I Gave it All Away – Adi Da Samraj

The following are
main points and questions derived from a talk Adi Da Samraj
gave (see below for title and date)

Possibly a good
‘exercise’ for some would be to review this ‘old’ talk and
consider its points and questions and see how it measures up
to ‘this moment’.

Main Points and
Main Questions (all points and questions are Adi
Da’s*)

1. Adidam was
created in response to the Teaching Revelation in the
circumstance of the time it was formed.

2. It is a new time
for Adidam or the ‘same old’ time?

3. Is Adidam a real
Transmission of Spiritual energy in the world?

4. Does Adidam
purify itself from the self-corrupting influence that are
always arising within it? if so, how?

5. Is Adidam able to
deal with it’s own self-currupting influences?

6. Is Adidam filled
with dull, low energy, hyped, maladapted worldly ‘spiritual’
seekers?

7. Is Adidam a
vigorous, intelligent, sophisticated, stable, cool and
Enlightened means of communication of Spiritual Truth in the
world?

8. Is Adidam an
authentic, true and free communicator of the Teaching of
Truth in the world?

9. Has Adidam stayed
from its ‘center’?

10. Is Adidam
creating a ‘higher communication’ to the world? If so,
how?

11. Is Adidam in a
‘survival’ mode of existence? or is Adidam in a growing
(thriving) and transmitting mode of existence?

12. Is Adidam just
an ‘institution’ playing only with itself?

13. What is the
‘higher spiritual function’ of the Adidam? and are they
fulfilling it?

14. Adidam is not a
unique culture that serves the Transmission of
Truth.

15. Is Adidam
keeping Spiritual life alive at the center and growing out
from there?

16. Adidam will not
grow if it is only an institution without a living center
radiating out.

17. Is Adidam filled
with ‘prima donnas’, special ones chosen or
‘called’?

18. Is Adidam a
mechanism for Truth, Spiritual Transmission and providing
Wisdom-Teaching to the world?

19. Devotees
responsibility to communicate the Truth, live the Truth and
transmit it.

20. Does Adidam have
integrity?

21. Lack of practice
is the source of defense, low energy and lack of
growth.

22. Is Adidam
presently a bearer, Source of Reality-Teaching and generator
of The Adept?

23. Does Adidam
fully understand the living quality of the process? If so,
where are the signs?

24. Do devotees
transmit Spiritual Transmission? With Power and
Strength?

25. Is Adidam
selling only ‘rare’ jewels poor people can’t buy? Is Adidam
preserving the jewels and locking them away?

26. How is Adidam
(successfully) persisting in ‘selling’ their
‘wares’?

27. People do not
want the Truth (“you can’t handle the truth!”)

28. How have you
‘sold’ or been the ‘bearer of the Truth’ in the world? How
have you grown?

29. Do you have a
sense of humor or have you lost it? Are you just a business
or in a creative adventure, fueled by your practice and
commitment?

30. Does Adidam
serve people interested in the teaching ‘at their level of
interest’? If so, how?

31. Adidam will not
succeed unless there are practicing devotees.

32. Is Adidam a
transmitter and a transcender?

33. Does Adidam
understand what is causing their weakness and
failures?

34. Are their people
in Adidam who can change the patterns that have created the
low energy and weakness of it’s present state?

35. Has Adidam
retired to a ‘cave’ and turned in on itself?

36. Is there a
‘strangle hold’ on Adidam at the top?

37. Are there
persons at the ‘top’ who are in it for power, authority and
control?

38. People at the
top must allow creative energy to flow and grant people
autonomy.

39. Give it all
away.

40. Does Adidam have
a manly and womanly presence in the world?

41. Do the men and
women in Adidam give the Gift, which they have
received?

42. Why aren’t the
thousands of people who have felt the Presence
returning?

43. Is Adidam
vigorous and expansive?

44. Is Adidam
communicating with people, groups and other institutions?
Other religious organizations? Is Adidam being invited or
inviting others to their events?

45. How is Adidam
presently interfering with the process of it’s own
growth?

46. Where is the
‘expanded wealth’ in the faces (and pockets) of
devotees?

47. Adidam will fail
if it does not recognize what it have been given and then
give it out.

*Some
questions and points were modified, but, in all honesty and
best ability, kept to it’s original intent.

Adi Da
Samraj: The entire Work of my Teaching developed
spontaneously. I simply did my Spiritual Work with the
people who came to me and who were right in front of me at
the time. I was never a businessman. I taught, and an
institution was necessary, but it was always created in
response to the Teaching Revelation and the circumstance of
the time. I was never in business.

