|
Question:
I'm currently a devotee of Adi Da. I've been reading the articles on your site
(including the one on The Eternal Vow), and now
I'm really wondering whether I actually "recognize" Adi Da (as the Divine
Person) — Adi Da's prerequisite for becoming
a devotee — and what form of practice I should engage if I conclude that
I am not recognizing Him. Help!
This article has the following subsections:
- Recognition as Essential to Practicing the Way of Adidam
- Placing Recognition in a Historical Context
- How To Know Whether One Recognizes Adi Da as the Divine Person
- What To Do if You're a Devotee Who's Not Recognizing Adi Da as the Divine Person
- A "Pre-Adidam" Practice for Devotees Who Haven't Yet Recognized Adi Da
1. Recognition as Essential to Practicing the Way of Adidam
If
you read Adi Da's final and greatest text, The
Aletheon, you will see everywhere throughout it that recognition of Him
as the Divine Person is the very basis for the Way of Adidam, and hence the
essential "entrance requirement" for becoming His devotee now.
. . . If I am devotionally recognized, the "Radical"
Reality-Way of Adidam Ruchiradam Is Revealed. Indeed, the "Radical"
Reality-Way of Adidam Ruchiradam Is Found only if I am devotionally recognized
— because Adidam Ruchiradam Is participation in Me. Adidam Ruchiradam Is
the Process That Spontaneously Unfolds if I am devotionally recognized. Adidam
Ruchiradam is not a practice that is engaged merely because someone is moved by
Me (or relates to Me) as an "objective other", or as a Teacher-Master
in some not-yet-most-profoundly recognized sense. . . . If I am not
devotionally recognized, there is an enormity of "world" and ego-"self"
to be figured out, and there are always a lot of things yet to seek and do. When
I am devotionally recognized, there is not anything to do anymore, because
there is no "problem", and (therefore) no basis for seeking. None whatsoever.
. . . Adidam Ruchiradam begins only when I am straightforwardly devotionally
recognized in exactly these terms. . . .Whole bodily devotional recognition of
Me Is the "Root" of Adidam Ruchiradam. Avatar
Adi Da Samraj, Part 24, The
Aletheon |
For this reason (as we describe in our
article on The Eternal Vow), the Eternal
Vow that is taken when one becomes a devotee explicitly refers to one's recognition
of Adi Da:
Beloved Bhagavan Adi Da Samraj, I recognize and acknowledge
Your Divine Person to Be the Eternal Source of Perfect Divine Grace, the Divine
True Heart of all conditionally manifested beings, the Very Divine Person Who
Avatarically Self-Manifested in bodily (human) Form for the Sake of the Divine
Liberation of all-and-All. Thus, I recognize and acknowledge Your Divine Person
to Be my Eternal Divine Avataric Master. Adi Da Samraj, "Radical"
Transcendentalism |
One cannot (and should not)
take this vow unless one is recognizing Adi Da as the Divine Person. (It's not
something you do on the basis of belief, only on the basis of Revelation.)
2. Placing Recognition in a Historical Context
You describe yourself as a devotee
who may not be recognizing Adi Da as the Divine Person. Some readers might ask,
"How is that possible?", given that Adi Da writes of it as the essential
prerequisite before one can take up the Way of Adidam. The answer is that recognition
as a prerequisite was not always the case. Adi Da's reference to devotional recognition
of Him as the basis for Adidam dates back to the Ruchira
Dham event in April, 2000 — not surprisingly, since, in that event,
the Divine Person was made more transparent to ordinary people than ever before,
and for this reason, Adi Da was able to make recognition of Him the basis for
the Way of Adidam Ruchiradam: because of the availability of that extraordinary
Divine Gift (after April, 2000).
Understanding this historical context allows
us to understand why people who became devotees before the Ruchira Dham event
might not be recognizing Adi Da — since that was not a prerequisite for
their becoming a devotee back then. But it gets a little more confusing: the Adidam
Mission has yet to really "enforce" this entrance requirement —
in part because only with the publication of The
Aletheon (in 2009) is Adi Da's Word on this matter crystal clear. So this
also means that people who became devotees between 2000 and 2009 also may not
be recognizing Adi Da as the Divine Person.
3. How To Know Whether One Recognizes Adi Da as the Divine Person
This clarity about recognition
being essential to practicing the Way of Adidam makes it essential (even urgent!)
for any devotee to determine whether he or she is recognizing Adi Da (or not).
Note that having spiritual experiences in response to Adi Da, "feeling"
His Spiritual Transmission (in the body-mind), believing that He is the Divine
Person on the basis of His extraordinary Teaching — none of these is the
same as direct recognition of Adi Da as the Divine Person. Here are five
criteria that help one determine whether one has received this Revelation of recognition: The
Revelation is an immersion in the Divine State Itself. That utterly "changes the
game" for one who is so immersed!
