Adidam Glossary - P

“Perfect Practice”
The “Perfect Practice” is Avatar Adi Da's technical term for the discipline of the ultimate stages of life (the sixth stage of life and the seventh stage of life) in the Way of Adidam. The “Perfect Practice” is practice in the Domain of Consciousness Itself (as opposed to practice from the point of view of the body or the mind). (See also stages of life.)

Perfectly Subjective
Avatar Adi Da uses “Perfectly Subjective” to describe the True Divine Source, or “Subject”, of the conditionally manifested world—as opposed to regarding the Divine as some sort of conditional “object” or “other”. Thus, in the phrase “Perfectly Subjective”, the word “Subjective” does not have the sense of “relating to the inward experience of an individual”, but, rather, it has the sense of “Being Consciousness Itself, the True Subject of all apparent experience”.

Pilgrimage and Retreat Sanctuaries
See Sanctuaries.

Pleasure Dome
Avatar Adi Da Samraj Speaks of the Way of Adidam as a “Pleasure Dome”, recalling the poem “Kubla Khan”, by Samuel Taylor Coleridge (“In Xanadu did Kubla Khan / A stately pleasure-dome decree . . .”). Adi Da Samraj points out that in many religious traditions it is presumed that one must embrace suffering in order to earn future happiness and pleasure. However, by Calling His devotees to live the Way of Adidam as a Pleasure Dome, Avatar Adi Da Samraj Communicates His Teaching that the Way of heart-Communion with Him is always about present-time Happiness, not about any kind of search to attain Happiness in the future. Thus, in the Way of Adidam, there is no idealization of suffering and pain as presumed means to attain future happiness—and, consequently, there is no denial of the appropriate enjoyment of even the ordinary pleasures of human life.

Avatar Adi Da also uses “Pleasure Dome” as a reference to the Ultimate and Divine Love-Bliss-Happiness That Is His own Self-Nature and His Gift to all who respond to Him.

“Practice”
As the quotation marks around the capitalized word “Practice" suggest, the psycho-physical expression of the process of Divine Enlightenment is a ”Practice“ only in the sense that it is simple action. It is not, in contrast to the stages of life previous to the seventh, a discipline intended to counter egoic tendencies that would otherwise dominate body and mind.

Avatar Adi Da uses quotation marks in a characteristic manner throughout His Written Word to Indicate that a particular word is a technical term, to be understood in the unique and precise language of the Way of Adidam, carrying the implication ”as per definition“. However, in other cases, His quotation marks carry the implication ”so to speak“, as in the case of the term ”Practice“ and are, therefore, not to be understood as precise technical terminology of the Way of Adidam.

prana/pranic
The Sanskrit word “prana” means "life-energy". It generally refers to the life-energy animating all beings and pervading everything in cosmic Nature. In the human body-mind, circulation of this universal life-energy is associated with the heartbeat and the cycles of the breath. In esoteric Yogic Teachings, prana is also a specific technical name for one of a number of forms of etheric energy that functionally sustain the bodily being.

Prana is not to be equated with the Divine Spirit-Current, or the Spiritual (and Always Blessing) Divine Presence of Avatar Adi Da Samraj. The finite pranic energies that sustain individual beings are only conditional, localized, and temporary phenomena of the realm of cosmic Nature. Even in the form of universal life-force, prana is but a conditional modification of the Divine Spirit-Current Revealed by Avatar Adi Da, Which Is the "Bright" (or Consciousness Itself), beyond all cosmic forms.

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