What Makes Adi Da’s Teaching
Completely Unique?
The Way that we consider is the Way of the transcendence of contraction. Thus, it is different from the path that derives from the convention of problems and the manipulation of attention to achieve a higher state free of the presumed dilemma of life. The conventional paths of the fourth, fifth, and sixth stages play upon the problem-contraction. The Way that we consider is the Way of the transcendence of the problem of contraction from the beginning. We do not temporarily adopt a method that plays on the problem-contraction, hoping ultimately to transcend it. The Way that we consider begins in understanding and the direct or unmediated transcendence of the problem-contraction or the conventions of ordinary consciousness.
Da Free John (Adi Da Samraj) – The Bodily Location of Happiness, 1982
Why Haven’t There Been Seventh Stage Realizers Before?
Adi Da Samraj
There has never been another seventh stage Adept [Beezone bold capitalization]. There has never been another true [FULL] seventh stage Wisdom-Teaching. There has never been another seventh stage Realization, true and full. The principle of ego-transcendence has never been understood, and transcendence of the self-contraction has never been made the basis for the God-Realizing process before.
[What has been “before” is Divine Realization and Absorption Into the One and Only without the full understanding and recognition of “egoity” or, more specifically, the self-contraction, the black hole of self – Beezone].
There are many things that I could say about the reasons why there has been no such Revelation previous to My own, but a fundamental reason is that there has been no true understanding of egoity, and the principle of egoity has always been the basis of religion, even esoteric religion. The search, egoity, separateness, the separative motive, the self-contraction itself, has been fundamental to both religious exotericism and religious esotericism, as well as ordinary life. Obviously this is the key matter.
This understanding is the key to the Way of the Heart. It is fundamental. If you do not have this understanding, if you do not truly engage it and demonstrate it, you turn the Way of the Heart into an extension of the great search. You make the Way of the Heart into another form of conventional religiosity.
My teaching to you about the matter of most fundamental self-understanding. It is a unique teaching , a radical teaching, a gone to the root teaching, gone to the root of what egoity really is. It is not to be found in the traditions. Its preciseness is not there. There are, however, teachings, or modes of understanding, shown, demonstrated, uttered, written, here and there, in various of the traditions, that obviously reflect upon the matter of bondage and egoity, and the transcending of it. And so there is a stream of such traditional understanding to be found in the traditions of Buddhism, but they are not identical to My teaching. Its not simply that you could find it there. You could find some elements of it there, and then you will find it completed, altogether gone to the root, in my teaching.
Adi Da Samraj – January 2006
The Way of Adidam is a Unique and Utterly Complete and (Ultimately) Most Perfect Process that has (Itself) nothing to do with the conventions of the Great Tradition. The essential difference between the Way of Adidam and all the ways of the Great Tradition is that the Way of Adidam has, even from the beginning, absolutely nothing to do with ego-eccentricity, or with the ego-“I” itself, or with satisfying the impulses (or the desiring-searches) of the ego-“I”, or (altogether with idealizing and satisfying (or even immortalizing, or perfecting, or utopianizing) the body-mind.
The Seven Stages of Life, ‘The Only Way To My “My Room'”
ADI DA SAMRAJ (Franklin Jones): The ordinary sense that a man [or woman] has, sitting, walking, is of separate existence. He doesn’t ordinarily say to himself, “I am this body, I am this mind, I am this, I am that.
No mental process goes on that is itself the communication of this sense to him. He already has this sense. He wakes up alive, he moves in bodily terms, it just seems very obvious. And there is the sense of some sort of subtle limit, size, shape, or difference. That is identification. It is called the “ego.” Differentiation is all the forms, all the qualities of cognition or mind, in which everything becomes an extension of this same thing that he has assumed.
Everything becomes a “this.” Look at this, look at this. Suddenly, there are endless planes of significance. The very structure of his thought is “this, this, this.” Spontaneously, everything is already multiplied, distinct. Having already, spontaneously acquired this sense of separate existence, and while already perceiving, thinking a range of multiplicity, of separate natures, forms, and forces, he moves. And that motion is desire. This separate one moves. He conceives a realm of multiplicity in which to move, because he is separate. There is something, even a world, that he is up against, so he moves. And that movement is desire.
An endless adventure is possible when these three assumptions [Identification, Differentiation and Desire] are made. And that adventure is what people are doing. All men, all ordinary beings who are karmically manifested in the material worlds, are living this adventure.
Each one lives it with different qualities, different circumstances, different ranges of subjectivity, but all essentially are living it on the armature of this same structure, this same form, this same complex of assumptions. Their present state, “me,” separate, with everything around me moving. What you ordinarily perceive to be your condition at any moment is the best example of it.
Now all adventures, all human adventures are possible from that point of view, and all are built on that point of view. And that point of view is the dilemma. All accomplishments take place within the framework of that dilemma. Therefore, all pursuits, all searches, all activities, all accomplishments, spiritual and mundane, are possible adventures within that same framework. It is not that the spiritual ones are better than the mundane ones. They are all the same adventure.
