Finding
Adi Da > Lyn Hart
He
Is AliveLyn Hart It
is not uncommon for devotees of Adi Da to have subtle experiences of Him before
they contact Him in waking life. Some have dreams, others visions, some experience
a curious synchronicity of events and circumstances that eventually draw them
to their Guru. And, of course, many simply pick up a book of Adi Da's or see His
photograph or are taken to a lecture by a friend. In reality, all such contacts
are equally extraordinary, equally momentous the meeting of Guru and
devotee is always a miracle, a moment that changes one's life and destiny
forever. In the story that follows, Lyn Hart, an administrator and businesswoman,
tells of being contacted and Instructed by Avatar Adi Da over a period of years
before she had any idea that He is alive in this world.
Lyn:
My early life was spent in a very disciplined religious environment. My father
was a physician, and we were Christian missionaries. As a young person, I was
very drawn to the religious life of my church and embraced it without reservation.
But even in my childhood and early adolescence and again in my early twenties,
I had experiences that were not accounted for in the doctrines of my church
experiences of precognition, vivid recollections of what seemed to me to be past
lifetimes, out-of-body experiences, and experiences of bilocation, or appearing
to others to be in two different places at once. As I grew older, all of
this was accompanied by the surfacing of all my repressed sexuality and the need
to explore all the dimensions of experience that had not been a part of my upbringing.
I began to feel more and more uncomfortable with the inconsistencies between
what I had been taught as a young person and what my experience of life actually
was. It was at this point that an event took place that validated my experience
from a different perspective and put me into a genuine crisis. I was working in
a large university medical center, where I was also in charge of the "code" team,
responsible for attempting to resuscitate patients who had clinically died. On
this day, I had gone to check-in on an elderly woman whom we had successfully
resuscitated a few days before. As I entered the room, she said, "I know you.
You were there the day I died." She then proceeded to tell me, in great detail,
the process of being out of her body and what she had observed in that hospital
room and in an adjacent room while she was "dead". I could no longer deny the
reality of my own subtle experiences. With great sadness, I began separating
myself from my church. I began to study everything I could find on Yoga and Theosophy.
I was driven to experience everything I could I abandoned the vegetarian
diet of my church, drank alcohol, explored sex, traveled, and invested myself
in scientific studies and various humanitarian efforts. At age 28, I went
out into the wilderness to spend a few months in complete seclusion. On this pilgrimage,
I had an experience in which I had no sense of body, no sense of ego, no feeling
of being separate only bliss, only light. This drove me to try to repeat
the experience, but nothing I could do could recapture this bliss. I began to
despair. Nothing in life measured up. Nothing had any meaning for me. In
my early thirties, I began again to experiment with trying to control my out-of-body
experiences. I became absorbed in the task of leaving and returning to the body
at will. It was at the point where I felt that I was really beginning to do well
that I first heard the voice. "So you can go in and out", it said. The clear implication
was that my accomplishments were of no significance or relevance! I was instructed
by the voice that I should not put my attention on these experiences, but that
I should learn to live in the body instead, and that I would be given further
instruction when the time was right. I moved to the country, got involved
in designing and building energy self-sufficient dwellings, learned carpentry
and plumbing, and did a lot of manual labor. For several years, there was no voice. Then
in 1986, a subtle being again appeared to me now with a face but without
a voice. I could not tell if this being was male or female. The hair was long
and the feeling was somehow neither male nor female although the eyebrows were
very heavy and the hairline receded. This being was introduced to me as my Teacher,
but I never assumed that this being was alive on the physical plane. Then,
in 1988, another or I thought it was another Teacher contacted
me. He was a powerful figure with a bald head and a big belly. His voice was the
same voice I had heard several years before. For weeks at a time now, I would
be awake all night receiving his instruction and experiencing painful revelations
about my lovelessness and self-obsession. In 1989, I began to see a Reichian
therapist to work on the basic "knot" I felt at the core of my being. I had noticed
that she had an altar with a small photograph of her Guru in the room where we
worked. Though I avoided looking too closely, I was intrigued, because she did
not seem like the "type" to have a Guru. She occasionally spoke to me about her
Guru, but I was careful not to ask too many questions because I was not "into"
Gurus. Then, in September of 1990, having just experienced another period of intensive
"instruction" from my Teacher, I entered another period of great frustration and
reevaluation of my life. I confessed my feelings to my body worker, who
offered to loan me a book by her Teacher. It was a tattered, much-read paperback
but every time I touched it, my heart would swell and I felt a great
peace. When I got home I read the first chapter, but, instead of finding more
peace, I was completely offended! How could any person presume such authority?
