The Gnosticon: The “Perfect Knowledge” Reality-Teachings of His Divine Presence, Avatar Adi Da Samraj

By Avatar Adi Da Samraj and Paul E. Muller-Ortega

An anthology of masterful "translations" of ancient Advaitic and Buddhist texts, Avatar Adi Da's own "perfect knowledge" teachings, and commentary on preliminary religious traditions, The Gnosticon is an unparalleled scholarly and revelatory survey of the esoteric transcendentalist traditions of humankind, given by the unique divine realizer Avatar Adi Da Samraj.

The Gnosticon—which means "the book of knowledge"—was begun at the end of 2005, when Avatar Adi Da was moved to make his own rendering, or "interpretive translation", of a traditional Advaitic text, The Ribhu Gita, in order to elucidate (and thereby honor) its full meaning.

Adi Da Samraj then did the same with other great texts from the traditions of Advaita Vedanta and Buddhism. In each case, he brought the essence of the instruction to the fore, with elegance and illumined understanding. Texts whose meanings were only partially (or cryptically) expressed even in the original—let alone in translation—suddenly shone forth, like rough gems cut by an expert hand. Such was the original kernel of The Gnosticon—an anthology of these masterful "translations", together with discourses about the traditional texts, given by Adi Da Samraj.

In the course of 2006, Avatar Adi Da transformed the nature of the book by adding many of his own teachings relative to "Perfect Knowledge" of Reality—such as "Eleutherios" and "The Teaching Manual of Perfect Summaries"—as well as essays on "radical" devotion and right life, the other key fundamentals to the reality-way he gives. In order to present these teachings in their full context as the apex of human wisdom, Adi Da Samraj also added essays he had written over the years about the more preliminary stages of human understanding, including commentaries on popular "God"-religion.

Avatar Adi Da's final work on The Gnosticon (only months before his passing in November 2008) included the addition of his culminating communications on his own self-revelation and the reality-way of Adidam, given in the essays "Atma Nadi Shakti Yoga" and "The Boundless Self-Confession". Taken together, the works compiled in The Gnosticon offer a profound clarification of the highest transcendentalist teachings, an opportunity to consider Avatar Adi Da's completing "perfect knowledge" teachings, and an invitation to all human beings to respond to the perfectly illuminating truth directly transmitted by and as Avatar Adi Da himself.

A foreword by Paul Muller-Ortega, author of The Triadic Heart of Shiva, and a beautifully written introduction by Carolyn Lee offer an invaluable orientation and in-depth understanding of why this book is a masterwork of truth.

Adi Da's Message, in all of His writings, is that there is only one force in human affairs that can correct the terrible trajectory of the world today. The "decline and fall" of global civilization is inevitable, unless a greater knowledge of Reality can begin to affect human culture. Locating this greater knowledge, and bringing it to bear in real human life, both individual and collective, is the most critical issue for all humankind. To convey the urgency of Truth, the Truth about Reality, was the incomparably creative lifetime-effort of Avatar Adi Da Samraj. His offering of The Gnosticon is part of that Work. In this extraordinary book, He explains the Great Tradition to itself, illumines its hidden treasures, and Reveals the Perfect Tradition that resolves the great wisdom-search in a Place never fully found before.
—from the introduction by Carolyn Lee

Adi Da Samraj has created a body of work that surpasses in its force and insight that of any other author and teacher of our time…. The present book [is] a mature document that culminates forty or more years of reflection and articulation on Adi Da Samraj's part. I can only add my own humble invitation to all to plunge into its ecstatic waters and savor The Gnosticon.
—Paul E. Muller-Ortega Professor of Religion, University of Rochester

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Jun 7, 2023
• ISBN: 9781570973963

Avatar Adi Da Samraj

His Divine Presence Avatar Adi Da Samraj (1939–2008) devoted his entire lifetime to revealing and establishing a unique means for human beings to discover the ultimate nature of reality itself, which he describes as Conscious Light, or the "Bright". Avatar Adi Da communicated this reality not just through words or philosophy, but by his direct spiritual transmission. Avatar Adi Da's transformative spiritual presence remains alive and active, even after his physical passing. During his lifetime, Avatar Adi Da touched and transformed the lives of many thousands of individuals, founding a new sacred tradition available to all who respond most seriously to his spiritual calling. Coincident with his work with spiritual aspirants, Avatar Adi Da Samraj established a new basis for human culture in a world fractured by conflict and strife. He authored more than seventy books of spiritual, philosophical, social, and practical wisdom. This vast body of teachings clarifies every area of human life and provides a unique understanding of the human condition and the great process of spiritual growth and realization. His writings have been acclaimed by Alan Watts, Irina Tweedie, Jeffrey Kripal, Andrew Harvey, and many others. His book Easy Death was called a "masterpiece" by Dr. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, noted author and pioneer researcher on death and dying. Avatar Adi Da's life was a living demonstration of the Conscious Light that is the fundamental condition of existence (or reality itself). His communications of truth and beauty are profoundly relevant to people of all cultures, faiths, and traditions. He has fully established a new blueprint for human growth and the spiritual transformation of all beings.

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His Divine Presence,

Avatar Adi Da Samraj

Adi Da Samrajashram, 2008

Title

NOTE TO THE READER

All who study the Radical Reality-Way of Adidam Ruchiradam or take up its practice should remember that they are responding to a Call to become responsible for themselves. They should understand that they, not Avatar Adi Da Samraj or others, are responsible for any decision they make or action they take in the course of their lives of study or practice.

The devotional, Spiritual, functional, practical, relational, and cultural practices and disciplines referred to in this book are appropriate and natural practices that are voluntarily and progressively adopted by members of the practicing congregations of Adidam (as appropriate to the personal circumstance of each individual). Although anyone may find these practices useful and beneficial, they are not presented as advice or recommendations to the general reader or to anyone who is not a member of one of the practicing congregations of Adidam. And nothing in this book is intended as a diagnosis, prescription, or recommended treatment or cure for any specific problem, whether medical, emotional, psychological, social, or Spiritual. One should apply a particular program of treatment, prevention, cure, or general health only in consultation with a licensed physician or other qualified professional.

The Gnosticon is formally authorized for publication by the Ruchira Sannyasin Order of Adidam Ruchiradam. (The Ruchira Sannyasin Order of Adidam Ruchiradam is the senior cultural authority within the formal gathering of formally acknowledged devotees of His Divine Presence, Avatar Adi Da Samraj.)

Copyright © 2010, 2023 The Avataric Samrajya of Adidam Pty Ltd,

as trustee for The Avataric Samrajya of Adidam.

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be copied or reproduced in any manner

without written permission from the publisher.

(The Dawn Horse Press, 10336 Loch Lomond Road, #305, Middletown, California 95461, USA)

The writings and discourses of Avatar Adi Da Samraj are the sacred scriptures of Adidam (the unique Spiritual Way Revealed and Given by Adi Da). In addition, His likeness and His artistic works are sacred images within the tradition of Adidam. As the principal Adidam organization to which Avatar Adi Da gave responsibility for protecting His sacred scriptures and sacred images, the Avataric Samrajya of Adidam calls for Avatar Adi Da’s writings, discourses, artistic works, and likeness to be honored and respected for all future time as Agents of His direct Spiritual Communication. It is Avatar Adi Da’s ever-living Intent in regard to this work that it not be reproduced or modified without consulting the Avataric Samrajya of Adidam.

