The Perfect Tradition
by Carolyn Lee, PhD
In 1980, two devotees of Adi Da Samraj visited Chogyam Trungpa (a well-known Tibetan teacher, then working in America). They showed him video footage of Adi Da Samraj sitting in silent Darshan and speaking to devotees.
After receiving the presentation, Chogyam Trungpa expressed his respect for the authenticity of Adi Da Samraj, and made the comment: "It is tremendously difficult to begin a new tradition."
In fact, when Adi Da Samraj began to Teach, it was not His intention to found a new tradition. In 1973, Avatar Adi Da even requested a formal interview with Swami Muktananda to determine whether He could establish His own Ashram and impart His Revelation of the "Bright" in association with, and continuous with, the Siddha-Lineage represented by Swami Nityananda and Swami Muktananda. He was already acknowledged by Swami Muktananda as a formal sannyasin within that Lineage.
But this was not to be. And, so, Adi Da Samraj was without a means of linking Himself to any existing school within the Great Tradition.
Thus, He began to develop His Spiritual Work as a new and independent tradition — with all the sacred, cooperative, creative, organizational, cultural, and dharmic dimensions that such a profound undertaking requires.
A religious tradition is not merely a teaching and a series of practices, but a way of life that covers all modes of experience and aspiration. It is the highest cultural endeavor, which ordinarily develops organically over a very long period of time.
The practices of the fifth and sixth stage type that have taken root in the West have not originated there. They have come out of the ancient Eastern cultures, transported and transmuted into a Western context by the efforts of individual teachers and the publication of traditional texts.
Thus, there is no precedent for the effort that Adi Da Samraj is making to establish, in His lifetime, the Way of "Perfect Knowledge" (or Way of Adidam) as a new tradition — a total culture of life and practice that includes and serves the process of Realization from the beginner's level to the ultimate stages, or "Perfect Practice", of the Way. At the same time, His Way of "Perfect Knowledge", does not, as He says here, appear "in a vacuum":
There is an authoritative source-tradition within the Great Tradition, with which the Way of Adidam is continuous, and which, therefore, provides a basis for understanding the Way of Adidam.
The uniqueness of the Way I have Revealed and Given does not exist in a vacuum. The Way of Adidam is, ultimately, the Perfect Tradition, but there is a dimension at the heights of all the Transcendentalist (or sixth stage) schools within the Great Tradition that is compatible with It — simply lacking the final step, which is the seventh stage of life.
The previous modes of Perfect Teaching — exemplified in the traditions of Advaita Vedanta and Buddhism — were not Perfect in the most ultimate sense that I describe as the seventh stage of life. They were Perfect in the secondary, or preliminary, sense.
They were precursors — but they did not achieve the Most Perfect Realization, and they do not carry the Most Perfect Revelation and Teaching. The sixth stage teachings are based in the causal dimension, which means they are yet psycho physically based.
This does not at all mean that they are to be ignored, but simply makes it plain where their views come from, and how, ultimately, the seventh stage Realization goes beyond all of that.
The Way of Adidam that I have Revealed and Given covers all the stages of life. It is not just a Transcendentalist Way. It covers the entire process of human possibility and Realization from the beginning — everything gross, everything subtle, everything of a causal nature.
And these dimensions are not merely exploited for the sake of developing those possibilities, but "covered" in the sense that you must go beyond them, and there are disciplines that relate to all the potential kinds of experience.
Thus, the Way of Adidam exists with reference to the Great Tradition, but it is a universal Teaching, not an Eastern teaching.
— April 21, 2005 and March 3, 2006
In order to indicate that the Way of Adidam is continuous with Advaita Vedanta and Buddhism, and the actual completion of these traditions (and the entire Great Tradition), Adi Da Samraj has given alternative names to His Way of "Perfect Knowledge" that indicate this connection and continuity — including "Advaitayana Buddhism", and "Buddhayana Advaitism".
The Way of Adidam combines and transcends the two different orientations represented by Buddhism and Advaita Vedanta — the emphasis (in Buddhism) on discriminating what is merely conditional, or "not-self", and the emphasis (in Advaita Vedanta) on directly identifying with the Absolute Reality, or Transcendental Self.
From the beginning, Adi Da Samraj has called His devotees to find their impulse to ego-transcendence based on a "dual sensitivity" — a sensitivity to what is merely conditional and passing, on the one hand, and to What is Non-Conditional, Transcendental and Divine, on the other.
The means of this dual sensitivity is not "mindfulness" (in the Buddhist sense) or a discriminative effort to locate the Ultimate Reality beyond objects (in the Advaitic sense). The Means of practice and of Realization in the Way of Adidam is Adi Da Samraj Himself and His direct Transmission of the "Bright", the Conscious Light That Is Reality.
In the Way of Adidam, the devotional relationship to Adi Da Samraj is the circumstance in which He Grants His great Transmission of the "Bright".
