Introduction
Avatar
Adi Da Samraj acknowledged February 18, 1939 to be the date when His Divine
Avataric bodily (human) Vehicle was conceived eight and a half months previous
to His Birth on November 3, 1939. This date is in synchrony with a unique confluence
of several events occurring on February 18: |
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Traditional Shiva Ratri portrait.
Compare with the picture of Adi Da and His parents, above.
(click to enlarge)
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The traditional Hindu religious festival of Maha Shiva Ratri (the celebration
of the marriage of Shiva and Parvati "the night of Lord
Shiva, when He Himself was created by His Own Divine Grace")
fell on February 18 in 1939,
the year of Avatar Adi Das birth. On that day, the great Indian
saint and Sat-Guru, Upasani Baba, made a remarkable, spontaneous
prophecy of the appearance of an Avatar in the West. (See below.)
- Avatar Adi Da's father was born on February 18, 1910.
- Ramakrishna
was born on February 18, 1836. (Avatar Adi Da identified Ramakrishna, together
with Swami Vivekananda, as His Deeper-Personality Vehicle.)
Upasani Baba's prophecy
On February 18, 1939, about six months before the outbreak
of World War II, the great Indian saint and Sat-Guru, Upasani Baba (1870 - 1941),
received an important visitor to his ashram, the Shankaracharya of Jyotir Math,
Minalaysa, for the Hindu feast of Siva Ratri. The Shankaracharya was greatly delighted
at the religious life of Upasani Baba's Ashram and as a token of his full satisfaction
with the life and activities of Upasani Baba's kanyas, he presented several of
them with religious books. He had long talks with Baba on religion, the present
chaotic condition of the Hindu Dharma (and of religion in the world altogether),
and the need for its reform, and he expressed his regret that holy men were helpless
to advance its cause. He saw only one solution to this sorry state of affairs
a great Divine intervention, in the form of an Avatar. Only such an event, he
felt, could re-establish true Spiritual life.
According to the account, Upasani Baba listened sympathetically.
He was a man of few words and unpredictable ways. Suddenly, he burst
out with a completely unexpected utterance. Such an Incarnation,
he said, would soon be born in a Western country. He will be all-powerful,
Upasani Baba declared, and bear down everything before him. And
he will see to it that Vedic Dharma is firmly reestablished in India.
[1]
To
prophesy the coming of an Avatar was extraordinary enough. To foresee That One
as a Westerner was iconoclastic. Upasani Baba was foretelling a World-Teacher,
One capable of Mastering both East and West. The notion that such a One would
be a Westerner was, from the traditional Hindu point of view, incomprehensible.
Nevertheless, on that very day, February 18, 1939, on Long Island, New York, a
young married couple, Frank and Dorothy Jones, were celebrating Frank's birthday,
which also fell on that day, and Adi Da has confirmed that February 18, 1939 was
the day His physical vehicle was conceived on Long Island, New York, by his parents.
In fact, the day of Upasani Baba's statement was the day of My conception. My father's birthday was the same as Ramakrishna, by the way. And, calculating the date when this statement would have been made and the celebration going on at the time — Shiva Ratri — it coincided with my father's birthday. My father and mother were celebrating, because it was his birthday, and I would have been conceived on that occasion. And it coincides exactly with the occasion of this utterance by Upasani Baba. So it precedes My Birth by the nine months that follow.
Avatar Adi Da Samraj |
I Am the Fulfillment of Upasani Baba's prophecy. My Incarnation is associated
with — and, at Its Manifestation-level, effectively "caused" by — the
Deeper Personality that was evident as Swami Vivekananda (combined with Sri
Ramakrishna's Spiritual Presence). Nevertheless, all of the characteristics of both
the gross physical vehicle and the Deeper-Personality-Vehicle of My Divine Avataric
Incarnation here had to be Transcended in My Person — because I am Prior to
all of those conditions and "causative" sources.
Avatar Adi Da Samraj, "I Am One", Part 20, The Aletheon
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Another synchronicity
It's worth adding that, on February 18, 1993
(long before the "February 18" confluence of events had been brought
to His attention), Adi Da was spontaneously moved to talk about His Conception,
describing how He was drawn to incarnate by the heart-need of certain of His devotees:
DEVOTEE:
Sri Gurudev, I have a question relative to the Gurukula's function in the preparation
of Your Vehicle. On February 18, You mentioned in a conversation about the Gurukula
that they had made Your Manifestation possible. ADI DA: By their
requiring of it. DEVOTEE: Their heart-need for You to incarnate?
ADI DA: Yes. The Gurukula is made up of individuals previously associated
with Vivekananda. This is part of that submitting to Me and their association
with Me. . . . RUCHIRADAMA NADIKANTA (a member of the Gurukula
and one of Avatar Adi Da's senior
renunciate devotees): I was also feeling Vivekananda's Mahasamadhi
and the profound sorrow that Nivedita at that point felt, and the sign that Vivekananda
made to her of love, Your Love, and I felt the heart-need of those who had been
with Vivekananda. I was strongly feeling how those coincided in bringing You down
in this Form. I cannot even express my gratitude, Love-Ananda. I felt a deep,
deep resting in this feeling-intimacy with You, because of the proven transcendence
of conditionality through Love, human love included, but Love that proves Your
Identification with the Divine Condition Itself.
Ruchiradama
Nadikanta / Sister Nivedita
I was also feeling the purity and the
greater purpose of the hidden personality that was Vivekananda, as He manifested
it, how pure and Divine in its purpose it was exactly Your own Work. I felt
so strongly, in being with You here now, that I am witnessing and participating
truly in that same Work, the continuation of what had begun then. And that truly
it was, as You actually told me once in 1987, just a continuation. There was never
any separation. That was just a glimpse. And that true Divine Condition and Purpose
and Work and Love was just exactly now as it had been begun then. ADI
DA: Now fulfilled. |
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FOOTNOTES
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