I am utterly grateful to my Great Teacher and Guru - Adi Da Samraj

 

I came across Adi Da (Franklin Jones) in the 1970’s when I read his first books, The Knee of Listening and The Method of the Siddhas. His Voice and Teaching were so penetrating, insightful, critical, humorous, and comprehensive that they changed the direction of my life in a moment, a change that persists to this day.

 

Although I had a life-long sympathy with Hinduism and Buddhism, was a religious studies scholar, a teacher of Transcendental Meditation, and had been actively pursuing what I thought to be a religious path or sadhana, I had never in my life come across any Teacher or Teaching that so perfectly criticized my character as well as all the religious teachings I had studied and learned, and the goals I had desired, practiced or investigated. He did so with a brilliant, penetrating insight and life-changing argument; indeed, to come across his discourse and teaching was a religious experience.

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Adi Da provided a key to understanding the the religions of the world, their scriptures, and the activities, fates and purposes of human beings throughout history. He gifted me a mirror in which I could view my own strivings (religious and spiritual), not as religious achievements of seeking, but rather as the avoidance of the always already presence of God. He pointed out the 'egg on my face’ and my lack of comprehension of what I was actually up to; merely hearing Him became my 'second birth.'

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His life was a Divine Lila (a humorous play)

His Teaching a Purana (a sacred Tale of Instruction)

He was and Is the Light of Understanding in the world

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Along with my parents, I owe Him Everything

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In the first words of the Knee of Listening,

He wrote the following Preface:

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"Death is utterly acceptable to consciousness and life.

There has been endless time of numberless deaths,

but neither consciousness nor life has ceased to arise.

 

"The felt quality and cycle to death has not modified

the fragility of flowers,

even the flowers within the human body.

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"Therefore, one’s understanding of consciousness and life

must be turned to That Utter, Inclusive Truth,

That Clarity and Wisdom,

That Power and Untouchable Gracefulness,

That One and Only Reality,

this evidence suggests.

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We must cease to live in our superficial and divided way,

seeking and demanding only consciousness and life

in the present form we grasp,

avoiding and resisting what appears

to be the end of consciousness and life in death.

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The Heart is that understanding,

that true consciousness, that true life

that is under the extreme conditions of life and death.

 

Therefore, it is said, that One that is is neither born

nor come to death, not alive as the limitation of form,

not rendered in what appears,

and it is the living One, than which there is no other,

appearing as all of this, but eternally the same.

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There is only the constant knowledge and enjoyment of the Heart, moment to moment,

through the instant of all conditions

of appearance and disappearance.

Of this I am perfectly certain.

I am That.

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- Adi Da Samraj

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The quote is taken from the preface of His book:

"The Knee of Listening"

Synonyms for "really"