I put the book down and tried to put it out of my mind, but instead I paced about
the house, finding it very disturbing that I was so disturbed! I started reading
again. The more I read, the more the battle raged within me. My mind was totally
offended, but my heart was inexplicably drawn to this Wisdom. I finished the book
at about one in the morning, and then I walked around outside until dawn. By
the morning, it was clear that my heart was winning. I now looked forward to borrowing
a different book each week. I was hooked. In fact, I was in love. The fourth
book she loaned me had pictures of the author. I was completely astonished at
what I saw. It was my Teacher! I was stunned. I was overcome with joy and gratitude.
I also knew that this discovery would now require great changes in my life. I
was excited and I was scared. In the next four months, I read twenty
of Beloved Adi Da's books. And, of course, I discovered that the slender-faced,
long-haired being whose gender I had been unable to determine was also Adi Da
Samraj exactly as He had looked in 1986 after a several-month fast
exactly at the time I had subtle contact with Him. Now I thought
about Him all the time. My dreams were full of Him. I knew I had to see Him in
person. To do that, I had to become a formal student and part of the Adidam community
and qualify to go on retreat to Adi Da Samrajashram, the island where my Beloved
Heart-Master resides in the Fijian Islands. I was not "into" community or joining
any groups, but then I had not been "into" Gurus, either. Things can change. I
became a formal devotee of Adi Da Samraj, and, within a year I was finally on
my way to Adi Da Samrajashram. On the evening after I and my
fellow retreatants arrived, we all walked out to Beloved Adi Da's Residence
or actually to a Meditation Hall just outside His residential compound. I was
very excited and a little apprehensive as we sat there waiting for the appointed
time. I could hardly sit still, the air seemed so charged. As Adi Da Samraj approached
the Hall, I could feel the room becoming more and more energized. The energy became
so great that I thought something in my head was going to split apart. And just
when I thought I could not bear it a moment longer, He walked through the door.
Something in me felt as if it did painfully split apart in that instant.
Then there was perfect calm and quiet. The room itself was not quiet at all, with
devotees calling out their praise and love to their Guru, but to me it was perfect
peace and quietness. I looked at my Heart-Master now for the first time in
His physical Form. He was so human and so ordinary in some sense and, at the same
time, His Presence was absolutely Powerful, luminous, and anything but earth-like.
All my self-consciousness vanished. I felt completely Loved, totally safe, and
my heart seemed to soften and expand to eternity. Whenever I was
with Adi Da Samraj, my mind became quiet and without thought. There were no ordinary
emotions. There was just this deep peace and connectedness and the absence of
all unhappiness and even all movement in the mind or emotions. I wasn't "trying"
to do or not do anything. It just happened. In the six weeks
that I spent at Adi Da Samrajashram, I received so much. Time loses its meaning,
and lessons that might ordinarily take years, or even lifetimes, can occur in
a few weeks or a few moments. I noticed that in Beloved Adi Da's physical presence,
all of my tendencies were exaggerated just as during those earlier times in my
life when He had been instructing me subtly. To me, more profound
than any subtle experience I have ever had, either before or after seeing Adi
Da Samraj in His bodily form, is the simple knowing that He is here, in the flesh.
He is Alive. |