Adi Da Samraj: Devote Your Life to God-Realization

All of the videos with Adi Da lectures which I posted in the Spirituality category have unfortunately been removed from YouTube. When I discover that a video posted here has disappeared in this way (as is often the case in the Music categories), I try, when possible, to replace it as soon as possible with the same video posted by someone else on YouTube, which means the date of the posting on YouTube will often be later than that of my original post. But I haven’t yet found my Adi Da videos reposted. Except, possibly, the one below, which is now available on the channel Adi Da Videos; it might be the one I gave the title Da Avabhasa on Discipline, but I’m not perfectly sure it’s the same. In this version a darshan – or what in the Daist community is called a “sacred silent sighting” – of Da towards the end of his life is added:

People in the Daist organization, Adidam, complained that I didn’t mention him only under that last and definitive name he used, Adi Da Samraj, but also under his earlier ones, or some of them: Franklin Jones, Bubba Free John, Da Free John, and Da Avabhasa.

The succession of names reflected his developing understanding of himself and of the nature of his teaching and mission. In the title of my essay on him, for instance, which is partly critical but explains the nature of my interest in him, I used the name Franklin Jones, since that was his first name, the name under which he was born, and the one under which the first edition of his first and best known book, The Knee of Listening, was published. And posting the mentioned video lectures, I called him Da Avabhasa, since I think that’s what he called himself at the time those lectures were given ((but it might still have been Da Free John, the name under which the first edition of The Dawn Horse Testament was published in the mid-80s).

His followers took this to signify a lack of respect, and of understanding of the significance of the final name, Adi Da Samraj, and the process of development leading to its adoption. But I don’t see anything wrong in using also his earlier names; indeed, it seems to me wholly appropriate, interesting, and perhaps even important to use the names that indicate his self-understanding at the time that he gave a particular lecture or wrote a certain book.

But not only does Adidam (which has gone through even more name changes than Jones/Bubba/Avabhasa/Da himself) and the Dawn Horse Press, which Jones founded and which has continuously published later editions of his earlier books under the name used by him at the time of those reissues, so that by now, Adi Da Samraj is the name of the author of all of them in their latest editions, not agree. Obviously Jones/Bubba/Avabhasa/Da himself didn’t either, and at least inasmuch as he himself also continuously revised and expanded his earlier books in order to bring them into accordance with his most recent understanding, this is reasonable. The situation clearly seems different with old, unrevisable speeches, but, anyway, I oblige Adidam by using the name Adi Da Samraj here.