Final Ruchira-Sannyasin-Order-Authorized Edition

First ebook edition, 2023 (main text matches printed first edition, 2010)

ADIDAM and THE DAWN HORSE PRESS are trademarks of

The Avataric Samrajya of Adidam Pty Ltd, as trustee for The Avataric Samrajya of Adidam.

Produced by the Dawn Horse Press, a division of the

Divine Avataric Holy Institution of Global Adidam Ruchiradam.

ebook ISBN: 978-1-57097-396-3

Library of Congress Control Number: 2009942562

CONTENTS

ABOUT THE COVER

FOREWORD

by Paul E. Muller-Ortega

The Perfect Tradition

An Introduction to The Gnosticon by Carolyn Lee, PhD

THE GNOSTICON

The Perfect Knowledge Reality-Teachings of His Divine Presence, Avatar Adi Da Samraj

PART ONE

Religion and Reality

Moving Beyond Childish and Adolescent Approaches To Life and Truth

The Parental Deity and The One To Be Realized

God As The Creator, God As Good, and God As The Real

The Culturally Prescribed God-Idea of Exoteric Religion Is Not The Divine Itself but Only A Cultural (and Entirely Conditional) Means For Turning To The Divine

The Wisdom of Esotericism

The Three Modes of Self-Evidence

The Three Great Principles of All Truth

Real (Acausal) God Is The Perfect Deep of The Happen of Seeming World

God-Talk, Real-God-Realization, Most Perfect Divine Self-Awakening, and The Seven Possible Stages of Life

The Transcendental Spiritual Way of Reality Itself Is Founded On The Tacit and Prior Perfect Knowledge of Reality Itself

The Seventh Stage Way

PART TWO

I Am The Divine Avataric Gift of The Bright—and of The Thumbs That Reveals It

The Divine Avataric Self-Revelation of His Divine Presence, Avatar Adi Da Samraj

PART THREE

Atma Nadi Shakti Yoga

The Intrinsically egoless Transcendental Spiritual Reality-Way of Adidam Ruchiradam

PART FOUR

Eleutherios (The Liberator)

The Radical Reality-Teachings of His Divine Presence, Avatar Adi Da Samraj

I. Eleutherios

II. What Is Consciousness?

III. Truth, Reality, and Real (Acausal) God

IV. The Perfect Practice

V. Freedom

PART FIVE

Reality (Itself) Is All The God There Is

A Discourse Given by His Divine Presence, Avatar Adi Da Samraj, to His devotees, on January 6, 2006—on the occasion when He first Recited His Renderings of the Maneesha Panchakam, the Dasasloki, and the Devikalottara

PART SIX

The Reality-Teachings of The Sages of Traditional Buddhism and Advaitism, Presented and Rendered By His Divine Presence, Avatar Adi Da Samraj

To Realize Nirvana Is To Realize The True Self

Buddhist Realism and Its (Ultimately) Inherent Sympathy With Advaitic Idealism

An Essay by His Divine Presence, Avatar Adi Da Samraj

Transcendental Gnosis

An Essay by His Divine Presence, Avatar Adi Da Samraj

The Zero-Point and The Infinite State

An Essay by His Divine Presence, Avatar Adi Da Samraj

There Is A Non-Conditional Condition To Be Realized

The Reality-Teachings of The Buddhist Sage Gotama Sakyamuni

The Transcendental Truth of Reality

The Reality-Teachings of The Buddhist Sage Nagarjuna

The Sixth Stage Transcendentalist Ways of Advaita Vedanta and Buddhism—and The Seventh Stage Acausal Way of Adidam

An Essay by His Divine Presence, Avatar Adi Da Samraj

What Is Required To Realize The Non-Dual Truth?

The Controversy Between The Talking School and The Practicing School of Advaitism

An Essay by His Divine Presence, Avatar Adi Da Samraj

Ten Declarations of The Transcendental Self-Identity of Consciousness Itself

The Reality-Teachings of The Advaitic Sage Shankara

The Five Declarations of Ultimate Knowledge

The Reality-Teachings of The Advaitic Tradition As A Whole, On The Necessary Characteristics of An Inherently Perfect Guru, or True Master-Sage

The Way of Knowledge That Becomes Possible Only At The Final Stage of Maturity

The Reality-Teachings of The Advaitic Sage of The Devikalottara

The Reality-Teachings of The Sage Ribhu

1. The Plain Truth of Traditional (or Sixth Stage) Non-Dualism, As Represented By The Ribhu Gita

2. The Legendary Story of The Sage Ribhu and His Devotee Nidagha, As Told By His Divine Presence, Avatar Adi Da Samraj

3. The Essence of The Non-Dualist Reality-Teachings of The Sage Ribhu

4. Abide As That

On The Practice of Self-Abiding As The Indivisible Self-Reality of Intrinsically Self-Evident Being, Itself

Sixth-Stage Method Versus Perfect Practice

A Discourse Given by His Divine Presence, Avatar Adi Da Samraj, to His devotees, on December 11, 2005—directly after He had first Recited His Rendering of the Ribhu Gita

Advaita Buddha Dharma of His Divine Presence, Avatar Adi Da Samraj

PART SEVEN

The Book of The Gnosticon

A Discourse Given by His Divine Presence, Avatar Adi Da Samraj, to His devotees, on January 28, 2006—directly after He had first Recited His Renderings of the Reality-Teachings of Gotama Sakyamuni and Nagarjuna

PART EIGHT

The Unique Sixth Stage Foreshadowings of The Only-By-Me Revealed and Given Seventh Stage of Life

PART NINE

The Searchless Essence of Radical Devotion To Me

PART TEN

The Only Liberating Discovery

PART ELEVEN

The Teaching Manual of Perfect Summaries

The Revelation of The Preliminary Perfect Knowledge Teachings of His Divine Presence, Avatar Adi Da Samraj

I. A Brief Introduction To The Teaching Manual of Perfect Summaries

II. The Teaching Manual of Perfect Summaries

The Preliminary Root-Practice of The Reality-Way of Perfect Knowledge

1. The Five Reality-Teachings

2. The Intrinsic Self-Realization of Reality and Truth By Means of The Preliminary Perfect Knowledge Listening-Practice of Transcendental Root-Standing

3. On The Intrinsic Transcending of The Fault of Objects

4. On The Intrinsic Transcending of The Fault of Knowledge and The Known

5. On The Intrinsic Transcending of The Fault of Subjectivity

6. On The Intrinsic Transcending of The Fault of Attention (or Point of View)

7. Is Happen

III. The Searchless and Acausally Awakened Preliminary Listening-Practice of Perfect Knowledge

IV. As It Is

V. My Inherently Free Speech

VI. The Distinction Between The Preliminary Listening-Practice of Perfect Knowledge and The Perfect Practice of Perfect Knowledge

