The Adidam Academy

The Adidam Academy has been created in response to the call from Adi Da Samraj for an educational institution that would represent His Divine Presence in the world, bring His unique Reality-Teaching to all humanity, and enable the participatory response of people wherever they may live.

 

We all live in a world where global inter-connectivity and inter-dependence require a new way of thinking and acting in relation to our species and our planet.

 

Cultural and sectarian turmoil, environmental stress, and political and technological pressures now have global ramifications unimaginable by previous generations.

 

The world is deeply in need — both of a fundamental critique of egoity and separativeness, and of a radically effective and illumined way forward.

 

The Reality and the Way of Life given by Adi Da Samraj directly address, in the most profound and enlivening manner, the fundamental faults underlying conventional mind and action, both at the individual and the collective levels of existence.

At the same time, Adi Da Samraj reveals, demonstrates, transmits and Is the Reality and Truth that stands prior to all mind, action, and conditions. And to His devotees who practice the Reality-Way of Adidam in formal relationship to Him, Adi Da Samraj gives the means by which that Reality and Truth can be perfectly realized.

 

Adi Da stands in unique relationship to all the traditions of human wisdom, spirituality, and realization.  He is neither of the East nor the West, for He transcends both.  His Realization and His Way, to which He refers as “seventh stage”, has no precedent, although there are many recognizable and sympathetic traditional associations.

 

The Adidam Academy exists to make it possible to discover, learn about, and participate in this seventh stage process. All our courses, whatever the topic and whatever the mode or style of approach, are purposed to enable you to connect with the Reality-Transmission of Adi Da, to get to know Him as He Is, and to benefit at heart in relationship to Him.

 

You are most heartily welcome to join us as we bring forth this first term and initial phase of the Adidam Academy. We will be regularly adding features to our website along with additional means for participation, and we encourage you to come back frequently.

 

 

The meaning of “academy”

 

At various times this project has been referred to as “university”, or “institute”, or “academy”. Why, then, Adidam Academy?

 

In the following illuminating talk, Adi Da speaks about the ancient academies (in the West) and ashrams (in the East) that have come into being for the purpose of transformation by Truth, or true philosophy, and by embracing a way of life based on what has been discovered to be of ultimate importance. He contrasts this with “academia”, or institutions of conventional mind-based learning, and also with conventional religious institutions. Both of these types of institutions have essentially replaced traditional schools of wisdom everywhere.

 

To Adi Da, real “academy” is the process engaged by those who live in direct and submitted relationship to One they recognize to have Realized the Truth.  Therefore, the Adidam “academy” is, most fundamentally, the gathering of Adi Da’s devotees who live the Way of Adidam directly in relationship to Him for the purpose of realization.

 

The Adidam Academy, as an educational institution, is established so that everyone can have the opportunity to benefit from, participate in, approach, and ultimately enter that true “academy”.

 

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Following is a transcript of Adi Da speaking informally on October 9, 2006, about true academy, the nature of philosophy, “academia”,and His experiences at university and seminary. He begins by referring to His undergraduate years at Columbia University in New York City.

 

 

The Academy I Have Established

 

Not having any kind of academic background before I went to Columbia, I naively presumed that the study of philosophy would be participation in a way of life, or something that had to do with transformation by Wisdom.  What I found was that academic study of philosophy is just about ideas or word exchanges. It is strictly “academic”, a term that now suggests thinking or conceptual activity divorced from any kind of life-transformation. The doing of academic philosophy has nothing to do with life-transformation. It is a conceptual discipline without any other reference to profundity. Naively, I expected that it would even have to do with Spirituality, but it was nothing of the kind. Therefore, I had to carry on My own investigations by Myself, which I actually was doing, or otherwise by going elsewhere, which I did ultimately.

 

My involvement in this merely academic and conceptual activity, including examining philosophy as an historical process and as a development of conceptual activity, generated a realization that there were fundamental problems needing to be dealt with. They were not merely academic or conceptual problems, but fundamental problems arising from what I saw as the absence of profundity, and the absence of answers, in both Eastern and Western civilizations.

 

Something was also made evident to Me about how religions were ultimately failed exercises and myth-based. So what I got from studying university philosophy was finding out that something was wrong. I was not involved in anything like a Wisdom process at a traditional academy, even though I somehow expected that to be the case.