The Method of the Siddhas – Adi Da Samraj – 1973
Adi Da Samraj – The Quest for The Historical Self, 2004
The Aletheon – Adi Da Samraj
What Makes Adi Da’s Teaching Unique,
Completely Unique?
It is the “discovery” of self-contraction
There is no free, true, direct, and final ascent except the separate and separative ego principle or soul, which is rooted in the heart, be not merely purified but utterly dissolved.
Paradox of Instruction, Bubba Free John (Adi Da Samraj), 1977,
***
The principle of ego-transcendence has never been understood, and transcendence of the self-contraction has never been made the basis for the God-Realizing process before.
Adi Da Samraj, Listen to Me, April 8, 1993
In all the doctrines of the Great Tradition of humankind, the separate “self” is described as the fundamental characteristic of human existence. This universal presumption of the Great Tradition of humankind – that the separate “self”, the ego, intrinsically and irreducibly exists – is then viewed as a “problem”, and life therefore must become a perpetual search and struggle to somehow get rid of the ego and its “effects”. Such is the nature—and the essential error and fault and limitation—of the seeking-idealism that is a defining characteristic of the entire Great Tradition of humankind.
Adapted from THE EGOLESS REALITY-WAY OF DIVINE TRANSLATION Adi Da Samraj – The Aletheon
***
What Does Adi Da Mean by the term “self-contraction”?
Most study of Adi Da’s teaching is weak (difficult) and there is limited understanding of just what Adi Da means by the term self-contraction. For many who believe they understand Adi Da’s teaching word, the term is used to describe something in the mind that can be described as a kind of tension. Ken Wilber in his Meditation Notes describes it as:
You will notice that the separate-self (or ego) simply arises in consciousness like everything else. You can actually feel the self-contraction, just as you can feel your legs, or feel a table, or feel a rock, or feel your feet. The self-contraction is a feeling of interior tension, often localized behind the eyes, and anchored in a slight muscle tension throughout the body mind. It is an effort and a sensation of contracting in the face of the world. It is a subtle whole-body tension”.
Listen to Adi Da on self-Contraction:
Adi Da Samraj – 2006
Adi Da Samraj (1988) – 00:45
The Unique Nature of Adi Da and His Teaching
What makes Adi Da’s teaching unique is not only his teaching argument about the self-contraction and its consequences but what one does (or doesn’t) do about it.
Those who do investigate the phenomena of the self-contraction generally sense that it is best to “relax” the tension of the self-contraction and find some relief from the tension it causes. The common approach is to search for cure.
Our reaction to pain, our desire to avoid it, causes us to react and to contract. The contraction itself generates at least a subtle pain in the manifest being, and therefore the being constantly seeks, through addictive strategies, to relieve pain through all the means of pleasuring.
This search to find relief from the tension of the self-contraction creates a endless cycle in peoples lives.
…all of your seeking is a search (founded on stressful desiring, or stressful reactivity) for union with something that you are seeking all of the time in many directions. You are always in pursuit of union with one thing or another, and it is always stressful, it is always agonizing, it is always basically disturbing in some fundamental sense. Even pleasurable desiring, if you examine it, is full of stress.
Therefore, you must come to this realization, this level of understanding—that you are seeking, that your seeking is failing, that there is always a pursuit of union with one thing or another, and it is always associated with stress that is agonizing.
Adi Da Samraj, ‘My “Bright” Sight’.
What is Adi Da saying that is different from what has been said before?
DEVOTEE: Sri Gurudev, when You were speaking before about the uniqueness of Your Manifestation as the Divine, I had a sense of what You meant when You said that You are Prior to the Cosmic Mandala. I felt that everything in the Great Tradition has arisen within the Cosmic Mandala. But You have arisen Prior to the Cosmic Mandala.
SRI DA AVABHASA (Avatar Adi Da Samraj): That is the difference. The searches and the Realizations of mankind heretofore:
(1) Have been generated from the position not only of egoity but of conditionality within the conditional Cosmic Mandala.
(2) They are approaches to the Divine.
(3) In My Case, it is the Divine That is Approaching.
(4) That is the difference for all of you in how the Way of the Heart works in My Company.
(5) The process in My Company is all about the transcendence of egoity and the transcendence of the point of view of conditionality and of the Cosmic Mandala.
(6) All of religion and Spirituality heretofore has taken place within that context of egoity, conditionality, the Cosmic Mandala. It has all been a search within it. It has gone to the limit of all extremes, at the periphery and in depth (the end-time).
Adi Da Samraj, ‘You Heart Must be Moved’, The Heart Conversion Talk Series, 1993.
Numbering and punctuation changes added by Beezone.
Stay in the Position of the Self-Knot
Understanding the Self-Contraction and the Pursuit of Union
Transcendence of Self-Knot of Fear – Adi Da Samraj, 2006
Three Hearts – Origin of Attention
Origin of Attention and Spirit Current – Right Side of Heart
Root of Body-Mind is in the Heart – Enlightenment of the Whole Body
You Must Hear the Teaching Argument
Excerpts on self-Contraction from Adi Da’s talks 2004-2007