VII. The Imposition of Pattern

VIII. The Mirror and The Checkerboard

IX. The Reality-Practice

X. Transcendental (and Non-Conditional) Spirituality

XI. The Root-Characteristics of Intrinsic Self-Understanding of Reality Itself

XII. The Essence of Perfect Instruction

PART TWELVE

The Reality-Way

The Way of The Mirror Is Me

Mere Concentration Versus True Surrender

The Ancient Walk-About Way

My Spiritually Bright Silence

True Devotion To Me Is Prior Coincidence With Me—Not The Search For Union and Unity With Me

True Devotion Is Perfect Knowledge Demonstrated By Renunciation

My Transcendental Spiritual Transmission-Work

The Essentials of Reality-Practice In The Reality-Way of Adidam

Acausal Adidam

PART THIRTEEN

No Seeking / Mere Beholding

Transcendental Spiritual Initiation of The Primary Practice of The Radical Reality-Way of Adidam Ruchiradam

PART FOURTEEN

As Is

The Perfect Word Is and The ego-Word I

The Way of Is

PART FIFTEEN

The Boundless Self-Confession

PART SIXTEEN

Advaitasara / Nirvanasara

The Root-Essence of The Truth and The Way and The Means and The Realization of Indivisible Transcendence

The First Room Self-Revelation of His Divine Presence, Avatar Adi Da Samraj

I. The Truth of Indivisible Transcendence

II. The Way of Indivisible Transcendence

III. The Means of Indivisible Transcendence

IV. The Realization of Indivisible Transcendence

LAST WORD

I Say This

NOTES TO THE TEXT OF THE GNOSTICON

GLOSSARY

BIBLIOGRAPHIES:

Selected Writings and Discourses by Avatar Adi Da Relating to Adidam and the Transcendentalist Traditions

Selections from The Basket of Tolerance Relating to the Transcendentalist Traditions

The Universal Offering of His Divine Presence, Avatar Adi Da Samraj

by Ruchiradama Quandra Sukhapur Rani Naitauba

The Sacred Literature of His Divine Presence, Avatar Adi Da Samraj

ABOUT THE COVER

Throughout His Life, Avatar Adi Da Samraj worked to develop means—both literary and artistic—of directly communicating Reality Itself. He approached the creation of His literary and artistic works as a process of directly Revealing What Reality Is and how Reality can be Realized.

The cover Image for The Gnosticon was created by Avatar Adi Da Himself, as one of the Images in His suite entitled Oculus One: The Reduction of The Beloved. The particular Image is entitled The Reduction of The Beloved To As Is: Part Seven, The Bride/6d.

The white circle in the black field (in the left half of the Image) is what Avatar Adi Da calls the Midnight Sun—a visual representation of the Divine Self-Brightness Shining in the midst of the cosmic domain.

In the cover Image of The Gnosticon, the Midnight Sun appears in the center of the left side—or, if one were to stand in the position of the Image, as if looking out from the book cover, the Midnight Sun would be on the right side of the body. Thus, the visual sign of the white circle is, symbolically, in the position of the heart on the right—which Avatar Adi Da defines as the locus in the human body-mind where Transcendental Self-Awareness as Consciousness Itself is Awakened. Therefore, this Image was chosen (by the Ruchira Sannyasin Order of Adidam Ruchiradam) for the cover of The Gnosticon because the Image communicates the esoteric reality of Transcendental Self-Awakening, which Awakening is the principal subject of Avatar Adi Da’s Reality-Word in The Gnosticon.

Examples of the artwork of Avatar Adi Da Samraj, together with discussions of His artwork and His own statements about it, may be seen online at:

www.daplastique.com

FOREWORD

A traditional conch sounds repeatedly in the misty chill air of a January afternoon. A large number of people have assembled in the various halls of the Mountain Of Attention Sanctuary. Today, Adi Da Samraj is giving Darshan. For about an hour prior to his arrival, we have been sitting in the vibrant silence of a large formal room. Now, at the sound of the conch, a contained, anticipatory excitement surges through the hall. Then, suddenly, he is just there. Without particular ceremony, Adi Da Samraj enters with a fierce intensity of purpose. Dressed in renunciatory orange,¹ with his long hair pulled back, he seems by his demeanor to be both somber and ecstatic. With a swift and graceful economy of movement, he dispenses with his outer coat and cane, and takes his seat at the front of the hall. Instantly, there arises an inchoate stirring, a spontaneous murmur of love. As the Darshan proceeds, this murmur will gather shape into a crescendo of recognitional exclamation and praise. Then, the formalities of the Darshan occasion get under way as his principal devotees come forward to pranam before him and to offer gifts of love and gestures of deep devotion directly at his feet.

In January 2006, during four luminously amazing days, it was my privilege to encounter the Avataric Master, Adi Da Samraj, in person for the first time. I felt extremely fortunate to be invited to visit one of his spiritually-empowered sanctuaries, the Mountain Of Attention Sanctuary in northern California, at a time when he was there. I had read about this place for many years and thus had a certain familiarity with the many sacred events that had there transpired.

During the previous year, by some mysterious arrangement of destiny, I had found myself involved in a sequence of written communications with Adi Da Samraj. This exchange had then resulted in a graceful invitation to visit. Thus, after more than thirty years of reading the books of Adi Da Samraj, I was now amazed to find myself in this room with him. I have to confess that at that moment my heart was pounding. Seated in the midst of his life-long devotees, I feel myself overwhelmed by the extremely strong impact of Adi Da Samraj’s physical presence. My racing mind muses that I am finally in the presence of what the medieval Shaiva scriptures of Kashmir call a "samsiddhika," or spontaneously self-perfected master. Said to be spontaneously initiated by the very powers of his own consciousness, such a rare, perfected master spontaneously achieves a profound understanding of and insight into the deepest meanings of all scriptures and all religions. And this, it is said, without undergoing any explicit outer initiation or instruction into those specific traditions. As I sit and watch this ancient scene of an adept-realizer gracefully receiving his disciples, here enacted in a totally modern setting, I strongly sense that I am in the presence of such a rare being.

Adi Da Samraj is now silently, very deliberately and slowly, sweeping the room with his astonishing eyes. Like the play of ever-shifting light in a forest meadow, an ever-shifting range of complex and unreadable emotions appears to cross his face. He looks with an almost unbearable intensity and for many prolonged minutes at each person in the room. As I meet his gaze, a flurry of sensations and emotions rise through me. Then, it is my turn to approach him directly in order to pranam at his feet. Through this devotional gesture, I feel deeply grateful finally to be able to express what I have long inwardly intuited: an ancient bond of connection to him. Then, beyond all such feelings, my awkward and unpracticed bow at his feet suddenly seems completely irrelevant as my gaze is pulled utterly within and above to a sublime space of love.

My first encounter with Adi Da Samraj’s writings, while I was still a graduate student, had been with his startlingly original autobiography, The Knee of Listening. Here I had encountered, for the first time, the richly nuanced descriptions he offers of his own already existing condition of complete freedom as characterizing his experience even from birth. In a dizzyingly sublime perspective, this autobiographical narrative grants privileged insight into what Adi Da Samraj means when he says he is living an avataric lifetime.

