The Broken Inheritance:
Grace, Will, and the Limits of Self
De vocatione omnium gentium
Preface
This article is part of Beezone’s ongoing effort to explore the intersection of ancient wisdom and contemporary spiritual inquiry. By placing Prosper of Aquitaine—a key defender of Augustinian grace theology—alongside the teachings of Adi Da Samraj, we seek to illuminate the enduring questions that link theology, psychology, and philosophy. This work is not meant as a doctrinal endorsement but as a dialogical reflection on a shared spiritual insight: that transformation does not begin with the self—it begins with grace.
Introduction
The Broken Inheritance—Reclaiming a Unified Question
In the modern world, the deepest questions of human life—freedom, will, change, responsibility, and transcendence—have been subdivided into isolated disciplines. Psychology speaks of trauma, resistance, or repression. Philosophy theorizes autonomy and determinism. Political theory debates responsibility and structure. But beneath these fragmented discourses lies a deeper, more ancient concern—one that, for centuries, was known simply as theological.
In the early fifth century, during a time of cultural upheaval and the slow collapse of Roman authority in the West, theology was not merely an academic or devotional pursuit—it was the primary language through which people wrestled with the meaning of human freedom and the power of divine grace. One such voice was Prosper of Aquitaine, a lay theologian and close disciple of Saint Augustine. In his Letter to Rufinus, Prosper offers one of the clearest defenses of Augustine’s view of grace: that no human being can, by their own effort, will themselves into salvation—not even begin to will it—unless God first moves the heart.¹
This controversy, known historically as the Pelagian debate, is often treated as a doctrinal footnote. But at its heart is a question that has never gone away:
Can the human being change itself? Or must it be changed—from beyond?
This question—ancient in origin but modern in expression—persists in every sphere today. The self-help industry promises transformation through willpower. Therapy helps us untangle internal resistance. Moral systems urge us toward better choices. Yet few ask what Prosper asked: Where does the power to choose even come from?
To trace this question into the present, we turn to a contemporary spiritual teacher, Adi Da Samraj, whose teachings echo Prosper’s in startling ways. Writing across decades of the 20th and 21st centuries, Adi Da rejected the modern cult of self-will. Like Prosper, he insisted that the self is not the cause of its own salvation, that grace is not optional but essential, and that true spiritual transformation is not self-engineered—it is received.²
What follows is a structured comparison between these two voices—one from the dying empire of Christian Rome in the 5th Century, the other from the postmodern 21st Century collapse of metaphysical certainty. What unites them is not their era or method, but their recognition of the mind/soul/hearts helplessness without grace/fate/providence/luck, and their challenge to the illusion that transformation begins with us/me/you/I.
The Limits of Will: A Challenge to Autonomy
Prosper of Aquitaine:
“Who can doubt that free will obeys the invitation of God calling only when His grace has aroused in him the desire to believe and to obey?” (Letter to Rufinus)
Adi Da Samraj:
“The Way is not a utopian and purifying path… Realization by Grace is the Principle.” (What I Look For)³
Contemporary Echo: Modern psychology often treats change as volitional—behavioral therapy (CBT), motivational interviewing, and coaching all operate under the premise that the individual can change by deciding to. Yet psychodynamic theory and trauma-informed models increasingly recognize what Prosper and Adi Da knew: that much of what drives us lies beyond conscious control. The will, left to itself, cannot free itself.
Grace as Transformative Initiative
Prosper of Aquitaine:
“The will is prepared by the Lord, and… it is God who worketh in you, both to will and to accomplish, according to His good will.”
Adi Da Samraj:
“The sadhana is the life of Grace, not a self-effort. Satsang is the condition in which the Divine does the sadhana through you.” (The Bodily Location of Happiness)⁴
Contemporary Echo: Neuroscience increasingly suggests that transformation begins not with effort, but with a rewiring of the nervous system—often dependent on relationship, environment, or a sense of safety. Prosper’s and Adi Da’s insistence on divine initiative parallels this: we do not start the change—we are first changed, then we respond. Grace, like secure attachment, is the condition that makes true freedom possible.
The Myth of Self-Sufficiency
Prosper of Aquitaine:
“Had they wanted to, they could have attained it”—is the false voice of those who ignore that without God’s gift, they could not even have wanted it rightly.
Adi Da Samraj:
“The ego makes its own prison. It cannot free itself, because the ego is its own activity. That activity must be undone from beyond itself.”⁵
Contemporary Echo: Philosophical existentialism once glorified autonomy as the source of meaning. But postmodern thinkers (Derrida, Foucault) and psychoanalysts (Freud, Lacan) showed the radical contingency of the self. What we think of as “ours” is inherited, shaped, and often compulsive. The modern belief in self-creation is a recasting of Pelagian optimism—one that Prosper and Adi Da would both see as illusion.
Surrender and Receptivity: The Path Forward
Prosper of Aquitaine:
“It would be sufficient to instruct a man and there would be no need to produce in him a new will.”
Adi Da Samraj:
“True practice is not progressive purification but radical surrender. You cannot bring yourself to it. You must be brought.”⁶
Contemporary Echo: Today’s therapeutic and spiritual landscapes are rediscovering the importance of surrender, trust, and receptivity. Psychedelic-assisted therapy, contemplative psychotherapy, and transpersonal psychology all recognize that healing often comes not through striving but through letting go, being held, or being opened by something greater than the conscious mind. This is exactly the stance that both Prosper and Adi Da insist upon: not self-mastery, but self-release into grace.
Conclusion: Remembering What Was Once Known
Prosper of Aquitaine and Adi Da Samraj lived in different worlds—one a Roman Christian steeped in Latin theology, the other a modern spiritual teacher shaped by Eastern and Western traditions alike. Yet they speak to the same human condition. Their message confronts the illusion of self-sufficiency and invites a rediscovery of dependence—not as weakness, but as the very ground of transformation.
Today’s psychologies, philosophies, and spiritualities are slowly circling back to this realization. Perhaps what we need now is not a new system or discipline, but a recovery of what was once already seen clearly: that we are not our own origin. We begin to change only when something greater begins in us.
The ancient language for this was grace. It may yet be the most truthful word we have.
Footnotes:
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Prosper of Aquitaine, Letter to Rufinus, as translated in various theological collections, including Church Society publications.
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Adi Da Samraj, Beezone Library, www.beezone.com
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Adi Da Samraj, “What I Look For,” https://beezone.com/current/what_i_look_foredit.html
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Adi Da Samraj, The Bodily Location of Happiness, https://beezone.com/AdiDa/bodilylocationofhappiness.html
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Adi Da Samraj, The Ego’s Prison, https://beezone.com/AdiDa/ego.html
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Adi Da Samraj, Radical Understanding, various talks compiled at www.beezone.com