A Beezone Exercise
Editor’s Preface
by Beezone
The following commentary is a reader’s reflection on Adi Da Samraj’s essay The Structure of Illusion and Enlightenment, originally published in The Enlightenment of the Whole Body (1978). This essay, written during a formative period of Adi Da’s teaching work, explores the profound nature of separation, consciousness, and Divine Realization through the lens of his Seven Stages of Life.
While this essay, like many of Adi Da’s early writings, is now considered “obsolete” within the formal tradition, its depth of insight and radiant clarity remain unmistakable.* The essential wisdom expressed here continues to speak beyond its historical context. I offer this work in that spirit—with the hope that readers will discover something of the same illumination that inspired me in the process of engaging with it.
While the language and propositions of this essay may challenge the contemporary reader—especially those unfamiliar with the metaphysical or esoteric traditions—its insights remain deeply resonant for those willing to engage them. What follows is not an academic critique nor a theological treatise, but a sincere effort to clarify and reflect upon Adi Da’s paradoxical and revelatory vision.
This commentary was created in the spirit of study and transmission and is offered here as a companion to the original text. It is my hope that it encourages deeper contemplation and helps make accessible the radical truths Adi Da so urgently wished to communicate.
Ed Reither
May 1, 2025
* In the context of Adidam, the term “obsolete” refers to early writings by Adi Da Samraj that he later superseded with more refined or final expressions of his Teaching. These earlier texts are not considered binding or authoritative within the formal tradition, but many readers and students still find them rich with insight and power. The term does not imply irrelevance, but rather reflects Adi Da’s ongoing evolution in articulating his Realization.
The Structure of Illusion and Enlightenment
Bubba Free John (Adi Da Samraj)
I will describe the Structure in which we appear-since Awakening to this Structure is Enlightenment. The Ultimate Reality or Truth is the Transcendental Person Infinite, Eternal Bliss, Prior to all kinds of relations. That Person is Radiant Consciousness, or Divin Ignorance-Radiance.
Commentary
Clearly, this essay is not for everyone. Why? Because not everyone is drawn to—or has been guided by—the kinds of insights offered by so-called enlightened masters. For many, such figures are seen as outdated, discredited, or even fraudulent. The entire idea of spiritual illumination has, over time, often been dismissed as either a failure or a corrupt illusion.
But for those not burdened by such skepticism, the possibility of encountering a truly Enlightened individual writing about profoundly esoteric matters in simple, contemporary, and accessible English is not only a rare gift—it is an important historical record.
***
The same Person, although One, is also Dynamic-expressed as an Infinitely Extended Process of numberless kinds of Manifest Play. In that Play, self-consciousness arises in each specific process or apparent entity. And this self-consciousness within the Dynamic Play of Existence cannot know or experience the Divine Person over against itself. The Divine Person is a Unity, Who Transcends the Dynamic Play while also appearing to Pervade it and even to Be it. Therefore, to Realize the Divine Person, individual beings must transcend their manifest forms, or their independent existence in the Play.
Commentary
The opening sentence alone is enough to leave a reader perplexed. How can one understand a Person who is described as both “One” and “prior to all relations,” while also being “dynamically expressed” and “infinitely extended” in the manifest play of the universe? The reader is left with only two options: to accept this statement on faith or to rely on some prior, perhaps intuitive, understanding of such language.
In the second sentence, Adi Da directly addresses this confusion. He writes that “self-consciousness… cannot know” this “Dynamic Play”—the appearing, pervading, and Being that is beyond all limits. It is only through the transcendence of independent existence, while still within the midst of the Play, that Enlightenment can be realized.
***
The Divine Person does not appear as such to the independent conscious entities within the Play. Rather, the Ultimate Reality seems to be a hidden Transcendental Consciousness, over against the Universal Drama of all phenomena. The entities intuit the Divine Consciousness through their own fundamental consciousness, which seems to be their essential or central condition of existence. Therefore, they may feel that God is Consciousness. But all of the phenomena of experience distract the entities and seem to bind them to what is not Consciousness.
Commentary
First and foremost, the concept of the “Divine Person” needs clarification, as it can easily lead to confusion. When Adi Da refers to the “Divine Person” and speaks of himself in that context, he is not referring to his body or personality as being the Divine Person—though it may certainly appear that way to the reader. This introduces a profound and difficult paradox, one that can only be approached through either faith or a prior, deeply intuitive understanding. As Adi Da notes, “they may feel that God is Consciousness.”
Here we come to the crux of the matter: the world both attacks and repels, while simultaneously binding individuals to the realm of phenomena. This tension is central to the difficulty in recognizing or realizing the Divine as anything but abstract or distant.
***
Thus, the Divine appears to, have divided Itself, becoming Consciousness on the one hand, and Dynamic Manifestation on the other. But, in Truth, the Divine is One, and this Self-Division in God is only an illusion, created by the presumption on the part of the entities that they are independently existing in a World of experience, separated from the Eternal Position of Transcendental Unity, or Bliss.
Commentary
The Divine appears to be separate, but in truth, the Divine—in all its multiplicity—is only One Dynamic Manifestation. The illusion of separation is generated by the presumption of individual entities existing apart from that One.
***
The living beings become convinced of their independence by virtue of the distracting power of manifest experience. They begin to turn from Intuitive Communion with the Divine Reality, and they turn toward the phenomena of the Play. Thus, experience continues, reinforcing the illusion of independence, separation from the Divine Condition, and necessary association with phenomena.
Commentary
Living beings, in their habitual turning toward phenomena, both reinforce and are reinforced in their illusion of separateness and identification with appearances.
