Foreward

(of The Gnosticon)

by

Paul E. Muller-Ortega 1

 

       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, with his long hair pulled hack, be seems by his demeanor to be both somber and ecstatic. With a swift and graceful economy of movement, be 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 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 lifelong 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. (p. 626)

      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. (p. 610)

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". (p. 624)

      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—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 wit 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 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 "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

 

Considered a world authority on the Non-Dual Shaivism of Kashmir, Dr. Muller-Ortega was educated at Yale University (B.A. 1971) and the University of California in Santa Barbara (M.A. 1979, Ph.D. 1985). His areas of specialization include History and Phenomenology of Religions, Mysticism, and classical Sanskrit, with a special interest in Indic Religious Studies including Vedic Studies, Classical Indian Philosophy and Yoga Traditions.