Key
Points:

1. Adidam was
created in response to the Teaching Revelation in the
circumstance of the time it was formed.

2. It is a new
time.

The world of
religion is basically a failed world. This is why I
struggled for so many years to guarantee, for the sake of
the world, not just the survival but the integrity of the
institution. Unlike Maharshi, I did have an interest in
providing a medium for real Transmission in the world. I
worked to purify the institution and to teach it how to
purify itself from the self-corrupting influences that are
always arising, so that the institution would be able to
deal with this tendency to become corrupt. I stayed with
that Work for a significant period of time, so that the
institution could be an effective Transmitter of the Truth
in the world.

Key
Points:

1. Real Transmission
in the world

2. Purify itself
from the self-corrupting influence that are always
arising

3. Able to deal with
self-currupting influences.

The institution
should refuse to be reduced to a dull, low energy, hyped,
worldly communication. We must be more than an institution.
We must be committed to a lively, vigorous, intelligent,
sophisticated, stable, cool, and Enlightened communication
of the Way of Truth. Some games should simply never be
played. Some games you only suffer profoundly until you drop
them. Therefore, do not begin them. Simply refuse to
function in certain ways. Look at other religious
organizations, you can see something in all of them that
reveals how they have compromised themselves. Some things
should just never be done.

Key Points:

1. Institution dull,
low energy, hyped, worldly.

2. Is the
institution vigorous, intelligent, sophisticated, stable,
cool and Enlightened means of communication?

The Spiritual Master
should be known for maintaining a commitment to
authenticity, to a true and free communication of the
Teaching of Truth, and to the Way of life that necessarily
follows. Likewise the institution should be so known. It is
in this principle that we can see the struggle. In our
attempts to grow and make peace, you make compromises, and
bit by bit you stray from the center. You then find conflict
between what you are trying to do and what you are supposed
to be. We should not do anything that we could not do and
still practice the Way at the same time. Have some class.

Key
Points:

1. Is the
institution an authentic, true and free communicator of the
Teaching of Truth?

2. Does the
institution stay from the ‘center’.

There is a scene in
the movie Roots of an organizational fund-raiser, a black
man, a school teacher. He is a good symbol from which the
institution can learn. Some white women come to see this
man, patrons of the school in which he teaches. They ask him
to sing a song for them, and after he sings the song, he
says to another black man that he would tap dance in
whiteface on the steps of the White House for the sake of
the school. Such is what institutional people become.

Ours must be a
higher communication than that. You must realize that we are
more than an institution trying to survive. You must do more
than merely survive. You must make the institution function
as an actual Transmitter of this Wisdom Teaching. Only then
will you know what to do. In other words, you must realize
that the institution is a shell for the Transmission of the
Teaching of Truth in the world. If you forget that, if you
do not understand that, then we are reduced to being an
institution only. But if you can keep your attention on the
fact that you are a process of Transmission, you will not
compromise the Way I have Revealed to you. If you are not
aware of your function, and if you are not functioning from
a high Spiritual point of view, you will inevitably
compromise the Way.

Key
Points:

1. Is the
institution creating a ‘higher communication’?

2. Is the
institution in a ‘survival’ mode? or in a ‘transmitting
role’?

3. Is the
institution just an ‘institution’ playing only with
itself?

4. What is the
‘higher spiritual function’ of the institution?

The institution is
not a limiting principle, nor is the fact that we are a
unique culture that serves the Transmission of Truth in the
world. We have tended to think that being an institution
limits our Spiritual practice and that having to communicate
the Teaching of Truth limits our effectiveness as an
institution. But that is not true. The truth that we are
more than an institution is an admonition to keep Spiritual
life alive at the center and also to grow as an institution.
You will see that if you will only persist in Spiritual
practice, the institution will be effective. It is only
because you are struggling to be merely an institution
without understanding our real purpose that you continually
fail.

Key
Points:

1. Adidam is not a
unique culture that serves the Transmission of
Truth.

2. Is Adidam keeping
Spiritual life alive at the center and growing out from
there?

3. Adidam will not
grow if it is only an institution without a living center
radiating out.

Other institutions
are at war with each other. Their teachers are trying to
dominate one another, and their members are prima donnas.
They will do anything to seem bigger than everyone else.
When the primary concern is the institution, then the
institution, and not the Way of Truth, becomes the focus.
This institution, however, is only a mechanism for what we
are trying to do, which is to support the Spiritual
Transmission of this Wisdom-Teaching.

Key
Points:

1. Is Adidam filled
with ‘prima donnas’, special ones chosen or
‘called’.

2. Is Adidam a
mechanism for Truth, Spiritual Transmission and providing
Wisdom-Teaching to the world.

I always Worked with
the fullest intent to communicate the Truth, and I never
compromised It. You can tell people that I did not go out in
the world. I stayed in the “pits” with the people who were
responding. My commitment was always to the Way. I was never
interested in anything else, and I was committed only to the
communication of Truth. Because of that commitment, many
things have happened, and you have grown to some extent, but
now it is the cultural responsibility of devotees to fulfill
their obligation in the Transmission of this Teaching
Revelation. Some things are plain old bullshit, and you must
know what they are. Such integrity must characterize the
institution.

