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.