Introduction
“This observation is true and I think that noticing it and understanding it is the first step in perhaps growing to embody something different” – Adidam devotee
“Thoughtful response from the Beezone about what’s happening in Adidam. And the inclusion of Beloved Da’s Fierce and Illuminating Critique, both in terms of personal and collective responsibility, makes it very compelling.” – Adidam devotee
he following is a Beezone Op-Ed/opinion piece posited as a commentary on the current ‘rumblings’ within Adidam*.
*After an inadvertent dispersal of a private and personal email a ground-swell of concern arose over some leadership structures and activities within Adidam. This ground-swell happened coincident with an upcoming ‘Convocation’ gathering at the Mountain of Attention Sanctuary in Lake County, California. At present individuals are pursuing an open dialogue about issues raised in email exchanges after the initial release.These rumblings calling for a more open and inclusive cultural dialogue are the reflections of an early stage of development in this new and burgeoning experiment called Adidam. This Op-Ed/Opinion piece is directed to those who are involved, directly or indirectly, in the culture of Adidam and Beezone does not intend to post this article in any public forum. It is only an observation.
Some of what follows comes from the Direct Divine Speech of Avatar Adi Da Samarj, which I believe address the current struggle oedipal in nature being played out in Adidam. It is the struggle of the ‘oedipal other’ be it Adi Da or a cultural hierarchy – which reflects the current collective stage of development in the young culture.
Adidam, as a collective is struggling with a lack of integrity and strength. I mean this in the way Avatar Adi Da writes about it in the Aletheon. “My true devotees “create” according to the aesthetic logic of Reality and Truth, and (thus) they turn all of their living into limitless relatedness and true enjoyment. They constantly remove the effects of separative existence and restore the inherent form of things. They engineer every kind of stability and intrinsic beauty. They give living human form to My Avatarically Self-Transmitted Divine Transcendental Spiritual Presence of Love-Bliss and Infinite Peace. There eye is on the integrity of inherent form, and not, on egoically fabricated (and necessarily, false and exaggerated) notions of artifice.” – I Have Come To Found A Bright New Order of Global Humankind, The Aletheon
The kind of ‘uprising’ that is currently being heard has happened before after the passing of Avatar Adi Da Samraj and centers around “who’s running the show”. Why is this important to many? Because it reflects the concerns and the realization that Adidam at present is very small, getting older, stagnant, and in world terms, a group teetering on being a failed experiment.
What this article points to is not who’s in charge or who’s right or wrong but the lack of a “Spiritual” demonstration within Adidam. The arguments and disagreements which are being heard are cultural in nature as one 2C devotee wrote me:
“I don’t think the RSO can ever be accountable to the gathering, Adidam is not structured that way, Bhagavan did not build any democracy into the structure (that I can see) the RSO are only really accountable to other RSO, this is how our Guru seemed to want it to be and since there are only 2 members and most likely in this generation that will remain the case ( only 2 members). We can make all the complaints we want amongst ourselves because that is as far as it will go, in my opinion, the RSO are totally insulated against any protest by the “rank and file”.
I do not want to engage in pitting one side against the other. But there is a good percentage of active devotees confused, disturbed, and in need some clarification (explaination/education) on fundamental matters. It is difficult to believe after hearing Avatar Adi Da’s ‘shout,’ painfully so, the last five years of his life that everything is now ‘hunky-dory’.
The Opinion
What is lacking, as when Avatar Adi Da was alive, is a strong spiritualized culture (don’t get lost in dharma) at least a fourth stage open-hearted, illuminated, radiant, loving force (Mother/Father) unified embodied presence in individuals and manifesting as a vibrant, integrated culture.
The current play of Adidam is happening within and as a demonstration of the first three stages of life. As He so often stated, “student-beginner practice is not a spiritual practice, it is a devotional practice”. The arguments, wounds, and disagreements (and seriously some crazy shit) – although positioned in abstract dharmic terms – are purely managerial. But, operating within a exoteric and (potentially) esoteric culture. Therein lies the rub, it isn’t just organizational issue.
