This
is Part 6 of Chris Tong's six-part article, Why
Great Spiritual Realization Requires a Spiritual Master. In
part 1 and part
2 of this article, we described why a Spiritual Transmission Master is functionally
necessary for Spiritual Realization. But some readers of Adi Da's life story try
to make the curious argument that they shouldn't need a Spiritual Master like
Adi Da because, after all, didn't Adi Da Himself "abandon" all Spiritual
Masters, and Realize the seventh stage Realization "on His own" in the
end? This
actually is a major misunderstanding of Adi
Da's life story. Adi Da was born already Awakened. The primary story
of His early life was not the story of an ordinary person like you or me, eventually
Realizing the seventh stage of life, having some Spiritual Masters along the way
but eventually "not needing" them. It was, rather, the story of the
Divine Person directly acquiring the body of "Franklin Jones" at birth,
and, over time, conforming it to Himself completely. So even "Franklin Jones"
had a Guru: the very Divine Person! But that was because Adi Da was the very Incarnation
of the Divine a "once in the history of the universe" occurrence.
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[My Appearance] in this world is the sacrificial embodiment
of the Divine Consciousness, or the "Purusha," as it is named in the Hindu tradition.
Such a life is Divine, but it is also paradoxically associated with all the limitations
of human existence. I entered this world without dissociation from the Divine
Conscious Being, the Great Purusha, the ultimate Divine, but I have also been
given all the limits of human experience. The force of the Divine Consciousness
keeps me Awakened and transforms the process of life as I live it, but I must
also suffer the limitations of born existence in the process. I have suffered
a human lifetime as if I were unenlightened. This is how the Purusha breaks
through space-time and into human time, by taking up precisely the limitations,
even the unconsciousness and the un-Enlightenment, of the human individual. Yet
the force of the Realization of the Divine is so profound that the ordinary destiny
of the human individual or incarnation is constantly undermined and his or her
limitations transcended to the point that suddenly the same human being, with
full consciousness, Realizes that he is the Purusha. Such a Realization is given
occasionally in human time, and such is my own Realization. I was born Franklin
Jones, on Long Island, but the process of my existence has yielded a more and
more profound Awakening that I am God, that I am the Purusha. . . . The
ordinary devotee does not Awaken at birth with that consciousness. Only God, the
Divine Being, Awakens with that consciousness in the plane of human beings. The
devotee Awakens to the Divine at last through surrender, yes this is the Great
Secret of the Way of Truth, the Way that I Offer to all. Avatar
Adi Da Samraj The
Divine Life and Work of the Spiritual Master |
Adi
Da did have Spiritual Masters during His lifetime, but they were not actually
the prime movers in His Process of Re-Awakening, because their Realizations were
not the equivalent of the ultimate, Divine Realization with which He was born,
and to which He Re-Awakened:
There are all kinds of ordinary associations with My
Birth. I Submitted to an ordinary Body in an ordinary circumstance in the West.
But that Submission has nothing to do with My Nature and Identity, nothing to
do with the Profundity of experience that has been Mine since before this Birth,
and all the while that I have been "Doing" My human Lifetime, That Submission
required many passages through ordinary life limitations but even in the midst
of such limitations, My Own Nature and State, My Own Divine Samadhi, kept Breaking
Through and that is where the Great Incidents of My "Sadhana Years" came from.
And those Great Incidents are also the Means by which I was able to Discriminate
between, on the one hand, the phenomena that were arising in My experience (both
the ordinary life-experences and the Spiritual phenomena that, in subsequent years,
arose in association with various Teachers and traditions) and, on the other hand,
the Very Divine Self-Condition and the Divine Nature of Ultimate Realization. Avatar
Adi Da Samraj, August 15, 2004 |
So it really doesn't
make sense to make an analogy between ourselves and what Realization requires
in our own case, and a Divine Incarnation like Adi Da, and His Process of Re-Awakening
(having already been born Divinely Enlightened). Nonetheless, the rest
of us have access to the very same advantage Adi Da had: we are Blessed beyond
words to have the very Divine Person as our Guru. But that has been made possible
for us through the Divine Incarnation that is Adi Da "Adi Da" is the
functional means the Divine has manifested that enables the rest of us to have
access to the Divine.
All of My "Years of Testing-by-Experience" were associated with Identification with the "Bright" Itself, My Own Self-Nature, Self-Condition, and Self-State. . . I Give you the Gift Which I, Myself, Am and by Which I always Benefited in all My "Years of Testing-by-Experience" the "Bright". Commune with Me, give yourself to Me, Locate and Know Me, be in Me. Then you have exactly the same Advantage I had in My apparent "Years of Testing-by-Experience" the Gift of Identification with the "Bright", Myself.
Avatar Adi Da Samraj, July 8, 1995 |
An ancient text says: "Mankind does not know. Only
the Horse knows." Therefore, you must grasp the tail of the Horse, the God-Realizer.
. . . The Horse takes you I take you Where there is to go.
