming their way unconsciously?

Happenine — The Happenine of Beloved Adi Da's life is NOT His "experiences". Etymology has something to reveal about these word choices. First of all, the "peri-" in "experience" is the same "peri" as in "peril" or danger.

"Experience" is to stay out of peril or danger. Beloved Adi Da's Avataric Life was not a culmination of experiences! (Notice how Beloved Adi Da often puts quote marks around the word "experience".) And what is the root of happening/happenine? It is a "fitting", just as the part embraces and is embraced by the Whole. Thus, His Life is a Happenine. "Hap" as "fitting" is also the root of that perfect fit: happiness.

Response — Being animated or moved by our past karma or experience or previous context is to be bound to past actions; it is to re-act. Thus Beloved Adi Da points out how we are always going through a mental "rehearsal" — or as He Points out, we are always saying mentally, "This reminds me of this, that reminds me of that." [And by the way, the "hearse" in rehearsal is also the same "hearse" that is the undertaker's vehicle (meaning "dragging along")!] In contrast to being bound to past actions, experience, memories, rehearsals, and deadly re-actions, we transcend the complex body-mind-self in present response-ability. Now the "pons" in "response" refers to a libation, a pouring in sacred ceremony. Recognition of Beloved Adi Da calls us to a puja of response, presently, in His Presence.

Sacred / Temple — The "Sacred" is made so by self-transcending sacrifice and is thus "set apart" from the round of ordinary ego-orientation. "Temple" is the place surrounding an altar (the place of sacrifice), demarcated first by a string pulled taut ("tem") in construction and is thus also explicitly "set apart". Sacred is the Temple, indeed. (Also, let us notice that the root of "contemplation" is indeed "temple".)

Subordinate-surrender — By the recognition of Avatar Adi Da, the Divine Person, we naturally and joyously realize that He is of another order of Spirit. Indeed, the word "human" is a sister word to "humus" or rich earth (as Hebrew's "adam" means "dirt"). We humble humans are of the earth, growing up towards the light.

"Humans" explicitly stand in contrast to another order of beings who do not rise to Light but rather "come down" from It: ava-tara. Recognizing the avatar bequeaths us humans the celebration of sub-ordination and receiving His Grace-Filled Light.

"Surrender" comes to English through French, with "sur" being the French version of Germanic "super" as in "over", and "render" is rooted in "da", to give! To surrender is to give ourselves over. Thus, we practice turning to the Avatar we recognize until this response matures in giving ourselves over: surrender. Him Him Him.

It should be noted that "de-vo-tee/de-vo-tion" are rooted in "vow", both literally and actually.

Anxiety is Latin for "to choke", to squeeze, constrict, eh?

"God" is almost a four-letter word these days, right? Therefore it is helpful to remember the original meaning is "to invoke". Who ya gonna call? The real ghostbuster.

Reality-Real-Realization — In contemplating the deepest meaning of Real, we come upon a universal slant of all languages: they are rooted in the physical. Doesn't that "make sense"? You see (ha ha), "real" is rooted in the Latin "res", meaning "thing". "Res" is also the root of "reification" or the kind of objectification that makes things. In common parlance, "real" means you can touch it. But "real" is more than materialism or the grossest orientation, more than merely energetic or subtle, and even more than causal. "Real" really means or points to the Condition of all conditions, "underneath" what is gross, subtle or causal. The Condition of all conditions cannot be reified; "real" is not any thing. Reality is not reified as the subtle essence or inner point of origin, but perfectly Subjective, the Condition of all conditions. The Free-Standing-Man "stands below" the waves of all experiences; He is the Person of real sub-stance in oceanic joy. He has shattered and penetrated all illusions, all supports, and egolessly Demonstrates Realization, always already intrinsically revealed in self-overwhelming abundance. He Shows Reality and really anoints His devotees with His Own Oceanic Heart, for Real.

Searchless — "Search" is cousin to "circle", as in: go round and round unconsciously. To be "searchless" is to See Him and step off the round of birth and death. "He still makes circles out of me, unless I press upon the lingam [Consciousness/Understanding] with my soul." When the heart burns bright with steady devotion, the flash of Consciousness completes the heart's yoga and searchlessly beholds what is Real. "Consciousness where I appear and disappear. . . May my heart grow in Brightness and be gone. I hold up my hands." (drawn from The First Great Invocation and The Second Great Invocation)

Radical — "Radical", as Beloved Adi Da points out again and again, means "at the root". It is sister to both "radius/radiance" (growing from the center) and "radish", a root vegetable.

