In late 1994, Adi Da sent Notes to me and my fellow devotee, Ed Rahsman. At the time, Ed and I were both serving Adi Da’s Work while living at the Mountain Of Attention. In His Notes, Adi Da said that He felt we were two of His strongest devotees, and, for that reason, He was making us the co-heads of His Lay Renunciate Order (aka "the LRO"):

Darshan with Adi Da. Ed Rahsman is the devotee with his mouth open, just to the right of the cameraman. (Click image to enlarge)

This function involved much more than managerial tasks! What I recall most about engaging this service was the intimate way we worked with Adi Da to help Him develop the practice of the Way of Adidam. The devotees in the Lay Renunciate Order were those devotees with the greatest response, willing to engage the practice of Adidam most intensively. So Adi Da would “experiment” with ways to intensify the practice of Adidam for LRO members. He would have Ed and I try out His proposals ourselves, and dialogue with Him about the results, before He would pass them on to the full Lay Renunciate Order.

We engaged in many such “practice experiments” for Adi Da! And we were delighted when some of them were successful, and Adi Da would then have the entire LRO adopt them.

Here’s just one example of a practice experiment. One week, Adi Da had Ed and I experiment with four-hour morning meditation periods. Normally, morning meditation is an hour and a half. So four hours is a much longer period! But Ed and I were always eager to test out any of Adi Da's ideas, because of their potential for accelerating devotee growth. So we entered a small Communion Hall (Plain Talk Chapel) at the Mountain Of Attention Sanctuary and sat for four hours. Ed and I emerged into the light of day, four hours later. I looked at Ed. Ed looked at me. I shook my head, saying, “nah”. He laughed and agreed. The extra time in meditation had not made any noticeable difference for either of us.

Working in such a way with Adi Da to develop the practice of Adidam felt very intimate! And both Ed and I also felt it to be an incredible responsibility that we needed to “get right” — we needed to be 100% sure not to report conclusions that might be inaccurate. So despite our initial negative impression, we continued the four-hour morning meditations for a full week, in order to be able to give Adi Da a conclusive report on it. This report would then be able to describe what difference a four-hour meditation might make not just on one’s immediate state leaving the Communion Hall, but also whether the added time in meditation would help with one’s practice throughout the rest of the day. The morning meditation and puja are intended to be the way we start the day; they serve as the devotional foundation for the rest of the day. Those events of meditation and puja allow for the greatest depth during the day because there is nothing else competing for our attention while we are sitting in the Communion Hall. Then we bring that depth of practice into the rest of the day, where many other things now are competing for our attention, and we work to sustain that early morning depth of practice. In principle, a longer meditation could be a resource that makes practice during the rest of the day easier; however, our continued experimentation the rest of that week did not bear this out.

From the beginning of His Work with devotees, Adi Da had engaged in experimentation with different forms of the practice. He knew what had worked for Him in His Own process of Re-Awakening to Divine Realization. But He soon learned that many things He was capable of doing were impossible for all the devotees who had come to Him, to date. (He did always consider the possibility that there could be exceptional devotees in the future capable of doing aspects of the practice no devotee so far had been able to do.) So it was important to "test out" all aspects of the practice on actual devotees. Sometimes the experiments He did involved the entire culture of devotees. We tried out many different dietary regimens over the years, for example. But in this case where He was experimenting with Ed and me, His experiments were more nuanced. He knew what He was proposing probably would not be useful for the general gathering of devotees. But He was wanting to learn whether there were some devotees who could make use of a particular variation in practice, and that’s where we (and the entire LRO) came in.

After years of experimentation, Adi Da's conclusions about what forms and stages the practice of Adidam might take (and which forms and stages were appropriate for which people) were summarized in His Source Texts, including The Dawn Horse Testament and The Aletheon.

Carrying out experiments with the practice of Adidam was something Ed and I were able to do for Adi Da, even when it involved an intensification of practice. Another responsibility that we found much more challenging (and for which we were constantly criticized by Adi Da) was in growing the LRO: identifying devotees who were potentially capable of engaging the LRO practice; and then inspiring them to apply for and enter the Lay Renunciate Order.

