FAQs about Adi Da & Adidam > Adi Da's Teaching Over Time > Words in Context

Dimension 7:
Adi Da's Use of Special Terminology

• The earlier use of the phrase, "God-Realization" by itself would later be replaced by the fuller phrase, "self-transcending God-Realization", to underscore the point that there can be no Realization without self-transcendence and renunciation.
  
  
• The word, "God", would be replaced by "Real God". More recently, Adi Da often used the even fuller phrase, "Real (Acausal) God". You can see the differences in this example where we compare the language Adi Da spoke in His original talk, "The Parental Deity and The One To Be Realized" with the final written version in The Aletheon:
  
  

  The Divine, or God, the One to be Realized, is not other than your real Condition. Avatar Adi Da Samraj "The Parental Deity and The One To Be Realized" talk, February 7, 1983 The Acausal Divine, or Real (Acausal) God, the One to be Realized, is not other than Reality Itself. Avatar Adi Da Samraj "The Parental Deity and The One To Be Realized" Part 2, The Aletheon

  
  

In some sense, this adding of qualifiers into His written language reached its peak in the late 1990's. It is interesting to compare the textual density of books from 2008, like The Aletheon, with the textual density of the Source Texts of the 1990's: the more recent books are less textually dense. In a real sense, Adi Da found a way to increase the readability of the language without sacrificing the clarity that the more "legalese" texts of the 1990's possessed.

On the other hand, He left that "legalese"-style precision where it made sense to do so, for example in The Dawn Horse Testament, which is, in effect, the manual of Adidam practice — and so, like manuals in general, presumes its readers are practitioners, already well-versed in the basic terminology and are consulting the manual for the fine points.

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One general point worth noting: Adi Da's creativity when it came to using language and communicating His Teaching was unbounded, and how to best communicate His Teaching was an ongoing experiment for Him. He did not feel required to have to be "consistent" in any superficial way with anything He wrote or said earlier. He was beholden to the Truth, not to a particular form of expression He had previously used. Furthermore, His Teaching was developed as a response to the many devotees who came to Him with questions (spoken or unspoken), and more generally as a response to the hearts of all human beings — and the variety in His language was often a reflection of the variety of people with whom He was in dialog, and the variety of viewpoints to which He was responding.

Compare, for example, the following passages, and how each uses the word, "ecstasy":

True Spirituality is not ecstasis — "standing outside yourself" — another condition, in other words. Ecstasy is not the goal of true Spiritual life — ecstasy is one of the conditions under which 'self'-understanding is appropriate. It is not to be generated by means, neither is it to be dogmatically prevented. No special modification of your state is to be grasped and maintained as if it were Truth Itself. When you are utterly free of identification with the states of transformation, or modification, then [you are aware of] That Prior Love-Bliss, Consciousness, Enjoyment — Which is neither outside yourself nor inside yourself — That Is Truth, That Is Oneness with Real (Acausal) God. Avatar Adi Da Samraj, June 13, 1973

The constant purpose of manifest existence is ecstasy. But there is nothing within us that can produce ecstasy. To be "ecstatic" literally means to stand outside oneself or to be released of oneself — to transcend oneself. Therefore, ecstasy is not produced by experience, or by any kind of higher or lower knowledge, or even by self-knowledge. Ecstasy is realized only through sacrifice of self — which is fulfillment of the universal Law. Ecstasy is realizable only in relationship, not in inwardness. It is realized through moral and esoteric spiritual or transcendental sacrifice of self, or the whole body-mind, via all the kinds of relations, into the Transcendental Condition and Life-Intensity that is Absolute. Ecstasy is realized through love, which is surrender of self-attention and reactivity via unobstructed feeling-attention in all relations and to the degree of Infinity. Avatar Adi Da Samraj, "Life Is the Urge To Ecstasy" The Enlightenment of the Whole Body

The three fundamental disturbances to the ego-made order of life are sex, laughter, and Real-God-Realization. Sex (or bodily pleasure), laughter (or genuine and heart-open, humor), and Real-God-Realization (or Most Perfect Identification with the Divine Reality Itself) are, each and all, forms of ecstasy (or of ego-transcending enjoyment). For that reason, all three are, in various ways (and by various means, both personal and collective), suppressed, manipulated, prevented, falsified, and culturally excised from your daily lives. . . When you are alive as Divine ecstasy in heart-Communion with Me, and (thus) when you are alive as Real (and really ego-transcending) enjoyment, and as true selfless pleasure, then you can love — then you have no option but to love, because the egoless heart is only love.When you are established in true heart-open (or truly ego-transcending) humor, beyond any limitation, beyond the possibility of its being lost, then you are compassionate — then you are only compassion, because egoless love is only compassion. When Real-God-Realization is Most Perfect, then There is Only Real God — then "you" are Free, of "you", in Me. Avatar Adi Da Samraj, September 7, 1975 Sex, Laughter, and Real-God-Realization

When You Have (Truly) Both Heard Me and Seen Me, Then (whatever conditional forms or events Are Associated, attractively or unattractively, pleasurably or unpleasurably, With attention, or conditional Awareness, At any moment) Surrender Into Ecstatic Unity (and, Ultimately, Enstatic Identification) With The Spiritual, Transcendental, and Divine Person, Self-Heart, and Self-Condition, By Means Of The Responsive Act Of self-Transcending Communion With Me (Realized Via Feeling-Contemplation Of My Bodily Human Form, My Spiritual, and Always Blessing, Presence, and My Very, and Inherently Perfect, State). Avatar Adi Da Samraj, The Dawn Horse Testament

A shallow reading of these passages might suggest they contradict each other. (For instance, the first passage says, "Ecstasy is not the goal of true Spiritual life", while the second passage says, "The constant purpose of manifest existence is ecstasy".) But a deeper reading shows that Adi Da is using the word, "ecstasy", in somewhat different ways in each passage. In the first passage, "ecstasy" is used as a term for "seeking" a different (more pleasurable) conditional state, and criticized in the way Adi Da has always criticized seeking. But in the second and third passages, "ecstasy" refers to the enjoyment associated with self-transcendence. And in the fourth passage, Adi Da's reference to the State of Real-God-Realization as being simultaneously ecstatic (through communion with the Divine) and enstatic (through identification with the Divine) alludes to the uniqueness of the seventh stage Realization, in which the goals of both fifth-stage practices (which have the goal of nirvikalpa samadhi) and sixth-stage practices (which have the goal of jnana samadhi) are simultaneously realized through the regeneration of Amrita Nadi in the seventh stage Realization.

Thus, Emerson's famous saying, "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds" applies when we consider such an open-ended, creative conversation Adi Da was engaging with all of humankind. For instance, He might use the word "religion" in one way in one talk, and in a markedly different way in another talk. (See Is Adidam a Religion?) Each talk might use "surface terminology" differently, to good effect. But where both talks would be consistent is at the level of depth and substance.