Read on and ‘listen’ to the direct words (italicized) of Heart Master Avatar Adi Da Samraj taken from the Avataric Discourses (2004-2006) on how the ‘oedipal game’ gets played out. (editors note: Beezone’s underline)
You don’t understand this. You think in terms of consumer religion, where some guy comes and sells you a message, and you are there to buy goods and services – buy a bill of goods. Conventional religiosity is based on it. Conventional exotericism is based on it. You think you are purchasing some kind of good feeling, salvation, what?, that is somehow owed to you. You’re here to get yours. You’re here to play your oedipal game out. I am the male other to be struggled with, compete with. I have nothing to do with any of that. It’s just the craziness of mankind. It’s destroying Me.
You’re not really making use of Me. You are looking in My direction, in some kind of a manner, as you say, not consistently, but somehow or other. But it is not profound. It is just a kind of parent-child kind of turning to Me–Me, the parent, you, the child. Inevitably then, all kinds of the emotional-sexual, oedipal character signs being part of it, but you are not turning to Me because you’re not recognizing Me. You haven’t located Me. You haven’t found Me. Not Me, just an image somehow motivating you in ordinary terms.
“If this is pleasing to you and you value this, you can continue to practice in that manner for the rest of your life”
If this is pleasing to you and you value this, you can continue to practice in that manner for the rest of your life. But the sadhana truly done is not limited to such patterns and such a limited use of Me. What you are doing in your presumed turning to Me is not becoming spiritual life.
To practice this devotion, you all must abandon your familiarity with Me, because it has gone on so long, you have become contemptuous of Me, and you don’t recognize Me. And this is why you haven’t made a true devotional culture yet. And the oedipal other, the one who’s reflected you to yourself, and you think that it was Me, when it was you. You want to continue to relate to Me in a casual and conventional manner, when it’s utterly inappropriate. And it’s utterly inappropriate for the gathering to be relating to Me as if I’m a businessman, as if they’re addressing somebody–an executive in an office or trying to fool one, in fact. This is no way to be relating to Me, but it is what people do. Or speak devotion without its profundity being demonstrated. Saying you are here to serve Me, and yet, basically, just having meetings, telling Me you’re working on it.
I say Five Issues (see below). That’s just a description of the Way as you all must live it collectively. It’s your obligation every moment. You know, I’ve said this over and over again.
“You all can’t get beyond lunch“
You all are making a long tour out of the rudimentary beginnings of this Way. It’s just remarkable. Just laziness and self-indulgence. Just not getting it, what it’s all about. The fully established practice of this Way is the Perfect Practice. You all can’t get beyond lunch, because you are so weak in your disposition toward Me.
If you stop indulging yourselves and excusing yourselves and being a social club and just winging it – and being presumptuous and disobedient and relating to Me as a kind of oedipal other or organizational man instead of as your Master, then you’re simply preventing the Way itself, revising it.
You want to do the Prayer of Changes about it, just sort of thinking about it and invoking Me and saying ‘Won’t you Make us fulfill the Five Issues’, you see, like you want to pray to Me about the Mission apparently. You have to do it!
What does it require of you? Examine yourselves
What does it require of you? Well, it’s been certainly Told to you, and in any case, examine yourselves. What do you think it requires? Where is the action on the part of you all, that is the demonstration of your recognition of Me and your awareness of where you are? This is not a religious summer-camp. You are not in Sunday School. I Am not a father figure. I’m nobody’s oedipal other. I’m nobody’s boyfriend. I’m your Master and you have no other kind of relationship to Me whatsoever, no matter who you are. That’s it, flat.
If I simply Persist in Speaking with you and acting among you, the spell will not be broken.
It is a tacit recognition of Me, and it becomes more and more profound in the actual turning to Me on that responsive basis. It’s a matter of Communion with Me, and you thereby know Me as I Am. But if you simply relate to Me through the conventions of speech and action and egoic presumption, you will not know Me and cannot. And if I simply Persist in Speaking with you and acting among you, the spell will not be broken. Or if I function as you tend to do rather than cut angles through it, break the conventions, violate the conventions, somehow, you will simply continue to project the egoic pattern onto Me and use your own acquired patterning in fact, to interpret Me or to relate to Me, and I will become a social, oedipal other.
