Beezone Essay – Adidam

The following remix
study is taken from many essays and talks from Adi Da Samraj
covering over 30 years of his teaching demonstration. It is
‘woven’ together by Beezone to make this study a compressive
and accurate reflection of Adi Da’s word on this
subject.

This style of
presentation is called the ‘White and Orange Books” project
and is based on two elements. One is Ludwig Wittgenstein’s
Blue and Brown books. The Blue & Brown Books of
Wittgenstein’s were dictated as a set of notes to his
student in 1934-1935. The other is a ‘remix’ of his talks
and essays.

Adidam is turning into a
peculiar kind of yoga. It is a Westernized yoga under the
guise of Spirituality. In the West, particularly in America
there is a kind of mysticism that doesn’t generate a
spiritual force. Adidam, as the legacy of The Great Realizer
Adi Da Samraj, is mostly an occupational institution with
internal aesthetic imageries manned by professional
institutional bureaucrats. Well intentioned as they are,
they represent only an extremely minimal force in the larger
culture as a whole. But fortunately for many, His presence
still is Alive and not all of his literature has been
neutered. All is not dead, at least not yet.

Adidam in it’s present form is not a true yoga or
cultural force. It is a small enclave of nominal
practitioners holding on and protecting a great treasure and
turning into a glorified transcendental center of exclusion
and Only by Me fundamentalist. Adidam doesn’t have any fire.
It is somewhat esoteric and mystical in it’s literature but
is more of a religion rather than a yogic force of
transformation.

Adidam in its religious ceremonialism and religious
corporate business is just stuff, preoccupation, something
that does nothing to attract people. Adidam at least at this
point in time is not of great value to the larger cultural
setting or even to itself. In fact Adidam has done just
that, turned in on it’s self and is only adapting to itself
in an endless cycle of transformational consideration. It is
only binding itself to imagery. It actually prevents the
process of Truth.

The principle of spiritual life is a fire and that is
what Adidam should be up to. It should integrate, mix and
produce sparks by mixing it up with the larger culture.
Adidam should be producing a crisis in consciousness that is
penetrating AND illuminating.

The principle of sadhana in Adidam does not serve this
crisis. Adidam in it’s present form is only a proposed
cultural experience at best. This proposed same thing goes
on in any idealistic religious community anywhere in the
world. The only difference is Adidam doesn’t even do that
very well.

Adidam is just an aesthetic cultural order in which
people have associated the life and mind with Divine
principles and truisms, with ideas. That is fundamentally
what’s going on in Adidam. The principle of real sadhana, of
Truth, the principle of this crisis and Illumination, does
not exist in the Adidam environment, because people are not
involved in any such process.

Adidam’s concern here is for imagery and adherence, for
what existed in the past. There is an obsession with holding
on with limited transformation. There is a hidden fetish for
transformation in Adidam. That fetish is how The Way of
Truth as turned into a way of seeking. In the way of seeking
no true transformation occurs, no grow manifests. There is
only a constant cycle of dysfunctional transformation
disguised as attempts of transformation.

Adidam’s current contributions are essentially literary.
It is presently an association with ideas and ideals, a very
literary and mental and really very Western kind of
preoccupation.

Take what they’ve done with ‘Not Two Is Peace’. It’s just
a utopian United Nations, World’s Fair, university idea.
There is no spiritual source of any profundity alive there.
Adidam has no force, no penetrating influence coming from
it. Neither is there the orientation to the genuine fire of
spiritual grace, nor the orientation of individuals toward
that quality in themselves which becomes this crisis of
Truth. So it is a very mediocre community at best.

Adidam accumulates thoughts, ideas and deals with
dysfunction’s. Then it tries to assimilates into itself all
these various ideas, ideals, thoughts, and functions, trying
to adapt themselves to produce an order of life based this
dysfunctional system.

Adidam is confused with its own dysfunction and can’t
figure out why they are not growing, this seems to their
preoccupation. Order or rather disorder is a thing in
itself, so there’s lots of considering going on, but at the
core of this considering there is nothing but the intention
to consider, the intention to create a community on ideal
lines. Therefore, the order becomes singular and oppressive
from the point of view of Truth.

There is no fire, no life, no freedom, and yet these
things are part of the language of the literature of Adidam.
As in any other merely idealistic community, all these
things are contained in the literature, not in the spiritual
life. Adidam is just a system of ideals of a religious
community.

But don’t mistake Adidam as a failure at least not yet.
Make no mistake about it, Adidam at it’s core, is connected
to a great individual, a True Siddha of the highest order,
but the community itself is not based on literal contact
with His Divine Siddhi, or at least is not showing the signs
of such contact.

