Preface
Note to the Reader:
This essay is an interpretive and educational reflection on a dialogue between Adi Da Samraj and a devotee, Jonathan, that took place in November 2004. Beezone does not possess the legal rights or copyright permissions to publish or reproduce the original dialogue in full. Therefore, what follows is not a verbatim transcript, but a narrative synthesis and commentary drawn from the content and spirit of that conversation.
Our purpose here is not to substitute for the original source material, but to offer a clear and thoughtful interpretation of Adi Da’s communication—particularly as it relates to the nature of religious myth, historical narrative, esoteric reality, and the deeper structure underlying human religious expression. We encourage all readers to explore the original source materials published by the Adidam Sacred Archives or Adidam Literature for study in full context.
The Mythic Structure of Religion, and the Real Structure of Realization
A Dialogue with Adi Da Samraj
Adi Da Samraj, 2005
t began with a question that had been fermenting for years in Jonathan’s mind—a question seeded in early religious training, tested through scholarly reading, and made urgent by his direct devotional relationship to Adi Da Samraj. Jonathan stood before his Guru in a gathering of devotees, not merely to ask about doctrine, but to ask about the truth behind religion itself.
He spoke of how, over decades of Adi Da’s Teaching, he had come to see that the so-called “Great Tradition” was not what he once assumed. The religions of the world, he had learned, are not pristine transmissions from historical founders, but deeply mythic, constructed, and often contradictory narratives—filled with stories retroactively shaped by faith and political agendas. Even the Gospels of the New Testament, he noted, were not written as historical biographies but as polemics—crafted to argue a case, to build belief.
“But what,” he asked, “of the ancient realizers—those figures to whom these traditions are attributed? Did they exist? If so, what is their real relationship to the traditions that came afterward?”
Adi Da did not hesitate.
“If Jesus of Nazareth founded Christianity,” He asked pointedly, “which Christianity did he found?”
It was a question with no answer—because there is no singular Christianity. The early movement splintered immediately into sects, myths, and contradictory theologies. It was not until centuries later, under imperial pressure, that a so-called “orthodoxy” emerged—and even then, it continued to fracture: Eastern and Western, Catholic and Protestant, mystical and moralistic, political and esoteric.
“Christianity,” Adi Da said, “is a tradition appearing—not a person appearing.”
And so it was with all traditions. The stories attributed to their founders are retrospective constructions—built to give coherence to something already in motion. Faith in Jesus’ resurrection was not based on having seen Him walk out of the tomb. Rather, it was the belief in His messianic identity that required He not be dead. That’s what “resurrection” meant—it was a mythological necessity, not a historical event.
Adi Da explained that such faith did not originate in empirical witness. “People didn’t see Jesus resurrect and ascend. They believed it.” The resurrection, He said, was not a perceptual phenomenon—it was a declaration, a theological certainty rooted in the Son of Man myth of Jewish apocalypticism.
Jonathan asked: “Does Son of Man mean a Divine being in human form?”
“Yes,” Adi Da replied. “A messiah figure expected to descend on the clouds, awaken the dead, judge the living, and fulfill the destiny of the Jewish people.”
Jesus was interpreted through that myth. And when He was executed—likely crucified as a political criminal—the early followers, retreating in fear, didn’t have facts. They had myth. And the myth demanded that He rise. The real engine of belief, Adi Da explained, was not what happened, but what the stories required in order to continue.
Even visions of Jesus after death—reported by some—were not proof. “I’ve seen My own teachers after their death,” Adi Da said. “So have many others with loved ones. That doesn’t make a world religion.” The uniqueness of Jesus was not in what was seen, but in what was needed by the tradition: He had to live on, or the myth failed.
But the myth of Jesus didn’t emerge in a vacuum. Adi Da revealed its deeper roots—astrological and pre-scientific cosmology that shaped the entire ancient world. Religions, He said, were built atop a layered understanding of the cosmos—flat earth, heavens above, crystal domes, spheres of influence. These weren’t superstitions, He insisted, but early attempts at meaning. The stories of resurrection after three days, of ascension through clouds, were symbolic reflections of celestial phenomena: the sun disappearing and reappearing, the morning star vanishing in the light of day.
“All of it,” He said, “was structured around observation and myth—myths of the cosmos that encoded power, order, and meaning.”
But Adi Da went further still. He pulled back the veil on why these myths appear—why they continue to appear.
It is not only because of cosmology or politics or psychological need.
It is because of the structure of the human being.
“The Great Tradition,” He declared, “is not the transmission of historical figures, but the manifestation of the psycho-physical anatomy of humankind.”
All myth, all religion, all esoteric aspiration arises from within—from the potentials and structures embedded in the body-mind, in the gross, subtle, and causal dimensions of the human form. Jesus’ resurrection and ascension—whether or not He ever existed—are true in the sense that they speak to an inner reality: the aspiration to move beyond death, to transcend, to ascend.
Christianity, He said, reflects the fourth and fifth stages of life—devotional surrender and ascending mysticism. It speaks of a savior, of a heaven above, of the transformation of mortal life into Divine Life. These are not “false” in any ultimate sense—but they are still ego-based, still within the conditional structure of human aspiration.
“And yet,” Adi Da said, “there is a Teaching that is not based in conditional forms.”
He meant His own Revelation—not as an extension of the Great Tradition, but as a break from it. The Way He offers is not the culmination of myths—it is what precedes them. It is prior to the psycho-physical structure itself, prior to the ego, prior to the myth-making mind.
It is the direct Revelation of the Divine Person, without form, without story, without condition.
And in that Revelation, even the loftiest religious traditions are understood not as errors, but as expressions of our ancient search—valuable, meaningful, but incomplete. They are maps written from within the body-mind, pointing toward a Truth that is only Realized when even the body-mind is transcended.
Jonathan listened, moved. He had asked about history—and received a Teaching about Reality. The question of Jesus had become a question of humanity. The structure of myth had become a mirror of the self. And behind it all, the Presence of Adi Da stood—as the Revelation of That which no myth can contain.
“You must transcend the structure itself,” Adi Da said gently, “or there is no Truth Realized.”
And in that sentence, the weight of centuries fell away—not with denial, but with freedom. Not with rejection, but with Grace.