Anybody who is recognizing Me is absorbed into My State.
It is a profound Transcendental Spiritual condition. That's how I tell [whether
someone is recognizing Me].
Avatar Adi Da Samraj, October 7, 2008
|
The Adept incarnates, is, and
is established in That which is perfectly attractive — to which beings should
be attracted, and in which they may realize their True Condition. They become
blissful through attraction, through the force of attractiveness. And when they
submit themselves to it perfectly, then every aspect of the stages of the Way
— all the kinds of transitions I consider with you — occur quite spontaneously.
It's not that you practice a "yoga of being attracted".
You do all the things that are associated with our discipline. But the essence
of it, the driving force of it, the essential content of it, is this attractedness.
And the fundamental quality of your life — to the degree that you are really
involved in that practice — is Enchantment. . . . What is Enchanting you
is the Living Presence of the Divine, That in which you stand, That which is Omnipresent
and All-Pervading. . . . That which is absolutely attractive is incarnate, stands
before beings, and draws them into relationship. . . . And those who practice
the Way communicated in that Company develop more and more the capacity to submit
to the State of Enchantment, to the point where they are absolutely Enchanted
by the State of That which is attracting them. . . How can
ordinary beings come to the point of confessing this Absolute? Because you are
Enchanted! . . . You discover the essence of the Way is Enchantment. It is expressed
through all the disciplines — it doesn't override them. It's not like there's
some sort of "Enchanted Way" and everybody else is inquiring, or considering
the Witness Position — it takes just that form! The Force that is essential
to all of it is Enchantment. The more Enchanted you are, the more you allow yourself
to be gravitated toward That which is attracting you. Avatar
Adi Da Samraj, Enchantment
(April 26, 1983) |
- That Revelation convicts
one of the Divine Reality: there is a State that is perfectly Happy, perfectly
Free, and which transcends all conditionality: life, death, and all forms of suffering,
and that one can always connect with (and ultimately, Realize perfectly).
- Because
the Source of that Revelation is the contemplation of Adi Da, it is tacitly clear
that Adi Da is none other than that Divine State, here in Person. It is tacitly
clear that contemplation of Adi Da is what restores us to that Divine State, consistently
and repeatedly. That Divine State, and Adi Da, are not separate from ourselves.
(In other words, Adi Da's "Spiritual Transmission" is not like a radio transmitter,
from "over there" to "here".) Rather, the Revelation tacitly makes clear that
we are arising in that Divine State, in Adi Da as Divine Person. That Divine State
also immediately reveals the Perfect Non-Separateness of Reality. Therefore, it
is completely clear that the "devotional relationship" to Adi Da is not of the
"me/other" kind between two apparently separate beings, but rather of the "me
surrendered into my very Source" kind.
And so the Revelation that Adi Da
is the Divine Person is not of an experiential kind per se — great visions,
sounds, or the kind of thing we might conventionally tend to associate with the
word, "Revelation", from our traditional religious backgrounds — but rather a
taste of the experience- and experiencer-free, non-dual Divine State Itself. But
it also equally clear the Adi Da's appearance here, as an "apparent other", an
incarnate human being, has provided the means by which from now on we can locate
our very Source directly.
- In receiving this Revelation, it is
tacitly obvious to all of us that our own egoic activity is the only reason we
haven't already realized this Divine State perfectly — because what we (always)
experience, in our contemplation of Adi Da as Divine Person, is (a) the Divine
State; and (b) our egoically imposed limit on that completely unlimited State.
It is tacitly obvious that the profundity of our practice (or lack thereof) in
any moment is what is determining the degree of Realization. But even those of
us who are spiritual beginners are directly aware of (and, in this sense, are
"given") the Ultimate Realization from the start, even as we also see the self-activity
we are going to have to transcend perfectly (over time) in order to realize that
Ultimate Realization perfectly and permanently. As Adi Da puts it: the Way of
Adidam is a seventh-stage Way from the outset. The repeated Revelation is always
immersion in the Divine State, but with whatever forms of egoic resistance we
still have not understood present and revealed as that which needs to be transcended
in order for our Realization of the Revelation to be perfect and permanent. To
put it another way: By virtue of the nature of the Revelation, every one of us
who has received this Revelation is already in a position to bear witness to the
Ultimate Realization of the Way of Adidam, even though we still may be spiritual
beginners.
Perhaps the most easy criterion to check
is this one: If you recognize Adi Da
as the Divine Person, then your response is instantaneous and extraordinary, and
should spontaneously demonstrate itself by your passing through the crisis of
hearing any time within
a few months to a couple of years after recognizing Him. In short: you advance
through the levels of practice "like a hot knife through butter", to
use Adi Da's words.