From a political, cultural, and social point of view,
there are some nice things going on Adidam. Just as you
might say the United Nations is a nice thing. But from the
point of view of Truth, this is not a genuine Ashram. It’s a
sort of literary and cultural event around which all people
can come and say, “Yes, we believe in this together and
let’s consider AND consider spiritual life.”

Adidam’s assumption is that the Guru is somehow contained
in this community. But the Guru would have to come to save
this community, to bring the dharma of true spirituality
into it. It is like any other community, an order of life
and mind with certain spiritual ideas behind it. They are
very busy creating this enormous Coney Island World’s Fair
community.

At it’s core Adidam has the Means but Adidam as a
cultural and spiritual force must invest itself with those
Means in True Practice* and True Transformation of Man.

We will wait and see.

***

Read more on this topic:

“Presumably My devotees, really doing the sadhana,
certainly become more and more charismatic, I would say,
something like that, more energized characters. Not
necessarily in the vital sense, but curiously energized, a
lot of free energy, which shows itself in how you are, what
you do, how people are influenced by you, whatever. It’s at
first a natural phenomenon. Wherever there is energy
loosened up, to flow in the faculties of the personality,
there’s more strength of quality.”

Is
Adidam in a stalemate?

The above essay (SEE BELOW) was
taken from a talk Adi Da Samraj gave after visiting Sri
Aurobindo Ashram, a community in Pondicherry, South India in
1973.

*Practice of the Way of the Heart is the practice of
relationship to Me, but also the practice of the condition
of relationship itself. (Incarnation
of Love, 1993)

*If You Do Not Hear the Argument for Spiritual Life, You Can
Never Begin True Practice of the Way. (Breath
and Name 1977).

*The true Word belongs to all true practice, rightly
understood, rightly Awakened, and ultimately Transcended.
(The Incarnation and Practice of the
Word,or Name, of God).

*Do not imagine for a moment that right and true practice is
an easy matter, that you can simply Listen to My
Teaching-Argument. (The
Super-Physics of Divine Enlightenment, Aletheon, 2008).

*The Realization of Truth is an emotional matter. The
discovery is an emotional one, the change is an emotional
one, the true practice of the Way of the Heart is emotional.
(The
Incarnation of Love).

*I am not the Wizard of Oz. I do not accept your false faces
as true practice, as genuine conversion. Thus, you must not
forget the emotional nature of this practice.
(The
Wizard of Oz). Compulsory Dancing, 1980).

ORIGINAL ESSAY from Dawn Horse Press, 1973

VOL. 1. NO. 2. August, 1974. BUBBA
FREE JOHN IN INDIA

Conversations About The Guru, Genuine Spirituality, The
Community Of Devotees, And Traditional Seeking. Bubba
Comments On: Swami Muktananda, Sathya Sai Baba, Ramana
Maharshi, Neemkaroli Baba, Sri
Aurobindo And Others.

ADI DA SAMRAJ: This is really just a visionary or
mystical yoga. Aurobindo and the Mother were not truly
saints, not sages, not Siddhas, just yogis of a peculiar
kind. It is a Westernized yoga. In the West there is a kind
of mysticism that doesn’t generate a spiritual force. It is
just an occupation with internal aesthetic imageries, not of
the kind that true yoga depends on. It doesn’t have any
fire. It is mystical rather than yogic in the traditional
Hindu sense. So Aurobindo saw a lot of visions, had a sort
of intellectual system in which he synthesized the spiritual
culture of this country and added a certain evolutionary
notion to it.

Hegel was a great philosopher of the last century who was
very much like Sri Aurobindo. He synthesized Western
philosophy and wrote volumes of endless logical and
aesthetic considerations. He created a systematic approach
to philosophy. Somebody once said that if at the end of his
life he would have said that it all was nonsense, Hegel
would have been the greatest philosopher that ever lived,
but since he did not, he was probably the worst philosopher
that ever lived! The same irony may be applied to Sri
Aurobindo. He was a vast systematizer, synthesizer of all
kinds of considerations regarding the spiritual culture
historically found in India and elsewhere. If at the end of
his life he had said that everything he had said was beside
the point, he would have been a great spiritual teacher, not
a Guru in the true sense, but a spiritual teacher.

Since he did not, he is one of the worst. Because his
teaching is just stuff, preoccupation, something that
attracts people at a level that is not of great value. It
gives them more to accumulate and assimilate, more to which
they may adapt and bind themselves. It prevents the process
of Truth.

The principle of spiritual life is a fire. It produces a
crisis in consciousness that is penetrating, illuminating.
But the principle of sadhana in this Ashram does not serve
this crisis. It is based on the principle of accumulation,
assimilation, and adaptation. In other words, it is a
cultural experience. The same thing goes on here that goes
on in any idealistic religious community anywhere in the
world.