In subsequent years, I had avidly read each new book as it was published. Through these years of study and consideration of his extensive and deeply impressive oeuvre, I had come to recognize that Adi Da Samraj is, in addition to being the adored Heart-Master of his steadfast devotees, the truly profound philosopher of ultimacy for our time. There is, to my mind, no other voice writing and thinking about the issues of spirituality that can compare to his. I say this with respect and with admiration for the work of many others. The assiduous reader of Adi Da Samraj’s work will, I believe, find in it a clarification and deep rectification of the entire array of the most vexed and still deeply misunderstood issues of spirituality. Moreover, Adi Da Samraj writes with an uncompromising freedom. He has literally invented a new vocabulary, a new set of technical terms, and a new literary modality by means of which to express and convey his exquisitely nuanced and precise insights and teachings.

In the present volume, Adi Da Samraj uses his deeply insightful reading of a number of traditional texts, drawn from both Hindu and Buddhist traditions, as a means to clarify and specify the nature of these subtlest themes of knowledge and practice leading to the ultimate stages of attainment. It is precisely in the context of this commentarial enterprise—which, to my mind, constitutes a new moment in the great dialogue and transmission between East and West of the last century—that Adi Da Samraj appears to have been moved to articulate openly what he means and intends by the perfect practice and perfect knowledge.

This precious commentary seeks to illuminate and clarify a perspective that is beyond all relative points of view, and that is located in an ultimacy of attainment and vision that is beyond the capacity of any traditional text finally fully to articulate or express.

What we encounter in this book is nothing less than what might be called a new avataric Veda, a new avataric Agama: a new revelatory dispensation of profound originality and force which brings forward a deeply new perspective on matters of ultimacy, reality, consciousness, and the forms of practice previously predicated by the great tradition for their attainment. This book is, therefore, a deeply important document which recommends itself to the attention of both dedicated scholars and devoted practitioners of religion and spirituality.

Later, as Adi Da Samraj prepares to leave the hall, he stands up from his chair. However, instead of immediately departing, he now stands leaning on his cane for many prolonged minutes as he again silently sweeps the room with his eyes. This time it is as if the lights in the entire room have been turned up to an almost blinding degree of intensity. With considerable and growing awe, I palpably sense an emanating wave moving out from his body, a wave that forcefully ripples outward through the entire hall. As it does, this wave of his beneficent and now magnified and intensified blessing force catches directly at the heart; it strongly moves the mind; and it powerfully lifts the spirit. The room suddenly erupts with the sounds, reactions, and spontaneous acknowledgements of this silent but unmistakable event. During many prolonged moments, shouts and cries, moans and whispers of devotional response can be heard as if to echo the passage of this energy into and through each person there present. As if the motor of spirit has been mysteriously accelerated, this subtle and yet completely tangible vibration of consciousness offers the gift of a descending and blessing encompassment of spirit. As it does, something deep and truly mysterious and awesome is felt. During the entire hour that Adi Da Samraj has been present with us, he has not spoken a single word. And yet the most powerful and important communication of all has taken place.

It is from this very deep space of silence, within which Adi Da Samraj seems to be constantly enveloped, that there has emerged and cohered, in the many decades of his teaching and writing, an astonishingly authoritative vision of the furthest reaches of human possibility. With evocative mastery, Adi Da Samraj writes about the subtlest matters of spirituality, life, and ultimate consciousness as if these usually invisible landscapes are all fully visible to him in detail. As if he has inspected them minutely and is thus capable of speaking from a place of complete intimacy and direct familiarity.

It is very clear that what Adi Da Samraj is teaching is not, as he terms it, merely a talking school of philosophical assertion and speculation devoid of practice or attainment. Moreover, it is evident that Adi Da Samraj does not want his teachings to be construed merely as philosophy if by this word one understands the articulation of yet another speculative and temporary construction of the intellect alone. What the reader encounters in this book instead is a profound revelatory dispensation, a powerful and fundamental explanatory matrix that allows for deep insight and elegant understanding into hitherto unknown areas of existence. Adi Da Samraj’s work here offers us a fundamental matrix of a radical perfect knowledge of enormous power and of extremely wide applicability. Derived from his own deeply illumined understanding, his work demonstrates that Adi Da Samraj is the revelatory philosopher of and for our time.

In the Indian philosophical tradition, various modalities of knowledge are categorized and distinguished. Beyond the knowledge gained through the senses, and beyond the inferential techniques of logic, there is a mode of knowledge, known as shruti or agama. Here, knowledge is understood to be revealed directly from an absolute and transcendental source. To my mind, Adi Da Samraj’s work represents an extraordinarily achieved and exhaustively perfected example of this category of revelatory knowledge.

Adi Da Samraj has achieved an unprecedented revelatory profundity in the articulation of his offering of the teachings of Adidam. In the modern period, we are completely unaccustomed to accepting claims regarding knowledge that originates from a revelatory source. Yet, I would argue, this is precisely what we have before us in this stunning new volume. What is here taught by Adi Da Samraj is not based or dependent on anything outside of its own self-manifested origin. To read and savor these pages is to be compelled by the unparalleled and unprecedented spiritual authority that pervades them. In truth, all of his many books, written seemingly as spontaneous outpourings of his own deepest attainment, evince a penetrative mastery that locates the core of being with an astonishing accuracy. Rather than being argued from evidence, or based on scholarly investigation, his writings are saturated with a revelatory authenticity and authority not based on anything other than his own profound and even transcendent insight into the nature of reality.

At the core of this revelatory offering, the essence of his message is the teaching regarding the perfect practice and, related to it, the preliminary practice of perfect knowledge.

The preliminary Listening-practice of Perfect Knowledge is the Tacit (by-Me-Given) Reality-Way of simply Self-Locating, moment to moment, the Self-Position in Which you Always Already (or Always Priorly) Stand. (see part 11, essay VI)

This practice is understood to represent the essential communication that Adi Da Samraj has been making in all of his years of teaching. Adi Da Samraj explains further that this way of perfect knowledge must and can only arise in the context of a relationship to him.

Perfect Knowledge and Perfect Practice is not merely a self-applied philosophy and technique, but It Is the Reality-Way of Perfect Knowledge of Me, and of the Perfect Practice of devotion to Me As I Am. (see part 11, essay V)

It is precisely this relationship that permits the real transcending of all life-concerns and egoic contractions, and that allows for the practitioner to come to stand as he or she already is. He says,

The practice of the only-by-Me Revealed and Given Radical Reality-Way of Adidam Ruchiradam is not a matter of doing something to (intentionally or strategically) stand back. You are Always Already in the Perfectly Prior Position, in and As Which you engage the right preliminary Listening-practice of Perfect Knowledge. (see part 11, essay VI)

It is clear from everything that he says that what Adi Da Samraj communicates here is meant to be an offering of wisdom of the most utterly transcendent and profound sort.

