Adi Da Causal

Adi Da Samraj’s MahaSamadhi site (burial chamber and temple complex) is named  “The Brightness”, it is located high on Naitauba Island Hermitage. The temple itself is small white oblong stone building, apart from a stupa, it is distinctly not built in the traditional manner of an Asian temple, it is sited in a vast field of lush tropical grasses. There is a young sacred grove consisting of one banyan, peepel, ashok, amla, bel, neem and mango tree, this is set below the MahaSamadhi, up higher is a group of sacred coconuts, the seeds collected by devotees from various Indian holy sites and temples associated with Bhagavan Adi Da’s sadhana and spiritual associations.

I briefly served the garden area there only 3 weeks ago while on a short (and as it turned out an immeasurably graceful, timely) retreat, the light at this height struck me as very rarified and intense, unusual in the tropics, where it tends to be more diffused than in temperate climates. There is a 360 degree view of Naitauba its surrounding reef, islands and the vast powerful sea, it is an intensly beautiful sigh

I am always struck by the immense work and detailed planning that Adi Da put into every item that he focused on. In his physical life he was an Iceberg, in that no one really had the capacity to see the depth of his consciousness and creativity, to what extent that depth will be recognized, explored and expressed with his passing will remain to be seen. To know that depth fully would require an equal Realization ( in Adidam this is called 7th Stage Realization )–a fully enlightened devotee did not arise during his physical life time.

Below is an edited account from a long time devotee indicating something of the amount of intention Adi Da put into planning and conscrution of the Mahasamadhi.

 The Mahasamadhi burial chamber is 6′ 9″ in height, and five feet square. It has a dirt floor and concrete walls. This had all been specifically designed by Bhagavan Adi Da Samraj previous to the construction of the “Brightness” structure. Bhagavan Adi Da had come up the “Brightness” and personally made the site location for every aspect of the “Brightness”. (Many structures remain to be built in the overall plan.) For several months, He had been involved in discussions relative to every detail of His Mahasamadhi Place. He had Requested and Received many traditional accounts of Mahasamadhi of Realizers in the Great Tradition, and explained their orientations. And He determined in detail just what should happen in the case of His Own Mahasamadhi, so as to ensure that His Body could be a point of contact for His “Bright” Blessing forever

Currently with the Master’s passing only a few days old, huge personal sacrifice and heroic endeavor by devotees is in place, hundreds of devotees and friends of Bhagavan have done (and are doing) whatever is necessary to get to Naitauba to share something of this immense occasion. In spite of modern transport, Naitauba is a very remote place and requires much of a person just to get there. Adi Da Samraj’s body faces West, by his own instruction, not North or South as in the traditonal manner.

More on Adi Da’s MahaSamadhi and the Future of Adidam

There is a lot in the 1971 version that is not in the latest edition of the Knee of Listening ( 2004) on the other hand there is also a huge amount added to the later version. Adi Da ( then Franklin Jones)briefly associated with Baba Ram Dass (Richard Alpert) -a quite famous instigator and inspirer of Western Youth to go “Eastward”, after he abandoned the limitations of drug induced consciousness expansion, this sympathetic and prophetic quote from Adi Da proved to be accurate

Baba Ram Dass with Neem Karoli Baba 1967

“When I met him he was animated and storied at Kesey’s, but, like myself, about to enter on a long adventure into the kinds of spiritual consciousness promoted in the East. We were to meet again in 1970, in the company of the same Guru. But he seems ready to pass forever into the habit of Indian devotion, whereas, for me, the paths of yoga, of occultism, of mysticism and all of the tradition of that remarkable consciousness I was about to experience would only be another brief stage in the simplicity of understanding”

Another famed but passing association of his time “on the Beach” was Ken Kesey, described here

“There was Ken Kesey, a novelist who had written at the Stanford workshop and who has since gained notoriety as an exponent of drug culture.”

Ken Kesey 1967

When Adi Da stated “We were to meet again in 1970, in the company of the same Guru ..” in relation to Baba Ram Dass, he was referring to the 1970 visit of Baba Muktananda to the US described here

Baba and Rudi arrived in the company of “Baba Ram Dass.” Ram Dass was previously known as Richard Alpert, the man who, along with Timothy Leary and others, had done much to create the current “drug-culture” among younger people. I had met him several years before at the home of Ken Kesey in northern California. Since then, like myself, he had been led into the experience of Indian spirituality.

Ram Dass was now trying to reverse the karma of those who had become devoted to drug culture. He wanted to turn them to the devotional path of Indian spirituality. He had met Baba in New York and subsequently volunteered to engineer Baba’s California visit, as Rudi had done in New York.

I met them all quite openly, but without any desire or motivation to become involved in the whole drama of Baba’s American tour. They stayed for several days in Pacific Palisades, then on for two weeks in northern California and Utah. They returned again at the end of October, and flew on to Hawaii November 3rd, my birthday.