It is just an aesthetic cultural order in which people
have associated the life and mind with Divine principles and
truisms, with ideas. That is fundamentally what’s going on
here. The principle of real sadhana, of Truth, the principle
of this crisis, does not exist in this environment, because
people are not involved in any such process. The concern
here is for transformation. There is an obsession with
transformation, a fetish for transformation. Everybody is
looking for the transformation to occur. The transformation
as a goal, sought through various methods, is simply the
search again, but no transformation occurs without this
fundamental crisis. In this crisis all concerns are undone,
even the concern for transformation.

Sri Aurobindo’s contributions are essentially literary
and cultural. His basic motivation was political. He was a
political activist early in his life, and he saw that
political change depended on the transformation of
individuals and all that, so he began to get into spiritual
ideas. He was educated in Europe and had a very Westernized
mind. The Mother is a French woman. They both have added to
this Indian notion of separation from the world the Western
idea of evolution and transformation of the world. His basic
political motivations were expanded into this notion of
spirituality and human transformation and evolution. So his
contribution is essentially cultural. It’s a political
rather than a spiritual philosophy in its truest sense. It
produces a culture, not spiritual life. It is an association
with ideas and ideals, a very literary and mental and really
very Western kind of preoccupation.

In India there is certain value to turning to a practical
order of life, since the ancient tendency is to abandon
life. But that doesn’t mean anything like real sadhana is
involved in the principle of this community. It’s just a
utopian United Nations, World’s Fair, university idea. There
is no spiritual source of any profundity alive here. The
samadhi site of Sri Aurobindo is the only one I have ever
visited that was just a grave. There is no force, no
penetrating influence coming from it. Neither is there the
orientation to the genuine fire of spiritual grace, nor the
orientation of individuals toward that quality in themselves
which becomes this crisis of Truth. So it is a very
mediocre, accumulating community.

Auroville accumulates thoughts, ideas, functions. Then it
assimilates into itself all these various ideas, ideals,
thoughts, and functions, and adapts to them, producing an
order of life based on this system. That is the way culture
grows, but it is not the way the spiritual crisis develops.
That is another thing entirely. Order in itself is fine.
Just as the universe is ordered, there must be order in any
functional system. But here order is the preoccupation.
Order is a thing in itself, so there’s lots of ordering
going on, but at the core of this ordering there is nothing
but the intention to order, the intention to create a
community on ideal lines. Therefore, the order becomes
oppressive from the point of view of Truth.

There is no fire, no life, no freedom, and yet these
things are part of the language of the literature of this
community. As in any other merely idealistic community, all
these things are contained in the literature, not in the
spiritual life. Christianity is loaded with the same kind of
idealism, but only here and there throughout the whole
history of Christianity have there been any great saints who
have had this fire. It is the same here. It is just a system
of ideals of religious community. Here and there there may
be a great individual, as in any other cultural setting, but
the community itself is not based on literal contact with
the Divine Siddhi.

From a political, cultural, and social point of view,
there are some nice things going on here. Just as you might
say the United Nations is a nice thing. But from the point
of view of Truth, this is not a genuine Ashram. It’s a sort
of literary and cultural event around which all people can
come and say, “Yes, we believe in this together,” and create
a United Nations of spiritual life.

All of that is good, but if the whole world took on this
particular form of community, it would still be necessary
for the Guru to appear. Their assumption is that the Guru is
somehow contained in this community. But the Guru would have
to come to save this community, to bring the dharma of true
spirituality into it. It is like any other community, an
order of life and mind with certain spiritual ideas behind
it. They are very busy creating this enormous World’s Fair
community. But all of that should be produced after this
crisis of transformation, the true, spontaneous
transformation. When there are individuals who are truly
living in the fire of Truth, then they can perhaps go about
creating a community. But here they are creating the
artifice first. There is all this nonsense about the future
beings we are going to have on this planet. They will be a
new race of beings, they will be greater than men, they will
have no sex, they will be immortal, and all this
craziness.

Ramana Maharshi commented on Aurobindo’s point of view.
He said that throughout the history of spiritual life there
have constantly been these guys who appeared and created a
philosophy of transformation according to which the body
would be made immortal and all these events would create a
superior man. It has always been happening. There have
always been such people. They represent one of the potential
points of view, but they do not make it true. It has nothing
to do with Truth. Aurobindo says, “Yes, there is
Self-realization, realization of the Atman must occur, but
then that’s not the end. After it occurs then there is this
other transformation in which the spiritual Light is brought
down.” That was just an offhand comment. There is nobody
here doing anything that’s going to bring about the
realization of the Self. It is true, though, that once the
Self is realized there does tend to be Siddhi, a
transformation is spontaneously activated, without any
concern whatsoever on the part of the individual. This thing
just tends to occur in some form or other in such a case. It
doesn’t mean that the individual is going to become immortal
or anything like that, but a transforming process does tend
to be activated in him.