Such an offering immediately presents us with a fascinating and fundamental epistemological paradox. To take the terms of Adi Da Samraj’s revelatory dispensation seriously is to discover that it calls for an understanding that is truly most profound, and certainly far beyond the usually accepted notions of what it means to know, to understand, to penetrate by knowledge into something. A deeply important part of Adi Da Samraj’s message involves the seniority and priority of this highest form of perfect knowledge. By implication, his message likewise involves a deep critique and a piercingly powerful evaluation of the limitations, contractions, and errors involved and present in all forms of lesser knowledge.

To take these claims seriously is to be quickly humbled by the realization that any kind of evaluation, judgment, appraisal, or interpretation of this teaching precisely from the vantage point of any such lesser or lower perspectives inevitably brings to bear the impediments and obstacles of these very limitations and contractions upon its understanding. How can anyone who is basically fixed in the ordinary point of view of the world do justice, not only to esoteric points of view beyond the merely gross or bodily based view, but further than that to a real understanding of that which ultimately IS?

Thus, as exquisitely clearly as Adi Da Samraj here articulates his teachings about this perfect knowledge, our growing initial understanding of it leads precisely to the certainty of our own limitations in its understanding. And to the expanding insight that there is something to be known that is beyond the intellect, beyond the mind, beyond the limitations of any ordinary and imperfect form of knowledge. This is the seventh stage of life which is the Position of Reality itself, of what truly IS, beyond any forms of states of consciousness, and senior to the position of the ego. It is precisely to this perfect knowledge that Adi Da Samraj is calling everyone.

From this stance of attainment, I believe that Adi Da Samraj has created a body of work that surpasses in its force and insight that of any other author and teacher of our time. With a pellucid clarity and a mysterious freedom, he reveals his own avataric nature as the source for a completely independent revelatory dispensation. From this stance, the Avataric Master, Adi Da Samraj, offers us his views—as he calls it, his divine shout, a purifying and corrective critique of all of the world’s religious traditions, philosophies, and, indeed, even its sciences. Emanating from his own spontaneously attained ultimacy of vision (and ultimacy of spiritual realization), Adi Da Samraj offers a profoundly clarifying assessment and ordering of human religious and philosophical culture from the touchstone of an achieved summit of ultimate attainment. This sets the stage for the elaborated treasure of his teaching regarding the seven stages of life.

This deeply powerful teaching creates the basis for an evaluative map of consciousness and of its successive stages, against the spectrum of which any particular statement of mystical attainment or system of spiritual insight, thought, or practice may be understood and assessed. His work for many decades in the forthcoming masterwork called The Basket of Tolerance ²—a few sections of which I was privileged to read when I visited the Mountain Of Attention last year—situates the entirety of human cultural and religious outputs within the map of these seven stages of life. In my written exchanges with him, Adi Da Samraj clarified aspects of his teachings relative to the seven stages of life in great detail. At one point, he said:

The psycho-physical structures of the human being are at the root of every stage of life. One mode or another of psycho-physics, gross to subtle to causal, is the root of each stage of life. By looking at the language, the proceedings, the practices of any tradition, you can, on that basis, identify what stage of life is speaking through the philosophical language of that tradition.

The seventh stage of life exceeds all categories of point of view, and all structures of a psycho-physical nature. The seventh stage of life Stands Prior to all conditional perspectives and dependencies. The Demonstration of the seventh stage of life can be seen in the context of psycho-physical events, but it is not (itself) a Yoga of psycho-physical events. It is Priorly Self-Standing, As That Which Is Always Already the Case. [October 23, 2005]

In the context of this and other statements, Adi Da Samraj cautions us that very different levels of spiritual attainment may, in fact, be described in the world’s traditions using very similar descriptive forms. However, this does not at all mean that they represent the same height or depth of spiritual realization. Against this map of the seven stages of life, Adi Da Samraj offers a stunning critique of the limitations and mediocrities of religion as conventionally understood and commonly practiced. He brings forward an enlightened, rational, and profound critique of conventional or popular religion as it is currently manifested in every major and minor religion in the world today. The critique is stunning in its force and overwhelming in its impact. One hastens to add that this critique moves in parallel with his critique of the limitations of the knowledge and authority claims of modern science, particularly insofar as science persists in its commitment to a materialistic stance in its assessment of reality.

But he does not stop there. Perhaps, more importantly, Adi Da Samraj proceeds to articulate what I think of as the most truly intelligent and cutting critique of what passes currently as the esoteric, and this both in the wider spiritual market-place, as well as in the more recondite worlds of scholarship. He vigorously demonstrates that what is typically called the esoteric reveals itself as limited, incomplete, and fraught with both error and illusion. And this is so both in the West and in the East. His critique of this matter demands sustained study and investigation and is a deeply important contribution.

Thus, in the world as presently constituted, there exists a very limited understanding of any spiritual tradition. Seen from the privileged vantage point of what Adi Da Samraj offers in his works, it becomes apparent that the confusions, superimpositions, and general misunderstandings of esoteric systems and of their claims is universal and deeply troubling. This light on wisdom that Adi Da Samraj here offers begins a labor of clarification and rectification that should be taken up by many others. Not all religious and spiritual traditions are saying the same thing by any means. Nor do they speak from the same level of enlightenment. What is called enlightenment, illumination, liberation in the many and different traditions has, in every case, a vastly varied experiential referent. Moreover, and here we encounter the deepest claim of Adi Da Samraj: None of them actually represents a final and definitive state of ultimacy of spiritual realization. Instead, they each manifest a particular modality of one or another intermediate if still quite laudable state of spiritual attainment. There is much for scholars and students to ponder and understand in just this particular claim.

Thus, understood in this way, Adi Da Samraj is a true philosopher of knowledge. He does not take as his point of departure an academic connection to previous traditions of philosophy. Nor does he base his teachings on those of any other teacher, adept, master, or realizer, either from the East or the West. Instead, speaking from the unique position of the seventh stage realizer, Adi Da Samraj illuminates and clarifies and calls for a profound shift in understanding, a profound shift in practice, and a profound shift in being.

The present book seems to me to be a mature document that culminates forty or more years of reflection and articulation on Adi Da Samraj’s part. I can only add my own humble invitation to all to plunge into its ecstatic waters and savor The Gnosticon. I end with an enflamed sentence drawn from my journal in which I wrote last year:

The final moments of Darshan with Adi Da Samraj, as he simply stood and palpably and so powerfully radiated and magnified the blessing energy in the room, which was already so charged to what seemed the maximum degree, this is a memory and an inner feeling of Him that I carry with me daily.

—Paul E. Muller-Ortega

Professor of Religion

University of Rochester

Author, The Triadic Heart of Shiva

July 1, 2007

Avatar Adi Da Samraj

Adi Da Samrajashram, 2008

THE PERFECT TRADITION

An Introduction to The Gnosticon

by Carolyn Lee, PhD

There is a dimension of existence that is off the edge of the mind. Words can only gesture paradoxically toward it. And yet the most urgent human need is to plumb this dimension, to get to the source of things, to know Reality with a capital R, in order to make sense of the chaos of experience. This fundamental enquiry was conceived by Adi Da Samraj, during His youth, in visual terms:

From My early years, I would have a visual impression of a group of people sitting around a massive boulder-like stone in a room. There were no windows, no features to the room at all, no reason to be looking at the room itself. I would be sitting with others, in chairs, around this stone—turned directly at the stone, simply persisting in that situation. There was the sense that eventually everything would be known—meaning that Realization would be the case—based on the starkness of that scene. It was about the transcending of the objective by simply looking at What Is—simply the room itself, or the great stone, the mere event of conditional awareness.