***
Entities thus develop desires and tendencies of all kinds, which trap them into automatic and uninspectable association with continued experience. They are launched on a space-time Tour of Possibility. But in that Process, the Bliss of God-Communion is replaced by inherent suffering, or self-possession. Therefore, as experience develops, so also does the profound sense of bewilderment, despair, and the feeling of entrapment. The entity feels that it is an independent, conscious being with form in a World, and that it is necessarily associated with experiential phenomena. Happiness seems to require continued experience and improvement of experience. The Real, or God, is considered either to be perfectly interior to the World or else to be the Perfection of the World.
Commentary
Adi Da takes on a somewhat poetic tone here. Desires and tendencies entrap human beings in countless possibilities—one could even extend this analogy to the Garden of Eden—and ultimately, death. In this entrapment, the Divine is either forgotten or sublimated. As the sense of independence grows stronger, it becomes more deeply fixed. If a person begins to awaken to their condition of entrapment, the struggle for release may take shape—either as an inward search or as a pursuit of Divine Perfection projected into the world.
***
Such is the puzzle or dilemma of consciousness in the case of manifest individual entities, or souls in manifestation. The manifest soul, or entity, is an apparently independent consciousness (the manifest expression of the Divine Ignorance, or Perfect Consciousness), covered by or necessarily associated with a body-mind and an Infinite World of relations (the manifest expression of the Divine Radiance, or Perfect Bliss).
Commentary
The puzzle and conundrum of existence—for everyone who seriously contemplates its nature, from renowned philosophers to eminent scientists—lies in the paradox of consciousness: its simultaneous appearance as both dual and unified, while being, at its root, Divine.
***
The only true “solution” to this dilemma is an Awakening that inherently transcends every aspect or condition of the dilemma. Thus, the manifest soul must Awaken to the Realization that it is always already and priorly Free of all conditions of experience, or the body-mind. Experience is not necessary, or even a Way to the Divine Person. The body-mind is an illusion in the Play. By association with the body-mind, the Free soul, or the Self-which dwells in the planes of manifestation but is inherently free of identification with phenomena-suffers the illusion of identification with phenomena. Liberation in Truth comes when this association produces a critical sense of revulsion, thus permitting intuitive Awakening from the stream of experience. This Awakening is Self-Realization, and it is perfected in the sixth stage of manifest life.
Commentary
The more one contemplates the dilemma—and the solutions—that religions, renowned philosophers, poets, and artists have proposed, the clearer it becomes that all of them, in one form or another, begin with a search or effort. Adi Da’s “solution,” however, is to awaken to what is inherent—not through progressive effort, but by transcending conditional existence altogether. Once even a glimpse of the illusion of separation—which is the key element—is seen in Truth, a “critical revulsion” is permitted, and the process of Transcendental Awakening is brought to its fruition in the Sixth Stage of Life.
***
When there is this Awakening beyond the distractive power of experience, the Self may then begin to Awaken to the Single Reality, the Original Condition, the Divine Person or Absolute Personality. The Self, first Awakened, tends to abide within Itself, excluding experiential phenomena-since the Play of experiential phenomena is recognized to have been the very Process that originally caused the Self, or Free soul, to forget its Free Condition. However, exclusive Self-Realization does not permit Transcendental God-Communion, or Realization of the Divine Person, the Inclusive Ignorance-Radiance of the One Reality. Therefore, the Ultimate Liberation comes only when the Self yields its effort to exclude phenomena as well as its previous effort to maintain association with phenomena.
Commentary
Once one has awakened to the exclusive Bliss of Divine Enlightenment—separate from conditional existence—what remains is awareness within the Ultimate Divine Domain itself. Yet, Adi Da proposes that this exclusive Enlightenment is not Ultimate Liberation, for it excludes the world. Only when the Divine Itself yields and reveals its Bliss within the totality of existence does the Seventh Stage of Life awaken as Perfect Realization.
***
In the first five stages of life, entities seek association with the various kinds of psycho-physical phenomena. In the sixth stage of life, entities seek to avoid association with every kind of experiential phenomenon, while abiding in the prior Bliss of the Self. But in the seventh stage of life, the Free soul, or Self, is yielded perfectly into the Condition of the Absolute Personality, or the Domain of the Divine Person. Thus, experiential phenomena are no longer either sought or avoided. They are simply recognized as unnecessary modifications of the Single Reality, which is Transcendental and All-Pervading. Thus, the Self becomes Sacrifice, Radiance, or Love, transcending not only experience but also the Unqualified Consciousness of the Independent Self (separated from the Infinite Radiance of Existence). Therefore, even the inward or exclusive Self-Position is yielded into the Bliss of Ignorance Radiance, the Absolute Personality, Who is the Person in the Play and the Person Who is Prior to the Play. Then all phenomena and every gesture of recoil from phenomena and toward Self Containment are Dissolved in Self-Sacrificial Communion with the Divine Person or Identity. And nothing is strategically excluded or included, nor may it be strictly said that the soul is either the same as God or separate from God. There is only the Paradox of God, the Divine Person, and by virtue of Absorption in Bliss through that Paradox, the Eternal Self is Translated into the Eternal Domain of God, beyond all the illusions of separation and suffering.
Commentary
There are Seven Stages of Life. The first five are associated with psycho-physical development and identification with conditional existence. The sixth stage turns inward, seeking release from all phenomena and resting in the Blissful Self-Condition. But in the Seventh Stage of Life, Divine Existence is Revealed to Be—not as something separate or sought—but as Existence Itself: Radiant Love and Unqualified Consciousness. The Divine Person is simply Revealed to Be, and in that Realization, nothing is excluded. All that arises is recognized as a transparent modification of the One Reality. All and All is Eternally Present, Alive, and Free.
***