“I’m lost in the shuffle.”
You must not make Me the projection of your own egoity because, in that case, you will make Me the man in the middle, simply suffering you and playing a mummer’s role–in which case I no longer have any function here. I’m lost in the shuffle. I might as well go and sit somewhere else in the room among you.
This is why it is essential for devotees to fulfill My Instructions for the collective demonstration. I’ve Called you to make, on a constant basis, cultivating the relationship to Me through what you all now refer to, and what I refer to, as the Five Issues*** of the relationship to Me. That is your responsibility collectively. It is the Way in terms of the collective demonstration. This setting apart is absolutely essential for your rightness of relationship to Me–in other words, for your relationship to Me to be fruitful for the purpose of Realization and not just made into a form of institutionalized relatedness in which I’m a kind of organizational figure on whom you project egoic or even oedipal kinds of designs, patterns of relating that you are habituated to in the daily sphere and so on.
It’s about realization of Me, renunciation, real devotion, real practice, real sadhana, not being explained to forever by some parental authority figure or oedipal other combined with whatever, you see? You should not be relating to Me and approaching Me, therefore, through egoic conventions or the patterns of habit that belong to your worldly life. I’m no such one.
You’re all busy doing what you’re doing with one another–whatever that is and however weakly or poorly you’re doing it. You’re always working on organizing your organization, your case. You’re always working on your personal practice as a case, you’re always working on your organization as a case, as a failed thing that you have got to do something about. But of course, you never really do anything about it. You just have another meeting the next day. You’re endlessly meeting working on your case. What does this have to do with the Way that has been Revealed to you? If there’s anything that does not characterize this Way, it’s the ego case working on itself. That has nothing to do with this Way. It’s the reverse of it. Whether you do it personally, individually, or collectively , it’s the same. That’s ego life.
Without (REAL PRACTICE and) the Ruchira Sannyasin Order*, its work, its service, and without My Person, what Adidam have you got? You all in your clubhouse with one another? What are you doing? You invented Adidam? It’s something you can do yourselves? Where did you ever get that notion? Who told you that? It didn’t come from Me. Just the opposite. So if somebody’s telling it to you they’re lying and misrepresenting this Way. No one should be in a position to be communicative about this Way in a false manner. Anyone who is representing this Way to others, whether it is through cultural services within the gathering or in the mission should do so only with the approval of the Ruchira Sannyasin Order.
*The Ruchira Sannyasin Order of Adidam Ruchiradam, established by Avatar Adi Da Samraj, is the order of His formal renunciate devotees who have vowed to demonstrate the most intensive practice of Adidam Ruchiradam and who, on that basis, embrace full legal renunciation and live in the circumstance of perpetual retreat at one of the Hermitages or Sanctuaries Empowered by Avatar Adi Da (Source: Adidam website). And not to be lightly ignored:
The Free Sannyasin Order of Adidam is the hierarchically central, entirely renunciate, and non-managerial authority among all formal practitioners of the Way of Adidam, as Revealed and Given by Me. Unlike the Sapta Na Sannyasin Order, which does not govern but embodies the authority inherent in Divine Self-Realization through exemplary seventh-stage Realization, the Free Sannyasin Order holds the culturally governing role. (Source: The Order of My True and Free Renunciate Devotees, 2007).
The problem, as I see it, lies in how Adidam should be governed. Should it be directed by a single individual who lacks demonstrated accountability, or by a senior governing group? If we choose the latter, can this structure be effectively communicated? The question of accountability within Adidam’s current structure is crucial. A cooperative dialogue—not necessarily democratic—seems to be at the heart of the issue. This may be the central question facing Adidam today.
There is much more to discuss, but in essence, this distills the core issue to a vertical vs. horizontal structure. Additionally, there is the matter of “court politics” that has played out within the inner circles for years. These dynamics are evident in “The Shout” notes and in personal stories from devotees who have lived “close in.” While I haven’t been in such a position myself and thus cannot comment on it, it’s clear that if these underlying issues are not addressed, they will continue to act as a recurrent cancer within the community.