—March 1 and 4, 2006

The primal circumstance of contemplating what is is native to the human being. But who can explain what is? Who can answer the conundrum of the stone? What is the stone? Why is there a stone at all? Why does anything arise? What is the Source of all of this happening?

During His childhood, and on into His years at Columbia University, Adi Da Samraj was possessed with the question: What is consciousness? By consciousness He meant that very sense of existence, or awareness of simply being—that which is constant in us, whatever the events and changes of life. In the modern scientific view, consciousness is the by-product of an electro-chemical process originating in the brain, and is, therefore, dependent on the survival of the body. According to this opinion, consciousness, which seems to be our most fundamental condition, disappears at death. This is the message imparted—even officially—by the institutions of modern civilization. Avatar Adi Da could never accept this message, because He had a greater, tacit knowledge, which had been self-evident to Him from His Birth.

Adi Da Samraj was born in New York in 1939 into an ordinary lower-middle-class family—but He was not in an ordinary state. As He describes in His Spiritual Autobiography, The Knee of Listening, He enjoyed in infancy an unbroken Condition of Radiant, Blissful Being, which, from childhood, He called the Bright. But He discovered in His earliest years that this sublime Reality was not obvious to others. And so, in a great Impulse to embrace the human condition completely—and, thus, to Illumine it for all—Avatar Adi Da spontaneously relinquished that Native Awareness of Reality. From the age of two, He submitted to participate in the human dilemma, the presumption that one is a separate mortal entity in the midst of a bewildering and threatening world. Nevertheless, the Bright persisted as an undercurrent of Truth that kept driving Him to the root of things—until all obstructions fell away, and the Bright was Re-Awakened in Him completely. From that point, He turned about to Teach others.

From time to time in human history, great Sages have appeared who have, to one degree or another, agreed to instruct devotees. Such a one does not teach from the position of an I speaking to a you. A truly great Sage speaks as the Very Condition, the Radiant Ocean of Being, That is Reality. From the beginning of His lifetime, Adi Da Samraj showed the signs of such a One. He tirelessly worked to show that the Ultimate Reality is not a blank absolute, nor is the Ultimate Reality the Creator-God (making the world, and implicated in the human drama). Rather, the Very One Who Is, is by Nature moved to Liberate—to set beings free of identification with the sticky web of illusions that makes up the usual life. The Reality-Teaching of Adi Da Samraj is a great gift to all who need to understand the human event in the light of Ultimate Truth, beyond the winds of doctrine and the competing philosophies that have made and unmade the cultures of humankind.

The Genesis of The Gnosticon

This book, The Gnosticon, was conceived by Adi Da Samraj at the end of 2005, but its history goes back more than thirty years. In the early 1970s, Adi Da Samraj recommended to His devotees that they establish a publishing house, making available His own Teaching and also some classic texts of traditional Spirituality. The first of the traditional publications was The Heart of the Ribhu Gita, a text in the Advaitic tradition of Transcendental Wisdom, which Adi Da Samraj had seen in The Mountain Path, the magazine associated with Ramana Maharshi’s Ashram. The rights to publish were obtained, and Adi Da Samraj introduced the book Himself.

In November 2005, He looked again at The Heart of the Ribhu Gita, and was moved to make His own rendering, or interpretive translation, of the text—in order to elucidate (and thereby honor) its full meaning. He was not intending to re-write the text from the Disposition of His own Realization, but, rather, to draw out the real intention of Ribhu (or the Sage who otherwise generated the text), as only another Realizer can.

Having completed the work, Avatar Adi Da Himself read the text to His devotees in an occasion broadcast live via the Internet, and commented upon it further, indicating that He was interested in rendering other principal texts from the traditions of the great Non-dualist Sages in a similar manner. By Sage, He means one who is Identified with Consciousness Itself, rather than being identified with body and mind. Thus, a Sage is one who is established in the Knowledge of Reality at the root, Realizing What Is—rather than seeking for any form of mystical experience (no matter how profound such experience may appear to be).

In the following weeks, Adi Da Samraj gave His attention to other great teachings from the tradition of Advaita Vedanta and some from the Buddhist tradition, all of which He also read to His devotees. In each case, He was bringing the essence of the instruction to the fore, with an elegance and Illumined understanding that left His devotees full of praise and amazement. Texts whose meanings were only partially (or cryptically) expressed even in the original—let alone in translation—were suddenly shining forth, like rough gems cut by an expert hand.

Avatar Adi Da Samraj Reciting His Rendering of the Ribhu Gita

at Walk About Joy (near Tat Sundaram Hermitage), December 11, 2005

Such was the original kernel of The Gnosticon—an anthology of these masterful translations, together with Discourses about the traditional texts, given by Adi Da Samraj at the time He read them to His devotees. In the course of 2006, Avatar Adi Da transformed the nature of the book by adding many of His own Teachings relative to Perfect Knowledge of Reality—such as Eleutherios and The Teaching Manual of Perfect Summaries—as well as Essays on radical devotion and right life. In order to present these Reality-Teachings in their full context as the apex of human wisdom, Adi Da Samraj also introduced at the beginning of the book Essays He wrote over the years about the more preliminary stages of human understanding, including commentaries on popular God-religion. Avatar Adi Da’s final work on The Gnosticon (only months before His passing in November 2008) included the addition of the seminal Essays Atma Nadi Shakti Yoga and The Boundless Self-Confession—which brought the entire text into the domain of His own Avataric Revelation of the Indivisible (Transcendental Spiritual) Nature of Reality and the process He has Given for Realizing It.³

The Great Reality-Teaching Transmitted in Living Relationship

The traditional teachings in this book were transmitted orally, even for many years, before anything was written down. Likewise, there is, in general, little reliable historical information about the Realizers whose teachings gave rise to these texts, and the original circumstances in which the teachings were transmitted have faded into the mists of time. The Upanishadic tradition (going back thousands of years in India) is one of coming to a Realizer in the forest, or some secluded place, where he or she might consent to impart a teaching, which is duly remembered and passed on. At the same time, as Avatar Adi Da points out in this book, the forest hermitage was not the only place of instruction. There was also an ancient tradition of dharmic debate between teachers of different schools—often taking place in the presence of a ruler and his court.

Whatever the life-context of these great teachings, we today confront them primarily as literary artifacts. Their origins are inaccessible. While the words of the Masters continue in some form, the Masters themselves, and their living play of instruction, have disappeared. And from the divorce between the teacher and the teaching—which inevitably tends to occur over time—have sprung endless revisions, dilutions, and distortions of the wisdom of all Realizers. The story of the Sage Ribhu and his devotee Nidagha, which is told in this book (in part 6), is a parable for the truth that there is no direct Realization of Reality apart from the relationship to the Master and the Master’s Spiritual help and skillful means.

