Leads readers through the contemplation of who we are, what we know, what death is, and what true happiness is, focusing on the three fundamental things to remember every day in order to be happy.
From the moment of His birth (in New York, on November 3, 1939), Adi Da Samraj was consciously aware of His native Divine Condition: the Condition of everyone and everything. As soon as He became able to use language, He gave this Condition a simple but very descriptive Name- "the 'Bright'". At two years of age, Adi Da Samraj spontaneously decided to relinquish His constant enjoyment of the "Bright" out of what He describes as a "painful loving", a sympathy for the suffering and ignorance of human beings. Avatar Adi Da confesses that He chose to "Learn Man"- to pass through all of the "ordinary" human limitations and presumptions that people suffer, and also to pass through the entire spectrum of "extraordinary" spiritual phenomena that people can seek and attain- in order to discover how to draw human beings into the "Bright" Divine Condition that He knew as His own True State and the True State of everyone.
This utter submission to all aspects of human life was the first purpose of Adi Da's Incarnation. In His spiritual autobiography, The Knee Of Listening, Avatar Adi Da recounts this amazing and heroic ordeal, which lasted for the first thirty years of His life.
In 1970, Avatar Adi Da finally Re-Awakened permanently to the "Bright", and embarked upon the second great purpose of His Incarnation- the process of "Teaching Man".
When He began to teach others, Avatar Adi Da Samraj simply made Himself available to all who were willing to enter into the living process of God-Realization in His company- a process which He summarized as the relationship to Him, rather than any method or technique of spiritual attainment. Through that relationship- an extraordinary human and spiritual intimacy- Adi Da Samraj perfectly embraced each of His devotees, using every kind of skillful means to Awaken them to the Truth that the separate and separative ego - with all its fear, anxieties, and fruitless seeking for Happiness - is self-imposed suffering, a contraction of the being (which He calls “the self-contraction”). True Happiness, He revealed, cannot be attained through any kind of search, because It is “always already the case”. And He offered the practice of heart-communion with Him as the effective means of going beyond the self-contraction, and thereby realizing real Happiness.
In the almost 30 years since Avatar Adi Da Samraj began formally teaching He has communicated a vast store of Wisdom. But He has also done far more than that: He has created a whole new way of life, a new religion, which is now practiced by people of different cultures in many parts of the world.
Just as the religions of Christianity and Buddhism are named after their founders, the religion founded by Avatar Adi Da is named after Him- it is called “Adidam” (AH-dee-DAHM). Adidam is an all-embracing practice that takes every aspect of human life- the “lowest” as well as the “highest”- into account.
Copyright 2000 The Da Love-Ananda Samrajya Pty Ltd, as trustee for The Da Love-Ananda Samrajya. All rights reserved.