Key
Points:

1. Devotees
responsibility to communicate the Truth, live the Truth and
transmit it.

2. Does Adidam have
integrity?

Is it difficult?
Yes, it is difficult, there is no doubt about it, but some
things have to be done, should be done, must be done, can be
done, and to create this institution as a Transmitter of the
Wisdom-Teaching is one of them! You must constantly be
serving something higher than yourself, higher than just the
institution, which tends to become the ego of the group. You
must serve and expand beyond yourself. Each individual must
do that, and collectively you must stand beyond our
institutional life, our institutional self. How will you do
that? By remembering the Source. You and I must maintain our
connection.

It is because of the
lack of practice in people that they become dissociated and
in doubt, wonder what is the right thing to do, and have no
energy for defending and supporting What is their Source. If
they would only contact That-and they cannot make the right
judgments until they do contact It-then the problems created
by lack of practice would come to an end. There will always
be creative matters to deal with, but they will know how to
deal with them appropriately and they will live as devotees.

Key
Points:

1. Lack of practice
is the source of defense, low energy and lack of
growth.

There are two
approaches to the Spiritual Teacher. There are formalities,
niceties, things you must do and say when you approach an
institutional representative. This is one form of response,
the approach that is popular, exoteric, and traditionally
made available. The other is the approach exemplified by the
man who came to Bodhidharma. There were no roads and no
games. Bodhidharma just dealt with what was in front of him,
and his response to the devotee made the Way a living
Teaching, a living Process.

My approach is this
second one. It is the Adept’s approach, not the lineage
approach. It is the Source of Teaching, the circumstance in
which true Teaching is generated. I refused to accept the
conventional role. Can you not see the difference between
the conventional role of institutional figures and the
unconventional role of a free Adept? This Way is the Adept’s
Process. It is a non-institutional Process. And our
institution is the bearer of this kind of Teaching.

Key
Points:

1. Is Adidam
presently a bearer, Source of Reality-Teaching and generator
of The Adept?

Devotees must do
real samyama, rather than opt for the traditions in a way
that shows a weakness on their part to understand the Adept.
You can read all kinds of traditional literature, but you
must understand the actual living process or else you will
fail to communicate it in Truth. Everyone must practice the
art of Agency of Spiritual Transmission, and devotees must
become serious about it. Let those who practice with depth
and power and strength and faith come forth, and let them
communicate the living Teaching, the Living Reality. Let
them practice the Way and thus in every moment be an Agency
of Transmission. Let them help others make this adaptation
to the Living Reality. This is their service!

Key
Points:

1. Does Adidam fully
understand the living quality of the process? If so, where
are the signs?

2. Do devotees
transmit Spiritual Transmission? With Power and
Strength?

One of the things
such devotees will discover is that there is a remarkable
level of noninterest in the Truth. This fact changes
institutions in the wrong direction. It is like opening a
store in Honolulu with the idea of selling the most
exquisitely crafted gifts from the Pacific, the finest
items. Suppose you go to the Pacific islands and you locate
the finest articles and you make your contacts and you come
back and you open your store – and there are no sales. A few
years later you are selling junk like everybody else, to
survive, because the masses will buy only certain kinds of
common art. Only the rare few want the finest. Well – you
must therefore open up the right kind of store, a different
kind of store, and you must cater to the rare few. You must
simply persist without compromise until you find a way to
sell what you value.

Key
Points:

1. Is Adidam selling
only ‘rare’ jewels poor people can’t buy? Is Adidam
preserving the jewels and locking them away?

2. How is Adidam
(successfully) persisting in ‘selling’ their
‘wares’?

It is the same with
religions. The first barrier is that the Truth is not what
people want. Look at what is sold on TV on Sunday morning,
and then look at the rest of the week. That is what people
want, at least what people in numbers want. It has nothing
to do with the Truth! But you cannot allow this observation
to change your own commitment. You must find ways to
function as a bearer of the Truth without having to become
another version of what sells cheaply.

Key
Points:

1. People do not
want the Truth (“you can’t handle the truth!”

2. How have you
‘sold’ or been the ‘bearer of the Truth’ in the world? How
have you grown?

I found out a long
time ago that people are not interested. But I had a sense
of humor, and you must also develop a sense of humor.
Instead of collapsing every time you run up against
opposition, have a sense of humor. I kept my commitment. I
was not compromised by mediocrity. And whose mediocrity was
I confronted with? Your mediocrity! But you were changed by
my commitment.

Key
Points:

1. Do you have a
sense of humor or have you lost it? Are you just a business
or in a creative adventure, fueled by your practice and
commitment?