Summary – The Rightening Process
The Guru is gone—gone beyond. “Gate Gate, Paragate ParaSamGate Bodhi Swahaa.”
For many, this is a reality; for others, it is not. What makes the difference? Self-understanding and Recognition, two fundamental principles in the Revelation and Demonstration of Avatar Adi Da Samraj. While embodied, He was the straighter. His “Shout,” most loudly heard in his last years, still echoes in the minds and hearts of his listeners. As He said, the “compromised first-three-stages-of-life ego must be outgrown, and ego itself must be outgrown.” But who straightens now? Abstract dharma? Directives? Reformulated proclamations? Who knows! In the end, everyone knows that “Laughing Mommy” doesn’t care, and you’re left with your own hallucination: “All has been Given to you; consider it, and then make your own choice.”
The only place where the “pig” gets purified is in His Fire. But in the meantime (if there is such a thing), His call is for real practice and accountability. Saint and Ear (Adi Da’s metaphor for religious activity divorced from its Divine Source) have, in many ways, usurped the play within Adidam—perhaps not entirely, but enough to cause “rumblings.” Until the “process of life-rightening ordeal” is demonstrated, the play of good vs. bad, us vs. them, in vs. out—and all other opposites—will continue to cycle within the gathering. Why? Because it is being enacted within the first three stages of life without a fully established Spiritual Condition.
The current challenge in addressing these rumblings includes:
- Accountability and the demonstration of real levels of practice (degrees of realization).
- Activation and demonstration of the Spiritual Process being lived and felt (Transmission, Hearing, and Seeing).
- An open, expansive, radiant, humorous, demanding, loving, and inclusive dialogue demonstrating Avatar Adi Da’s Presence in the faces and practices of His devotees.
“So, you’re hearing from Me what I would expect the Ruchira Sannyasin Order to serve among you, and this is what is going to have to occur here. I have got to locate among you… a staff of people who are here to do sadhana, the sadhana that has the potential for Realizing Me, that will enable Me to Work Spiritually with those who serve Me here, live on this island, and serve others who come here.” — Avatar Adi Da Samraj, 2004
The Five Issues
Vows to live in right relationship to Avatar Adi Da Samraj by fulfilling their responsibilities for the Five Issues, Given by Beloved Adi Da as the collective obligation of all His devotees:
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First Issue: Devotees accept responsibility for ensuring, now and in perpetuity, a cooperative sacred culture and Avataric Mission living by Avatar Adi Da’s Divine Word of Instruction and cultivating right relationship to Him through gifts.
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Second Issue: Devotees accept responsibility for the full establishment and effective continuance of a true Avataric Samrajya of Adidam—setting Beloved Baba Da and the Ruchira Sannyasin Order of Adidam Ruchiradam apart and establishing the Holy Domain of His Avatarically-Born bodily (human) Divine Form.
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Third Issue: Devotees accept responsibility for providing a True Hermitage for Beloved Adi Da’s Avatarically-Born bodily (human) Divine Form that fulfills the principle of Holiness by establishing a sacred and cultural environment that is perpetually the Place of His Samadhi Lived.
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Fourth Issue: Devotees vow to ensure the presence of right, direct service to Beloved Baba Da in His Avatarically-Born bodily (human) Divine Form, in His Hermitage Ashram, wherever that may be, provided by devotees who are devotionally and Spiritually sensitive to Him and strongly impulsed to Realize Him.
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Fifth Issue: Devotees accept responsibility for the full establishment and effective continuance of right access to Beloved Adi Da’s Avatarically-Born bodily (human) Divine Form and the Ruchira Sannyasin Hermitage Ashrams Spiritually Empowered by Him. The Gift of access to Beloved Adi Da is the Supreme Gift for all beings, and it is justified only when He is fully served through our demonstration of the first four Issues He has Given. Devotees orient their lives toward preparing to rightly and fully receive this Gift of access to Beloved Baba Da, through demonstrating the first four Issues He has Given, and by preparing in all other ways for Darshan of His Avatarically-Born bodily (human) Divine Form and right access to His Hermitage Ashrams.
Note: This version of the Issues is not the current one but fits the excerpt and was taken from an Adidam ‘Level of Practice’ transition application.