Such is the immense Grace of the Avataric Appearance, in our time, of His Divine Presence Avatar Adi Da Samraj. His own Reality-Teachings have been given by Him word for word, and have arisen in a contemporary Upanishadic circumstance—the situation of devotees gathered at His Feet in one of His Hermitages or Sanctuaries. And, because of modern technologies of recording and archiving, His direct Instruction, in audio, video, and written forms, will always remain available exactly as He gave it. Moments of His Instruction, like the occasion described below, occurred countless times in different ways with different individual devotees.

One evening in 1996, Adi Da Samraj was seated in a small room surrounded by a group of devotees. He was humorously, compassionately, and lovingly engaging one devotee, Daniel Bouwmeester, in a dialogue—pressing Daniel to inspect the root of the conventional references us and I.

DANIEL: A number of us had questions tonight.

AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: A number of us—just what do you mean by that, Daniel?

DANIEL: Individuals. Us.

AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: Are you talking about a real experience of yours—that you are one of something there can be a number of?

DANIEL: Oh, yes.

AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: What is that experience?

DANIEL: Well, it is a sense that there is me, and then there are others.

AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: Nonsense! Yes, and what are they?

DANIEL: As You have said, there are presumed others who are similar to or even the same as myself.

AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: I mean, what is that? What are you referring to?

DANIEL: Generally, other bodies, other entities, but also individuals.

AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: Yes, but you declared yourself to be virtually identical to all these others.

DANIEL: Something similar. Us is just a language convention.

AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: So what exactly are you referring to? You cannot just refer to they are all bodies because you said you are one of those, and you do not refer to your own body from without. So when you say I, you mean something different than they mean when they say you.

DANIEL: Yes.

AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: Well, what is that? Is that what you were referring to when you said us? Were you really speaking about yourself, or just using language?

DANIEL: Using language was one part of it, but when You asked me who are the us, there is just a presumption that there is another person, a physical body.

AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: As a convention of speech, yes. But do you mean altogether what you are saying, or are you just using conventions? I mean, are you actually referring to a something when you say I?

DANIEL: No. When I refer to the I, no.

AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: Well, what are you referring to when you say I?

DANIEL: The totality of my sense of myself, and also all my experiences as well.

AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: But who is the me behind the my? Is there a someone other than all those experiences that are remembered?

DANIEL: Yes, yes. I guess it is a sense of essential self—myself. It even seems to be not really definable.

AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: Right now you are referring to it as an it. But is there a someone other than all those thoughts and memories and such?

DANIEL: Yes.

AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: So what is that?

DANIEL: It is basically just a feeling, a thoughtless feeling.

AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: Yes, yes. You are a thoughtless feeling. It is so, isn’t it?

DANIEL: Yes.

AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: But if you just attach yourself to the conventional mind, you think you are referring to what people can observe, or expressions on your face or something other—things that are objective to them. But when you examine what you are really referring to as I, it is a thoughtless feeling, as you say. It does not have any mind or body. All experiences of mind and body are objects to it.

The being is, as you say, experientially a thoughtless feeling. Therefore, if you simply feel yourself as such, as you are, what can you say about it? Is there anything else to be said about it, other than it is a thoughtless feeling?

DANIEL: It also feels radiant. There is a sense of radiance, but it is not limited by the body. It is not limited by thought or any of the other objects associated with the body.

AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: Do you feel that every being here represented by their bodies is a different thoughtless feeling than you are?

DANIEL: I don’t know if I can answer that.

AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: What do you feel about it? If you did not just look at them and focus on them as individuals or think about them, but are just here among them—so-called them—do you feel yourself to be a separate thoughtless feeling? Or the same thoughtless feeling that all could refer to?

DANIEL: The same—because when I want to limit it, it seems to be greater than that.

AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: But as soon as you start using the faculties to perceive everyone, not only do you see lots of bodies and suggest separate persons but you begin to create a whole complex of associations and presumptions based on that. In other words, you abandon the position of the thoughtless feeling, and your knowing is all about these perceptual and conceptual complexes, which are otherwise simply Witnessed by you.

If you are to maintain that thoughtless feeling-being, unagitated, how would you live differently—since presently all of your thoughts and feelings and actions and perceptions are a kind of invention that is dissociated from your actual being? You are talking all the time about something that is not Truth.

To be true, you would have to remain established in the Native State of Being and Radiate from That in the form of life.

DANIEL: This is What we have all been drawn to in You, Beloved Master. It is a fundamental reason why we all came here.

AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: Tcha.⁴ You must become relaxed from your agitated, contracted identification with the body-mind and its play, and become capable of simply Standing in the Native Position. Then all that Radiates from that Position informs the body-mind, informs the life, and you do not lose Reality in order to be alive. So thoughtless feeling is a simple way of describing what is Realized—Self-Existing, Self-Radiant, Non-conditional. Everything is Divinely Self-Recognizable in Reality—no longer the lie, the invented life made by dissociation from the Native State, but everything seen in Truth, in and As the Divine Self-Condition, Unobstructed Light, Unobstructed Consciousness, One with all, Transcending all, in a flash of no time whatsoever.

To recover What Is, forgetting the separate I, even for a moment, is more than a matter of following the thread of meaning in this dialogue. When one is Graced to sit at the Feet of a Master, one is stepped out of the common world and entered into the sphere of the Master’s Radiance, the field of his or her innate Transmission of the state of Realization. The Words of Adi Da Samraj, as His devotees can confess, carry a potency that is vastly beyond the verbal meaning, a force that activates fundamental transformations in the being. This potency is not restricted to hearing Him speak. He invests Himself Spiritually in all of His writing, also, and that Transmission of His Person can be received through reading any of His books.

The Hidden Structure of the Body-Mind

The effort to console, or save, or transform, or even dissolve the apparent I—which we all presume to be—is a major preoccupation of religion. In fact, as Avatar Adi Da argues in The Gnosticon, this search, in all its variant forms, is basically the entirety of religion. And He goes further, bringing the extraordinary insight that the kind of religion (or even rejection of religion) that one chooses depends on what dimension of the I one is focused in.

In the ancient oriental view, the I is more than the body, and more than merely body and soul. Rather, the human being is a complex psycho-physical structure composed of a hierarchy of layers (or sheaths).⁵ In the simplest understanding, this esoteric anatomy is composed of three fundamental dimensions—which Adi Da Samraj defines as gross, subtle, and causal, or outer, inner, and root.

The gross (or outer) dimension corresponds to the physical level of experience and the waking state.

The subtle (or inner) dimension includes everything to do with mind, emotion, and energy—including the domain of dreaming and psychic experience, as well as the range of supernormal experience that is commonly called mystical.

The causal (or root) dimension refers to the depth where the I-other sense originates, thereby causing, or generating, the worlds of subtle and gross experience that extend from that root presumption of separate identity.