So if you have been a devotee
for more than a couple of years, and you have not yet passed through the crisis
of hearing, it is highly likely you are not (yet) recognizing Adi Da as the Divine
Person. If this is your situation, know that you are not alone! Many others
are also in the same boat. Now some devotees say things like: well, I do
think I'm recognizing Adi Da as the Divine Person, but my recognition is weak.
When someone put it that way to Adi Da Himself (during one of the Avataric Discourses
He gave from 2004 to 2005), He humorously replied: "You can't be half-pregnant."
In other words:
You can't "sort of" recognize
Him (or "weakly" recognize Him) as the Divine Person. Adi Da continued
in His response to the questioner by asking him: who would you be relating to?
In other words, the Way of Adidam is based on the relationship with the Divine
Person — so if one is not recognizing Adi Da as the Divine Person, then
one can't be relating to Him on that basis, and one must be relating to Him either
as an ordinary man, or as an extraordinary man or Spiritual Master (but not
as the Divine). Having crossed the threshhold of recognizing Adi Da as
the Divine Person, it is true that recognition does deepen with practice:
If I am devotionally recognized most profoundly, there
is Divine Translation. Avatar Adi Da Samraj, Part
24, The Aletheon |
So you can't be half-pregnant. However, once pregnant, there is a process
that unfolds that makes you more and more pregnant, and that culminates in giving
birth.
4. What To Do if You are a Devotee Who Is Not Recognizing Adi Da as the Divine Person
If you have gone through the consideration we
just presented you with, and have determined that you are a devotee who is not
recognizing Adi Da as the Divine Person (despite however many decades you may
have been Adi Da's devotee, however many extraordinary experiences you may have
had, etc.), the obvious next question is: what should you do? Adi Da's words above
make it clear you can't practice the Way of Adidam Ruchiradam — you are
missing its very basis. You might have a passing thought that the "honorable"
thing to do would be to step back from being a devotee. But this would violate
a spiritual principle that Adi Da takes very seriously: once a devotee, always
a devotee. He takes your Eternal Vow completely seriously, and expects you to
do the same. Adi Da Himself was very aware of the devotees who weren't recognizing
Him, and He never asked them to step back from practice, or from being devotees.
Instead, He called them to recognize Him.
5. A "Pre-Adidam" Practice for Devotees Who Haven't Yet Recognized Adi Da
So all devotees
who are in this situation are in a kind of limbo. At some point, the formal culture
of Adidam will have to provide guidelines for all such devotees. But until it
does, here are a few insights right now. The best way to get out of this
limbo is first to recognize that this is where you are truly at, rather than staying
"murky" and unclear about the real reason your practice is "stuck",
and continuing to try to practice a Way that you don't have the proper foundation
for yet. The next thing is to focus on doing everything possible to cultivate
the Gift of recognition — through complete immersion in Adi Da. You may
have been feeling His Transmission in the body-mind, in some experiential (less
than Divine) sense, and basing your practice on that. Understand, then, that that
response to Him is still "pre-Adidam", and that recognition of Him is
beyond that, greater than that. Allow yourself to be moved by Adi Da beyond your
limited reception, until the Gift of recognition is Given to you. This
should not take forever — Adi Da made it the basis of the Way of Adidam
after the Ruchira Dham event because of the availability of the Gift! But to receive
it, you do need to acknowledge that you haven't yet received it, and completely
open yourself up to receiving it, through immersing yourself in Him. Use the elements
of practice — meditation, the life disciplines, etc. — but knowing
that you are not yet able to engage them in the same way you would if you were
already recognizing Adi Da. The life disciplines
are especially important, because one's lack of recognition is due to lack of
free energy and attention and the disciplines can help free up more energy and
attention:
My Heart-Master, Adi Da Samraj, Divine and True and
Free — may Your Radiant "Bright" Blessings Awaken me, whose
eyes are covered over by the images of a separate self, and whose mind is
held captive by visions of the world. Avatar Adi Da Samraj,
Ruchira Avatara Gita |
Even before recognizing Adi Da as the Divine Person, you can still
surrender to him like a man surrenders to God, as Adi Da demonstrated in
relation to His first Spiritual Master, Rudi, who was not a Divine Incarnation:
One can respond to Adi Da not
as an ordinary man, and not (yet) as the Divine Person, but as a great Spiritual
Transmission Master, understanding that one's present reception of His Transmission
must continually be felt beyond until the Gift of recognition of Him as the Divine
Person is received, and one is immersed in His Divine State, rather than experiencing
Him in the body-mind. |
| |