About Adi Da Samraj

Adi Da - 2006 Adi Da Samraj is widely recognized as a uniquely great being. In the early 70s, Alan Watts, writer of numerous influential books on religion and philosophy, acknowledged Adi Da Samraj as "a rare being," adding "It is obvious, from all sorts of subtle details, that he knows what IT's all about."

In the early '90s, author and philosopher Henry Leroy Finch described Adi Da Samraj's principal book, The Dawn Horse Testament, as "a genuine scripture, expressing the heart and soul (and body) of the non-separated Divine Being.... There does not exist a stronger affirmation of the Universal Original Condition, not as 'Eden' but as the world's unborn, infinite Source."

Indeed, thousands of people have recognized Adi Da Samraj to be the most extraordinary being who has ever lived — the fully enlightened Divine Person, appearing on earth by means of a human incarnation.

Adi Da Samraj was born on Long Island, New York, in 1939. By his own testimony, he was aware of his Divine Nature from the moment of birth onward, without the slightest break. As soon as he acquired the ability of language, he gave his own Divine Condition a name: the "Bright."

Adi Da as a baby At approximately the age of two, Adi Da Samraj made a conscious decision to embrace the human condition — in other words, to fully "become" an ordinary human ego, even while (paradoxically) remaining aware of his "Bright" Divine Condition. He made this sacrifice in order to "Learn Man."

From his earliest years, he fully observed the unhappiness and suffering of the usual human life, and it became his overriding passion to discover how human beings could go beyond that unhappiness.

This process of "Learning Man" lasted until he was thirty years old. Those years were concentrated in two fundamental activities: His all-consuming investigation of the means for realizing truth, and the development of the capability to communicate truth through artistic means, both literary and visual.

As part of his quest, Adi Da Samraj pursued a higher education. He graduated from Columbia College in 1961 (with a BA in philosophy), and then went on to graduate studies in English literature at Stanford, obtaining his MA in 1966. His thesis was a study of core issues in modernism, focusing on Gertrude Stein and the leading painters of the same period.

In 1964, Adi Da Samraj initiated a six-year period of intense practice under a succession of highly accomplished spiritual masters in the United States and India — Swami Rudrananda (known as "Rudi"), Swami Muktananda, and Bhagavan Nityananda.

He always related to these great beings with the deepest devotional surrender and gratitude, but it eventually became obvious to him that his process of discovering the way of perfect truth could not come to completion under the guidance of any other — because he had come to know, from direct experience, that the kinds of realization offered by such beings were not the equivalent of the "Bright" State he had known from birth.

Finally, on September 10, 1970, Adi Da Samraj spontaneously (and permanently) re-awakened to his own "Brightness." This marked the end of his time of "Learning Man." As an expression of the import of this awakening, he eventually took the name "Da," the fundamental meaning of which (in various languages) is "the giver."

Adi D Beginning on the evening of April 25, 1972, Adi Da formally entered into a new period in his life — his period of "Teaching Man." On that night, he opened his first ashram (in Hollywood), sitting silently with whoever was moved to come, and then giving his first formal discourse.

In the years since 1972, Adi Da labored tirelessly to create his spiritual way — the Way of Adidam. In that process, he created a vast body of literary and spiritual writings — more than sixty published books, including those he has designated as his "Source-Texts", which contain his most summary spiritual wisdom and practical instruction.

Adi Da's "Source-Texts" communicate the fullness of Adidam, which is not a set of beliefs or techniques, but the devotional and (in due course) spiritual relationship to Adi Da Samraj himself.

Adi Da's period of "Teaching Man" lasted until the year 2000. After that, although on occasion he continued to speak and write, he was most intensively concentrated in his work of silent spiritual blessing. During the final two years of a Lifetime that had been utterly devoted to the Communication of Truth, Avatar Adi Da created His supreme Scripture — The Aletheon

From His birth on November 3, 1939 on Long Island in New York, to His passing from the body on November 27, 2008, at the Island of Naitauba, Fiji, His Life is the story of the Intervention of the "Bright" in human time.