I was interested in seeing how Baba’s Presence would affect me and how he would respond to my own discovery. I sat with him while large groups of people chanted devotions and gazed at the Guru. I held his foot, I chanted, and I meditated.

In the first hours of his visit he blessed me with his peculiar form of the Shakti. And I moved with the experience, abandoning myself utterly to the familiar physical movements and the merging in the mind. I shook and fell on the floor. I watched Baba. I enjoyed the communication of his Shakti. I listened to him advise people to turn within and seek the “blue pearl” and the “blue person” in the sahasrar, the seat of consciousness in the head. I listened to him detail the various forms of vision, internal sounds and experiences, and I experienced them along with him.

In my own case as a young man reading this remarkable book in the early 70’s, in the remote cloisters of Hobart Library, perhaps the one description that had the most impact on me ( Adi Da was writing about the various effects of the Shakti) was this, a literal undeniable miraculous physical effect, witnessed by another. There was no mistaking it, flowers cannot move from a nailed position.

“These manifestations were not simply internal. Frequently my perceptions coincided with certain external events. Thus, a friend once came to see me after a long stay at the Ashram. We bowed to Baba’s picture and felt the Shakti fill the room. Just then, the flowers that were nailed about the portrait flew off and landed at our feet.”

Beezone has an online copy of the 1971 (I believe this was the first version publicly released) Knee of Listening, the first book written by Adi Da and his best known work. I stumbled across a copy of this book in the Hobart (yes Tasmania) Library in the early 1970’s and it blew my mind, I read it all in one day. I was a rabid and somewhat desperate seeker at the time around 17 years old, my head full of the traditional seeking and finding, methodology, still current in spirituality to this day. On first read, I loved the adventure, Adi Da‘s (then Franklin Jones) marvelous meetings with powerful beings, great forces and his wonderful shakti filled life and experiences. The imagery of great siddha’s and yogis’s such as the tough and earthy Rudi (Rudrananda), the powerful and enigmatic Baba Muktananda and the benign and incomprehensible Baba Nityananda was riveting, yet the ending of this book put me into revolt and deep disturbance (as I am sure it has many others) –The spiritual search and all its imagery and methodology are futile for the goal they seek — certainly not a popular message compared with the opposite tangent, beautifully described in Yogananda’s ” Autobiography of a Yogi ” So after first reading it several times–just to make sure I got this extremely (at the time) unpalatable message correct– I resolved to never go near it again!

Of course in spiritual life nothing is quite that simple, I had a very powerful dream about Adi Da around that time and continued to be haunted by the message of the Knee of Listening. I had a periphery involvement with Ananda Marga who had quite a strong presence in Hobart in the 70’s, I spoke to one of their Acharya’s about the shakti and its effects, to be fair I don’t think the man had any understanding of this phenomenon and dismissed it as “mind”, he told me to forget this nonsense, meditate twice a day for the rest of my life and “Moksha” ( liberation in the yogic system) is guaranteed !

Just finished writing a page on the the effects of spiritual practices and internal bodily bliss and inherent pleasurableness and what Adi Da teaches about these effects, here is a quote

However natural pleasurable –conductivity– ( meaning exactly what this word implies a unbroken flow ) is native to the body and living things, without deep bodily bliss readily available and at least relatively constant in the body mind , the world and life appear devoid of real sustenance and we are always hungry and addicted to any pleasurable source.

Read Full Article Here

More an intuitive title, a gut feeling title, defies a simple explanation, go here first

Adi Da

Someone asked me of any relation between Adi Da and Subud , the only relation I am aware of is the fact that Rudrananda ( Rudi ) had some connection with Subud, the descending force connection perhaps. Great story here on Subud - Bali - Mystery and Beautiful Art the web page is also quite beautiful, nice blend of colour, pattern and images

Found this post by an Aussie Car enthusiast called The Great Google Images Car Photo SEO Experiment I followed and searched for all the images he has listed on that page and my estimate was what works is :

Alt Tags
Text around image

The H tags , title and keywords in URL , did not seem to effect the results.

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Have you ever wondered or needed to know how many domains or websites are hosted on your shared hosting IP address this tool will give you a good indication , according to it there are currently 265 other websites using my IP , does it matter ? No , not a bit

Search Engine Watch has the breakdown of an interview with a Yahoo heavyweight, the gist of the interview is below The footer links discount is the same with Google, still more incentive to get links on page, perhaps

Footer (bottom page links) may not be used for ranking purposes, but will be used for crawling and discovery
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My page ( rather than site ) for it is only one page , absurd but true has begun to get a sprint in this mighty Google Busby Seo Challenge , it has moved into the 50s after being stuck @ 70 ish for several days , still the odds are hugely stacked against much more progress in this contest . The hot favorite remains the French teams followed by the determined Indonesian team , who may be a little more cash hungry , than the French in this challenge Who seem to think this is some sort of game , can you believe it ? ? I will also edit my Busby page tonight just to keep it all ticking over