The institution must
therefore serve people who bother to approach this Way, and
serve them in a true fashion. People do come – lots of
people have come and they must be rightly served. They must
be served at their level of interest and through their
capacity to respond. You should not be corrupted by the
tendencies of ordinary people. What you confront in the
public is very real, but you should not be corrupted or
compromised by it. You yourselves should stay real, and you
must at the same time artfully succeed. You will not
artfully succeed unless you practice the Way. That is why I
have told you that practice is more than what you do in the
Communion Hall in the morning and evening. Practice is what
you do in life! You must practice there. To be effective you
must transcend your subjectivity with all the energy that
you tend to withhold. You must be alive. You must be
functioning at a high level of energy. To be effective in
that way, you must transcend your reactivity and mediocrity.

Key
Points:

1. Does Adidam serve
people interested in the teaching ‘at their level of
interest’? If so, how?

2. Adidam will not
succeed unless their are practicing devotees?

3. Is Adidam a
transmitter and a transcender?

Many institutions
have failed when they became confused and compromised by the
realities of ordinary people. And now that we are getting
our shot at it, what will we do?

Our staff must
understand what it is in them that causes them to weaken and
fail. The failures of the institution in the past have
occurred because the people in charge were not able to
transcend these qualities in themselves. Something in their
tendencies causes them to betray their own Help. They are
psychologically tending to be weak because of a weak
commitment to the Way and a lack of awareness about the
world and its processes. They must transcend their lack of
knowledge, their naiveté, and their dramatization of
the adolescent’s need to control everything.

Key
Points:

1. Does Adidam
understand what is causing their weakness and
failures?

2. Are their people
in Adidam who can change the patterns that have created the
low energy and weakness of it’s present state?

It is not that they
should retire into a cave. They should serve in their
functions by growing up and living like devotees. There are
many, many forms of service in the institution, and the
small group at the top must not try to do everything. To do
so is to keep a stranglehold on the institution. To do so is
a sign of craving for power and authority. It is a false
motivation, and it must be transcended. To make this Work
grow, devotees must pass the Prasad. They must grant people
their energy. They must stop killing life and holding on to
information.

Key
Points:

1. Has Adidam
retired to a ‘cave’ and turned in on itself?

2. Is there a
‘strangle hold’ on Adidam at the top?

3. Are there persons
at the ‘top’ who are in it for power, authority and
control?

4. People at the top
must allow creative energy to flow and grant people
autonomy.

5. Give it all
away.

I gave it all away.
I created it, and I gave it all away. There is enough there
for thousands of people. But devotees do not understand what
has been given to them. They must come to that
understanding. They must be manly, and they must take this
Prasad as a Gift. They must know that the Teaching
Revelation has been given to many, and that I am in
Communion with countless people who have not yet been
notified.

Key
Points:

1. Does Adidam have
a manly and womanly presence in the world?

2. Do the men and
women in Adidam give the Gift, which they have
received?

It is the
institution’s responsibility to notify those people, to help
them practice, and to encourage them to serve the
institution. Devotees have inherited a great estate. They do
not yet know that they are millionaires. The institution
must therefore notify them. People are always coming to the
Sanctuary and being surprised by the Presence there. They
always say that they want to come back. Why aren’t thousands
of people coming there constantly as a Source of refuge? And
why aren’t they telling their friends about it?

Key
Points:

1. Why aren’t the
thousands of people who have felt the Presence
returning?

The institution must
be vigorous and expansive. People must be communicated to.
People are dying and suffering even though there is religion
and everything else out there, but most of religion and
everything else are fake, a compromise. They do not serve
and help people truly. My intention has been to establish an
institution that is a Transmitter of the Greatness of this
Way, and to see it be wholly and vigorously alive and
dealing with things that other religions do not want to
think about yet, but that must be addressed.

Key
Points:

1. Is Adidam
vigorous and expansive?

2. Is Adidam
communicating with people, groups and other institutions?
Other religious organizations? Is Adidam being invited or
inviting others to their events?

The institution must
help many people become involved with all the unique areas
of this Teaching. Practitioners must stop interfering with
the Process that is working in them, and they must become
the inheritors of what they have been given. They should be
the happy inheritors of this Way of life. When I see
devotees, I want to notice how they have expanded their
wealth.

Key
Points:

1. How is Adidam
presently interfering with the process of it’s own
growth?

2. Where is the
‘expanded wealth’ in the faces (and pockets) of
devotees?

I have given you an
immense fortune. Go beyond your neurosis. Get involved with
many more people. Be creative with your wealth. You have
been given so much. It seems impossible to fail when you
have been given so much, but you will fail if you do not
recognize what you have been given.

Key
Points:

1. Adidam will fail
if it does not recognize what it have been given and then
give it out.

I Gave It All
Away
a talk by Heart-Master Da Love-Ananda

May 22,1981