Adi Da and Animals

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Non-Human Contemplation

Preface
This collection of several historic audio recordings of Adi Da’s is of unique interest. Excerpted from a considerably longer recording, what Adi Da speaks about here is quite absent from the libraries of spiritual literature, whether Christian, Hindu, Buddhist, Muslim, or others.
Even Adi Da’s own formal writings and texts largely omit these words of his about the vast, mysterious-to-us, contemplative lives of the non-human beings. Adi Da left these instructions (for the most part) out of his formal texts because his intent for those writings was to provide direct spiritual instruction on matters related to human beings in particular.
And, as he describes, non-humans are already doing what we struggle to comprehend and embody. The prevalence of non-humans, who have no need for books and words to aid their contemplation, is why Adi Da founded his Fear-No-More Zoo—as an additional component of guidance to humans in how the non-human world “all around us” always inheres in the naturally contemplative state that we have forgone.
These recordings are worth listening to repeatedly and constantly returned to, if our propagandized minds might be relieved of our self-limiting humanistic prejudices and our profoundly chronic human fear. Imagine a world where all humans are also natural contemplatives—and where our contemplation informs every aspect of our lives.
Adi Da instructed that we ought to more fully observe how the non-humans live, and then “do as they do.” For further listening on this subject, see the book Lightning Thunder Cows for an overview of Adi Da’s radical instruction (to humans) about the non-humans’ contemplative realms.
– Stuart Camps, manager of Fear-No-More Zoo – 1993 to 2018
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ADI DA SAMRAJ: The non-humans enter directly into the state of Divine Contemplation. They don’t necessarily need any Seven Stages of life, at least precisely as you grasp it in human form, you see. Or they have their own way of doing it, perhaps – now gifted to do all seven – because I don’t only instruct and awaken human beings, you see? So I know the kind of contemplation everything and everyone does.
Human beings seem to have to get very busy about their bodies, and what they’re doing as bodily beings, before they can get into the profounder states of reality. But you have to go through this incredible tour – addressing all the “this-and-that’s” about your body-mind before you’ll consent to the “perfect practice” of just dropping out. So there’s a certain way that human beings do it that is apparently more complex.
The non-humans are far less afraid than you all – because of their simplicity and their ease of contemplation. This is why in traditional circumstances, they’ve felt that the animals were the direct representatives of the spirit world. They didn’t have the obstructed consciousness of human beings. They were direct representations of spiritual communications and powers, and so they were highly venerated, and used ritually, and contemplatively, and so forth, for various purposes.
But do you think that was just bullshit? Or are human beings uniquely complicated… and non-humans are a more direct representation to you, as a general rule, of contemplative existence, God-communing existence, spiritual awareness?
And all the animals… not humanly interfered with… everything that goes on.
All of that sign, and Me, you see, are urging you very directly if you get sensitive to us.
There does seem to be something dramatically unusual about human beings… that they have to be so profoundly re-acculturated, reoriented, to get to the point where they can do what any cricket can do, and does readily. They wouldn’t deny themselves the contemplative happiness, you see? But you all have to go through an extraordinary work of preparation, and changes, “bit at a time, bit at a time”.
You’re humanly compassionate, but, look at this whole thing. And you are all straining and struggling with your whole lives, to a maybe-time when you can do what the chameleons are doing in the kitchen right now – especially since you’re not bothering them. They just hang out in those little trees in there, and zone out completely.
So they’re doing that right now. And I’m in my over a-quarter-century now of consideration about something the chameleons are doing in the kitchen, and trying to get you guys up to it. Well, it is interesting, you see. It requires a much more elaborate bit of business to deal with the leading-edge of the planetary body of yellow-red beings…
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The Vase of Contemplation
ADI DA SAMRAJ: You see contemplatives all around you, including your Master here, in the form of everything, except what otherwise in general human beings are doing and their effects. But apart from human beings and their effects, you see, there is a Universal State of Contemplation going on. And functioning… it’s just on the base of that contemplation. Essentially it’s not a fear world. The human world is the fear world.
All of nature, so to speak, is contemplating – constantly. Oh yes, there are breaks it seems, required action, but essentially it’s a culture of contemplation, including the Earth itself. There are doings, but in samadhi – except for the humans. All we in samadhi, notice this. Yes, the body itself is fear, doesn’t want to be lost. But when the body is given over in Divine Communion, thoroughly, then it becomes fitted differently. Its true structure, its fundamental structure shows itself, performs itself, in the body’s shape, and all kinds of things about it are changed by spiritual fullness.
This is how the body is relieved of fear. Be given up utterly to communion, the body itself. Just as the chameleons, the animals out there, can commune, be in the state of communion – given up. So can the body, you see, it’s like that chameleon out there in the kitchen, or the tree.
The body has that intelligence, that capability. If you don’t interfere with it. If you allow it to be rightly aligned, you see, it becomes spiritually full. But likewise, all aspects of your disposition, your consciousness, your awareness, your life. Characteristically, when you feel anxiety, fear, and so forth, you get a contraction, inward contraction, a cramp in your solar plexus. It’s a typical sign, right?
So what does it do? It prevents the vase you see, prevents the fullness. It constricts. It effectively ties on knot in this conduit, this frontal line, and you feel the discomfort of it, you see. Self contraction has that bodily sign, and others. So if you are given up altogether, with all your heart and soul and mind and strength, you see, into Divine contemplation, this True Yoga of devotion to Me, then you are giving permission for the body to become a yogic body, a spiritualized body, one that is yogically, spiritually activated. So what do you think about the non-human then, now that we’ve talked about it some?
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Become Aware
Adi Da Samraj