Part of the process of fulfilling this responsibility was Adi Da training us to assess devotees' practice and potential at a deeper level. I recall having several conversations with one devotee about applying for the LRO and then communicating to Adi Da my sense of the strength of this devotee's devotional response to Him. "That guy?! Are you kidding? He's just a sycophant!" And then He elaborated all the clues in this devotee's behavior that He wanted me to notice, so that I could arrive at an assessment closer to how Adi Da was reading him.[1]

Every couple of weeks, we would provide Adi Da with an "LRO report" that listed all the LRO applicants around the world. Despite all our efforts working with devotees, the list was never large enough to satisfy Adi Da. I remember one occasion where Ruchiradama Quandra Sukhapur joined me for our regular early morning meeting. She read me Adi Da's Notes on our latest LRO report. Or more accurately: she shouted them at me for the half hour it took to read all His words. As I was receiving these Notes, I recalled a story about one of Quandra Sukhapur's earliest attempts at communicating Adi Da's Notes to a particular devotee. Adi Da later asked her, "Did you relay to him everything I said?" She responded affirmatively. Adi Da then said, "Did you shout what you were communicating at him the whole time, the way I was shouting at you when I gave the Notes?" She said, "no". "Then you didn't give Him My communication!!", Adi Da said. So that was why she was shouting at me — because He had been shouting as He gave the Notes.

Obviously, receving such a shouted communication from your Beloved Guru — reflecting how you had fallen short in a responsibility that mattered a great deal to His Work of liberating all beings — is a difficult experience! But I was much helped in receiving such communications from Him with an open heart by Ruchiradama Nadikanta, who told me that she always understood His Shout to be just a particular modulation of His Blessing-Force. And so it was! It was Divine Love in a form that communicated urgency.

It was not possible for Adi Da to work intimately — one on one — with all of His devotees. So one of the basic, recurring designs in Adi Da's organizing of devotees over the years was His working intimately with a smaller group of devotees that He referred to as His "coins". His primary intent was to grow these devotees in their practice. They, in turn, would be able to serve other devotees and help them grow in their practice. The Lay Renunciate Order was one form of this layered design for growing all His devotees.

So I was not too surprised with the following criticism, in the midst of many criticisms in that half-hour Shout. "It says in their report that the LRO in Canada is made up of a guy who can't speak English and an elderly woman who can't walk! Are you kidding me?!" Of course, Adi Da loved all His devotees without limit. And the fact that one of the two Canadian members of the LRO spoke Vietnamese and the other was in a wheelchair posed no limit in their ability to practice. But these particular circumstances of their lives did impact their ability to fulfill the other functions that were expected of LRO members (as Adi Da's "coins"): to inspire and educate other devotees in the practice; to engage in public speaking events as part of the Adidam Mission; etc.

Adi Da's Notes finally concluded with a final Shout, expressed in what He often called His "New York mannerism": "Tell Tongue He can stick his report where the sun don't shine!!"

It was devastating to receive this! But His Shout also deeply penetrated me (as Adi Da had intended), and left me more moved than ever to find more members for the Lay Renunciate Order.

The whole time Ruchiradama Quandra Sukhapur had been shouting Adi Da's Notes at me, she had a fire in her eyes. She literally had become Adi Da to a degree, as she passed on His Commmunication and Blessing-Force. When she finished reading His Words, the fire left her eyes, and she was just Quandra Sukhapur again. She smiled sweetly at me and said, "Just do the best you can."

* * *

I always remember another thing Quandra Sukhapur said to me during one of those morning meetings. We often would be responding to Adi Da at all hours of the day or night. I even took to having a mat I could sleep on in my office at the Mountain Of Attention, so I could be available whenever I was needed to reply to Adi Da on some matter. In the middle of one particularly challenging time, Quandra Sukhapur said to me, "Always remember to do whatever it takes to stay balanced, no matter how difficult it gets!" I took her advice to heart and never forgot it. Adhering to it has kept my life sane, during many difficult moments since that time.