 

What is commonly called "philosophy" is not philosophy.”Philosophy" literally means the "love of wisdom". In fact, Wisdom was personified in the ancient days as a kind of feminine icon, ultimately meaning what in the Indian tradition is called "shakti".

 

If you look at the dictionary definition of "philosophical", it specifically makes reference to a kind of calmness in the face of life, a transformed disposition.  I use the term "equanimity" to mean the same thing, except that I refer to something beyond a behavioral disposition, technique, or attitude. Ultimately, what I call "philosophy" is about the transcending of mind, and even of brain.

 

I did continue with philosophy after Columbia—including at Stanford and at two seminaries—but it was not done merely academically, not merely in the Western context, and not merely as an exercise of mind.

 

However, at university that is not what the study of philosophy is about. It points again to what the president of Columbia said in My first week there:  “At Columbia, we will not teach you how to be happy, but we will teach you how to think.” That said it all. I could just as well have dropped out of university right then. Because if it is not about Realizing Happiness—meaning in ultimate terms—then what is it for?

 

The process I Myself was involved in was philosophy in its original sense. Everything could actually come under that heading. However, the academic process was not about Realizing Happiness, or Ultimate Wisdom, and, so, what was the point? Well, there was no point, except to get more and more bound up in problems.

 

And that is what occurred for Me at Columbia. I saw the dead end of all that was proposed in the world. At the same time, there was a Yogic process going on with Me, including the events associated with the “Bright” that occurred during My time at Columbia. Yet, that was a profundity that I brought with Me. It had nothing to do with Columbia itself. I had to find it all Myself and make use of it in a manner that was relevant to My own Purpose, or Disposition, and to the Motion of My own Life here.

 

What I have since established has precedent both in the East and the West. The Eastern reference is ashram, and in the West it is found in the academies of philosophical process, especially as exemplified in ancient Greece, not only by Socrates, Plato, Aristotle and, later, Plotinus, but by many others who are more secondary figures in the philosophical tradition.

 

In the past, in the ancient days, philosophers were Realizers of a kind. But as time went on, so-called "philosophers" became less and less like Realizers, to the point where Realization had nothing to do with it anymore. So philosophy, or the doing of philosophy, has in recent centuries become completely divorced from Realization in any sense whatsoever.

 

Philosophy has been taken out of the academy and reduced to something academic. Not only has it become merely an exercise in concepts alone, but it has also become a pursuit that is more of an analysis of language itself. It has become something without reference to Wisdom or Ultimacy.

 

At the places where I engaged university and seminary study, there were no wise men or wise women. There were no Realizers. There were intelligent people. There were people who were more alive in some kind of consideration and profundity than others. However, these were places where philosophy was failing.

 

They were places where everything and everyone was failing because of a reductionist mind. That mind has acquired everything—even what was of virtue in traditional pursuits of the past—and turned it all about or reduced it into something less than ultimately fruitful.

 

There is much that goes on in academic institutions and research centers that is certainly important, positive and of great interest. Yet, there is also something missing, just as there is something missing in global civilization altogether, and in Western and Eastern civilizations such as they have been. Academic institutions are not oriented toward transformation in the manner that I am talking about.

 

They are not about to become ashrams or traditional academies dedicated to Wisdom. The exchanges at universities tend to be reductionist, and the same thing is true in "religious" institutions as well.

 

Both academic and "religious" institutions are focused in false or limited views. At the general level, they are concerned with merely social-ego matters, and even at the highest levels their considerations are limited by “point of view”, or the presumption of a separate self located somewhere in time and space.

 

Real profundity is absent. Beyond a point, there is no profundity in the institutions of the common world at the present time.

 

The return of philosophy to the situation of academy and to persons of Wisdom would seem to be a necessary cultural matter. What I have established—including access to the Sighting of Me, the Way of Adidam Itself, the body of practitioners of the Way of Adidam, the Sacred Places, My Written and Spoken Teaching, My Literary and Image Art, the history and stories of My Work—is such an academy.

It is a circumstance of actual Reality-Teaching and Reality-Realization where people spend time in the Company of the Realizer. They are transformed by that relationship through processes not merely of verbal consideration but of Wisdom participation. They participate in Reality Itself.