As He has frequently pointed out, is not possible — as He repeatedly states in this book — to simply "work towards" the Most Perfect Knowledge of Reality, or, otherwise, to merely declare It to be so. That Knowledge must be Given, directly Transmitted, from the Source.
Avatar Adi Da is always Radiating His Inherently "Bright" Condition — but, before His devotee can become fully available to His Spiritual Transmission, "radical" self-understanding must unlock the self-contracted body-mind, and let Him in.
This most fundamental capability to transcend egoity, moment to moment, is also a Gift of His Grace that awakens on the basis of profound preparation.
Devotional heart-Communion with the Avataric Great Sage, Adi Da Samraj, and the observation, understanding, and transcending of self-contraction are the two pillars of the Way of "Perfect Knowledge" He has Given.
This is true from the beginning — until, in the Awakening to the seventh stage of life, the ego is most perfectly understood. Even so, devotion to Avatar Adi Da does not cease. Rather, devotion to Him is perfected in the seventh stage of life, through utter identification with His Spiritually "Bright" Divine State.
All the various disciplines and practices that Adi Da Samraj gives to purify and bring equanimity to the body-mind are merely supportive to these two great pillars of the Way, and never techniques or methods to be applied independently.
The miracle of the Way of Adidam — and a primary reason it is rightly described as the "Perfect Tradition" — is that the Transmission and intuition of the seventh stage of life is given from the beginning.
Potentially, in any occasion of His Darshan — but particularly in the moments when He Sits silently with devotees — Adi Da Samraj simply, directly, and profoundly Reveals the Root-Realization that the entire Way of "Perfect Knowledge" is about.
The mere beholding of Him in quiet, heart-open attentiveness dissolves the edges and opacity of the physical world. An inherent underlying Radiance permeates the view, and everything, including His apparent human Form, Reveals Itself as a fluid Light of infinite Blissful depth.
There is a deep relaxation of the knot of "I", a kind of amazement at the obvious illusion of separateness by which the ordinary life is motivated. Nothing at all has happened, and yet, Reality is Self-Manifest and the true nature of the arising world has become obvious.
It is literally nothing more than an unnecessary and harmless mirage rising and falling in the timeless Ocean of Reality. And Adi Da Samraj is That One. He is the Source and the Nature of What Is, Gracefully Appearing through the Agency of a human Form.
All of this is shown to be simply so, and the heart breaks at the Wonder of It, and the Love of It, and the sheer sudden Truth of It. The numinous Stone that was contemplated by Adi Da Samraj in His youth has become, for His devotees, the All-Revealing Mystery of His own human Form.
Avatar Adi Da's Transmission of Reality is the Source of His Way of "Perfect Knowledge", and therefore of its Perfection. Ultimately, the Way of Adidam is a Divine Yoga of "Brightening" that exceeds all precedent and human comprehension. And yet, it is entirely real.
Every detail of it has been Revealed by Adi Da Samraj not only in His Words, but in the most profound bodily and Spiritual ordeal and Sublime Signs, which His devotees have witnessed and continue to observe every day.
He is showing, in a manner that surpasses all the myths, what was anciently meant by the term "Avatar" — the Descent into human Form of That Which Is Beyond — the Transcendental, Divine Condition made visible and alive to human eyes.
In the tradition of the Bhagavad Gita, the appearance of an Avatar coincides with degenerate times and an overwhelming human need for Divine Intervention.
Whenever a decrease of righteousness exists,
And there is a rising up of unrighteousness,
Then I give forth myself
For the protection of the good. . .
For the sake of establishing righteousness,
I come into being from age to age.
Few serious people would disagree that we are now living in such a time. The great Wisdom-Teachings of the past have ceased to be the living Truth for human beings.
Rather, a very superficial sense of Reality has replaced the natural participatory awareness of the nature of existence. It is said that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing — and that is the present plight of humanity.
For all its cleverness, the modern Homo sapiens is not sapient enough. We know enough about the laws of physics and biology to exploit — and potentially destroy — our planet, and yet we remain largely ignorant of What Is, beyond our sensory and mental experience.
The Avataric Great Sage, Adi Da Samraj, is profoundly concerned about where contemporary human culture is going. As He has always pointed out, the modern world has settled for a very narrow slice of the total spectrum of human understanding.
Adi Da's Message, in all of His writings, is that there is only one force in human affairs that can correct the terrible trajectory of the world today.
The "decline and fall" of global civilization is inevitable, unless a greater knowledge of Reality can begin to affect human culture. Locating this greater knowledge, and bringing it to bear in real human life, both individual and collective, is the most critical issue for all humankind.
To convey the urgency of Truth, the Truth about Reality, is the incomparably creative lifetime-effort of Avatar Adi Da Samraj. His offering of the books in the "Perfect Knowledge" Series is part of that Work.
In these extraordinary, all-encompassing books, He explains the Great Tradition to itself, illumines its hidden treasures, and Reveals the Perfect Tradition that resolves the great wisdom-search in a Place never fully found before.
