Customer Reviews

The Method of the Siddhas: Talks on the Spiritual Technique of the Saviors of Mankind

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Having read over 75 books on Spirituality, I felt that I had a pretty good grasp of the function of the guru. I gained much new understanding when I read "Method". What is wonderful about this book is that a person never having read ONE book about the guru-disciple dynamic can pick up this book and get a crystal clear description of what REALLY goes on in this mysterious relationship. Master Adi Da details in such everyday yet precise language, the nature of the Guru and explains WHAT is so unique about that nature and how and why it serves the spiritual aspirant. Have you ever wondered why people seemingly turn over their lives, their volition etc. to someone who appears to be a mere charismatic leader? This book clarifies for ANYONE what exactly is given over to a true Spiritual master and what is received by the true devotee. In one section, Master Adi Da describes the guru functioning like a light moving over a dark well (the devotee's subconscious) and stirring up all of the heretofor hidden impulses, thought processes and emotional patterns that charecterize each devotee. I can attest to the validity of this phenomena...as can many spiritual practitioners throughout the ages. One of the things I appreciate about this book is that it illuminated for me just what has been going on in this age-old relationship of Master-disciple from Krishna to Jesus to various Buddhas and finally Adi Da himself. He even describes his own gurus' work with him in terms that are immediate and grab the reader in a vital way. I highly recommend this book to anyone who is even remotely interested in the subject of Spirituality and its processes. By the way, this book also contains passages that are very funny!

This powerful little massmarket paperback came out in the mid-1990s, and is now out of print, although used and remaindered copies are still out there. Officially, it has been replaced by Book Five of the 17 Companions of the True Dawn Horse: "The Divine Siddha-Method Of The Ruchira Avatar". Sadly, that book has not yet been published, even though some of the other volumes in the Companions series came out as early as the late 1990s.

Some of the essays in this book have been revised and have been published in other "Source Text" books. For example, "Money, Food and Sex" appears in "He-and-She Is Me." Others are available only in this massmarket paperback. And a very powerful little book this is: the entire history of mankind and the universe are covered clearly and simply in a little more than 500 pages. It is probably still one of the best single-volume introductions to the Adi Da's work, especially if you're a left-brained linear-thinking type of person.

For five bucks or so, you can take advantage of an infinite amount of wisdom. This is one of the greatest bargains of all time.

Some of the Marketplace copies listed here are actually the 1973 or 1992 trade paperback editions. The earlier one came out very early in the Adi Da's teaching period, so obviously it's missing a significant amount of newer material. The 1992 edition is only slightly different from the 1995 edition.

The book gets a good review for many of it's individual ideas and its style of writing but gets a negative review for it's limited, absolute and controlling solution. What it accuses as narcissistic to those that rebel can be the very lens to see those that obey. And so the Eastern thoughts of inward relative diversity are framed under fundamental unity which does not tolerate autonomy.

According to Adi Da, anyone who is not in satsang with him is practicing Narcissism. That is the higher paradigm here. Adi Da is a divine incarnation of the god Da and only where all conceptual inquires, all seeking, all efforts at spiritual development are meaningless unless they are in satsang with "me" and thus the only and absolute alternative is by living within the communal relationship with Adi Da and his devotees. And so this really is a Cult with the control that does not tolerate the two cardinal rules, to first, think for oneself and second, to question authority. And almost all cults have good points to offer within their paradigms.

And the paradox here is that the trees inside this controlling and limited forest bring out some profound points. Some of these include the idea of community relationship with Adi Da in simply a moving, playful, spontaneous relationship in the present moment as opposed to simply intellectual analysis of spiritual growth and that the idea of seeking is part of the problem itself. Here it is letting go of the seeking, which is based on suffering from a moving thought created mind, into now a nonconceptual movement within ordinary life, not some spectacular satori or nirvana but the ordinary life here and now perceived in its now enlightened awareness and paradoxically in this world of the mundane. Also the idea that we are sleeping in a dream and waking up is not seeking for solutions, as solutions are merely those inside the dream, where as to wake up is simply an awareness, again, only in satsang with "me."

And while there are these and many other rather insightful and profound points, they are to the objective reader, contaminated with the control of satsang with what appears to be only a man, a man who both claims to be a god-man and is worshipped as one by many followers who have separated themselves from those not part of the satsang community with Adi Da. Now I am only an ignorant human and Adi Da may just be the incarnate of a divinity, so one can not judge or know any more as an ignorant human being reading this book, for it does not put one in Satsang with Adi Da, as this comes only with personal and direct communication.

In this paradigm there is negative views on solitude and nature mysticism, labeling all as narcissism, while Adi Da is claiming both divinity and absolute devotion for anyone to obtain the "truth," only in satsang with "me." And so, to look at the trees, there are many moist and ripe, insightful in meanings, and then there is the forest, the forest which unites without individuality to a controlled environment, a life that lacks autonomy and condemns unity from diversity.

This is indeed a wonderful book about the Guru-devotee relationship, but it is out of print.
If you are interested in talks from the early years of Adi Da Samraj's teaching I found:"Understanding" [CD], and "Garbage and the Goddess" [CD] great listening. For books check out: "Adi Da: The Promised God-Man Is Here" and "Adi Da and Adidam".