Avatar
Adi Da Samraj |
My "Sadhana" made by My Submission to the
conditions of ordinary (and extraordinary) human life established the Pattern
of the Way of Adidam. Such is the Pattern within which all My devotees (now, and
forever) will participate. My devotees participate in that Pattern by virtue
of their devotional and Spiritual relationship to Me and not otherwise, by virtue
of some seeker's effort to replicate the Process as It was shown in My Own Case
(although, obviously, there are elements of the Process that will inevitably become
evident in My any devotee's case). The practice in My Company is not a matter
of attempting to replicate what I Did in My "Sadhana Years". It is simply
a matter of entering into moment to moment (self-forgetting and Me-remembering)
devotional communion with Me. Such true heart-Communion with Me is access
to the Pattern of My Avataric Divine Presence here. Avatar
Adi Da Samraj, December 21, 1998 (p. 600, The
Knee Of Listening) |
The humanly incarnate Spiritual Master is Divine Help
to the advantage of those in like form. When My devotee enters into right relationship
with Me, changes happen in the literal physics of one's existence. I am not just
talking about ideas. I am Talking about literal transformations at the level of
energy, at the level of esoteric super-physics (beyond the physical limitations
you characteristically presume), at the level of the Unlimited Condition of the
Divine Conscious Light. That transformative process is enacted in My devotees
in (and by means of) My Divine Avataric Company. The relationship between
the Adept-Realizer and the devotee is not a matter of conceptual symbolisms or
emotional attachment to some extraordinary person. The true Guru-devotee relationship
is real physics. Therefore, because they can make unique use of the Offering of
the Adept-Realizer's Company, it is to the special advantage of people when an
Adept-Realizer (of whatever Real degree) appears in their midst. And that advantage
is Unique in My Case, because I have Revealed and Given the Complete Reality-Process,
Which culminates in Most Perfect (or seventh stage) Divine Self-Realization. Real
Spiritual life has nothing to do with the childishness people tend to dramatize
in relationship to the Spiritual Master. I Criticize that childish (or dependent)
approach more directly than most people do. Others are merely petulant about the
necessity of the relationship to the Spiritual Master, in the "self"-righteous
mood of adolescence. Both the childish approach and the adolescent approach to
the Spiritual Master are forms of destructive nonsense and must be overcome. However,
the mature, ego-surrendering relationship to the Spiritual Master is absolutely
Lawful and necessary. Those who object to that relationship might as well object
to the relationship between the Earth and the sun. Most people are willing
to sacrifice things, but not themselves. They are willing to pay cash,
in other words, for a quick salvation. Such "religious consumerism" is an ancient
ritual of worship, but it is false and futile. True worship is the surrender of
your own body-mind-"self" in Truth Itself, in the Living and Transformative
Company of the Spiritual Master. People absolutely resist such surrender, because
they know nothing about it. Human beings are, in fact, subhuman in their present
level of adaptation. Devotional surrender of the egoic "self" represents
a future stage of development for humanity as a species. In their present actual,
literal psycho-physical condition, human beings are incapable of such surrender.
They must be drawn out of that limited condition, and into another state of existence.
And it is as far to go from where they are now to Most Perfect Divine Self-Realization
as it is from the amoeba in the primal mud of the Earth to a human being. Every
aspect of your existence even the body must change dramatically. There
is an unspeakably profound difference between the condition of the usual egoic
iindividual and the Condition of the Divinely Enlightened individual. If imagined
in "evolutionary" terms, that difference is an an inconceivable leap.
However, there is a Real Process for making that leap, and there is Help for it:
the devotional and (in due course) Transcendental Spiritual relationship to Me,
the Divine Avataric Master. In other words, something in the Super-Physics of
the universe makes it possible for the Divine Conscious Light to Avatarically
Incarnate as an apparent human individual, for the Purpose of Bringing others
into the Sphere of Divinely Enlightened Existence. Therefore, just as the relationship
to the Spiritual Master (of one or another degree) is the supreme Principle of
Spiritual life in general, the relationship to Me is the Supreme Principle of
the Reality-Way of Adidam. . . . If you enter into the devotional relationship
with Me, then the Divine Process begins to duplicate Itself in your case. It is
not as if you are a robot that is being transformed by some computer no. The
Process is a living and human relationship to Me. But that Process has nothing
to do with the conventional "doctor-patient" and "mommy-daddy-baby"
games. Irresponsible people cannot enter into this Process. . . . You must
be responsible for yourself at the human level, and in a profoundly uncommon way.
You must live the discipline of ordinary life. You yourself must be love
under all ordinary, daily conditions. You must make this change in your life.
There is no way whereby you can be relieved of this necessity and nobody else
can do it for you. Nevertheless, all of that ordinary responsibility simply prepares
you for the right relationship to Me (in and As My Divinely-Avatarically-Born
bodily human Divine Form and Person). I Am your Unique Advantage, because
I Am Present in the same kind of bodily form as you Manifested via the same
kind of physical structure, the same kind of nervous system, the same kind of
brain. In My Case, however, all these mechanisms are Conformed to an Absolute
level of Functioning, such that your entering into Communion with Me brings changes
even at the level of the psycho-physical body that you present to Me. No
abstract Divine Principle can serve you in that manner because the physics of
this Process must be directly Present, and the bodily (human) Demonstration of
the Process must be Present in a Form that can do its Work in your case. That
Work is My Purpose. My Divine Avataric Self-Incarnation Fully Manifests the State
of the Ultimate Physics of things Which is your Potential, but not your actuality
at the present time. The "abstract Divine" and the powers of the universe
are not (in and of themselves) organized for the sake of the immediate transformation
of human beings. If people truly enter into right devotional and (in due course)
Transcendental Spiritual relationship with Me, they will (inevitably) Realize
the process of transformation characteristic of the only-by-Me Revealed and Given
Reality-Way of Adidam. Avatar Adi Da Samraj, "The Super-Physics
of Divine Enlightenment" Part III, The
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