Finding Adi Da > Chris Tong > Part I, Chapter 4

A Crisis of Faith

This is Part I, Chapter 4 of Chris Tong's book, Finding the Divine In Person and Waking Up From the Dream. Columbia Stanford

Columbia

Former nun that she was, my mother taught her children simple, heart-felt devotion to God. Among other things, she would lead our family in praying the rosary together. Our home was full of books about the lives of the saints, and we had all the volumes of the Catholic Encyclopedia, to familiarize ourselves (should we so choose) with the fine points of Catholic theology. I also served for several years at the local church as an altar boy.

I would carry that Catholic faith with me until I was a young man, attending Columbia University in 1975 (like my father and mother before me) — and the extensive and rigorous education process there ripped that faith from me, leaving me in a profound crisis of faith.

While at Columbia, I was exposed to a great variety of new influences — the ones considered most influential in shaping "Western civilization" . . . from the ancient Greek writers, to Hobbes, Hegel, Darwin, Marx, and Freud. While a few of these sources (for example, St. Augustine and Dante) were religious, most were materialistic in their philosophy and secular in their focus, and the fact that all of these new viewpoints seemed to have a grain of truth to them shattered my childhood simplicity.

Adi Da's description of His time at Columbia University matched my own experience there perfectly:

The experience of study at Columbia was completely devastating. I had never in my life encountered any kind of sophisticated thought. But now I suddenly became aware of the literature of the world. The mood at Columbia in those years was profoundly solemn and critical. . . . Grayson Kirk, who was then president of the University, introduced us to college life with a serious speech about the rising problems of humanity. He promised that Columbia would not teach us the answers, but we would perhaps learn the questions. Altogether, he indicated that Columbia would not make us Happy, but he promised that we would learn how to think. I was deeply impressed by his attitude, and that of the entire formidable crowd of lecturing "thinkers", talking (and otherwise in attendance) there. Immediately, Columbia seemed like an emininently appropriate, and even ideal, place in which to expand my doubts — but I was puzzled that one of the highest institutions of learning could represent itself as anything but the bearer of Truth. I soon learned that the Truth was always in research in such places. They are not institutions of Truth. They are marketplaces of doubt. I began to read the deposits of Western culture. And all my idols lost their Power. To begin with, I learned that the "Holy Christian Truth" was anything but the real substance of Western civilization. There is a thesis emphasized in all the little bits of thought generated in a university education. In that thesis, the human being is described as necessarily mortal, functionally conditioned, and (at best) "creative" as a social animal. Also, the universe is described as materially prior to conscious life, and it is chronically understood without recourse to religious or Spiritual propositions... Every book I read and every course I took emphasized this thesis in some unique fashion. Avatar Adi Da Samraj, The Knee Of Listening

That profound crisis of faith changed the course of my life, and sent me searching in new directions. I ceased being a practicing Catholic, and began instead to value and explore psychology as a means for gaining self-knowledge: my unconscious motivations, the reasons why I was not completely happy, and what I could do about that.

On a practical (and karmic) level, I excelled in my academic studies, following in my parents' footsteps. By now I also had a string of "accomplishments" to add to my resume. In sixth grade, I had placed third in a New England-wide public speaking contest. As a high school junior, I had been awarded a research grant from the state of New Jersey for new research into the origin of life. As a sophomore at Columbia, I received the Professor Van Amringe Prize for "best freshman or sophomore mathematics student". As a junior, working during my summer break at IBM's Thomas Watson Research Center, I developed a new algorithm that was considered a breakthrough in the area of system stability.[1] As a senior, I was the narrator of Columbia University's annual Varsity Show, for which I was interviewed by New York City's Channel 5 News — and, for one evening (my "15 minutes of fame"!), was recognized everywhere I went in Greenwich Village because of a cover story and picture that had appeared in New York City's "cultural" newspaper, The Village Voice.[2]

Chris at Columbia University, 1978

I graduated from Columbia summa cum laude with a 4.0 grade point average and a degree in computer science in 1978. I then moved to California to attend Stanford University for my graduate studies, because it had a reputation for being the best graduate school in the world in the area of computer science.