As Adi Da Samraj makes clear in the opening Essays of The Gnosticon, popular (or exoteric) religion is strictly an outer, waking-state affair, motivated by the concerns of physical existence. Whatever its particular characteristics of doctrine and practice in any time and place, exoteric religion is a search for consolation and salvation through belief in some kind of Creator-God or patron-deity, and an adherence to a moral code of behavior that promotes social order.

The esoteric traditions, accounting for a small minority of humanity’s religious endeavors, conduct a more refined and inward form of seeking. They aspire to transcend the common myths and Awaken directly to What is Ultimate. They all speak, in one way or another, of Realizing the Ultimate Source-Condition of the impermanent arising world. But this intention has various meanings and implications, depending on the orientation of the particular tradition. In summary, there is not only a fundamental difference between the exoteric religions and the esoteric traditions, but real differences exist between the esoteric schools themselves.

Avatar Adi Da’s revelation in The Gnosticon, and throughout His writings, is that these differences correspond with the esoteric anatomy just described (with its gross, subtle, and causal dimensions). Esoteric practitioners are focused either in the subtle dimension, which is the realm of the various mystical and Yogic traditions, or in the causal dimension, which is the domain of the Sages, the Realizers who are exclusively invested in knowing the Transcendental Reality. Thus, the esoteric traditions of humankind have been polarized around these two different orientations—the orientation to subtle energy and light as the means and nature of Realization, on the one hand, and the urge to Realize Consciousness, by excluding attention to all objects, on the other.

The Seven Stages of Life

When Avatar Adi Da’s Communication about Reality begins to penetrate human culture, He will become associated globally with what He has described as the seven stages of life. These stages constitute a fully-developed map of the progressive developmental potential of the human being, based on its total structure—gross, subtle, and causal—and also of the most perfect Divine potential that is beyond gross, subtle, and causal. (See God-Talk, Real-God-Realization, Most Perfect Divine Self-Awakening, and The Seven Possible Stages of Life, in part 1.)

The various stages of life are illustrated not only in the individual case, but also in the cultural evidence of history. Adi Da Samraj refers to the vast and varied process of humanity’s wisdom-search as the Great Tradition, and explains how it can be understood in terms of six stages of life—with the inherent potential for the Realization of the seventh (or most ultimate) stage of life. His paradigm of the stages of life represents an esoteric science that belongs to the future of humankind.

In a conversation with His devotees, Adi Da Samraj speaks here of the great shift that must occur before the ordinary human being—still struggling to adapt in the foundation stages of psychophysical development (the first three stages of life)—can take the leap into the fourth stage of life, characterized by a life of devotional communion with the Divine Spirit (however the Divine is conceived or experienced).

The first three stages of life are associated with the most basic physical, emotional-sexual, and mental functions to which you have adapted. The transition to the fourth stage of life requires a realistic confrontation with your limitations in the first three stages of life. You must go through the inevitable and natural crisis of this transition, and that is a profound matter. If it were not profound, most difficult, and something that people in general are not prepared for, human beings all over the world would have entered the fourth stage of life by now. This crisis of transition is the most profound and unwelcome change that confronts humanity. That change has been unwelcome for thousands of years.

—October 4, 1985

In terms of the underlying structure of the gross, subtle, and causal dimensions, the transition to the fourth stage of life is, as Adi Da Samraj indicates, the most critical transition, because it involves an opening of the body-mind to the dimension of Spiritual Energy, which transforms the beliefs and observances of merely exoteric religion into real surrender to the Divine and potential mystical experience.

In the fifth stage of life, the fundamental point of view is no longer that of the waking state, but, rather, a persistent concentration in the subtle-energy centers in and above the head, in order to enter into states of ascended bliss—possibly including the experience of subtle lights, visions, sounds, and tastes.

The sixth stage of life goes to the causal root. The effort of sixth stage practitioners is to abide as the Formless Reality (or Consciousness) that is intuited in the depth of meditative contemplation, and to discount (or turn away from) all experience (gross and subtle), in order to find and stay in touch with that Root-Reality.

The Final Esoteric Secret

Avatar Adi Da’s discovery of the seven stages paradigm was not a product of merely philosophical enquiry but a tacit (or wordless) clarity that arose during His youthful quest to recover the Bright. The tradition with which He was most directly associated during that time was Kundalini Yoga. His first Spiritual Master was Rudi (Swami Rudrananda), who worked in New York. Later, in India, Avatar Adi Da’s Gurus included some of the greatest Siddhas (or Master-Yogis and Spiritual Transmitters) of modern times—including Swami Muktananda, Rang Avadhoot, and Bhagavan Nityananda (who was then no longer in the body). The principle of their teaching was Shakti—the Spirit-Power transmitted from Master to devotee, which awakens the chakras (or energy-vortices in the spinal line) from base of the body to the crown of the head.

While Adi Da Samraj freely experienced all the potential of Kundalini Yoga during His association with these Masters, He was never satisfied that the mystical experiences and exalted states (or samadhis)—no matter how dramatic or apparently profound—amounted to Ultimate Enlightenment. Throughout His youth, in fact, He experienced breakthroughs of the Bright that established Him in an utterly free disposition relative to all the traditional forms of esoteric practice. Thus, He brought a unique intelligence to whatever arose to His experience. After His Re-Awakening to the Bright in 1970,⁶ the esoteric anatomy underpinning His entire Spiritual adventure was obvious to Him. Eventually, that anatomy was systematically described by Him in terms of seven stages of life.

One of the most remarkable aspects of Avatar Adi Da’s account of His quest to recover the Bright is His description of a previously unknown esoteric process in which, first, fixation in the chakra system (exemplifying the fifth stage of life) is transcended, and, then, fixation in the causal dimension (associated with the sixth stage of life) is transcended, and, finally, the Ultimate Form of Being (characterizing the seventh stage of life) is Realized.

The following passages, selected from The Knee of Listening, illustrate the developments in this process. The first passage—from Avatar Adi Da’s recounting of His myriad experiences in the mode of Kundalini Yoga—describes a classic vision of the ascending process associated with the fifth stage of life. This vision occurred while Adi Da Samraj was on retreat in Swami Muktananda’s company in Mumbai in 1969.

I saw the muladhar appear below me as a Siva-lingam.⁷ Then I appeared below, my hands tied to the lingam in a gesture of prayer, pointing above. I rose up with the lingam into the sahasrar and experienced the perfect, Infinite, Unmoved Sat-Chit-Ananda—the Pure Existence-Consciousness-Bliss of the Indian Godhead, my own Ultimate Self-Nature as the Divine Being of all the world’s scriptures.

The next passage describes an event in February 1970, when Adi Da was living a reclusive life in an apartment in New York City:

For several nights, I was awakened again and again with sharp lateral pains in my head. They felt like deep incisions in my skull and brain, as if I were undergoing a surgical operation. During the day following the last of these experiences, I realized a marvelous relief. I saw that what appeared as the sahasrar (the terminal chakra and primary lotus in the crown of the head) had been severed. The sahasrar had fallen off like a blossom. The Shakti—Which had previously appeared as a polarized Energy that moved up and