Finding the Divine In Person and Waking Up From the Dream: Part I, Chapter 10

Adi Da, 1989
(click image to enlarge)

At last, at the end of the summer in 1989, I became Adi Da's devotee, in a formal initiation ceremony in New York City (Brooklyn) in which I felt His Spiritual Force crashing down on my head and through my body with great power. One of my devotee friends who was in the room (Jackie Hogan) recalls the occasion. "I was there at your initiation on that hot summer night . . . I remember feeling Beloved Adi Da's powerful descent that night. It felt like He took over all of New York!"

Later that same night, as I was contemplating Adi Da at home (in New Jersey), I was suddenly shifted into a state of Divine Ignorance, where (as Adi Da puts it) "you do not know what anything is". It is not "ignorance" in the sense that that one ceases to know anything or is unable to function. Rather, one's sense of familiarity with anything is completely stripped away. Normally that sense of familiarity serves as a consoling force — but as such, it also tends to work against ultimate Realization. So to have that sense removed can be a great gift in one's spiritual practice.[1] But it turned out to be very disorienting for me. I was not ready to make fullest use of that gift at the time. Consequently, the state dissipated after a day. Nonetheless, it was a Grace-given glimpse of the Enlightened State.

. . . no familiarity whatsoever. No thinking about anything, no being a body, no recognizing names, faces, or what a face is . . . phenomena such as these are cultivated in this Way. They are a potential, by Grace, in My Company, all kinds of experiences. So devotees commonly report experiences, even as beginners, that are in the domain of the advanced stages of life and the Witness-Position, and so on. These experiences should inspire you and give you a sense of what this Way is all about and so forth.

Avatar Adi Da Samraj, January 5, 1995
"There's No Escape, There's Only Realization"

The most important thing that was revealed to me by that experience was this: in direct response to my becoming His devotee, Adi Da had immediately let me know that He was my Spiritual Master in a very real and powerful sense, and He had revealed the kind of tangibly Graceful relationship I was now entered into! And a sense of what practice of the Way of Adidam was capable of Realizing. This was a Way of immediate (and ongoing) Revelation, in which the only limit was "oneself".

I was profoundly grateful for that.

That the Way of Adidam was not a technique but a relationship — whose centerpiece is mutual gift-giving — was a lesson I would learn again and again. I gave Adi Da a gift by becoming His devotee, and that allowed Him — on the basis of a spiritual law: The Sacrament of Universal Sacrifice — to give me His gift of Divine Ignorance. And in some sense, that ongoing process of mutual gift-giving is the focus and "lesson" of my entire story.

The tangible reality of that eternal relationship between Guru and devotee was made apparent over and over again in my life. Soon after becoming Adi Da's devotee, I was invited to give a talk about Artificial Intelligence at a major U.S. company, which arranged for my plane flight down to the company's corporate headquarters in North Carolina. Shortly after I got in my seat on the plane, an Indian man came down the aisle, looked at me, and asked if he could sit next to me. It was a little odd, as it was a mid-day commuter flight, with plenty of empty rows; but I nodded yes. After the plane took off, he turned to me and exclaimed, "You're either a priest, or the devotee of a very great Guru!" I was somewhat taken aback — this was a fellow I had never met before, making a rather personal statement! But I was also amused by his very dramatic pronouncement (which was clearly seeking my corroboration), so I replied: "Yes, a little of the first, and a lot of the second!" He laughed heartily, delighted by my answer. "I've always had a psychic ability to read the core of what a person is, and the communication about your core was very clear. Your Guru's Presence is all around you!" I went on to tell him all about Adi Da and my relationship to Him, and showed him pictures of Adi Da and read him passages from Adi Da's masterpiece, The Dawn Horse Testament, which moved him deeply.

My wife, Mary, tells a related story. She had been seeing a shaman for years, for therapeutic energy work serving the integration of her mind and body. At one point the shaman said to her, "I can't do any more work on you. Your Guru just instructed me to stop and told me that He alone will be working with you from now on!"

Through experiences and accounts like these, it became clear that Adi Da's relationship to His devotees is tangible, eternal, and primary. As the non-separate, all-pervading Divine Person (the Source of our very existence in every moment), He is always with each of us in the most Real sense, wherever we are, whether we ourselves are aware of it or not in any moment. And so part of our practice as devotees is to remember that, presume it, and become ever more directly aware of that Reality in every moment.

A devotee who was about to leave Adi Da's physical Company for an extended period of time told Him how much she would miss Him. His reply to her: "Don't miss Me! Take Me with you!"

On many occasions, Adi Da has taken us to task for casually using language that suggests we are ever "outside" His Company. To say something like, "I wasn't in Your Company when it happened", goes over like a lead balloon. He asks, "What do you mean you weren't in my Company?" So you get down to the details and say, "Well, I wasn't in Your physical Company." He says, "Well, that's different."

Tom Closser, "I'm Talking to Everybody"
Crazy Wisdom, March/April 1988

Chapter 11

FOOTNOTES

[1]

For example, see Adi Da talking about the matter of familiarity in this video clip, an excerpt from the DVD, The Illusion Of Familiarity.

Becoming Adi Da's Devotee: The Eternal Relationship

Becoming Adi Da's Devotee:
The Eternal Relationship