Mystery — Beloved Adi Da points out that everybody [even (or especially) children] suffers from the feeling of "not knowing enough". This neurosis is undermined by the contemplation and appreciation of the "Mystery", or Beloved Adi Da's chosen word for Reality and realization for children. (See His book, What, Where, When, How, Why, and Who To Remember To Be Happy.) Interestingly, "mystery" is rooted in "myo-" meaning "to close", but not in the sense as the opposite of "to open", but as an intimacy protected. As He points out, we do not make love in the street, but in intimate quarters, and thus set apart, mysteriously intercourse.

Conceptual-perceptual — The –cept in "concept" and "percept" means "to grasp" (as in a clenched fist). Thus Beloved calls us to Divine Ignorance, to open-handedly not-know, to the Mystery; not grasping in mind or body any object or subject, not-grasping and un-done in His Great Gifting. As He Quipped in critique of the consolation of knowing, "An insight a day keeps the Guru away" and "When you are free to know nothing and be nothing, then you may hear what is Truth, and so become a devotee of the Unknown, through eternal and always present Ignorance."

Revelation — When the veil is removed ("re-veal": un-veil/remove-veil), we see the revelation of what is always and already before us, and Bright Behind me.

Aletheon — When Orpheus toured the Underworld in his flawed attempt to recover Eurydice, he brought back gifts of understanding about the after-death state. One of the most important observations he taught was that, after the body and mind had been torn from the soul, what we left was a most compelling thirst. It was the thirst of everything the person had wished for or wished had not happened.

Possessed by this craving, all souls come weakened to the Waters of Lethe, the Pool of Forgetfulness, of un-consciousness. ["Lethe" is the root of our "lethargic".] Those who had not been initiated into the Mysteries (with its restraints) think not and throw themselves towards immediate relief. Indeed, their thirst is quenched, but they forget who they are and wander aimlessly in the grey flatland of Asphodel forever.

But those who had been initiated into the Mysteries of Master Orpheus, know to not settle for the first apparent satisfaction in life or after death. When they feel the urge towards Lethe, they recognize the automaticity and instead look up. In doing so, there appears a white tree and there they find instead another pool, the Waters of Mnemnosyne or Remembrance. Here they drink and rise satisfied in the Fullness of Being, thus entering the Field of Elysium with its eternal celebration.

The pivotal moment in this conscious process is to turn away from Lethe; a-lethe. This is the etymological root of the Hellenic word for "truth", aletheia. Truth is literally not lazy, so the next time you say to yourself, "I'll do that later", remember this.

Before Orpheus, when people wanted to speak of Reality, they spoke mythologically and poetically. Orpheus did not speak merely poetically, but rhapsodically; and his more logical descriptions of reality were of such a different and higher order that a new word was coined to describe him and his discernments about divinity: theologoi. "Theology" was born with Orpheus.

A few generations after the transformation of poesy into rhapsody, a new kind of speech about reality appeared, completing Orpheus' discriminative move towards the logical: prosaic (and what we would call "scientific"). Thales was widely acknowledged to be the first to speak this way, though he wrote nothing. Without mythology or poetry, neither rhapsodically nor theologically, he prosaically and rationally suggested that at the origin (arche) of all things was water; look at the desert, just add water and life springs forth, he reasoned. His younger friend and raving genius Anaximander took up this new form of speech, but wrote volumes [the world's first book of knowledge; copied and extended by Aristotle a couple hundred years later]. Unfortunately, only half of one sentence remains, but many, many people have repeated his sayings and understandings. Anaximander suggested that the arche of all was nothing substantial but rather that which is un-limited (a-peras). His student Anaximenes suggested that it has to have something, perhaps air. Then the great Parmenides stepped forward and exclaimed, "Who gives a shit about what is at the origin [I'm loosely translating here], what Is the Truth?" Thus the focus of Western thought was crystallized. The word for truth is of course, aletheia. And the sacred place of Truth is indeed The Aletheon.