The following talk by Adi Da Samraj explores the contemplative relationship between humans and the non-human world, drawing on the example of Aboriginal people in the Australian Outback. It highlights their deep observation of animals, weather, stars, and the natural world as expressions of something beyond the human—manifestations of a sacred, instructive, and powerful reality. Animals are not seen as lesser beings but as unique signs of Divine Awareness, carrying spiritual significance and offering lessons through their presence and survival abilities.
ADI DA SAMRAJ: Well right now in the Outback in Australia, aborigines are, so-called aborigines, are sitting around fires or just sitting out on the ground somewhere. And among the things they look to observe are the non-humans, and their movements about, but the whole non-human process… the weather, the sky, the stars, everything… observed in a rather contemplative disposition – openness altogether. Among those people, the animals, like among the Native American Indians, it is not merely believed in some heady sense, but presumed that the non-humans are a unique display of what is beyond the human… and are not lesser – at all.
There are unique signs, something to notice very profoundly, you see, and to learn from, and so on. There’s also the presumption that for the humans to survive, they have to sometimes kill animals, or whatever – for food. But even that is done in a sacred disposition. Not maliciously, but with respect. Acknowledgement of necessity, with regret, and asking for apology, and expressing goodwill, and blessing. Something of that is in it all. But apart from the eatings of the non-humans, they do spend a lot of time observing them, noticing all kinds of things about… including their survival abilities and whatnot. But, beyond that, they’re viewed as direct spirit forms, with something instructive about them and a kind of power even, to become intimate with. Such peoples do a kind of samyama, then, on animals. They contemplate them to the point of achievement of sometimes remarkable states – and so on.
We were just talking about the non-humans here, in a somewhat different fashion, perhaps, in terms of them being signs of Divine Awareness, not just representations of the invisible world and so on, you see. Here to help humans, or to be of use to them perhaps… profound contemplatives, you see? So that’s what we were talking about. But it still would require the same thing of you, basically, that was done long ago, and still. You have to allow yourself to become sensitive to everything, and realize that everyone is a “one”, not just the humans. In their presumption, they are, certainly, as alive and conscious as you, just as self-aware, in every fundamental sense.