Eleutherios: (The Only Truth That Sets the Heart Free)

In Eleutherios, Adi Da discusses the spiritual practice necessary for God-Realization. In a mixture of poetry and prose, Adi Da reveals what Truth, Reality and God really are, and how they differ from the usual activities, assumptions, and perceptions we make as everyday human beings. He also discusses the ways in which human culture must be transformed if we are to have the reality of Divine Love as part of our everyday experience. I highly recommend Eleutherios along with all of Adi Da's books. Added note: Adi Da writes in an intellectual style as well as a more colloquial, accessible style. Eleutherios is of the more intellectual genre.

In Eleutherios, Adi Da Samraj reveals that the feeling of being a separate self is the root-cause of suffering individually and collectively. He reveals that this feeling is an activity we are generating at the core of our being. He also says that this activity can be gone beyond by communing with the egoless personal presence of truth and perfect happiness, which he freely states is his constant, conscious condition, moment to moment. He claims that this condition is who he is. I am struck not only by the penetrating clarity of Adi Da's teaching in Eleutherios, but by the fact that reading it gracefully reflected to me the ways in which I generate my own feelings of separateness and the ways I dramatize them. In one of the last essays in the book he calls the leaders of the world to examine themselves in the light of his teachings in the areas of social, political, and economic activities so that we might begin to grow beyond our terrible separative, egoic and collectively destructive tendencies.

I have now read all five of the Heart of Adidam titles (the epitome of Adi Da's 23 source texts, which are to be published over the next year), of which Eleutherios is the last. Each one gave me a slightly different understanding of who Adi Da Samraj is and the gifts of realization he offers. But I must admit that Eleutherios really grabbed my attention. The title essay is a kind of prose poem. It's a difficult read but I found it very rewarding when I really gave myself to it. In it Adi Da Samraj very precisely defines what and who God is and what and who God is not. For me, reading it felt like he was stripping away a lifetime of religious and spiritual mythology and replacing it with an intuition of the God-Realization which is his moment to moment condition. In the following essays he makes an argument that true world peace will only occur when a sufficient number of people are God-Realized. Until that time, he says no amount of social and technological tinkering will ease the world condition. Only a change of attitude summarized in his prescription, "Cooperation + Tolerance = Peace" will truly bring benign change. He then paints a wonderful picture of what a society of truly mature spiritual beings would be like and the contribution they would make to the world. I've read the book twice and will certainly read it again.

Everyone has a book that, for them, is the final word. This is that book for me. Eleutherios means 'Liberator.' Perfect liberation equals perfect love. This book is about the love Adi Da Samraj has for all beings and how it is felt by individuals and how the individual may express it in the world. This book can answer every doubt, soften every heart, and quiet all the desires of the bodymind. It certainly did this for me. Even as I write this my heart is spilling over from the fullness evoked by Adi Da in Eleutherios.

The essay "On Liberation From Ego and Egoic Society, Or Cooperation + Tolerance = Peace" in Eleutherios is a work of astounding political, social, humanistic, and spiritual signifigance and implication. In it Adi Da Samraj cuts to the quick in his analysis of the world's troubles. The ultimate and perfect solution to our troubles, he says, is the transcendence of our deeply ingrained habit of regarding ourselves as separate from everything else. The first step in making this change is embodied in his admonition, "Cooperation + Tolerance = Peace."I believe this essay should be in the hands of every world leader, every holder of national office in the US, every mayor of any city of significant size, and every head of every major corporation, the editor of every decent sized newspaper and news magazine in the world, all over the Internet, every major scientist, and everybody else.