It all "made sense" on the level of the practical. But on another level, it also was simply another sign of my Guru's presence and influence in my life — a kind of "synchronicity" or "psychophysical resonance", as I (unknowingly) followed in His footsteps: becoming an altar boy at the local church (as He had been); winning an award in a major oratory contest for young people (as He had done); and attending the very same schools He had attended (Columbia, then Stanford) eighteen years earlier.

Stanford

In contrast with the frenetic (and, at times, even harsh) urban life of New York City, I experienced California as a great relief — a place where I could relax psychically, and focus on personal growth. Again, Adi Da's words about His own move from New York City to Palo Alto, California, describe very well what I was feeling, as I began my new life at Stanford University, and in northern California altogether:

the foothills above the Stanford university campus (click image to enlarge) My arrival in California was the most instantly healing and supportive experience of a purely external kind that I had yet enjoyed in my life. The sunlight was so deeply radiant, the air so soft, and the hills and country all around so dramatic and beautiful that I became marvelously light and, in the most positive ordinary sense, happy. Since that time, I have traveled many places in the world, but, for me, the areas of northern California — with the incredible mountains and forests of Yosemite, the dramatic coastline of Big Sur, and the beautiful city of San Francisco — remain equal to the most glorious physical environments on earth. Avatar Adi Da Samraj, The Knee Of Listening

Perhaps because the very psyche of the land supports and nurtures it, California has a history of giving birth to new "personal growth" movements and spiritual experiments. And so it was natural that, while I was pursuing my graduate studies in computer science, I also made time to explore human and spiritual potential. I participated in an EST-like organization called Lifespring, whose "encounter group" experiences [3] helped move me beyond the limitations of ordinary psychology into a larger view of reality, that included the possibility of "Enlightenment" as the greatest human potential.

I started reading the literature of Eastern spirituality, and began personally experimenting with the notions I was reading about. I began having energy experiences of various kinds. For the first time, I read about the Guru-devotee relationship in the various spiritual traditions of the world; and I experienced the tangible spiritual transmission of two Gurus: Jiddu Krishnamurti, while reading one of his books; and the shaktipat guru, Yogi Amrit Desai, as he drove past and looked at me (while I was on a brief retreat at his Kripalu retreat center in Massachusetts).

It was all excellent preparation for finding my Guru. I'll now describe some additional events in my life that helped prepare me for Avatar Adi Da.

Chapter 5

FOOTNOTES

[1]		R. K. Brayton and C. H. Tong, "Stability of dynamical systems: A constructive approach", IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems, CAS-26, pp. 224-234, April 1979. The stability algorithms I developed while at IBM have turned out to be widely influential (cited by over 160 other research papers) and have broad applicability, in areas as diverse as biotechnology and the stabilization of greenhouse gases required by the Kyoto Protocol.
[2]		Richard Rodgers (piano) with Oscar Hammerstein (click image to enlarge) Richard Goldstein, "The Great Columbia Riot of 1978: Up Against the Wall of Time", The Village Voice, p. 29, March 6, 1978. My favorite part of that experience was the night Richard Rodgers was out in the audience. This was the Richard Rodgers of "Rodgers and Hart" and "Rodgers and Hammerstein" fame — the composer of countless well-known songs and musicals, from "Blue Moon" to South Pacific, to The Sound Of Music), and one of only two people to have ever received a Tony Award, an Oscar Award, a Grammy Award, an Emmy Award, and a Pulitizer Prize. He had been a Columbia student years before, and had written the music for some of the earlier Varsity shows, and came to watch the show each year it was offered. But there hadn't been a Varsity Show since 1967, and we were, in some sense, reviving the tradition with that 1978 show. Knowing Richard Rodgers was watching the show, we all went through it on stage that night, as we sang and danced on stage in front of him... but we were relieved and delighted to hear later that he had liked and enjoyed the show!
[3]		For a comparison of encounter group work with the "Crazy Wise" work of a Spiritual Master like Adi Da, read our article on the subject.

Chapter 5